Nightworn

A few days back I had a dream and I woke in sweat.

Dreams have a funny way of seeming more dangerous when asleep, innocous when you wake and lethal when they come true.

I was in a room. Or was I outside? It was raining I remember and it was night. And it was raining demonically.

Then I got beat up by a few people. Who were they?

And I ran out disgusted.

Suddenly I discovered I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt.

My state of undress didn't seem to bother me.

It was cold and I was shivering.

I walked all night. In the streets. Can't remember what city it was.

Saw a tree and stood under it.

Felt disconnected.

As I was about to think what next...where next...I see a big black book near the gutter. It's got 'THE BIBLE' written on it in gold.

It is soggy and worn out.

I pick it up and feel there's a message in it for me.

Message my ass.

Unwell is bad news

Not feeling very well at all.

Work at office is many little disjointed things. People with little imagination and lesser ability.

But then, when was it ever different? And where was it ever different?

As for writing, there is little that has happened. Health has been down, though I am fighting it. Desperately. Do not want to go down the degenerate road.

But don't feel well. And what's scary is that I am not too sure if it is the body or it is the mind. Or something else.

My nerves are completely frayed. And I am unable to focus on my thoughts that lead to writing.

Will I even out?

When will it happen?

When will the ordeal end?

How much lonnger?

Snatches Wisps Slivers Crags

"Go take a walk. All of you. I mean, everyone can go take a walk. When it comes to me, sorry, I am selfish. I like my career. It's important to me. It's important to me. I mean that's more important to me than anyone. Even you. No, that's true."

- and what about the cold breeze i have left bridled between the rocks for you my love, and what about the sunrise that waits behind an unmade house, and what about the windows that are waiting to be opened and a fire that is waiting to be kindled in the hearth?"

So I say man, what passes is just a dream. In ten years time no one remembers a thing. No, it's a fact. No one remembers. That's why god's given us this ability to forget. That's life. One can take anything. This too will pass. There's nothing that will remain. So what the fuck! One ought to do what one wants."

- so what was it about the lines i have etched on my skin? why do they refuse to go? why is your palm etcheh on my body? why can i not erase you from the markings between my fingers? and even if it grows old, i think the legs still remember how they once crawled, and the lips without teeth remember how it was to have spoken the magic words, perfectly pronounced, softly uttered under the breath.

The Animal Is Angry

In the middle of the storm is the moving of eyes now. Morning is rush. Work is a wheel.

Hunger does not want food.

Blindness does not want eyes.

And what you want kept gets broken. And what you want broken gets broken. And nothing gets built.

And these hands that seem mine, that are torn from me, one to seek, one seeked by the storm, will be seen as the hands that disturbed the winds.

And no one will know of the animals that thrashed about behind the mountains and under the earth, that raised this madness from beneath and from behind.

Engineering confusion

Comes a time when your tediously long train of perfectly linked, smoothly drawn carriages on unshakeable rails, their insides insulated from the grim air and jaunty light begins to rattle. The engine, so long disciplined to move, station to station, trained to learn and know only the next direction - and to know it well - to think nothing but onward momentum, forward draw, to know only the pull, the roll, the pusrposeful slicing of air and fog and dark and day, and to whistle and blow, that it could all move that way or that - that engine, draws to an abrupt halt because someone somewhere, a human hand, has pulled upon a dangling chain of questions that have the power to slow, confuse the mindless pistons, stop - and I am afraid, even derail.

So AJ, what way, and with what new certitudes? And how do you know there is a station at the end of this journeying, with light and sandwiches and the promise of warmth in a restless waiting room.

A Crocodile story begins

Once there was a crocodile and his name was crocodile. He lived in the marshes with no crocodile. He had crocodile skin, crocodile soul and crocodile mind. And he knew all the crocodile rules well -

1. Do not seek them out in the forest, they all come to the waterplace.
2. Be patient. Let them find you.
3. Do not scratch your own back. There will always be someone who finds benefit in scratching it.
4. Always keep your head above the water.
5. When hungry, eat without guilt.
6. Everything the world has to offer is in the marshes.
7. Move only when you cant help it.
8. Human beings walk and talk. They haven't evolved to still-life and silence. Avoid the unevolved.
9. Food comes before thought. Body before soul.
10. Want what you dont have. Want beauty.

And he sat and learned the rules again and again and again. And did the crocodile-do in the marshes.

We are unsettled with us

I know we are unsettled with us. The life we lead is too much in the light. And then the hands we have, look at them. We know each line, each growing wrinkle. And then our commerce with ourselves - observe, how we know it all - each joke, each sad memory, each corner of our minds.

I told you yesterday to seek out someone and you did. And you invited to our table a new creature. What shall we call him? He looked pleased with himself. He was a hungry shifty bright-eyed unfeeling floating person. I saw him. I did not speak with him. I wanted to see what he could do. And he did much. He did not seem capable of friendship. Friendship does not devour. And, frankly, I thought his humour acerbic and unsavoury, not quite the kind we share. But he was different. And he did things.

And then, it was refreshing. After all we have been unsettled and cramped in our little space. There's you with your brooding against the wall, there's him with his dialectics at the desk, and him with his contemplative cover on the bed, and him with his cunning at the window, and him with his memories frantically rummaging through the cupboards, and him with his keen eye and twitching fingers fixing the eisel, and him with his tireless ambitions - cleaning washing fixing mending making, and then, there's that keeper of rhythms and songs who walked off the roof some nights back and will not return.

It's been a crowded place with us. And maybe we need to get ourselves a new home. A larger one. And call a few more faces to run the show.

It's like having just one story and one script for a million nights. When you are done with the reading, you know you cannot change the words. But you hope - sitting on the fan, dangling your legs, looking down with curiousity - that maybe the story will tell you something of the gardens and the cities outside, if only you screwed a new face into the reader's neck, a new pair of hands into his shoulder sockets and a new set of lips that will whisper in a new tongue.