13 February 2005

MUTES #   Poor old Reubs has a respiratory virus – nothing grave but he has a temperature & has spent most of the day reclining on the sofa.  A peculiarly affecting sight early this morning: Reuben in his bright red, ankle-length dressing gown (sorry, bath robe) & a blue Fantasia wizard’s hat with silver moon & stars & a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, sitting mournfully in the kitchen eating a banana. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.   #   I’m still trying to sort out a second blood test. Now that my viral condition has gone, I need to get my yearly check-up done again to see whether the slight anomaly on one of the PSA readings was due to the virus, which was active at the time of the test.  I arrived at the local hospital yesterday 15 minutes before the pathology department opened & entered a waiting room wall-to-wall full of the halt, lame & blind awaiting attention.  A bored looking nurse reckoned an hour’s wait. I did an instant translation from NHS-speak & guess-timated at least three, so – as they used to say in novels – I turned on my heel & left.  Back tomorrow with a small selection of literature, my poetry notebook, a large duvet & rations for two weeks.   #   Criminals in the Welsh county of Gwent will have had something of an easy time of it during the past few weeks.  The Independent reports that recent emergency line calls to the police have included the following: Is it safe to cook a chicken in the oven overnight? There is a dog panting under a tree. It looks as if it needs water. I’ve lost my coat in my house. There are rabbits on my lawn. Can you move them?   #   Also reported is a school in Massachusetts considering a name change – from Dummer Academy to something more in keeping with its calling.    #   A recent survey of British women revealed that: 33% believe that women have the upper hand in sexual relationships; 72% believe that the media encourages women to be in control; 76% support a woman’s right to abortion; 18% of women dream of sex.   Your observations, please…   #       10:12:24 PM    Mmm? [] SEA OF STARS   They would ask, should I return, to give them names for all the things I saw. Even as I fed back voltage, trickled   chemistry past their electrodes; even as I shared my heartbeat with their monitors, my blood with their microscopes,   they would question in quiet voices, seeking out  new nouns with which to corner the ineffable, new  verbs to charge  the immaterial.    As now  their aerial voices – filtered through ionosphere, the shingle-clouds of asteroids, across these tideless oceans -   whisper insubstantial, needle-thin, scratching their need to know the unknowable onto the mighty silence.  I trail interrogation   like a shower of sparks. But from this eminence I no longer heed their eyes that scrutinize, lidless, unswerving. This dark accomodates   a billion eyes, speculating my parabola by day, by night, probing for my tiny skidding light.  Implacable, incurious, I navigate the brilliant wastes -   long black sargassos drifting, planet wrack and flotsam, dereliction. And beyond, always beyond, the bright flying splinters of the stars. pic from: www.beginningofspace.com 6:57:17 PM    Mmm? []     MUTES    I’m struggling somewhat with a post about power & what drives an individual to embrace it.  There must be a thousand unpublished PhD theses that cover the same ground. But I’ve long been fascinated by the kind of viral ambition that so consumes an individual that s/he (almost invariably he, in fact) will abandon all constraints, physical, moral, practical, rational, to achieve a goal.  A capacity for empathy & the urgings of personal loyalty are early casualties.  Isolation & utter loneliness are the price.   I’m fascinated too by the phenomenon of the leader’s acolyte, the sad creature that lives within the penumbra of the leader, approving unconditionally every word & deed.  In the open territories of society at large the dual roles can wreak havoc. In the enclosed environs of a community or institution, the effect of their coordinated functioning can be catastrophic.       #   Well, it’s Half Term.  Emma & I can dump the kids at nursery – we have to pay monthly throughout the year, regardless of the school holidays - & then head up to town. The Joseph Beuys at the Tate Modern, maybe, or the Boucher at the Wallace Collection. After that a swift pasta at Issoldo’s in Brewer Street & then deeper into Soho to the French House in Dean Street for a bottle of Stella & a large whisky, tucking ourselves into the corner with a view of the bar & the street beyond.  Then, via Borders at the top of the Charing Cross Road (where I shall buy poetry mags, the latest Wired & a novel that I shan’t read for several years), up to Tottenham Court Road tube & back to Kings Cross & the train home.   More realistically, we’ll dump the kids at nursery & return to the flat where we shall spend the morning shovelling the silt of toys, cotton wool balls, single shoes, bourbon biscuit halves & empty yoghourt cartons into new, more manageable heaps. The afternoon will pass in serial clothes washing & drying, asking each other several times what the other wants to eat & then cooking spinach & ricotta ravioli, reading yesterday’s newspaper & collecting the kids from nursery.   #   12:23:13 AM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2005 Dick Jones. Last update: 17/06/2005; 08:02:58.