brims assemblage

Races

2006-06-16T05:29:00.000+01:00

Now that Mr. H and Fleur have taken a train to meet Denny, the King and I take the express to Picar. The expresses are big like Greyhound buses only they sport the logo of a rabbit on the side of their bright orange carriage. I think it’s good to be somewhere where the rabbits have a chance and so I have a smile on my face. Rabbit races are very popular here says the man sitting opposite to me on the bus. Expensive Pedigrees chase after stuffed Greyhounds and right now he tells me Picar central will be rammed because of the annual Beta-Carotene at the Super-bowl. It’s tradition to bring back silver plated rabbit droppings after each event and throw them into the waterfalls where they’re washed out down to the valleys and then picked up by fisherman who, in turn melt them down and sell the silver back to the city. I love these altruistic traditions.

We’d decided to take this journey to Picar for one because without the village the King however much he might have enjoyed the company of wanker’s and his tight pink jump suit found that fresh company had brought humiliation and it was time to move on. Secondly I had been brought to this place for a purpose that was not yet clear to me and short of clarity I decided on finding reason in the fortunes of the journey alone. Thirdly The first major performance of the Genius Child Orchestra, whose luck had dramatically changed due to a substantial and anonymous donation, were opening for the following days races and this seemed reason enough for our mountainous jaunt.

As we travelled on, a hawker made his way up and down the bus selling T-shirts and refreshments. His shirts were emblazoned with the words, ‘My family went all the way to Picar and all they brought back was this lousy T-shirt.’ The shirts came in four sizes, small, medium, large and hanging dreadfully. He was also selling CD’s and he just happened to have a copy of The Genius Child Orchestra’s first release. I bought a copy and listened to it on my player for the rest of the trip, sharing my phones with the king.

I thought of Pookie, Swim-Swim and bubbles, my fish back home in Camberwell, I thought of the Meister and Toni and I thought of The Softest Person and wondered again, as I often had if there was perhaps more significance to all things doll. I’d been feeling a bit plastic myself just recently and it really is a very difficult feeling to describe. I have an odd taste in my mouth for example and I think that I can make out these moulding marks that appear to run along the sides of my torso and then down the insides of my thighs. Also, and just sometimes, my eyes open when I sit up and then close again when I lie back down which is very irritating. I’ll have to go and see a doctor when I get to the city. I wondered why, what and if about all kinds of things and then I just started thinking about sex.

The king sleeps now on my shoulder, dribbling and I can see that we’re nearing our destination as we climb along the plateau’s edge. It’s an unbearable route for anyone fearful of heights and some of these roads don’t even seem to have a barricade. I’m no good with heights and so I close my eyes, recline my seat back and try to forget about falling while I listen to the tins and whistles, wails and crescendo’s of the orchestras Kinder maelstrom until I’m off to sleep too. ‘This shaker of salt makes me want to cry, this shaker of salt makes me wonder why, oh wieeeeee, oh wieeeeee are we the genius chillen chiklin orchestra woooeee, oh wieeeeee.’

Picar

2006-06-14T03:53:00.000+01:00

A richly vibrant, sometimes insanely paranoid and cruel palimpsest, Picar has been tightly woven over thousands of years into layers of progressive architectures. The lower levels of its structure are carved from the Plateau itself, whilst successive strata dilute the symbols of ancestor magic becoming ever more rational, dispassionate, frail, and cynical, the further one stood from its birth stone the brighter and cheaper its neon became.

Gangs of warrior monks dressed as Catholic priests and adorned with black gold kept check on the so-called radicals, peace seekers, punks and immigrants. The fundamentalist vigilantes struck for order. Outbreaks of civil unrest between the priests, who believe that true liberty is a pollution of the human spirit and the Polemites, secularists who believe that no true enlightenment can take place unless the sacred is re-marketed, has become more and more frequent.

On the outskirts of the city walls dispossessed ragamuffin’s and exiles slice at each others flesh for scraps of food filtered from the sewers that drain effluent into the Efflit river and on into the lakes. The landscape is dotted with small fires, nests for metal buckets that boil down discarded fish bones for the purposes of making sniffing glue, a vile, yellow residue of poor oblivion.

Once a month warrior monk outreach team’s venture into the slums to offer work instead of charity. Those that accept and there are many, march to the discipline of the hard chapters, brigades of highly skilled fighters that push into the Libertines, neutrals and Polomites. ‘Covert or overt, podium or sword,’ this is their cry.

Amongst the romance of the cafes, the neutrals sip coffee and keep the flames of Picars powerful oral traditions alight under the glow of Absinthe and whisky until the soporific effects of opium level excess and filter out fools. Certain whispers rouse excitement and debate; sometimes there is talk of an army or some mythic garrison of peace crusaders from the UN, but they laugh. There was never anyone coming, no aliens to save us, great truths or absolutes, that god forbid would snuff out the mysteries. We had all heard the stories before and we’d laughed then too. But still, talk was different now and the gossip had turned to something new, people were talking about ‘The Ten.’

Phoenix

2006-06-13T06:05:00.000+01:00

Mr. H and Fleur said that they’d prefer it if I didn’t come with them to confront the preacher. I followed them anyway at a distance and after a short trek I was able to find some decent cover from which to view proceedings. A column of smoke billowed out from the small hamlet. All the inhabitants were placing their costumes, all that rubber, grease paint and ribbon on to a huge fire and as each individual threw their skin on to the flames they were given an instrument by the preacher himself. Each time he reached into a large box filled with violins, mouth organs, a large variety of brightly coloured Kazoos and an old standpipe that had been drilled with holes. There were also a large number of empty plastic containers that were handed out along with requisite tools for their rhythmical thrashing.

I watched as Mr. H and Fleur walked around the queuing villagers and through the rippling haze of burning costumes. When they reached the preacher I couldn’t hear what was being spoken from my inaudible vantage but watching carefully it was clear that the conversation was focused on the moustache problem. Mr. H angrily prodded the radish and then waggled his finger at the preacher. After H had finished making his case the preacher took a moment to think. Finally he spun about, bent down into the box that housed the instruments and spun back hitting Mr. H with a Tambourine in one hand and then artfully following up with a blow from a rubber chicken with the other. H reeled backwards as Fleur quickly came to his aid. She immediately tried to protect him, cursing the preacher man and lunging at him, swiping towards and missing his head in retaliation as two of the villagers rushed to restrain her. The preacher kept pointing to Mr. H’s top lip with a huge smile.

From what I could make out I think H sustained a small cut to his brow. At least I could see that the radish had gone. Fleur was gently let go and the village that had seemed content to patiently wait out the fracas that had momentarily halted proceedings once again turned to its endeavors with a shrug. My two new acquaintances left the smoke filled square as the preacher picked up a small round object and popped it into his mouth. It was the radish. Mr. H’s moustache was only hidden after all; the art of illusion comes easy to a preacher.

Suddenly, just as I was about to hurry back to the encampment I heard a branch snap behind me. I spun around. “Good morning!” A well-spoken male voice said in a whisper. The man didn’t look too threatening in a tight, pink jump suit. “And who are you?” I said whispering back.
“My name is Kallerakal and actually it’s not my name anymore its Marjorie or Marge for short if you like. I came up here a while ago after reading all these self help books and I thought ah, to hell with all this king stuff, I did used to be a king you know, that really was my name…” I nod. “Anyway so the thing is it didn’t take me too long to work out that all those cats down there are barking. So I refused all that doll get up and they made me look after the err…” He paused for a moment and pointed over to a small enclosure filled with old gentlemen in orange jump suits, “…to the err, to the wanker’s over there and…”
“Wanker’s, Who?” I interrupted perplexed.
“Ah, well, you see, some of the old men in the village get…some of them got caught cracking one off.”
“Cracking one off?”
“Yes, you know what I mean don’t you, shaking the fat-man, bashing the Bishop. Cracking one off for Christ’s sake, you must have heard of that?” He graphically articulated with his fist.
“What, so they lock up all the…” I laughed as I said it, “…the wanker’s”
“Well yes, anyone who gets caught of course.”
“And you get to do this job in a tight pink cat suit?”
“Yes.” He said, looking down and over his attire objectively, an excess of blood ruining an otherwise honest but pale complexion.
“Well if it was me old boy I think I would’ve taken the Barbie outfit.”

We both turned back to the village and to a chorus that one might hear from an orchestra pit before a performance. “What’s with all that I said?” pointing down towards a small, growing crowd hacking away at the production of polyrythmns and an attendant sea of grinding disharmony. “Wannabes, sycophants and madmen.” Said the redundant king.

Tashtastic

2006-06-11T07:53:00.000+01:00

Mr. H has been having trouble with his face furniture since those proceedings inside the church yesterday. I only know this from what little I overheard whilst resting, comfortable in my arboreal nest of branches that’s agreeable enough for even the humblest Bonobo. What kind of ceremony would do that sort of damage to facial hair?

Fleur had been trying to help:
“It just keeps fanning F.” Said H, exasperated.
“Well look, just…look do this.” Said Fleur gesticulating and moving towards him but he dodged away from her.
“Let me do it.” H said, twisting. He tweaked and pulled while bending over, tempting gravity into the fray whilst Fleur just stood and watched patiently, bemused. “What are you doing now H?”
He stood upright in response to her but then suddenly he seemed to shrink, giving up.
“I might never get it straight.” He said, hopelessly stamping his foot into the ground.
“Come here sausage.” She said comfortingly, drawing him into her and holding him tight. H’s shoulders began to shake a little as tears of bewilderment broke loose. “I…” H began in vain, questioningly, but it was all over.
“Sssh.” Comforted Fleur and together they rocked slowly from side to side until H, exhausted, fell asleep in her arms.

Morning arrived and Mr. H awoke to find that his tash had become a radish. In resignation to fate he said nothing but sat at the waters edge, his knees drawn up whilst he looked out towards the village; a morning call to prayer melodiously crafted from wineglasses variably filled with water, broadcast from the porcelain prayer tower above.

I climbed down from my tree and greeted H but he ignored me, so I lay down on my back and enthusiastically rendered a sand angel with my arms and legs. That’ll cheer him up I thought.
“Look.” I said jumping up, smiling all over the place and pointing to the angelic silhouette in the sand. “It’s a sand angel!” He looked over at the shape disinterested. “The tash?” I said surprised, noticing the small but obvious red irritant.
“It’s a fucking…” He began angrily. H stopped, composed himself, cleared his throat and started again, “Sorry, it’s a radish.” He said and then, “…like an engorged tick in fear of a hot fag.”
“Ok. Maybe it’ll go down in a few days, what do you think?” I belched unconvincingly.
“I think…” He began, “…that I have a Radish on my top lip.” Ah, sarcasm I thought, “…and when I sniff…” He continued again slowly, “…it plugs my right nostril. And…” He went on, “…I’ve tried to pull it off but I think it’ll rip my lip off with it.”
“Shit.” I said, useless. “Well then we’ll just have to go back to the church, find the guru and ask him to reverse things to make it hairy again.” I rattled.
“Yes.” Said H changing his tune and jumping up. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.” Excitedly he marched over to where Fleur was still sleeping and gave her a gentle nudge with his bare foot to wake her.
“I’m going to the village.” He said emphatically.
“A…a…and me.” I said, stuttering.
“We’re going back to the village.” H said, punching the air.
Fleur stretched her arms out over her head and seeing H properly she sat up suddenly. “H.” She said surprised and then lowering her voice with seriousness. “H…” again almost baritone, “…you’ve a…”
“A Radish, yes, I know.” He preempted.
“On your top lip.” she said after a short pause.
“And were going back to the village to sort it out.” I said jumping up and down a little too enthusiastically. They both looked at me.
“What?” I said.

Environ

2006-06-09T03:09:00.001+01:00

It’s a difficult area to cover because of its dense and often wildly exaggerated pros & cons and a successful mapping is still ‘The mighty challenge waiting to be fondled.’ The elegant and richly foliated terrain lies on the flip side of a piece of paper and within the silent spaces of the unwritten word or, and to quote an anchorite from the locale “…astride the long and sticky journey of synaptic spittle.”

The high and low cities, the ancestral homes of all the people of Picar assert forest like spires upon the Picaris Plateau, a range of mountains a little north of here. But not so far away for, as the sun falls in the east the city’s peak’s spell out their names across the still waters of the great lake as nights shadow pulls up like a sheet.

(Harvey Picar, a Gnostic and accidental exile ((who fell through a hole between the high and low just as an uncertain dial-up connection withdrew)) resides back home in symbiotic accord with a Mr Crumb. Together they have channelled the lake and mountain Tao for much of the later half of the twentieth century and the two unexpected strangers amongst men have attempted without force to illuminate us all "…as it is yeah?")

I’d found the doll skins on the edge of the lake as I’d found a fresh, dead crab in a Cornish rock-pool when I was a child one summer; I took the crab home to break open with a tool to reveal its white and fragile mash. I stubbed my toe on a hot, rough tarmac road that snaked its way down to the beach that morning. The objects that I’d found here and now I left stinking at the water’s edge.

You see Fleur and Mr H had found a village of dolls by the Efflit River, a flow so old that it had carved out almost every strata of the Plateau creating some of the highest waterfalls that they’d ever seen. The village as it revealed itself was a ruse of sorts. Imagine looking down from an aircraft and one might easily presume that a misguided exclamation such as ‘Dammit, there’s a whole village of dolls down their Dr …’ from one of the passengers could easily lead to months, years even of exhausting anthropological hypothesis and pointless fundraising. The village was no more than a pack of mostly middle class baby boomers and their Mall-Rat offspring who’d gone out in search of hope and found a guru instead draped in the elaborate attire of a spoilt Barbie and usefully hollow enough for worship. Above the Gurus door in the centre of the village the words ‘Of outward shew elaborate, of inward less intact.’ * The inscription gave it all away.

And I whispered to them, to the hearts, "Best not to say a thing."

But the hearts leaked a disturbance, “…a shift like a graze.” they might have said. And so came a response down the wires and their little crystal sets tuned and whined that The Softest person had lost faith. Perhaps the feelings of a father’s loss were broadcasting indifference as loves rejected defence. This news deeply disturbed them I could tell, for even disembodied hearts wear themselves on sleeves. Their passion and joy shifted to mechanical tears and an arrhythmia that undulated upon waves of capricious sunburst influence. I knew this could happen and I had hoped that the loyalty of a doll’s patriarch would be a little less fickle. “But he must be forgiven.” I whispered again, “for we, all of us after all are only human.”

*William Hazlitt

Fruit

2006-05-31T03:19:00.000+01:00

As an aside I must mention that in my most basic inventory I have the heart of Classic Doll. When I’d arrived back from shopping for the essential underwater travel accessories, Newts energy had to be ramped up from the closest source. This was an essential requirement after giving me directions to the tank and then exporting me in the manner of projection that brought me here. For Doll law in this instance to be respected one must be stabbed by another and so, in a dramatic leap of faith from one point to the other Classic doll dived, aiming for Newts chest, as if into water herself.

Impaled to the core, Newt spent five minutes with his eyes rolled upwards in ecstasy, his back arching over slowly as the little body was wrenched by taught ligaments. With Newt arranged in this position Classic pointed upwards and away from his chest like a penis. When she was spent, her sacrifice fulfilled, milked, the husk toppled slowly away from newt inert. As she did and lay down next to her receivers replenished, risen feet, Classic dolls desiccated chest rent open like a dried peel of fruit secreted of all its pulp and out from this cavity a final ejaculation of sympathetic nervous energy vented her heart. I had to bring that little mechanism with me and I have it here now as a bulge in my pocket.

Tank

2006-05-28T04:24:00.000+01:00

It started with the dolls, I was able to see them reflected in the mirrors as I explained in my last post. (Classic Doll has arrived and joins Newt Sublime upon the table where they can be seen always when one stands in the hall. I have set up mirrors in each room so that they can always be reflected to this vantage of interior geography and head height…)

They’d started to respond to something, radio waves I had read, inscribed upon the steamed up windows of the living room in which I now stood. I hadn’t expected anything more from them but the voodoo as advertised on the packet. But, and Classic Doll started the whole thing followed by Newt, each head began a slow revolution and then spun faster at different speeds until they synchronized. Small objects in the room drew towards them and a few other small but heavier pieces made it as far as a peripheral orbit around them like insects circumnavigating a light source. I began an internal investigation:

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“What, the…?”
“The spinning doll heads?”
“Pretty scary though I think.”
“Yeah, but they had an official health and safety seal on the box so…”
“What could go wrong?”
“Right.”

Newt’s left arm began to expand and elongate, uncoiling across the floor like a root. This ‘Evil Dead’ like oddity took about twenty minutes according to my digital watch and reached the fish tank where it finally dipped into the water with an exaggerated unfurling of its finger, pointing. I’d been watching this from the sofa in case I got varicose veins or some kind of clot.

Classic Dolls mouth began a wide opening like a start to a word, a first word that sounded like the seed of a mouth move towards sound in a flesh cathedral. ‘For even the smallest choir means more than all that has ever been said.’ The words on a flap at the base of Newts box had seemed no more than an aphorism.

Like a minute hand Newts slow brittle lips released their monotone mewl which I recorded through a tiny mike inside my watch noted for its consistent quality and comforting whir. At playback I was able to speed things up and to hear: ‘to the lake through the tank with snacks for the fish Spin-boy.’

“It’s ok.” I thought and fathomed from the short and cryptic message orated by the Newt doll that I would begin a journey with the fish. I had been a grand guardian of Pookie, Swim-Swim and Bubbles for long enough to feel comfortable climbing into their tank but I would have to do some shopping first.

I went out and bought a large can of fish treat flakes called ‘Fish flavor flaves’ which are especially shark flavoured to boost the confidence of domesticated marine life. In the fish section of the pet-shop I found a manual entitled, ‘How to construct underwater breathing apparatus in no time at all from household stuff and such and so on.’

The book informed me that I had all that I needed and using parts from discarded coffee machines found in the cafe, old gas pipes and elements from around the house I was able to construct an aid to sub-aquarianism. The fragile spires of partitioned rental rooms tottered in the wind.

During my journey:

I meet Paparazzi frogmen who ask me whether I’m a member of something called Ten-sided. Through verbiage restrictive apparatus I refuse to speak and swim off with a porpoise like spiral.

I wondered at the interconnectedness of all things and felt grateful for my chest attachment which came highly recommended in the ‘Other good stuff to do.’ chapter of the useful book that I mentioned earlier. The small parcel as such contained amongst other things a change of underwear, toothpaste and a small booklet of Impressionist paintings.

I shrank a little which may have been the result of water pressure or perhaps just the pressure of narrative.

Anyway I blanked out or something and the next thing is that I wake up hanging on a hook, comfortably but hanging is hanging. These two people pulled me out and I’m a little confused.

My neck is a little raw and chaffed because of the wraps I had used to keep my breathing bits on. I am mostly disorientated however and there are welts on my thighs that seem conspicuously like that of a tumble drier interior.

The thing is I think this is all about err…The thing is actually, now that…they’re good people, I’m just trying to acclimatize. I asked questions, but I needed time up a tree to think and to mumble for a bit amongst the soothing shrill of coconut rustle. Whilst I was up there I remembered the fish. What happened to Pookie, Swim-Swim and Bubbles?

Craters

2006-05-13T14:32:00.000+01:00

I can’t avoid the Gorillas any longer. I can feel their primate sinew stretch in the night like ethereal wire connected to yesterdays flesh, a synaptic trace of this morphological variant like a splinter from a hologram. Our great dark and brutal clown parades from dream and nightmare, safely withered by entertainment but perhaps just a tiny bit of Antonin Artauds’ vision for the re-birth of ancient rites remain for those close enough to the costumes surprise.

I woke up yesterday on the floor, unable to breath and my pillows were thrown outward and away from the bed as I unconsciously ejected my body to escape disappearance. I haven’t had an attack for a while. I had been trying to keep tabs on my repression, my little carpet lifter and visceral sump.

Classic Doll has arrived and joins Newt Sublime upon the table where they can be seen always when one stands in the hall. I have set up mirrors in each room so that they can always be reflected to this vantage of interior geography and head height, a moment of panoptic certainty.

Some things of troubling:

1. Missing things, for example those that for a moment offered an opportunity to overcome traffic with regards my first post and the little relic reasonably known as cat mummy for identification purposes that turned up in Jezs’ houseboat and more recently Nambos’ shoe.
2. The little notes upon which the word ‘Shoe’ had been written remain a mystery. The letters on the reverse T. C. W so far mean nothing to me.
3. Everybody else seems to be travelling somewhere else apart from me. Brim here in bloody Camberwell, this remnant zone and survivor of the Blitz that left so many fetid pools for the delinquent children of Bauhaus to mud pie in.
4. Watch this space.

Children

2006-05-11T01:26:00.000+01:00

Sadly this week Sally, the new girl at a small shop that I have so far neglected to mention, a long standing corner shop that nudges right up to the edge of the right side of the café had an accident. She slipped inside the café during her lunch hour and twisted her ankle and I am to blame because it was I that had waxed the floor that morning. I had been thinking of other things, I had been thinking about Classic Doll and Alma Halmstrom. Alma had a small house in an area not all that far from where Toni is living at the moment. He had wrist charms that gave out far seeking symbols that rose to occasions of danger like engorged nipples and inspiring a sort of tremulous dodge that threatened a decent day, that’s what it says on the side of the doll box at The Softest Persons web.

The box that embalms Classic Doll, until the seal breaks to that first gasp of obsolescence, is slightly more attractive than the case that Newt Sublime arrived in. Classic Doll is an earlier pearl born of fine technique, steady hand spirit and that lotion totemness that so refines all that bleeds from the aching womb of the Softest Person. Classic Doll inspired Molly Doll, but and this is only rumour, hearsay, gossip and the uncontrollable variant of evolving whisper, Molly Doll enforced an exile upon herself some say of unfathomable humility. Molly, and there is so much assumption and creative writing here, sought to find her greatness equalled through experience above the vulnerable mask of aesthetics that her skitty form scorged mythically from her predecessor. Alma Halmstrom? La,la,la, I’ll get there later.

A flyer came by today that said ‘Shoes’ on the front in 36pt emboldened Arial. Outside there was a scattering of these flyers as they’d been discarded by limited interest all over the street outside.

“Brim, you wanker!” A car zips by with Nambo hanging out, wailing and giving me the appropriate gesture. GERDING! He cracks his head on a lamppost. The car stops and Nambo rolls out whilst Helium, who’d been driving shoots out from the other side and around to cup the mans' head with a little irony.

“Fuckin' hell, you alright Nams'?”
“Ne…” He was fine, just a little wound above his temple, a borderline machismo gash, and a wound of little beneficial credence.
“You find my shoe Brim?”
“You called me a wanker.”
“I hit my head.”
“No shoe. Are you responsible for the flyers?”
“Flyers?” I held up a flyer to his face. Nambo rose with a little rise from Helium (Jesus)
“These.”
“Not I.” He said. So, I thought, not he. I gave a long, slow and thoughtful look of conspiratorial subterfuge out over the South London horizon and thought…

Alma Halmstrom is on the side of the Classic Doll box because he stumped up much of the lolly for the Softest Person and this is all in the small print of course. Alma is related to a king and “ah…” you say, “ah, The King, King Kallarackel III?” Indeed, the great doll financier himself.

“So then...” I say, “Who is responsible for the flyers?” Helium, Nambo and Brim look around them whilst the camera rises above in a circular motion, the scene fades to black.

Pane

2006-05-04T22:53:00.000+01:00

A really daft thing happened on Monday. This guy called Nambo, a friend of Helium came over to see me. We know each other fairly well, I thought. He lives in the next street. He had been telling me about this girl that he’s been seeing when he just flipped and went for the window. The conversation went like this starting from the door as I opened it:

“Hey Nambo, how are you?”
“Fine.”
“I didn’t call.”
“So?”
“Can I come in?”
“Yes, yes of course come in.”
“So how is everything?”
“Fine.”
“Tea?”
“No, no. No thanks, really no tea, I’ve err…”
“You’ve?”
“Whatever, listen! Sorry can I sit?”
“Yeah, what’s the matter?”
He took out a bar of chocolate from his pocket and left it in his lap unopened.
“Chocolate?”
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“Coffee?”
“With the chocolate, no?”
“No. Sam, I…she left.”
“I’m sorry to hear that mate.”

Then he just got up and thrust himself at the ground floor window. He got jammed though because it was only opened a little way, as far as it goes. We struggled; it was really hard to get him free and to squeeze him out and I had to rip his shirt. His shoe fell off too. He sobbed all the way through this. He didn’t say anything about the girl. He just kept saying something about an American writer called Richard Yates whose career had been seriously undervalued. He mumbled things about people being, “Janus faced fucks.” He said that no one really cared about anything, that selfishness was an unavoidable rule, that human beings are hard wired to struggle and that choking on your food was just more irrefutable evidence for the non-existence of a truly altruistic God. We couldn’t find the shoe so he left with a limp. Afterwards I was worried and tried his mobile a couple of times. Then this morning he phones to say he’ll come over because he wants to talk. I’m expecting him to apologise. When he arrived he behaved like nothing had happened and he denied, vehemently denied that he’d come over. I tried to find his shoe again as evidence, speechless. He tells me I’m mad and I’m supposed to believe that a stranger came over who looked just like him. All the time that he’s there he’s doodling frantically on printer paper that I have in the kitchen. When he goes I see that it’s a picture of a car crash. The car has crashed through and into a kitchen just like mine, the car, smashed up, is jammed into the front of a washing machine, my washing machine.

When I speak to Helium about all this he laughs and says that I shouldn’t get too upset about it, that he does it all the time. He’d never done it to me before.

Tomorrow I’m going to a gallery called ‘10’ in Hoxton, East London. A Japanese friend called Koyo makes these little figures from pen caps. She carves them out like ivory. They are all these little models of World leaders who have suffered damaging forms of psychosis during their time in power. One of them is of an American president who tried to slice his face off which he didn’t manage very well to complete. He bled a lot.

Anyway Nambo left the chocolate bar behind and I ate it. I still haven’t found his shoe though.

Praying

2006-05-01T06:37:00.000+01:00

It’s a funny old thing, this life. We can stopper uncertainty with deities or for the monotheist ‘A Deity’, one almighty and omnipotent answer. But it isn’t enough. How can absolutes satiate the folly of curiosity? The phones are playing up and the television has a bad reception; I don’t have digital, I have background cosmic radiation as a constant fauna to the electronic theatre. I need reasons damn it.

So life, it’s a funny old thing, this…this retelling of stories, this always relearning, remembering, the function of our essential absurd, that through pain each generation must grow, remaking the books because we have to know, jump, scream and love that which also destroys us.

Mr Meister my electronic stranger I’m sorry about Toni. I feel now that I should have sent a reply to a small comment that she left attached to my last post saying I could mail anytime. That was really very kind of her to respond like that. Then I read about her tough time with credit cards and I knew that I should have written back and left a few words of wisdom. I got caught up with cards too.

I got myself into a terrible mess a couple of years ago and made myself bankrupt to get away from a similar amount to that which she currently owes. It kept me from much sleep and so much life that I missed, burrowed behind closed curtains and an impossibly shrinking room. I know what it’s like and recovery is slow, my old life distant and a new one trying hard to be careful. Toni, when so many envelopes build like so much decaying matter, fecund like cancer, escape is always an option but never an answer. Still, nothing wrong with a little distance from the fog for a while, but on another credit card? Oh the pornography of desire. I think though that you should give those that care the opportunity to help. Talk to the man. There’s nothing worse than not being given the opportunity to offer a possible means of resolve. Get yourself a ticket back perhaps, think about it clearly, there are worse things than debt and, hey a little bankruptcy isn’t a bad thing these days. In fact, I’m reliably informed that it’s the new black. In addition, think of it as a little covert manoeuvring against the hegemony of the bastard card peddlers. Look after yourself girl.

As for that very kind offer J it’s not a bad idea at all. We should get in touch and make some arrangements, but this is the net man, are you sure? I mean I might not be what I seem to be, might be someone else, not Brim at all. Hope the Blue turns out smooth.

As for Ezra Kire what happened, are you now a voice from beyond? If so can we all have a detailed report on the Messiahs full reading list? Thanks and by the way, while you’re in there as it were, please help feed all the starving people in the world. Also could you put an end to all the Machiavellian black-op’s, blatant-op’s period, collateral damage, hydrogenated fats, ugly housing estates, anything called art made with corporate sponsorship and, oh yeah, pay off Smooth Blues credit cards. If there’s one small favour left at the bottom of the bag, clean slate my bank account and credit history please. I hope that’s not an all too idealistic selection of requests. Can I rise now? Humbly, Brim.

Counting

2006-04-25T06:33:00.000+01:00

It seems a long time since my last post. Ten days is enough of a short break I think. Ten keeps popping up. Sometimes I catch myself counting numbers in my head. I used to do it occasionally but just recently I’ve been doing it a lot more and I don’t know why. I think it might be associated with a disorder like the way I hoard stuff, stuff I should get rid of. When I catch myself doing it it’s hard to stop. Sometimes I just keep counting on and on and into the hundreds and it’s usually when I’m out and about walking when the counter begins its climbing oratory. People develop ticks in the city in a multitude of ways, urban psychosis, twitching curtains at the windows of the self. 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10..11..12..13..14..15..16..17..the Zebra crossing 18..19..20 the shop 21..22..23 “Alright mate!” 24..25..26..27 look at the little dog.

I read that J.Meister and Smooth Blue seem to be hitting it off and I’m pleased to read that. I thought I might send them a comment but I thought that maybe I shouldn’t be a freak, that’s to say that even though the net has doors ajar it’s good to respect peoples privacy. It was damn strange to read about the wrapped cat that Mr Meister found on the long boat, the little thing couldn’t be the same as the bundle found under my floor could it? The council had taken it away and I thought that they would burn it at least…although, of course those other items of mine, the bridge parts, they were confiscated too and ended up miles away. Those fragments ended up in the house that incarcerates Old Uncle Charles and his young matriarchs.

Boris returned from seeing his brother Ruth in Prague. He came back with this little box that opens out to become a little table. It’s a miniature curiosity, perhaps some kind of truth.

Yesterday two cars exploded outside. I asked a fireman who stood waiting his turn at the hose what he thought had caused it, he just shrugged and mumbled something about sparks, right then I started counting again.

Back at work the monotony of turning tables and sweeping floors, cleaning the toilets and catching myself in the bathroom mirror, looking at a stranger there, so much older than me and then I obliterate the image with glass cleaner, counting.

House Arrest can be more than just a geographical location. Is Aliss through the looking glass I wonder? The cartography of all our children, our layer cake evolution, myself, the crumbs I leave, the icing I loose, my decaying sweetness, all the memories that I am of this and that connection to all that I ripple against in the pond. I’ve forgotten the code I once adhered to, that of my sensitivity to symbols embedded within the exegesis of the day to day, to read my text carefully. I’ve been skipping too much, whole chapters and stumbling into narratives over which I have no knowledge. I feel as if I’m fighting an enemy of strangers because I have become a stranger to myself. I am disadvantaged, infiltrated and surrounded. I am going to be knocked down and when that happens I have to listen very carefully. I can only hope that there are enough cotton buds left on the shelf inside the cupboard. 1..2..3

Sublime

2006-04-15T05:14:00.000+01:00

I’m taking this week away from work because Boris has gone to visit his brother Ruth in Prague. Ruth used to have bit parts in Hammer house films when he was younger.

I have this pile of books that I’ve started but not completed. Each book has a marker, their shaking pile like a switchboard of calls on hold. It’s a mindless way to read but I have a sniper of an attention span, my analog Internet. I’m going to read them this week.

The Young woman called Mandy that visited me with my friend Helium a week or so ago? I mentioned her URL in my last post regarding a Mr. J Meister. I’d posted it with the possibility in mind that she might by chance be the same girl whose phone number he’d lost. It turns out that One and another one somewhere else connected by a common factor makes Two. I checked out her blog and she sounded a bit pissed that I’d mentioned it. I think that the net makes us more vulnerable to nodes of indeterminacy in an acceleration of mans evolution. It’s like sticking our heads outside the eye and into the storm and these things happen more and more frequently in the wind. Sorry Mandy.

In her latest post she mentions a gift that she had gotten for her mother. She’d found this curious doll maker called The Softest Person. Naturally I checked out the dolls and had one sent to me. It arrived the next day. Newt Sublime is special and another kind of serendipity. The dolls are like balms for ailments, alchemical morphologies, signs for divination, texts for resolution. Newt Sublime is like a synaptic bridge. This effigy from The Softest Person has allowed me to find some kind of closure. When I was about fourteen a friend and I, Star Wars fans found two Newts in the garden pond. We called them Chewbacca and Yoda. We put them both into a shallow, water filled, orange plastic cat litter, with little rocks, weed from the pond and a little netting over the top to keep them in. Later, after a day digging holes in the garden I returned and found one dead, dehydrated and bound in fluff on the carpet of my attic bedroom. I had always thought that perhaps the cat had disturbed them, that he’d got one whilst the other had got away, at least I never found the other but it was a long way back to the pond through unfriendly territory. One thing that was certain was that I was responsible. It was an ill memory that pinched, a little past that swayed restless and ghosting. The doll is a mirror in to which I can slowly mouth resolve. Thank you TSP and god bless Meister and Mandy.

Breaks

2006-04-10T20:49:00.000+01:00

I might by coincidence know someone who, by coincidence knows someone else and if you’re reading my feed Mr J. Meister then, hey fella, I can’t give out a phone number but I do have a blog address for you it’s: smooth-blue.blogspot.com (.) The world turns like a poker wheel so lets see if your number comes up, good luck and you have my friend Helium to thank for that tip.

As for my love life, well nothing at all right now. I actually feel that I can’t be bothered at the moment. This is because I’ve made so many of the same mistakes over and over that I just want to get off for a while. I want to sit with Popcorn and watch the dial carefully from outside of the ring. I don’t expect to ever get things right, my block’s been carved, shaped and hacked by raging, misplaced desires. I am a wretched, Pavlovion dog. I am every man. I’ve fallen off the bike and I haven’t managed to get my feet back on to the Peddles. I do however have at least a good grip on one of the handlebars if you know what I mean.

Changing the subject the Café has managed to be a little burdensome this week. The stove needs replacing and my good intentioned adjustments ended up with a damaged gas ring and a reprimand from Boris. To quote his well managed words “You’re a terrible, terrible bloody fiddler.”

Other news, Dink the Café cat went missing and then reappeared outside the newsagents yesterday asleep in an empty fruit basket. He had an Elastoplast on his head for no apparent reason and some chewing gum matted up on the end of his tail. I can only imagine foul play and not the winged variety. I doubt, with respect to our feathered friends that they’d have the imagination.

Back to the subject of gas the tower block at the end of the mainroad had to be evacuated last week because a tenant, a middle aged Lithuanian women, had decided to kill her husband. She had left the gas on whilst the man was sleeping, sealed the place with damp towels, came out, locked the front door and after an appropriate time put a match through the letterbox. The flat blew up as she’d intended although the reverse of intentions came to pass. She was killed instantly as the door blew out on to her whilst her bemused, most fortunate husband and bed were found intact, upturned and outside two storeys below. A little magma springs forth.

Every action has a reaction and unless we’re really careful it won’t be one that we can comfortably presume, not that I’m an advocate of flat-lining expectations, the indeterminate considered, but so much trouble can be avoided. Misplaced desires? The inevitable bite from the juicy fruit? We balance ourselves on ropes suspended many hundreds of feet above the earth and yet some of us (me) cannot traverse the most even terrain without pain. But and this is the rub, we are shaped by pain. If we lived for a thousand years, what then? It’s not that I’m not a gambling man, I’m just conservative with the odds. Ladies and gentleman, Brim has left the building.

inside me
thousands of summer songs
crammed
i open my mouth
& try to put them in some order.
I sing, badly.
but,
thanks to my song,
i am distinguished...

Cicada by Timothy Gallagher

Rise

2006-04-05T21:18:00.000+01:00

An over-trod and painful west London Street, lusting after fire and destruction, desperate for death. A fifteen-year-old boy torched every bus in the Westbourne Park bus yard. Why? All things, it used to be thought, contained the element Phlogiston. “Phlogisticated” substances were those that, on being burned, were “dephlogisticated.” The ash of the burned material was held to be the true material. The stink of unreleased Phlogiston rises from the filth of London’s labored, street and avenued entrapments. Like ancient grasslands cities too need to be raised from time to time. Short of regulated, lung draining flares of necessity, intense, startling bursts of concentrated inferno will rise like tremors from the earth. Flames have shaped the city of London many times in the past and it feels as though the volcano is about to violently erupt once more, reducing again to its true material; materia-prima to feed the atrophied spirit of the lost.

Enter

2006-04-05T16:04:00.000+01:00

Spineless rat spread out and wired for insight on the ground and beneath an averaged height outdoor clothesline. Rattus Anoono bathed in etiquette of mirth and dandelion. Pulled out and sung to from a distance. The small voice undulation that arises over and above any wind or direct breeze impact resonates the voided, spineless rat as hi-tone modulation. This in turn and of an occasion inspires black birds with a certain predilection to the attractive qualities of a certain timbre to grace the evening brighter. ‘Sqee ack ack ta wee wee Sqee nata nee nee sqee.’ The significance of the line is the magic quality of surrogate spine to which it has succumbed as Succubus to need.

It is always a gamble.

Anti-aging cream in easy jars. Destructible virtual environments to bite through from a static position like the nail to hammer into African sculptures for release of bad spirit. Effigies of pillow and string reach out to mimesis, hung from poles, waiting for lead. Sleepless nights tossed on the tide of times slow resolution. Poured turpentine on fresh oil on wood, decaying the inaudible stutter of a poorly rendered face. This instrument of bricks and mortar, this house, like a musical pipe for the breath of traffic.

Entropy

2006-03-28T12:03:00.000+01:00

The council turned up and took the cat. They had forms with them, paperwork with capitals, red ink at some point and health and safety slipped from lips like ectoplasm. Next I see headlines in The Evening Standard about a trade in council appropriations smuggled overseas. Why on earth would you want to do that? I’ve heard of recycled material, gathered in good faith by the environmental homeowners of Britain and found floating along tropical coastlines like an equation in some autistic algebra, but…I’m thinking that all my bridge parts are abroad somewhere and part of some damn project (ha, ha). I’d slipped a card with my address into the fabric wrapping the little dried cat, a small picture of me and a poem, an index of sentimental nonsense to bury the little corpse with. I wonder when that’ll come back at me?

Friday I meet up with an old friend of mine. He used to be a Womble in the seventies; he was in the Womble band. He was the guitarist, the one playing a flying V on Top Of the Pops. The Wombles brief brush with hot, furry outfits and novelty fame came to a crashing close with headlines like, ‘Wombles party drug lust bust’, or something along those lines ('scuse the pun) We had a few drinks in a pub in west London. He told me that a few nights before he’d been coming back from a club in Shoreditch early in the morning when he came across the corpse of a woman. It was raining. She had been disemboweled; her entrails lay splayed out in a trail indicating the direction of a drag. She had one leg missing and her dress had been pulled up over her head. He called the police who told him to stay put. When they arrived they questioned him and one officer was especially curious with what he’d said during his call, ‘I’ve a dead one ‘ere’. They thought this suspicious. It had turned out that the woman was a hit and run. My friend drew a sketch of what he’d seen and he was strangely surprised when he’d finished the drawing as if he’d been unaware that he was doing it. “Some ways in which we speak are truer than others,” he said.

The young son of my neighbour came by with a present for me. He’d made me little Plasticine tanks. He’d made five of them and I thought how perfect of him to provide me with that clear and perfect number. The pentad is a star, ten-sided and the formation of the first female number, number two, duality and the first male number, number three, unity and diversity. The boy, a young Russian is fascinated with dragons and knights, of conflict and I’m reminded of my own drawings as a child. Great armed star-fleets and their twisted wreckage, those ordered systems of disorder illuminating the terrible pattern of war in our fabric, sublimation’s for internal dispute. Those delightful, tiny models brought me back into the house and able to resolve a struggle that I’d had with some arrangements of things that had dried up in their departments of articulation.

On Sunday my friend Helium turned up and I had to surf the stairs as I lost contact with carpet and grazed a surfeit of insane newspapers that cascaded down beneath me. 'Go with the flow' I thought, as flock wallpaper dopplered in my peripheral vision, 'be the wave'. He’d come along with a couple of friends of his, a very natural Mancunian woman; a young nurse called Mandy and her friend. Mandy had an unrepressed immediacy about her that I found so refreshing. I was reminded just how little I know about how to behave these days, my friends are all complicated enough to leave me without the security of expectation and this brand of cynicism has been uniquely insidious. Anyway she was very sweet and I was a little embarrassed, as I usually am at the state of things. Hellie though was kind enough to put it all down to the chaotic mechanics of an artist’s mise en scene, but even he knows the truth of my deplorable domestic affairs. I’m afraid I might become like the brother of the American writer John Vernon whom he recorded in his ‘Book of Reasons’. Vernon had to pick through the rancid detritus of his sibling’s small and neglected home after he’d died, leaving Vernon as sole benefactor to clear it up ready for sale. He wrote by way of conclusion, ‘…that the book had been a way to comprehend a life that had left behind not splendid monuments but ordinary wreckage.’ We turn ourselves out into the world, manifesting ourselves into the material, constructing physical maps of madness, genius and sadness. And if I died tomorrow what would I leave behind?

Dust

2006-03-24T05:00:00.000+00:00

Today I stayed at home, a day off work. The landlord had builders in to take up the floorboards and rewire the hallway. All the old cables had reached their peak. The downstairs always shorted out; candle wax everywhere. They found a dead cat wrapped in filthy old rags and whoever left it there had painted an eye on its head like a mummy. I’ll bury it, in the garden, later. When I was a kid other builders found a rat, mummified under floorboards. They put it into a little plastic bag and left it outside the backdoor on a marble top. It looked like a dried puffball. You ever see a dried puffball before? Did you ever see a fresh one, eat it with bacon and eggs? Puffball steaks, slices of pure meat like best bird breast. It’s only when they’re completely dried out that they can release their spores.

 The mugger I let pass, chased by a copper
 The businessman I lost reason with on the tube
 The awful silent wish that others might die
 White noise wall of radios
 Melon balls

Spheres

2006-03-23T01:26:00.000+00:00

“Useless bastard!” Then, when I was at the bottom of the stairs I felt the first pelts of saliva that my father was spitting down at me, a fiver flittered down and I danced for it. That was my last late night visit to the old man. I post this like vomit. Do I feel better? A little, yes, am I resolved, purified, more relaxed, settled? Absolutely not, a great bag of memories fit to burst like an overstuffed cosmetic breast. I pierce myself and everything’s going to be all right, for a bit. But I’m sick of sticking it to myself. I’ve had a belly full of an adult life wracking myself against a hair shirt. But what am I now? I live alone, clean a café and spend my cash in the pub. I collect a lot of rubbish that comes through the door and most of the rooms are stuffed with possibilities of one form or another. I record the sounds of lids in the kitchen, the lid on the coffee, on the peanut butter, on the jam. I compare them, spend hours realizing their harmonics and sometimes when I get it I feel drunk.

I work in fives, fifths, a diatonic, sets of clumsy heart felt pythagorean solids. It all seems to work well enough for me. I like the door open and swinging in the simplicity of knowing without a definitive equation. All this stuff, it’s not academic. I’m not talking about absolutes because there aren’t any. I like the stuff in between because we can touch it. We can gather it up, throw it out, leave it to evaporate, set fire to it, let it rot, stretch it, pluck it, twist it’s sign and this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this makes for a great dissolution. From nothing comes something even if it’s flawed. It’s essential to be flawed because if your not flawed you’re deceiving yourself, which is the biggest flaw of all.

Enclosure

2006-03-20T03:32:00.000+00:00

I had this dream last night about a small building surrounded by barbed wire. In the background there’s a mountain and this overbearing presence, I can feel this weight on my chest, a shrouded figure, a woman I think and she kneels down on me and starts whining like a radio trying to find a station on Longwave. When I woke up there was a storm outside and about an hour left before I was due to get up for work. At the café I slipped on a cat shit in the dining area. I surfed Dinks’ turd, that’s Mr Salvos’ cat across the whole room and lost my shoe, it carried on without me and out into the kitchen. I ended up on my back and all I could see was the lampshade above me. I hadn’t cleaned that shade for a while and it was hanging with webs and an old Christmas streamer from last year. When Brian gets in at 9.30 to fire up the kitchen I’ve cleaned everything up and I tell him about Dinks incident and my directly associated accident whilst holding Dink in my arms. Dink farts. He’s an old cat, about eight or nine I think and heavy from customer scraps. I didn’t mention the shade. Brians’ got a skin complaint on his face and uses a cream for it now. He’s been wearing the prescription everyday for about two weeks so he’s been coming in early and keeping scarce so that the customers don’t get freaked out.

Floaters

2006-03-18T01:39:00.000+00:00

Listening to Ezra Kire this morning on digital I gather all the remotes from around the house together and lash them up with Sellotape. Next thing I go off in search of some kind of wire, find some old broken curtain cord that might be suitable and fiddling with that, pulling at these shelves, books and stuff bramble out all over the floor. When I’ve wrapped up the remotes in some old mobile charger cable that I’d found Mr Salvo calls round. He sees what I’ve done, whips out his pen, sits down and starts drawing. So I have to tell Brian about why I’ve got all this stuff tied up. Last night I had this dream. It took place in the kitchen and all it is is this wrap of remotes floating above this little table with my fruit bowl broken open on the top. When Brian was finished it was five thirty so I had to wrack the whole thing apart to turn the TV on for Neighbours.

Tape

2006-03-09T00:30:00.000+00:00

In addition to what I'd written before I wanted to post some sketches of what I had originally proposed for my construction. I know that from the start I was flawed. I know this now. I'm not going to make a fuss about the stuff. Mr Salvo persuaded me to put the phone down when I contacted the council because I was angry. I think I've made peace with it all. There are always so many other projects to get on with, always so many other things to play with. I feel the pressure around me sometimes and I identify it with things that just need a reordering, a rearranging. They need to be controlled and in the immediacy of these thoughts if I'm in a room for example I think that if I were to begin combining the disparate I would find, in their new concentration a solution. The solution I often think is simply to bind.

Scuppered

2006-03-07T21:39:00.000+00:00

My name is Brim Miscovich and I have a small flat in South London where I have lived for many years. The street where I live is a main road and it’s become increasingly busy since I arrived. I have a job cleaning an old café that belongs to an elderly gentleman called Boris Salvo. Boris saved it from demolition when it was under pressure to make way for new office space. At the back of the café are four apple trees that were planted as a small orchard in the seventeenth century and a young friend of mine made a very short film there. He told the story of a little girl who was orphaned during the blitz. The girl took up refuge in the orchard which had miraculously survived the bombing and took a bite out of every apple that hung from the trees while she was there.

Last week the council removed some things from outside of my building. They weren’t harming anyone and they were strapped safely to the brickwork with a proper binding that I had learnt to tie as a merchant seaman. I am always very careful about these things and here is a list of the things that they took:

My collection of plastic crates
Forty metres of binding rope
Ten lengths of 4x4, 6ft ply
Plastic sheeting
A large collection of used plastic bags

Since the road has become so busy over the years I had started on a bridge project and I had only got so far as the foundation structure. Once it was completed it would have enabled me to create a pulley system that would have taken me over the traffic with plenty of space below for everything to pass by safely underneath. I had no intention of causing any trouble to the traffic below or indeed to endanger my feet. I don’t like to use the Zebra crossing at the junction.