Looking tired again, and that's not always loneliness or sad.
It's like student's eyelids before that stampede of letter-writing,
expectations and predictions and the old aching of not knowing
where your letters will send you. Holding onto a past,
a present you aren't sure you want, a pair of spectacles,
a lucky pencil, the blueprints to those important smiles.
It all comes down to the architecture of your face and
a dream you have that you know you can’t say aloud.
Friday, 29 May 2015
Wednesday, 20 May 2015
Burnt-out
Days are landlocked, minds divided and expanding
burning the edges in
photographs of nebulae, of burn-out humans
starred and scarred faces in the sky.
It doesn't matter that I don't know the answer to the question that is being asked:
there will be answers to come, but we haven't even conceived
of something anywhere like close to
whatever those will be. What answers do you need from me?
In Old English, a second ago was a second minute ago
and in Latin there is not a word for yes or no
and did you know that the hippocampus is a Latin word for seahorse?
The seahorse in your brain where memories make you,
photograph by photograph, it keeps your mind together.
Still, you're asking. What happened to that face?
He has stars in his eyes, I thought, while Will held a flame
to a discarded photograph and the paper seared gold
and the people pictured there became galaxies
and stars of jewel-bed colors in night and cities and in trees.
burning the edges in
photographs of nebulae, of burn-out humans
starred and scarred faces in the sky.
It doesn't matter that I don't know the answer to the question that is being asked:
there will be answers to come, but we haven't even conceived
of something anywhere like close to
whatever those will be. What answers do you need from me?
In Old English, a second ago was a second minute ago
and in Latin there is not a word for yes or no
and did you know that the hippocampus is a Latin word for seahorse?
The seahorse in your brain where memories make you,
photograph by photograph, it keeps your mind together.
Still, you're asking. What happened to that face?
He has stars in his eyes, I thought, while Will held a flame
to a discarded photograph and the paper seared gold
and the people pictured there became galaxies
and stars of jewel-bed colors in night and cities and in trees.
I don't understand myself right now. My poems are not good. My writing is not happening
but my mind somehow overtook all else and my synapses might burn-out too
like some William voodoo
Monday, 11 May 2015
The 150 Friends Club
Oh my golly what a great song
Oh my golly listen to this band
Oh my golly I couldn't be more jolly
That they use my helping hand.
Saturday, 9 May 2015
I lost him long before the fog rolled in,
the sound that sound cracks make
the glass would break
when I would be framed-
if I had known, I would have not missed handwritten notes,
the small signs amongst the hollering
and the erosion- the brick walls and the attrition
of something I counted up
brick by brick, counting myself safe
and if I knew he wasn't waving anymore
maybe I would have left the lighthouse and gone somewhere alone
but I am lonely
I miss him, I miss the swing of the lighthouse beam
calling out for him
i will find a way back to you
I had only one light shining and it was for him.
I lost him long before the rocks came apart
and the lighthouse fell into the sea.
come back to me
I would say, but who am I talking to?
Myself, I guess.
Myself, I guess.
Friday, 24 April 2015
Waterstones
So some people posit that people aren't afraid of dying, just dying before they have the chance to leave some imprint or mark upon the existing world that will remain in their absence as a reminder, or as evidence to show, that they ever existed themselves. I got to write some book reviews for Waterstones so I guess if that theory holds true I can die happy now.
An Anthropologist On Mars- Oliver Sacks
A surgeon with Tourettes' that gives him uncontrollable tics that magically cease during surgery; the amnesiac who can't recall anything since the 60's; a painter whose colour-blindness doesn't stop him from painting (pictures included); a blind man who regains his sight after 51 years, with frightening consequences; among other abnormalities of the human condition, Sacks writes the stories of his patients and their amazing idiosyncratic experiences.
Virgin Suicides- Jeffrey Eugenides
A breathtakingly beautiful confusing and one-of-a-kind novel, absolutely incredibly unmissable
While the story keeps you riveted, the language will inspire.
Proust Was A Neuroscientist- Jonah Lerner
Long before the 20 and 21st century advances in neuroscience and neuroimaging technology the pathways to what we now take as scientific truths about how the brain experiences the world were already being paved y Proust, George Eliot, Cezanne, and Woolf, among others.
Brimming with knowledge tracing concepts of female mental illness back through melancholy, hysteria, mania, nerves, desire, contrariness and 'Freudian problems'- contains case studies detailing the afflictions of women from 1800 to today and the rapidly changing understanding that accompanied elapsing time.
Friday, 3 April 2015
Inspired by No.5 of Charles Bernstein's experiments
You are still too young for how old you're getting,
You're so young in your head that you speak to yourself
in poems
in second persons,
in your own voice
sounds
in your head
sound
like voices in my head.
You, I think I lost your mind.
You are not yourself.
I am mistaken, so are you.
I am mistaken, for who?
You.
You got me.
You get me.
I've got you.
I (for)get you.
Love is never enough. You know that
I know you.
I love you, you know.
You know I love you.
You're so young in your head that you speak to yourself
in poems
in second persons,
in your own voice
sounds
in your head
sound
like voices in my head.
You, I think I lost your mind.
You are not yourself.
I am mistaken, so are you.
I am mistaken, for who?
You.
You got me.
You get me.
I've got you.
I (for)get you.
Love is never enough. You know that
I know you.
I love you, you know.
You know I love you.
another fictional diary entry of sorts/fictional mind and its fictional thoughts
I've got a few characters in my mind that have developed over time, some of which are extensions of myself, others characteristically standing in dramatic opposition with every fairly well-established characteristic or trait that I have learnt from others that I possess (it's no secret that all my self-knowledge comes from other people, specifically the reflections of how or what or who I am informing me of how or what or whom that is). I did a thought experiment and tried to adapt to fit the mindset of one of these characters, and began to write.
4.37 am
We're the oldest living crusaders
in a war
we can't remember,
I can't remember-
10.58 am
my dreams last night were stranger than usual. but these days dreams are no stranger than reality and that's unusual. I found my mother sitting on the front porch. Her nightdress wet from the sprinklers and she was wearing socks but no shoes, so the soggy lawn soaked right through, turning them grey. If it was still 5 or whenever I woke up and started trying to write my dreams down I would not have realised I was awake, she'd just be another part of the dream.I wish I could This is a nightmare and I can't It's pointless to wish you could wake up from I feel sick with guilt about
I am aware of how seem only to myself writing this, and I'm not strong enough to see that hateful wicked part of myself that I know exists and is undeniably present, not subtle,
I just don't want to see it.
And she was drumming her fingers on the decking, picking at the paint. I wish we could whitewash ourselves, all of this, us. I need to get out of here without feeling immediately like the most terrible living creature to ever own a beating heart. She's so helpless. Her little pointed eyes turned on me, her little pointed teeth seeming to get smaller the more she refrained from speaking so she could listen to her voices. They are hers because nobody else hears them and they are also hers, she says. She says she has been split off like light refracting from a prism. Sliced into little rainbow bits and fragmented and now her soul is in ribbons, her brain slivers, her central nervous system, her senses, speech.
I need to close the conversation, she was nodding and saying when I found her, not looking at anything, I need to bring it to a close.
Your clothes, I extended my arms to pull her up, as if she was my younger sister and not my mother, I imagine what haunts her, if I'm correct and have listened as hard as I have she is hampered bythe feeling the knowledge that she's been cut up and dispersed. She's not a person anymore, and not many people. Something that once was and is now fractured, spread too thin has no central nucleus for the rest of her feral electrons to spin around. She is spinning around everywhere and without somewhere to go or to belong then you are nothing. You have nothing, and that usually means there is nothing of you because someone always has something. I fixate on the fragments themselves. Those tiny pieces of her. I think about how they are shaped. I imagine holding them in my palms, feeling their angles and even venture as far as picturing what it would be to reassemble her like a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Like a jenga backwards, without the falling bricks. I can never fully imagine getting close to completing it because the image itself is impoverished, which to me usually means it won't be possible. Things aren't possible if they'e not yet conceived of.
Someone will, though, somewhere.
She howls in the night because she sees faces in everything, They are beyond human, she says. They are never warm or kind. The world I'm in hates me, she cries again and again, what have I done? As if someone is going to answer. Even I know that her voices don't have one. If they did would she want it?
I need to get out of here and anesthetise my conscience. Or else give myself a lobotomy. I'll be mad like her if I don't get out. I'm going to go to confession tomorrow. I would go today but I need to iron Mass dress. I have enough guilt for a handful of Christians but I guess I leave the repentance for someone else.I wish I was I wish she could God, please help us.
4.37 am
We're the oldest living crusaders
in a war
we can't remember,
I can't remember-
10.58 am
my dreams last night were stranger than usual. but these days dreams are no stranger than reality and that's unusual. I found my mother sitting on the front porch. Her nightdress wet from the sprinklers and she was wearing socks but no shoes, so the soggy lawn soaked right through, turning them grey. If it was still 5 or whenever I woke up and started trying to write my dreams down I would not have realised I was awake, she'd just be another part of the dream.
I am aware of how seem only to myself writing this,
I just don't want to see it.
And she was drumming her fingers on the decking, picking at the paint. I wish we could whitewash ourselves, all of this, us. I need to get out of here without feeling immediately like the most terrible living creature to ever own a beating heart. She's so helpless. Her little pointed eyes turned on me, her little pointed teeth seeming to get smaller the more she refrained from speaking so she could listen to her voices. They are hers because nobody else hears them and they are also hers, she says. She says she has been split off like light refracting from a prism. Sliced into little rainbow bits and fragmented and now her soul is in ribbons, her brain slivers, her central nervous system, her senses, speech.
I need to close the conversation, she was nodding and saying when I found her, not looking at anything, I need to bring it to a close.
Your clothes, I extended my arms to pull her up, as if she was my younger sister and not my mother, I imagine what haunts her, if I'm correct and have listened as hard as I have she is hampered by
Someone will, though, somewhere.
She howls in the night because she sees faces in everything, They are beyond human, she says. They are never warm or kind. The world I'm in hates me, she cries again and again, what have I done? As if someone is going to answer. Even I know that her voices don't have one. If they did would she want it?
I need to get out of here and anesthetise my conscience. Or else give myself a lobotomy. I'll be mad like her if I don't get out. I'm going to go to confession tomorrow. I would go today but I need to iron Mass dress. I have enough guilt for a handful of Christians but I guess I leave the repentance for someone else.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
untitled days
To go with my lullaby, a wire drum overnight
at my ear in a loop in the hope of sleep,
I wanted to try
to go to panacea, all of my life in my hands,
I witnessed grey eyes, irises
student's eyelids and eyelashes and eyebrows, nose, cheeks, freckles, freckles,
scars, broken teeth, gums,
the teeth are my own, and I want to be a person.
Palms and feet, and I direct line of my gray veins and your fingers and nails you want to drill to point out how great,
the great day is, it is possibly my dream,
I think this it is the best.
Saturday, 21 March 2015
Moon picnics
Saturday, 14 March 2015
the summarised diary of a fictional slightly heartbroken bitter-sweet-mouth person
date in J a n u a r y
Three years, one after the other, I asked myself the same question.
I asked myself who it is I want to be. Three years ago, I wrote down in my notebook that I wanted to be the one. The year after that, I wanted to be the one that got away. This year, I want to get away.
date in F e b r u a r y
I have dreams about waking up. Last night I dreamt I woke up wearing his face.
date in M a r c h
Supposedly it's too early to be philosophising, but today I still hope to see my shadow prove to me I'm a whole and real person.
date in A p r i l
This morning there was a damaged boy in my bed. One I remember from months ago, when I was alone and wanted to be wanted, not even wanted, just accepted, then and then and then, in those moments. I don't remember how he got here but I guess I must be feeling the same. Need to be here, here and here. Except that I don't need to be here. I just need what I can't have.
s u m m e r
Months we don't speak of, now we don't speak.
date in A u g u s t
Time clings like cat hair and days are arbitrary smudges of light on the darkness that drops with night's fallings. My fingernails are cracked with good intentions but I can't find meaning in anything. Today on my walk home from work I found some old maps from pre-war London someone had lfet on the side of the road, near the drain where leaves are collecting. They remind me of body bags pulled up into banks that part for the cars to gleam through. I spread the maps out on my floor at home and traced the tiny roads with my fingers, pressing stickers onto places I remembered from when we used to take our adventures on the trains I was so afraid of taking before I met him.
date in S e p t e m b e r
I'm the only one at work who wears a long-sleeved uniform.
date in O c t o b e r
A storm last night split the sky open. It looks like the back of the moon. There are no apples in the fruit bowl, no milk in the fridge. I'm lonely but for the birds that still come even though I broke the bird table he built.
date in N o v e m b e r
Someone today thought that I was their old friend. I was stopped on the street by a woman perhaps in her late fifties. She had the kindest eyes, and they were greener than summer leaf, and they were so warm I could have heated my hands on them. I had to let her hug me before I forced out a laugh and said to her that I didn't know what she meant, that I probably wasn't who she was looking for. When she let go of me, I heard myself crying from the inside out. I heard the voices again, those that come from somewhere between my bones and all over, but under, and when she walked away I wanted to run after her. I went home and didn't cry, just watered the plants and watched the news.
date in D e c e m b e r
Christmas television crackling, hard folded bedsheets, night quiet and heavy at the window, looking in. It doesn't see me.
date in the N e w Y e a r
This year, I want nothing from anyone.
Three years, one after the other, I asked myself the same question.
I asked myself who it is I want to be. Three years ago, I wrote down in my notebook that I wanted to be the one. The year after that, I wanted to be the one that got away. This year, I want to get away.
date in F e b r u a r y
I have dreams about waking up. Last night I dreamt I woke up wearing his face.
date in M a r c h
Supposedly it's too early to be philosophising, but today I still hope to see my shadow prove to me I'm a whole and real person.
date in A p r i l
This morning there was a damaged boy in my bed. One I remember from months ago, when I was alone and wanted to be wanted, not even wanted, just accepted, then and then and then, in those moments. I don't remember how he got here but I guess I must be feeling the same. Need to be here, here and here. Except that I don't need to be here. I just need what I can't have.
s u m m e r
Months we don't speak of, now we don't speak.
date in A u g u s t
Time clings like cat hair and days are arbitrary smudges of light on the darkness that drops with night's fallings. My fingernails are cracked with good intentions but I can't find meaning in anything. Today on my walk home from work I found some old maps from pre-war London someone had lfet on the side of the road, near the drain where leaves are collecting. They remind me of body bags pulled up into banks that part for the cars to gleam through. I spread the maps out on my floor at home and traced the tiny roads with my fingers, pressing stickers onto places I remembered from when we used to take our adventures on the trains I was so afraid of taking before I met him.
date in S e p t e m b e r
I'm the only one at work who wears a long-sleeved uniform.
date in O c t o b e r
A storm last night split the sky open. It looks like the back of the moon. There are no apples in the fruit bowl, no milk in the fridge. I'm lonely but for the birds that still come even though I broke the bird table he built.
date in N o v e m b e r
Someone today thought that I was their old friend. I was stopped on the street by a woman perhaps in her late fifties. She had the kindest eyes, and they were greener than summer leaf, and they were so warm I could have heated my hands on them. I had to let her hug me before I forced out a laugh and said to her that I didn't know what she meant, that I probably wasn't who she was looking for. When she let go of me, I heard myself crying from the inside out. I heard the voices again, those that come from somewhere between my bones and all over, but under, and when she walked away I wanted to run after her. I went home and didn't cry, just watered the plants and watched the news.
date in D e c e m b e r
Christmas television crackling, hard folded bedsheets, night quiet and heavy at the window, looking in. It doesn't see me.
date in the N e w Y e a r
This year, I want nothing from anyone.
Sunday, 8 March 2015
Untender nights
Tenderness is a habit.
Tenderness is just a habit and we’re unlearning everyday.
There are darker things than the nights I am always running from
angrily leering in the periphery of my eyes
and I am too scared to stop running, too scared and yet
not blissfully ignorant enough to be blind to the denial I am in.
It’s an awkward place to be inside when you know wholly where you are
and also have no desire to get out.
The periphery is a meeting place of two absences.
Books left untouched for too long start to emit a low moan.
Another busted light bulb and the circles are round, they have no end,
that’s how long I want you to be my friend, again,
and to take care of me
and fix the circuits in here
and in here.
The dreams I don’t sleep enough to let recur
murmur to me from the vents between my cortices
and the thoughts that build up through the little hours
and block their circulation-
cut off your hands,
nobody will hold them anyway.
I pretended not to hear until I wrote this down
and now I'm cowering.
A circle’s round, it has no end,
a circle’s round, it has no end.
Everything has end. Even infinity because,
in actuality, the universe ends,
reports the New Scientist. I can’t run forever,
it has to all end somewhere.
Using google translate, I put the above text through several diferent languages and back to English. I got this:
There is not a night's nights' soft soft
Sensitivity is usually only and give us every day.There are darker things that always run at nightLooking angrily near the eyeI'm afraid to stop driving, very scared afterBlissful ignorant enough not to be blind to deny that I am.An unpleasant place to be if you know exactly where you areI also want to leave.The circumference of a meeting of two absences.
Immune written since the beginning of the long version whine.The second circle around the bulb explosion, not the end,This is the time I want to be my friend againAnd take care of meAnd the appointment of a community hereAnd here.Dreams do not sleep enough to stop the repeatTell me, my cracks in the crustAnd ideas to build up the hoursAnd prevent the movementAmputation of handsNo one will be anyway.
I did, as if he had not heard before, I wroteAnd now I'm intimidated.Ring around not overVisit the hand is over.This is the end. Because even infinite,
Actually ends of the universe,The New Scientist. I can not run forever,Everything has to stop somewhere.
Tenderness is just a habit and we’re unlearning everyday.
There are darker things than the nights I am always running from
angrily leering in the periphery of my eyes
and I am too scared to stop running, too scared and yet
not blissfully ignorant enough to be blind to the denial I am in.
It’s an awkward place to be inside when you know wholly where you are
and also have no desire to get out.
The periphery is a meeting place of two absences.
Books left untouched for too long start to emit a low moan.
Another busted light bulb and the circles are round, they have no end,
that’s how long I want you to be my friend, again,
and to take care of me
and fix the circuits in here
and in here.
The dreams I don’t sleep enough to let recur
murmur to me from the vents between my cortices
and the thoughts that build up through the little hours
and block their circulation-
cut off your hands,
nobody will hold them anyway.
I pretended not to hear until I wrote this down
and now I'm cowering.
A circle’s round, it has no end,
a circle’s round, it has no end.
Everything has end. Even infinity because,
in actuality, the universe ends,
reports the New Scientist. I can’t run forever,
it has to all end somewhere.
Using google translate, I put the above text through several diferent languages and back to English. I got this:
There is not a night's nights' soft soft
Sensitivity is usually only and give us every day.There are darker things that always run at nightLooking angrily near the eyeI'm afraid to stop driving, very scared afterBlissful ignorant enough not to be blind to deny that I am.An unpleasant place to be if you know exactly where you areI also want to leave.The circumference of a meeting of two absences.
Immune written since the beginning of the long version whine.The second circle around the bulb explosion, not the end,This is the time I want to be my friend againAnd take care of meAnd the appointment of a community hereAnd here.Dreams do not sleep enough to stop the repeatTell me, my cracks in the crustAnd ideas to build up the hoursAnd prevent the movementAmputation of handsNo one will be anyway.
I did, as if he had not heard before, I wroteAnd now I'm intimidated.Ring around not overVisit the hand is over.This is the end. Because even infinite,
Actually ends of the universe,The New Scientist. I can not run forever,Everything has to stop somewhere.
Musical perfection
A fairly recent discussion about songs that exempify musical perfection prompted me to procrastinate when nearly at the end of my essay (not even surel it's relevant without degree, probably) and give my idea of the songs that are perfect:
Baba O'Reily- The Who
Re: Stacks- Bon Iver
Nothing Compares 2 U- Sinead O'Connor
Perfect Day- Lou Reed
Feel- Robbie Williams
Old Friends- Simon and Garfunkeyu
America- Razorlight
Romeo and Juliet- Dire Straits
more coming soon, not in that order
Baba O'Reily- The Who
Re: Stacks- Bon Iver
Nothing Compares 2 U- Sinead O'Connor
Perfect Day- Lou Reed
Feel- Robbie Williams
Old Friends- Simon and Garfunkeyu
America- Razorlight
Romeo and Juliet- Dire Straits
more coming soon, not in that order
an account of last year found in the poetry that was written during
January is folded neatly like my mother taught me,
life’s dirty laundry, she left the rest to the housekeeper,
we failed to clean it, the dirt got in deeper.
February and like you I why: when even scrambled I’m get me you
March and I have finally stopped burning bridges that are not yet
done being built and will let all that is meant to be (or not)
sink softly into the silt
April is overburdened on both sides, the extremist can’t
keep up either and simply snaps
May is where dreams come from- the deepest part of your
chest cavity, the sorest part of my throat, behind aching knees,
in my lungs, under our tongues
June & there are better ways to leave than through the skylight
or the heart/window
July and i am becoming, i am becoming, i am becoming,
empty sonnet, rolling static, sun splinters and
the spiders scatter
August, because- don’t leave me behind, don’t forget about me
don’t replace me, don’t hold this against me,
don’t ever say these things aloud because my mother taught me.
September sees sometimes the break in your heart is more like
the hole in the flute, sometimes it’s the place where the music
comes through and it came through for me when I most needed it to
October and we took the underground train home because we thought
to stop at the museum of natural history would turn habits and
thoughts that are old into to fossils, turn fools into gold,
November is dicing together my fragmentary thoughts on the
fridge door, when I play guitar, it creaks like it's dying
and I start crying.
December so I check my quiet corners for signs of you.
I check my poems for signs of wounds.
life’s dirty laundry, she left the rest to the housekeeper,
we failed to clean it, the dirt got in deeper.
February and like you I why: when even scrambled I’m get me you
March and I have finally stopped burning bridges that are not yet
done being built and will let all that is meant to be (or not)
sink softly into the silt
April is overburdened on both sides, the extremist can’t
keep up either and simply snaps
May is where dreams come from- the deepest part of your
chest cavity, the sorest part of my throat, behind aching knees,
in my lungs, under our tongues
June & there are better ways to leave than through the skylight
or the heart/window
July and i am becoming, i am becoming, i am becoming,
empty sonnet, rolling static, sun splinters and
the spiders scatter
August, because- don’t leave me behind, don’t forget about me
don’t replace me, don’t hold this against me,
don’t ever say these things aloud because my mother taught me.
September sees sometimes the break in your heart is more like
the hole in the flute, sometimes it’s the place where the music
comes through and it came through for me when I most needed it to
October and we took the underground train home because we thought
to stop at the museum of natural history would turn habits and
thoughts that are old into to fossils, turn fools into gold,
November is dicing together my fragmentary thoughts on the
fridge door, when I play guitar, it creaks like it's dying
and I start crying.
December so I check my quiet corners for signs of you.
I check my poems for signs of wounds.
Friday, 6 March 2015
Will's new recording equipment put to use
A short poem recited using Will's exciting new mics and mixer.
Thursday, 5 March 2015
Kicks
Kicks was a rare find- he was one of those guys who looked good with bleached hair or with specatcles on or with a ring in one of his earlobes. We weren't sure whether or not he actually was a student like us, but we had heard about Louis' roomate who had looked like the kind of guy who would kill kittens and carry a pocketknife to terrorise council-estate kids for the hell of it, and anyway, he didn't make it past the first few weeks. Rumours went around that he broke down crying in a seminar and confessed that he was cooking meth but they were only rumours and rumours could get pretty far fetched, flung even further the more people believed them. Louis took him in after the kitten-killer dropped out and after that Kicks was often at parties. He drank a lot but never got noisy or boorish. He didn't speak, ever, even when we asked if he wanted to play a song, or how old he was. Instead he'd shrug, nod, occasionally smile. He had big lips and small eyes, a delicate nose. He got his name from one of the first parties of the second term. In the middle of the dancefloor, he was jolting around in time with the music and he looked like broken china, his legs and arms loosely attached to the rest of him. From that kicking about, and because so few people knew was his name really was, he picked up the name Kicks. We never knew whether or not he liked it, but he never complained about it. He was funny, laid-back. It was a shame there weren't more guys like that.
Robbie told me that her real name was actually Esther. He was in a small class with her on Tuesday mornings, one that only contained seven students or so. We wouldn't have known it because she introduced herself and Joan and wanted everyone to know her like that. At parties she had this trick that some people were fascinated by, some people hated, but either way, everyone had something to say. She liked that- having an audience. She'd tell people she was Joan of Arc reincarnated and as if to prove it she would put cigarettes out on the crook of her white blistered arm. I remember people gathering round her one time when people were having drinks on the fourth floor of Robbie and Charlie's residential halls. 'When I died the first time,' I heard her say, 'I became fire-proof.' She took the roll-up George was smoking and before he could stop to protest- if he intended to, for he might have been more interested in the act she was performing- she pressed it into the inside of her elbow. It was a bit like I'd imagine watching a junkie shoot up. She tossed her head back, her skin seeming to glow luminescent with all the attention she was getting. She loved it all- people rolling their eyes, muttering, trying to turn away, staring at her scabs.
Kicks was the only one who wasn't apprehensive about Joan. Because he wasn't frightened by her, she tried even harder to frighten him. She went so crazy that we were't sure whether she really had lost her mind for good, and not in a party-trick way, because she would yell and yell until it didn't sound like anything and say strange things like that he was too clean to sleep in her bed or that she'd had a vision from God telling her to cut off his fingers. When she kissed him, it was wild and all for show, almost violent. Kicks didn't seem to mind. He didn't say anything about it, but I guess he never said much about anything.
George told us that she'd taken a fall trying to climb down the building from Kicks' bedroom. Some people said she deserved it, that it was coming to her. Others said that she was having another vision, hallucination, whatever, and she jumped. Kicks stopped dancing like a marionette with fractured limbs and when we saw him at parties he always left early, as if he wanted to be polite. I sort of hated Joan for swallowing him whole like that. I thought she'd always wanted to prove that he wasn't as laid-back as he seemed, and she'd succeeded, but now everything was bitten-lip and sidelong-glance and hesitant, awkward. It wasn't long before Louis wasn't happy and Kicks wasn't around anymore and nobody remembered what it was like when he had been so it didn't matter much anyway. a
Robbie told me that her real name was actually Esther. He was in a small class with her on Tuesday mornings, one that only contained seven students or so. We wouldn't have known it because she introduced herself and Joan and wanted everyone to know her like that. At parties she had this trick that some people were fascinated by, some people hated, but either way, everyone had something to say. She liked that- having an audience. She'd tell people she was Joan of Arc reincarnated and as if to prove it she would put cigarettes out on the crook of her white blistered arm. I remember people gathering round her one time when people were having drinks on the fourth floor of Robbie and Charlie's residential halls. 'When I died the first time,' I heard her say, 'I became fire-proof.' She took the roll-up George was smoking and before he could stop to protest- if he intended to, for he might have been more interested in the act she was performing- she pressed it into the inside of her elbow. It was a bit like I'd imagine watching a junkie shoot up. She tossed her head back, her skin seeming to glow luminescent with all the attention she was getting. She loved it all- people rolling their eyes, muttering, trying to turn away, staring at her scabs.
Kicks was the only one who wasn't apprehensive about Joan. Because he wasn't frightened by her, she tried even harder to frighten him. She went so crazy that we were't sure whether she really had lost her mind for good, and not in a party-trick way, because she would yell and yell until it didn't sound like anything and say strange things like that he was too clean to sleep in her bed or that she'd had a vision from God telling her to cut off his fingers. When she kissed him, it was wild and all for show, almost violent. Kicks didn't seem to mind. He didn't say anything about it, but I guess he never said much about anything.
George told us that she'd taken a fall trying to climb down the building from Kicks' bedroom. Some people said she deserved it, that it was coming to her. Others said that she was having another vision, hallucination, whatever, and she jumped. Kicks stopped dancing like a marionette with fractured limbs and when we saw him at parties he always left early, as if he wanted to be polite. I sort of hated Joan for swallowing him whole like that. I thought she'd always wanted to prove that he wasn't as laid-back as he seemed, and she'd succeeded, but now everything was bitten-lip and sidelong-glance and hesitant, awkward. It wasn't long before Louis wasn't happy and Kicks wasn't around anymore and nobody remembered what it was like when he had been so it didn't matter much anyway. a
She entered the bedroom late but unhurried. After scrubbing some of the filth accumulated from sleepless earth-worn crusading off her face and and from beneath her nails with the wash cloth and manicure brush at the sink, she slipped into bed beside him. Her arms fell atop his. He remained asleep, still. She began to whisper all her celestial wishes, telling of how they could only come alive with him. Travelling alone only led to tired paths and stretched wounds and echoes of antique voices, promising only the events as far ahead in time as the months and recent years just passed. Reading the news from headlines that were already being recycled into news nobody could prepare for.
Into the darkness, she voiced the new doubts she'd uncovered in the corners of yesterdays where she'd looked for answers and antecedents and other loose ends with which to tie her own, thinking her audience too faraway in sleep to hear-
Did you ever love me?
He replied to her from the dark and the sound of his voice was too present to echo.
I loved you in sleep. You never left me there.
Into the darkness, she voiced the new doubts she'd uncovered in the corners of yesterdays where she'd looked for answers and antecedents and other loose ends with which to tie her own, thinking her audience too faraway in sleep to hear-
Did you ever love me?
He replied to her from the dark and the sound of his voice was too present to echo.
I loved you in sleep. You never left me there.
contents pages
II. A history of alcohol consumption and addiction
III. Identifying addiction
i) Early signs of alcoholism
ii) Physical symptoms
iii) Psychiatric symptoms
IV. The causes of addiction: theoretical perspectives
i) Psychosocial causes
ii) Genetic variation
iii) Neurological approaches
V. Diagnosing alcoholism.
VI. Treating alcoholism
i) Rehabilitation
ii) Detoxification
iii) Psychological treatments
iv) Medications
VII. Prognosis for alcoholism
VIII. Current research into alcoholism
IX. Helplines and useful links
I. Foreword
II. The Psychology of Communication: Seven essays
1) Face-to-Face
2) Telephone Etiquette
3) Body Language
4) The Written Word
5) Innuendo, Implication and In-Between-the-Lines
6) Speaking in Public and Public Speaking
7) The Psychology of Silence
III. Afterword
I. An introduction to humanism
II. The history of humanism
i) Predecessors across the globe
ii) Renaissance humanism
iii) 18th-19th century to modern humanism
III. Types of humanism
i) Renaissance
ii) Secular
iii) Religious
IV. Anti-humanist humanism: the paradoxical polemics about humanism
V, Humanistic psychology
I. Memory: an introduction to the study of memory
II. Long-term and short-term memory
III) Models of short and long-term memory
- Atkinson-Shiffrin's Multi-Store Model
- Baddley and Hitch's Working Memory Model
- Research to corroborate and contradict
IV. Types of memory
i) Declarative memory (explicit)
- episodic memory
- semantic memory
ii) Procedural memory (implicit)
V. Forgetting
i) decay
ii) interference
VI. The neurobiology of memory
VIII. Disorders affecting memory
IX. Levels of processing: improving memory
X. Other types of memory
i) flashbulb memory
ii) topographical memory
XI. False memories
X. Current issues in memory research
XI. Conclusions
Wednesday, 4 March 2015
A story
The sky was split open and tumbling, crude and grey and yellow. It looked like the back of the moon. Everything shone and we could hear the war. I thought about everything burning.
There wasn't any dreaming that night, only nightingale song we couldn't hear, storm clouds spun the colour of lillies and the bruises that made an atlas of my arms and legs, and rainwater collecting in the gutter that we couldn't be trusted with. I couldn't sleep again and spent most of the night twisting the bedsheets into rugs and curtains so that I could live with myself. He woke a few hours before daybreak and I asked him to teach me how to sleep but he knew that I didn't learn anything that way so instead he told me bedtime stories. The one about the fairytale lion chasing old souls and big roots across oceans and down to the middle of the earth where they intertwine like hydrangea vines. Whole armies and navies buried with their glasses on because some people believe that death is a sleep that ends in the sky.
The next day came as promised and we didn't waste time. We got into his car and drove until we hit a wall of stars. The summer heat knew us. It simmered around us, connecting us to the great men in history We play a game I made up that involves picking our favourite words out of the poetry anthology I carry in my satchel wherever I go, and fashioning crowns out of them. Our laughter snowballed as the sun rose higher above the blue car. There was only one other car as far as we could see. Muffled drums, cracked bells. The car couldn't go as fast as ours. I didn't think we were laughing at the same thing.
We thought of as many words as we could to describe distnace. Because of the sun, his hair grew lighter and his skin darker; I was sure that at any moment he could disappear.
It began to rain so we stopped on the side of the road. "It never rains here does it?"
"No." We stayed. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a hardcover book on ancient cartography. I used my poetry anthology . Receipts and a clean paper napkin fluttered out of his book when he opened it, stepped out of the car, holding it over his head. Rain looked nice on him. He became the song playing inside the car. I don't remember it but I think it was good.
It looked no different from outside the blue car than from the inside. "Why was that in your glove compartment?" The book was soaked. We took to leaning against the car and staring at invisible things. He whistled; it was grating. The way he was talking in the rain was more like biting. After a while I climbed into the car and he follows me in, tossing his book into the backseat, absolutely ruined. There had been a brief inscription in the front cover but it was entirely indecipherable then.
We drove on some, until we were at the edge of the city. Beauty and light and noise are all the same thing and they are fulsome. We left the car in someone's driveway as there was no parking outside the diner we wanted to go into. My dress was damp from the rain, and time was getting on and we hadn't transformed yet as we'd agreed we would. There was hardly any light inside. We sat in a booth much too large but perfectly secluded and I ordered pancakes, nothing on them, while he orders a sandwich with grilled cheese The waitress was bleary-eyed and unfazed when she brought us over cups of tea and a jug of tap water. He requested some lemon and ignored the strange look he received in exchange, concentrating instead on arranging the sugar pots and cutlery nicely on the tapble I was beginning to fall asleep so held onto his arm tightly and told him to keep me awake, I wanted the pancakes. To pick myself up with false energy, I slipped to the ladies room, where the inside made me look wily, or like I was sickening for something.
For a small moment, we sat there, just breathing. "Did you ever think about how your possessions will outlive you, like shoes and stuff." He didn’t really ask it, because he knew I wouldn’t say anything. "You can’t go to sleep, we are talking and the pancakes aren’t here and you might have a nightmare and I don’t know how to deal with that sort of thing."
He disappeared for a while and returned when his grilled cheese arrived, smelling of cigarettes and something else, I felt my thoughts thinning and he pushed his plate aside, the food mostly untouched, making space to lie beside me. Whispers, loud and obtrusive, were exchanged. Even the hearts in my heart were fatigued. He said that he felt set apart from me forever, especially after today. He said he felt afraid.
The next morning I woke up in his room to a quiet expanse of excess. The thick folds of sad light that had been coating everything had been pulled back. I looked at my forearms and saw that the bruises that yesterday still made maps of my skin had faded, leaving me pale and blossom pink.
"Is the war over?" I asked him, half-sitting when he came in. The room smelt of coffee and the Carpenters song 'Close To You' was playing on a loop from his record player.
"No. Why?"
"Everything feels happy."
He left because he had a job interview and I stayed for a while to write down some words I dreamt about. I didn't like myself for stealing paper, so I put the words on the refrigerator. There was a photograph pinned up of a pearly moon; it was poignant but I didn't like it.
There wasn't any dreaming that night, only nightingale song we couldn't hear, storm clouds spun the colour of lillies and the bruises that made an atlas of my arms and legs, and rainwater collecting in the gutter that we couldn't be trusted with. I couldn't sleep again and spent most of the night twisting the bedsheets into rugs and curtains so that I could live with myself. He woke a few hours before daybreak and I asked him to teach me how to sleep but he knew that I didn't learn anything that way so instead he told me bedtime stories. The one about the fairytale lion chasing old souls and big roots across oceans and down to the middle of the earth where they intertwine like hydrangea vines. Whole armies and navies buried with their glasses on because some people believe that death is a sleep that ends in the sky.
The next day came as promised and we didn't waste time. We got into his car and drove until we hit a wall of stars. The summer heat knew us. It simmered around us, connecting us to the great men in history We play a game I made up that involves picking our favourite words out of the poetry anthology I carry in my satchel wherever I go, and fashioning crowns out of them. Our laughter snowballed as the sun rose higher above the blue car. There was only one other car as far as we could see. Muffled drums, cracked bells. The car couldn't go as fast as ours. I didn't think we were laughing at the same thing.
We thought of as many words as we could to describe distnace. Because of the sun, his hair grew lighter and his skin darker; I was sure that at any moment he could disappear.
It began to rain so we stopped on the side of the road. "It never rains here does it?"
"No." We stayed. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a hardcover book on ancient cartography. I used my poetry anthology . Receipts and a clean paper napkin fluttered out of his book when he opened it, stepped out of the car, holding it over his head. Rain looked nice on him. He became the song playing inside the car. I don't remember it but I think it was good.
It looked no different from outside the blue car than from the inside. "Why was that in your glove compartment?" The book was soaked. We took to leaning against the car and staring at invisible things. He whistled; it was grating. The way he was talking in the rain was more like biting. After a while I climbed into the car and he follows me in, tossing his book into the backseat, absolutely ruined. There had been a brief inscription in the front cover but it was entirely indecipherable then.
We drove on some, until we were at the edge of the city. Beauty and light and noise are all the same thing and they are fulsome. We left the car in someone's driveway as there was no parking outside the diner we wanted to go into. My dress was damp from the rain, and time was getting on and we hadn't transformed yet as we'd agreed we would. There was hardly any light inside. We sat in a booth much too large but perfectly secluded and I ordered pancakes, nothing on them, while he orders a sandwich with grilled cheese The waitress was bleary-eyed and unfazed when she brought us over cups of tea and a jug of tap water. He requested some lemon and ignored the strange look he received in exchange, concentrating instead on arranging the sugar pots and cutlery nicely on the tapble I was beginning to fall asleep so held onto his arm tightly and told him to keep me awake, I wanted the pancakes. To pick myself up with false energy, I slipped to the ladies room, where the inside made me look wily, or like I was sickening for something.
For a small moment, we sat there, just breathing. "Did you ever think about how your possessions will outlive you, like shoes and stuff." He didn’t really ask it, because he knew I wouldn’t say anything. "You can’t go to sleep, we are talking and the pancakes aren’t here and you might have a nightmare and I don’t know how to deal with that sort of thing."
He disappeared for a while and returned when his grilled cheese arrived, smelling of cigarettes and something else, I felt my thoughts thinning and he pushed his plate aside, the food mostly untouched, making space to lie beside me. Whispers, loud and obtrusive, were exchanged. Even the hearts in my heart were fatigued. He said that he felt set apart from me forever, especially after today. He said he felt afraid.
The next morning I woke up in his room to a quiet expanse of excess. The thick folds of sad light that had been coating everything had been pulled back. I looked at my forearms and saw that the bruises that yesterday still made maps of my skin had faded, leaving me pale and blossom pink.
"Is the war over?" I asked him, half-sitting when he came in. The room smelt of coffee and the Carpenters song 'Close To You' was playing on a loop from his record player.
"No. Why?"
"Everything feels happy."
He left because he had a job interview and I stayed for a while to write down some words I dreamt about. I didn't like myself for stealing paper, so I put the words on the refrigerator. There was a photograph pinned up of a pearly moon; it was poignant but I didn't like it.
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