Saturday, 17 October 2009

Just back from my weekly dream analysis with doctor F. It does not concern me that she has been struck off (in fact I am rather hoping she will apply some of her malpractice on me) and can now only practice as an amateur.

Each time I visit I am encouraged to paint an image of my latest dream.

Last night I dreamt I was a child. It was a stormy autumn evening and I had been milking pomkin the goat who had lashed out at me with her hooves annd rendered me unconscious for a while.

Groggily I returned to the house and entered, but somehow I had gone in through the wrong door and found myself neither inside nor outside. there was a wall of raining teaspoons clouding my view of the walnut tree and of the three beakers on the window sill; my mothers red one, my dead fathers black one and my yellow one. Each time I reached out for my beaker (I was very thirsty) my hand was stung by the falling spoons.

I gave up in the end and finally fell asleep.

I awoke some time later on the straw in pomkins shed.

If it is possible for a goat to sneer, pomkin sneered.

Doctor F chuckled and clapped her hands on hearing the dream and seeing my painting and then ushered me out of the room giving me no explanation as to what it all might mean.

Rusty, depression and horse shit.



Rusty came round for coffee this morning. He looked distressed and depressed, I've not seen him this bad for a long time. I'm worried because I know I'm not going to see him for a while.

I said go to see the nurse Rusty, she can help.

I doubt it said Rusty. I hear she ain't nursing no more, I hear she has taken up horse riding. How do you know that? I asked.

Well, he said. Every time I see her she smells like stables.

I told him he should perhaps go back on the rodeo circuit one more time before he got too old. And Rusty, I said. Why not ask the nurse to go with you, she could look after the horses for you.

That woman is every man's dream, Rusty.

Yeah he said. But not every night.

I talked to nurse Caz later this morning. Told her I was worried about Rusty, and would she help? She said she would get back to me on that one. I also said that I had heard that she had taken up riding.

She laughed then (I have not heard that mountain stream for a long time) and said; I've just been putting horse shit on my garden.
I will not pass that information on to Rusty, I imagine he would prefer to keep an image of Caz in tight johdpurs in his minds eye rather than the reality.

Friday, 16 October 2009

Advice for young lovers.

If you are going to keep bullshit in a treacle tin there is no point reading each other the label.

Sunday, 11 October 2009

Mutate Britain


Rusty, Babs and Dame Nellie Melba.

Rusty called round this morning to analyse Tristans performance last night.

We decided not to talk about it.

Instead I went to make cheese on toast for us all. I could hear Rusty and Babs talking and laughing in the other room as I grated cheese and then a finger. I burned the toast and Rusty came in to criticise.

I was about to throw the burnt toast in the bin when he pushed me to one side. He then grilled the bread on the other side, cut off the crusts and sliced the slices horizontally. once toasted on the cut side he had made 4 pieces of melba toast.

Here he said; presenting it to Babs.
What's that she asked.
Melba toast!
Why is it called that?

It is named after Dame Nellie Melba, who, when not eating peaches liked to eat this stuff.

Sunday, 4 October 2009

Bridges I have lost shoes from. I've lost count.


I'd gone down to the Serpentine this morning to photograph the bridge having lost a shoe there a while back.
I was astonished to find Tristan there fishing. Fishing is not permitted in the serpentine. I pointed out the sign stating this fact.
He said. I'm not fishing Jan, I'm pretending to fish.
Have you caught anything I asked.
Only an old shoe and the attention of a crazy old woman who said if I catch a tuna she has the maionnaise...
What bait are you using?
Approachability.

Saturday, 3 October 2009

Mountains, views and dogs.

Babs calls from Mountain view, California.

And I think is that a view of a mountain or a view from a mountain and Babs says that the sky is as high as an elephants eye.

And I say you are lying Babs

And she says I know, I heard it in a movie. And eveyone knows that the movies lie.

I left that sleeping dog to do the lying.

Friday, 2 October 2009

Horse shit. Bull shit. Holy shit.

She said I suppose you are going to use this as material for a poem or a story or something.

I said no. Personal experience is like horse shit; it needs to stand around for a year or two before you dig it into the garden. Otherwise it is too caustic to do anything other than kill everything.

So you won't be writing about me.

Oh yes! I'll be writing about you, but only the stuff I make up.

Prairie omelettes, hangovers and male bonding.

Rusty came round tonight. I thought he'd want to skirt the nurse but no.

He said, as he eyed my larder, she may be a nurse Jan but the only thing she is nursing right now is a hangover. He went on to say: Women teach us a lot of things Jan but all she done teach me is that I'm way out of my depth, and she aint teaching me to swim.

He found eggs, strawberries, black pepper and cream.

Heck, if we aint got a prairie omelette. He said.

What is in a prairie omelette I asked.

Whatever you got left in the chuck wagon at the end of a drive. He said.

Do you know, a strawberry and black pepper sweet omelette with cream is quite extraordinarily delicious.

Hey Rusty I said as we licked our fingers, let's go rent Brokeback Mountain.

Aw shucks. Said Rusty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRTiSq4qas&feature=related

Tristans wall


Coincidences in nature, guns and tulips.

A mat of ivy roots pulled from a wall and a robin that watched. Is it not interesting the colours in the two images.It is as if the robin is camouflaged for stealth flying between the ivy roots and the wall. The ivy roots do not sing as well as the robin. Not even as well as Tiny Tim. And he's dead, pushing up the tulips rather than tiptoeing through them.

rusty came along shortly after the photo was taken and shot the thing with a Colt 48.

I said Rusty you can't do that and he said Jan, the constitution says I can do what I damn well please with my gun.

I said GULP.

Thursday, 1 October 2009

Show business.

Things may be quiet for a day or two.

Tristan has a 'gig' (nasty word) coming up and requires my help for read throughs and rehearsals.

He is reading 3 poems with films made for the event at the Tabernacle, Powis Square on October 10th. Ditto TV are putting on the show... Probably best to be there. Just in case.

Babs says she will attend.

Swine flu. Pigs flying. what's the difference?

Shoe Trees


There appear to be many 'shoe trees' on the planet.
I am told that the first occurrance of the phenomenom was in the Herault region of France. I suspect that I might have been guilty of starting the trend when losing shoes from bridges.

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Ballerinas make unsuitable muses and trees rot.

Years ago, after I had known her a few weeks we walked on the heath.

I foolishly agreed to carve the words SHE and I and FOREVER on a tree.

I already had my doubts about her suitability as a muse, so spent the day searching out the tree nearest death. Just in case. I found and chose an old horse chestnut, it's leaves blighted and yellowing.

I carved 'she and I forever' on its elephant bark.

I returned to the tree alone this autumn and found the tree fallen and decaying. My carving obliterated by rot.

Sunday, 27 September 2009

The muse gone

The muse has gone back to her garden
she has put on her don't mess with me boots
She has put away her fuck me shoes
The muse has gone back to her roots

Shoe


Cerebral grafitti

Tagging a train of thought.

Jim Carroll

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/fashion/27Cover.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hpw

Polanski, Orson Welles and cheese

So the Swiss have seen fit to arrest Roman Polanski on a 31 year old US warrant.

Would they be the same Swiss who have been protecting, and profiting from, Nazi war criminals as well as genocidal dictators for decades?

Orson gave me a swiss cuckoo clock when I helped him get over his vertigo for the big wheel scene in the Third Man. That bloody clock broke after three weeks.

Swiss cheese is tasteless drab and a waste of space.

Sums up the Swiss in general...

Bed bound with Ginsberg.

I am bed-bound.


My back, already twingeing for days, finally seized up in the night; it is too painful to move, or to cough, or to roll into another position.

Fortunately I have, beside the bed a bottle of Perrier water and a Kilo of dates. Unfortunately I have, beside the bed Allen Ginsberg's journals(1954-1958).

It is a perfect autumn day and the bed is perfectly still and I have all the time in the world to think of times past when the same bed would rock with laughter, with joy. Or would rock like a schooner at anchor in a long easy swell.

I have no muse here to nurse me or nurse here to bemuse me.

The perfect occasion to write an Haiku on stillness and calm.

I cannot reach pen and paper.