Saturday 28 June 2008

Sometimes things just start happening...

You know, things just start happening sometimes don’t they.
11:08.
There comes a time when you are sat in your dining room, staring at the web pages on your iMac, staring but not looking, not recording, the music is playing ‘I speak in many tongues to many men, Argue with angels and always win’, you hear it but you aren’t really listening.
11:10.
This is the time that your inner-voice ponders in his own direction, he strolls through the lists of what really you should or even could be doing at the minute, leaving you to be an empty shell, the hollow man with eyes, which are starting to become slightly blurry, boring into the screen in front of him, the symbol of a generation, the torch holder of the Facebook and Myspace revolution. VivalaRevolucionandallthatcal. He strolls through your republic of conscience (to quote a certain Mr. Heaney), but the thing is in this Republic there doesn’t really seem to be old men with photographs of my grandfathers in their wallets, or a woman on customs who asks me to declare traditional cures and charms, and she certainly wouldn’t mention anything about evil eyes.
11:16.
Instead the inner-voice, him, it, me, wanders around with a checklist, top of it is ‘I really should read something right now, I really feel like it’ but instead of checking it off he follows a different little side route. He talks to me, because we, he, I, don’t really know what to read because I have so much to read, a bookshelf full of books ready to be handled, felt, opened, received, loved or hated. And there they are, in stacks in the bowels of my library, he, we, I, look through the books wondering what I should start, what he has started, what we have finished.
11:21.
He sees the book I’m reading at the minute, the bookmark of a torn piece of paper from an old sketchbook with a little yellow ochre kissing the edges, the remnants of a long disregarded painting, tester, playful moment of creativity, another time that he went wandering I suspect.Page136outofaround400andsomething, I, we, he really should learn to keep to one book until he is finished, so when we’ve finished wandering I will go back to that book.
11:24.
But that is the problem you see, I just want to read so much, we want to know as much as he can, I have such a thirst for knowledge that there isn’t enough time in the world for me to learn everything that I would want to.
11:26.
It might have gotten me thought of as a ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ in school but who cares really, I just love learning, I adore words.
11:29.
In my Republic I look up through my inner-voice, he is your translator now, I see cloudy skies but they are majestic. The swirling thunderstorm of thought thriving off the synapses.
11:33.
It never really stops, the rain always falls, feeding the saplings of ideas in my cultivating forest of complexes. The water droplets are warm, they soak you through so you are drenched, the water running down your face as you lean your head backwards, eyes closed up towards the steady hydrant flow, each droplet of water causing it's own stream of consciousness down your body, seeping into the ground beneath feeding the roots. The exhaled sigh of comfort, this is where I think, my true home.
11:42.
Sit down underneath a tree, the trunk is your support, giving a little in its slightly spongy, damp condition. It is still tipping down, the continuous Shhhhhhhhh of my own private library. The area around me is warm, wet, wonderful, but my books are dry.
11:46.
Here is where I can just shuffle my shoulders, swivel my hips, engage with my surroundings as they mould to make me comfortable.
11:50.
But you know what that translation is enough, don't want you getting too comfortable in my world now do we? You know what I had a saying that I told a few people on what I thought about James Joyce's style of writing that I think I'd like to share. I find him amazing because he is so unforgiving to his readers, he doesn't really care if you don't get it because it's your own loss, if you really wanted to get it, you would go out and research the details and references. He has his own stream of consciousness that he has given the public access to, you can jump in and it's freezing, you can either get out with a towel that has been on the radiator, or you can acclimatise yourself with it, swim around, get used to it and enjoy it, enjoy the freedom of swimming through someone else’s stream for once, you might catch some fish to put in yours... Try it some time.
11:56.