Saturday, August 15, 2009

44A Charing cross.


It never arrives but when it does it's at the last minute. The innards smell of sweat and a faint hint of urine. We lodge beside two by two. Battalions dip heads into newspapers and scroll through the mobile locked in the screen. Everyone rudely brought to life by morning finding themselves here daily.

Passing by Queen's park, the sun spears through the trees, making a greenhouse of the bus; welcome in the morning. A baby startles the air with her primal cry. The bus moans and stretches as it takes a right corner. We sit in rows two by two and someone accidently brushes the leg of another, they flinch as though they had touched something cold and disgusting. They shift gingerly and settle back down again, no eye contact,settling down for a few more paragraphs of gibberish.

At the back of the bus a man and a woman talk nonsense to each other through long awkward pauses. Someone cringes and coughs. Two strangers admire the view from the window but one actaully only stares through the glass. The bus lurches and hisses down Victoria Road, passangers move and sway like audience memebers, the lights halt us, we each say a short prayer - red, orange, green. We play Monday morning solitaire in separate chairs. In ritual. And someone always sends out a thought or two for the angel left standing.

Centipedes crawl the road and moments run like cats under cars. Blurred flashes of headlines as pages turn. Everyone is generalising internal monologue and the brains creepy almanac informs us of a dangerous future. The bus pushes on through the streets. An aging crossword puzzler has dozed off. A lady is blabbering about a recent biopsy and a few of the men over hear and think of their testicles and the women their breasts, and some others, the rectal passage. The sun pours through the glass pure orange juice. Morning stretches and yawns and wedding bells are tolling somewhere for lovers in the universe of a quite perfect mortgage. And the spelling mistakes in the newspaper forgive themselves, a zebra crossing in sub-Saharan Glasgow halts us, a set of lights, again, betray us. Some are running late now.

The congregation shuffle their feet nervously. 'Better to be safe than sorry' says an aging widow wearing a long brown coat. The man beside her says nothing. She is afraid of her naked body. Heliotropic trees inhale their fix of the sun. Everyone is taxed and no one has anything to say and wishes to tell the world about it. And the ego is being fiddled with by signs and beta rays; no one can take themselves lightly, someone farts in divine silence, four wheels make 840 revolutions every mile, five passengers yawn in synchrony.

The arbiters of life sit neatly in their pews. Heads in papers soaking up the inky meaning. All waste and pine against the routine of work. Many hearts beat in time, but it's impossible to know exactly when this is happening. The engine roars. The noise fills the bus like colourless smoke. One rusher is tapping his feet desperate to urinate. Most are sullen and inconsiderate. A prayer it sent up: 'I must be joyful.' And now they enter the city, out of the mountains, down into the valley into the uterus of the business zone.

Someone makes a mental note to re-read the book of John - 'those who believe in the Son are not judged'; someone concludes that 'some things are under our control while others things are under the control of others'. A lady confesses to herself she must edit her diary to take out the truths she is ashamed of. And a man smiles, his face touched by the sun, thinks to himself 'take care of a thing as though it where not your own'. The bus comes to a halt, and the professionals, the marching band and the fingered administrators of practical reality queue off the bus, at Hope Street. They sink into the day, in swarms of fabric and wrist chains, clock in time together under the grey sky of the same nullifying office blocks throughout the city.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Deranged penguin.



A clip from the documentary filmed in Antarctica by Werner Herzog, 'Encounters at the end of the world'.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Holy Water.


The world is out of water.
The last droplet has been drank.
Everyone is so very thirsty.
Everything so very dry.
Everyone hunting for that
miraculous glass of water.
Congregations with cracked lips
kneel and bow trembling
before the effigy of a giant iceberg.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

A lovely read.



Elizabeth: 'Hi Karen! Fancy meeting you here. What books that you're reading?'

Karen: Hi, Liz, it's 'The beauty of being' by A. H. Hart. It's devastating. So moving. Tear filled. I would recommend it. Really plays with the heart strings. How are you doing anyway? How are Eric and the boys?'

Elizabeth: 'I'm brilliant. The family are doing great. I love a good book too, Karen. I adore Emmanuelle Terez, a wonderful Latin novelist, I love to read philosophy, romance, and poetry, in fact, I'm actually in a community book group. Ah yes, such types as we are truly beautiful, peaceful, we won't be dragged by the demands of life. We have an overwhelming sense of empathy. We love the sensitive side of life, the soul, introspection, the passionate life. Don't you agree?'

Elizabeth: '...O Karen, look at the time, I really must pick the children up from school then I must dash to the supermarket and do the shopping. We are having lamb chops for dinner and lychees and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Can you believe they charge one pound and sixty three pence for a single can? I was outraged, almost complained, dear dear, rotten supermarkets. I'm thinking of changing to the new Tescos branch thats just opened. '

Karen: 'God yes Liz, I've started shopping their myself; the smaller supermarkets are just too over priced. It's extortionate. So, is that the book group Susan Redford attends? I've thought about joining actually, it's down at the local library, is that the one?'

Elizabeth: Yes, Susan is secretary. You should come down, it's on Wednesday evenings. I'm sure we'd all love to have you. Well lovey, my jeep isn't parked far from here. I'll be off, see you soon love. I'll pop round during the week with a copy of 'Soft lives of the delicare unaware' by Emmanuelle Terez; it's so poignant. kiss kiss xx.'