Outside the madman hunches over his own gut, and a tire-track dog dozes in the middle of the road.

Soul Architects

The soul architects slid along the pavements,
sniffing, murmuring between themselves.
They watched for the moment before the storm,
the aftermath of which was their creation,
in such destruction their resurrection,
in such anguish their ^house was built.

At times I wonder the words they murmured

The afternoon haze cast itself a brilliant illumination across the prairie.
Taking steps forward,
Backward
seeking. They were hesitating,
while the future kept beckoning,
because they wanted no part of it.

"There is Now," Malone's words kept passing through their thoughts,
their inflamed minds that once ignited
would never droop to a smoulder
and the atoms that they would become
had never known another,
and in the span of half a century
they finally came together.

A separation so intolerably long would one day
melt
like a frozen finger of ice beneath an afternoon haze.

Until then, they were just holding on.
 Holding on to this moment,

Now

the only moment that had ever - would ever - matter.

The Library

The sun glared on the bare legs of figures spread over Piccadilly Gardens. I don't know how that's relevant, but it seemed a good way to start telling you about something odd that happened yesterday, even though that particular moment happened two days earlier.

I've started volunteering in a library this summer. It's one that specialises in antiques; old, crumbling tome after old, crumbling tome. I get to climb high among the books, like a midshipman scaling the crow's nest. It's an interesting way to look at books. It also gets tiring, spending hours on end reshelving.

I was sat behind a desk taking a break when she came along. Her age was indecipherable. She could have been anywhere from late twenties to early fifties. A lot of the time her age seemed to vary on the lighting, or her mood. Maybe it was just the make up.

She glanced about the place absently, and I watched. Just a habit, I suppose, or perhaps my eyes just happened to plant themselves on her when she turned and caught my eye. I was in trouble now. I was just a re-shelver. Not a receptionist. Hell, it was my second day.

I asked her to sign in on the sheet because that's what the others did when someone came in. When I looked at what she had written later, all I saw was an indecipherable scrawl.

She wanted to know where the section on marriage-advice was. Remember, this library specializes in antiques. One section's even called 'polite literature'. There was no marriage shelf, let alone any self-help section.

Also, her hand was bare. No wedding ring.

Could have been trying to find a book for a friend but she seemed way too personally involved. Her eyes kept flitting about the room, she couldn't settle on her feet. I don't think she ever stopped moving after she entered. She scratched at an arm a lot too, and all while giving the saddest smile.

I didn't notice any of it at the time, but I knew then she was acting oddly, even if I couldn't explain how. None of it bothered me too much beyond the usual parameters of disliking social contact. What really made me hesitate was when she turned to leave. It took some convincing until she believed me when I told her that we didn't have that kind of book. And then she'd gone on a tangent about how I should be careful using the ladders, that I could fall easily.

Anyway, when she started moving off, she did this sort of stretch, and her shapeless beige shirt lifted up slightly. Creeping out of the hem of her jeans was a faded sliver of grey and white. A tattoo. A cartoon rabbit. A Thumper tattoo.

All you who sleep tonight

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

Vikram Seth

That was an exceedingly depressing conversation.

FATE

Two shall be born, the whole wide world apart,
And speak in different tongues and have no thought
Each of the other's being, and no heed.
And these, o'er unknown seas, to unknown lands
Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death;
And all unconsciously shape every act
And bend each wandering step to this one end -
That, one day, out of darkness they shall meet
And read life's meaning in each other's eyes.

And two shall walk some narrow way of life
So nearly side by side that, should one turn
Ever so little space to left or right,
They needs must stand acknowledged, face to face.
And, yet, with wistful eyes that never meet
And groping hands that never clasp and lips
Calling in vain to ears that never hear,
They seek each other all their weary days
And die unsatisfied - and this is Fate!

Susan Marr Spalding [1841-1908]

"We're allways sixteen..."

www.onlyrevolutions.com

Without you, I am only revolutions, of ruin.

They find it impossible to conceive of the perceptions of a mind filtered by a lobotomy.

We Carry The People We Meet With Us

Why is it that whenever I catch eyes with one of them that I'm drawn to her to such an extent that her face is burned into my retina? This stranger girl draws me in so much that I leave with part of myself lost, or stolen; a thousand hypotheticals leave my heart feeling drowned.

Out of Reach

I do believe that it's ending. All of it.

Falter

This is why they continue:

I saw my friends turn and falter
one by one
turning a lie on its heels,
their rationalisation of inhaled defences
had failed. Their ashen lungs heaved,

but try as they might, the rain continued to fall.

|    |    |   |   |   | |   |/  |   | \|| | | |  |  | |  | ||  | |/ ||  |  |   |   | |  |   | |

Are you beginning to understand?

Quote of the day [night].

"The angel of his youth became the devil of his maturity. He went out with women when he was young, always holding something in reserve. There would always be a reason to break it off, which opened the door to a multitude of relationships. Heaven. Or so he thought. As age encroached upon his sensibilities and form, he longed for something with enough vitality to endure. But the covering cherub of his Lothario days had stayed with him and was no longer so angelic. It haunted him, guarded him, kept him from intimacy promising the ash dry glory of so many toppling relationships, toppling like dominos, one after another, ad infinitum, or at least until he died."

Of course, I'm paraphrasing.

A proffessor of theology asked what the problem with merely following emotional dispositions in ethics would be.

A student replied, "All people would be whimsical".

"Echolocation comes down to the crude assessment of simple sound modulations, whether in the dull reply of a tapping cane or the low, eerie flutter in one simple word - perhaps your word - flung down empty hallways long past midnight"

"Perhaps I will alter the whole thing. Kill both children..." - A quote from H.O.L. I'd attribute to old man Z.

I've been looking back at my oldest posts today. Did that boy think he'd grow? Well he did, in a way. Heroin, ketamine, LSD, coke, glue, crack, shrooms, alcohol... Anything to help me forget. That's all we do these days, isn't it? The wild youth? We try to burn our memories.

Ever since I moved out of the house and got an apartment near the uni things have been getting exagerrated. I read a lot more now. And not only because I'm studying English Literature: there's no tv in my room, no phone reception, dodgy wifi that barely lets me make a post on here. No students live in these apartments either, just a few quiet middle-aged people sleepwalking through their lives. A few doors away a Frenchman with a habit of talking too long, midway through a divorce. And the landlord, although I only saw him once, and he was more interested in me paying a rent than making conversation. At least he doesn't care when the smell of cannabis seeps into the curtains, escapes through the cracks beneath the floorboards and permeates the hallways.

I thought I'd be fine, I'm an introvert anyway. This is my own private squalid sanctuary. Although of course it isn't squalid. The rent is reasonable and the rooms are clean. I suppose things seem dingy when you're rotting inside. Good old Doctor Louise knocked up the dose of fluoxetine. That should help add to my trench, my fortifications, my wall and Maginot line of defense. Along with the other drugs. Being alone a lot has led me to the books. Any book really, as it always happens. Doesn't help lessen my growing obsession with House of Leaves. But why would I mind that?

I settled for making a few alterations to the old posts. Maybe later I'll have the courage to delete them, maybe the whole blog. Let the URL sink into oblivion. Right now I've spent too much time on it to feel like ending it.

I thought you should know,

Daddy died today.

He closed his eyes and he left here

At 12:03,

He sends his love.

He wanted you to know

He isn’t holding no grudge

And if you are, you should let it go.

Posioned

I'm beginning to r  t again.
                            o

Blogger crashed so I'll have to rewrite this. The second copy of House of Leaves arrived this week. It came in an elderly yellow package, that had done little to prevent whatever event caused a few of the corners to bend. That said, I'm not sending it back after waiting two weeks for it to arrive. I don't really mind its injuries. This new copy's the full colour edition. Though I'm sure it isn't missing any pages, it feels a lot lighter than my original version.

If I look at the husk of packaging now I can see darkness still clings to the far corners of its mouth, despite the fact that it has been opened. I wonder how many days the book slumbered (or paced) in the envelope. How many hours it spent drenched in night. How it existed in that eternal span of time before any eyes set upon it again. I wonder if that black journey means anything, changes anything about the book. It certainly changes how I look at it. As I waited for my cheap oven pizza to 'cook', I walked in ellipses around my kitchen, holding the light copy, reading the opening from where the words spring (or more accurately: drift) off the page, into my mind, through me. It takes a powerful book to do that to you. If you've ever read one, you'll understand the sensation I'm talking about.