16 April 2004

REUBEN DREAMING ABOUT CLOUDS   CENTRAL HEATING   I remember mornings waking cold into strange grey light like after disaster.   Breath hung in a hoar-frost globe. I lay excited in the arctic dark.   My body foetal-coiled for warmth beneath the eiderdown, I wove iceflow fantasies:   exile on the iron moon, staring at new stars; abandoned on a mountainside, dying a hero.   Downstairs my father rumbled in the kitchen, raking through the embers, laying new foundations.   This secret ceremony, always heard, never seen. Anthracite, Welsh nuts, coke that only glowed –   holy fire lagging the pipes, comforting the water, heat rising with the sun like muffled music.   Now with a muted bump, my boiler lights itself ungrudgingly and heat flows greased, obedient.   We crawl, machine-led, into the morning whilst outside the world lies bound in antique ice.     11:27:49 PM    Mmm? [] MERRIE ENGLAND – Vol. II (contd.)   The image of the country graveyard is a staple, whether it’s the lattice of mossy crosses & stones through which one catches a glimpse of the ancient church or the lid of the tomb sliding away at midnight to release the plague of zombies.  On a fleeting visit you wander between the graves checking the inscriptions for early dates, interesting inscriptions, recurrent family names.  In the unexpected spring sunshine, surrounded by the overwhelming bucolic prettiness of it all, any acute sense of the immanence of death is distant.   Unless you find a child’s grave.  In All Saints graveyard, in the lee of the Rectory wall, we suddenly came upon three tiny headstones.  An inscription was visible only on the largest. It was simply two roughly carved dates: 1828 –1830.   #   I stumbled on this curious but oddly compelling instruction on Anna Scott’s blog, Self Winding.  Appended is my found sentence.   1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.   “A shaft of sunlight fell across the carpet”. Harold Pinter The Dwarves 1990   Just crazy enough to catch on or simply very sad..?   #   12:06:16 AM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2004 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/05/2004; 23:09:42.