your benzedrine, uh huh.

May 15, 2009.

2009-05-26T15:05:00.001-07:00

He's always very snappily dressed, which I always appreciate and is one of the pluses about dating designers (the egomania, childish self-centredness, maudlin tendencies and garden-variety insanity being the drawbacks, but hey, you gotta take the crunchy with the smooth).

December 28, 2008.

2008-12-30T18:17:00.000-08:00

I felt something shift on those twisting Sussex roads as that record washed over me. I felt something fall away, something evaporate off my skin, dissipating into the dark cold air, left behind. Who was right, who was wrong, who punched through and who withdrew don't matter anymore. The show is over, the circus has moved on. In its place, something else will grow. It's me. It isn't me. It's you. It isn't you.

It's you.

August 18, 2007.

2008-11-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

This is what relationships do to you - they melt away all your defenses but after it's over you don't get them back so you're just raw and broken and bloody, vulnerable with no hope of defending yourself, and all you can do is just cross your fingers and pray that the finishing blow is quick and direct.

July 26, 2008.

2008-08-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

I was lying in the tall tall grass and looking up at the blue blue sky and running my fingers along a bull rush and everything was in three dimensional colour and so so bright and his green shirt made the gap between the grass and the sky not quite so wide. I wrapped a wide blade of river grass around my fingers and told him the truth when I could have lied.

Undated.

2008-07-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

It is already summer. I had hoped for mornings spent sweating into your arms and onto your chest but instead I bleed into my brain with all the things left undone and unsaid, there was never enough time because I never envisioned the leaving coming so soon. Or maybe I stopped waiting. Or maybe I have better things to do. Or maybe you never liked me anyway. Maybe you were slow. Maybe I was impetuous. Maybe your arms never got around me. Maybe I am a master of escape. Maybe I always knew better. Maybe I don't have a clue. I can philosophise in a million directions, I can map the expanse of your shoulders in the grey morning light, we can fill the space between us with something thick and sweet and watch each other drown, I can spend the last stretch of my expiring youth fancying that I wasn't wrong and that you felt it too, I can slide headlong into winter and away from all this but I don't forget. I forgive but I don't forget.

May 16, 2008.

2008-07-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

London is drifting into summer after a too-long and too-dark winter. I thought by now my longing would be over but not quite, not yet, every time I think I've gotten to the bottom of it there's one more level of want. My veins and arteries are exposed, laid out in beautiful patterns on the pavement and spilling into the gutter, you idly step over them while doing something else the way you subconsciously dodge puddles of vomit on a shiny Friday night street. I am bleeding, I am bleeding, I am bleeding because you never bled for me. A yellow moth settled on my eyes the morning before and whispered its warning that I chose to ignore, I should really be more careful, I should take my cues from buzzing insect symphonies instead of my own misguided misaligned and so often stupid heart. It's only ever gotten me into trouble and seems to want to march to its own broken watery death.

August 20, 2007.

2008-07-10T18:09:00.001-07:00

I have been imagining myself in a room that's dark with heavy curtains blocking out the daylight, like the ones you tend to find in American road hotels. The corners and edges of the curtains are glowing with the bright light outside. I'm sitting in a chair across from the window - it's one of those mass-produced uncomfortable chairs that I find hard to believe were meant for use by human beings - and I'm staring at the curtain and watching the light bang and rattle against the other side. I can feel the chair's rough polyester upholstery under my hands, I can feel the hard narrow arm rests. I'm not comfortable. I get up with a certain amount of effort and throw the curtains open. Everything comes alive with blazing white light. It is warm. I close my eyes.

July 3, 2008.

2008-07-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

Last night I was surprised by the phrase "You look lovely in this light" when I was sitting in that rough little pub, the phosphorescent street light pouring in the windows and splashing all over everything, the fat candle and its tiny flame flickering in the crystal bowl and tossing a flurry of yellow shapes over the wooden table. I half-mumbled "Doesn't everybody" because it's true, everybody does, that lighting makes us all so deceptively soft and inviting and shadows fall so delicately, honey tones of hair and skin compete for low-contrast dominance, skin beatified and flaws all rinsed away. My mind wandered off to the first time I saw you, in that dark place with pale light that always seems to leak in from a direction you can't quite identify, and how your mouth was moving and sounds were coming out but I was so lost in the collision of your features and tilt of your head and wondered if your eyes/nose/eyebrows/skin had planned to dance in that configuration or if it was just some grand genetic accident. Either way I was grateful to be their captive audience.

August 16, 2007

2008-07-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

There are two people sitting across from me in this cafe and I'm pretty sure they're breaking up. It's difficult to watch, I want to lean over and tell them to work it out work it out work it out, if not for each other then for you and me. There's a loose end dangling where you used to be and sometimes it drags along the ground and
hurts
like
hell.

May 20, 2008.

2008-06-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Saturday:

Got off work. Gave myself stigmata on a broken glass right before I put my coat on to leave. Decided fuck it and didn't bother getting a napkin for it.

Ran to the tube to get the last trains to Tottenham Court Road. Realize I'm still bleeding. It turns out I have also cut my finger but the shard must have been so sharp that I didn't even feel it. Blood is running down my wrist, it's one of those cuts that just won't quit. I'm waiting for the train with my finger in my mouth, swallowing blood, digging through my bag for something to stem the bleeding. I can usually come up with something absorbent out of that thing - an old tissue, a sock, something - but this time I'm coming up dry. I find a receipt from Ryman's but know damn well that won't do. I look at people eating kebabs on the platform but the recent environmental conscience of England means that no one gets fifty napkins with their takeaway anymore. I wrap my finger up into the cuff of my jumper and hope for the best.

March 10, 2008.

2008-06-03T20:51:00.001-07:00

London is a cruel city, a trussed-up whore who always has this look on her face like she's detected a faint but horrible smell. Women with that look on their faces - somewhere between boredom and hatred - always manage to attract the masses, and London is no exception.

June 23, 2008.

2008-05-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

After the show we go into the most underwhelming backstage I've ever seen, a quarter of a hot smoky canvas tent. I hate this stage of things, the act-worshipful-and-wait-for-something-to-happen stage. I decide to talk to the girl standing beside me. She must have thought the same thing because as I open my mouth she says "So what do you do in London." I say, "I'm an artist." She says "Oh really" with a cocked eyebrow and that look and tone that I fucking hate, the look and tone that says "Well, you're probably pretty shit aren't you." I must have successfully smiled politely because she tells me about her job, working for some gallery touring exhibitions. She also says that she was an artist until she was twenty-five, when she decided that the "art world was bullshit" and tossed it all to work in galleries. I pretend to be more impressed than I actually am - Exhibitions! Touring! Really! - whereas I think that anyone who decides to toss an art career at twenty-five before you actually get to any of the hard parts has simply identified a legitimate and graceful way of giving up. Congratulations. Oh, and fuck you for that "Oh really" comment.

At this point I realise that there are a lot of groupies backstage of varying ages, and not a shred of shame or dignity between them.

May 25, 2008.

2008-05-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

I am standing against the barrier at the front and two junkies are make-out humping beside me. There's something visceral and desperate about them, it's creepily beautiful in all its track-marked, braless, unashamed and disturbing handsiness. I try not to watch but can't look away. The guy is tweaked out like crazy. He has a faded home tattoo on his arm - MUM.

September 7, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

I have just finished five hours of soul-killing work which felt like nothing despite three hours of sleep, and despite a porn star getting uppity and in my face about a fruit fly in her mojito.

I had to literally bite the inside of my cheek to keep from saying "Come on, we all know you've had worse in your mouth than a goddamn fruit fly."

August 31, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

I am hating everything I'm writing these days. I think I need to do less with words for awhile. Maybe I'll just use one word for days at a time. I nominate something funny like "buggery" for day number one.

August 24, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was living here in 1999, so miserable and alone and desperate and hopeless and I was on the 55 upstairs going who knows where and it stopped at a red light in Picadilly Circus. It was one of those winter evenings when it gets dark at four in the afternoon and there's this certain crispness and coldness but distinct aliveness and it doesn't feel like night because the world isn't tired yet, I don't know how to explain it but you might know what I mean. Anyway, I was looking out the window down at the traffic and trying not to explode at the seams and wondering what I was going to do with myself when my eyes strayed down to a man in his sixties in the back of a black cab in another lane of traffic. He was wearing a suit and reading the paper and I remember thinking that it must be so nice to have enough money to go everywhere by black cab and as I was sitting there thinking about this he for some reason looked up over the top of his paper and was at the exact right angle to catch me staring at him from up above and there was this brief second while we looked at each other and then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

I'll never forget him. I learned so much from that private joke, from that brief moment of connection. That's what I'm getting at, those are the moments that are so blindingly beautiful, these are the things that make me so in love with everything. It's the way the afternoon light dims a little when a cloud passes overhead, it's what your lover's hair does in the morning, it's the smell of chimneys in the early evening, it's a stranger saving you from yourself.

August 23, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:40:00.001-07:00

It's one of those sodden London days when your shoes never dry out and your hair is always wet, when umbrellas fail and puddles are deeper than you think they are. It's one of those days when the sky is so low that you can bump your head against it, one of those days that's enough to scrub the effervescence from your bones, enough to make you lie down and never want to get up again.

August 14, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

Themes of distance are flowing these days. Not distance with wistfulness or nostalgia - nostalgia is for old TV and family albums - but joyful distance, like when you're driving ridiculously fast and pass a speed trap and tense up looking in the rear view mirror waiting for the cop to materialize behind you, and then the rush of relief and euphoria when he doesn't and you're far enough away to know that he won't.

That kind of distance.

July 23, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:15:00.001-07:00

I am noticing that my graphic design is getting steadily more monumental in nature; I can't say I mind. Fuck your gradients, gaussian blurs and muted palettes; the world is saturated screaming colour and I'm not going to lie and say it isn't.

June 10, 2007.

2008-05-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

Show me your self and I will show you a million reverberations in live technicolour, I will show you what's painted on the back walls of my mind's eye, I will show you the smells that throw me back in time and the little thoughts that grab me and yank my eyelids down when I should be doing something else. I will show you my scars and I will show you my dark side and I will show you my books of plans and schemes and you can be a part of it all, I'll drag you through the world by your perfect fingertips and down dark alleys where the speak is easy and the drinks are strong.

I burn like a million furious candles and I buzz like a neon sign and I'm volatile baby, handle at your own risk, do not agitate, do not expose to heat or flame or temperatures below freezing. The line is drawn my friend, the chase is on. You need me and I need you.

Let's live like parasites and light cigars off flaming twenties and get in everywhere for free. Let's talk our way past danger and intrigue and dodge those who try to crush us. Let's flick the caviar off crackers and steal what we can't afford and live like fugitives in the lap of luxury. It's started and it can't be stopped, the fuse is lit and it's short and it's burning and you don't have time to douse it so just lie back, hold on and watch it sparkle.

March 24, 2008.

2008-05-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

There are times when I get a whiff of April on the air and I am pushed with force a thousand pounds per square inch back to that sweet spring day all those years ago, writing letters and pressing daisies between the pages in the blinding sun, broke and drunk on whiskey sitting on the embankment at two in the Wednesday afternoon.

Everything was squared, sorted. I wonder if i could have saved myself four years of bullshit and heartache with just a small shift in perception but then I guess I wouldn't be where I am right now.

We're all products of our times and locations and decisions and accidental meetings and intentional leavings and we all get gently but profoundly bumped around in our own little fates like electrons in a quantum system, you can plan where you're going to be next but you're at the mercy of any small shift that might decide to happen (I've always found far more poetry in physics and chemistry than anything else).

May 14, 2008.

2008-05-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

May is creeping over the horizon a couple of weeks behind schedule and oh darling I need the long days more than you'd ever believe, I need sunshine and laser beams to cut through these walls and spell out the recipe for salvation.

Remember that time, oh you all do, you were there, when we were young and the statistics and the barriers melted for awhile, when all colours of failure and love and possibility and bitterness ran together down my cheeks, I was ticktickticking with electric rhythms that were never committed to magnets or paper and disappeared like puffs of smoke.

May 19, 2008.

2008-05-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm diminished today, muted, like I'm singing at the top of my lungs beneath the covers, like when you play guitar and nothing sounds good and the noises come out all weird no matter what you try. I can't let this malaise du jour that I can't seem to shake be the end of me, I can't let it rot into my bones and poison everything I'm made of. I feel adrift, lost, like I was following a path that's disappeared in the dark and the rain and instead of trying to find where I'm going I'm trying to find where the hell to put my feet. There are times when the world bends and warps to my will, and then there are times when I feel completely at the mercy of the forces around me and I can't even find a direction to think in.

May 20, 2008.

2008-05-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

The band is tuning up, I feel the dance starting again. It's ten cents a waltz and I'm jingling a pocketful of dimes.

July 6, 2007.

2008-05-20T17:44:00.001-07:00

I used to play Carey every night when I lived in London the first time. Sometimes twice, sometimes ten times. Wanting escape while escaping. Typical.

I was struck today with a memory of the summer of 2005, this sweet sunny day in southern California, somewhere around Santa Barbara, where Jeff and I drove off the road and went swimming in the ocean.

I could have stayed there forever, in the honey sunshine with eight thousand miles behind us and three in front, nothing but endless sky and warm sand and cool water. Even though the waves filled my shorts with grit and I ended up with my top around my neck no less than twice.

They say the Pacific Ocean has no memory. I vow to be the first person it remembers.

Things are solidifying these days, I know exactly where I'm going. You're not in? Fine. No hard feelings, just don't say that I didn't tell you so. I'm busy putting my arms around the world, I'm busy approaching light speed, I don't have time to hold anyone's hand who's not holding back. Don't worry darling, your bullets in my back are going to keep me warm, and soon enough my back is all you're gonna see.

The sun is rising somewhere and making the air quiver, making the sidewalks orange. Tell me, when was the last time you saw that.

October 28, 2007.

2008-05-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

It's an afternoon for brit pop. It's an afternoon for hazelnut coffee. It's an afternoon for getting it right, setting it straight, fuck this noise. It's a windy day in the big city and my socks are falling down. The sting is still there but baby we can get over it, we can get past it if we try. It's a day for silently thanking past loves for everything and quietly cursing our enemies still at large. You can't run forever, I've got the dogs on your trail, this time they're going for the throat.

It's a day for sideways glances and sleight of hand. It's a day for levitation and seeing endless blue skies where there aren't any. It's a day for full distortion and overdrive and overkill and gratuitous everything, a prelude to a night of excess and neverenough, a grand adventure into the catacombs of backrooms and VIP lounges only to find overflowing ashtrays and your body double passed out face down on the couch.

It's an afternoon for stopping time, backing up, starting over, playing again, one more chance boss, just this once. It's an afternoon for forgetting revenge fantasies and forgetting that it's winter and that your friends are gone and no one remembers your name anymore. It's an afternoon for delusions of high fashion and saturated colours and hats at fashionable angles and pants rolled just so, shirts with just the right amount of derelict, accents from whoknowswhere and names with too many vowels.

It's a beautiful day.

October 24, 2007.

2008-05-20T05:25:00.000-07:00

There was something in the air tonight, as I stood outside Borough station waiting for a night bus that ever-so-eventually came, that reminded me of King Street West circa a bunch of years ago. A certain smell in the air maybe, a certain phosphorescent streetlight glow, maybe it was the yellow thumb print the moon made in the night sky. I remember stumbling out those old doors, an arm slung around my shoulders, singing old Sinatra songs at the top of everybody's lungs. Oh you should have been there. Maybe you were.

November 24, 2007.

2008-05-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

While riding the N21 over London Bridge tonight I looked out on the Thames all lit up with strings of lights on the south bank and realized that there's something in the air here that's unfamiliar. I tried to put my finger on it and eventually came up with what it is:

Hope.

January 4, 2008.

2008-05-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

Six true stories.

1. Unhurried. Long arms that circumvent me twice. Eyes the same colour as mine that twinkle with private visions of the promised land. Patience to watch grains of sugar scattered on pale crema burrow holes and dissolve. Nowhere to go but everywhere to be.

2. Almost pulled to the ground by the weight of your joie de vivre, that hung off my shoulders as if it would collapse without me propping it up. I am considering a career as a fulcrum.

3. Bon mots scattered on the city sidewalk and glinting like broken glass but far more dangerous. Long time till daylight. Safety in numbers - us and the hours. Keep it down for fuck's sake.

4. You were well accessorized that night, correct number of stripes per inch and a hat at an angle that suggested a protractor. I was afraid of you because you looked like those fashion types, sleek and mean, and I wanted to touch you.

5. I sat down in front of you and you opened your mouth to speak and paused to catch your breath. I smelled something in the air and it was gone as quickly as it appeared. We'll just agree to ignore it.

6. I never really liked you anyway.

January 17, 2008.

2008-05-20T04:51:00.000-07:00

Now, more than ever, I do not apologize. If you don't like what I say, what I wear, the noises I make, what I do, how loud I laugh, how hard I work, the people I hang out with, the art I make or how I cut my sandwich in half, then feel free to disapprove but do it somewhere else. If my determination, working style, theoretical problems, ethics or copious and liberal use of words such as "fuck" and "cunt" bother you, then prepare to be bothered, you fucking cunt.

February 1, 2008.

2008-05-20T04:39:00.000-07:00

I am having my hair cut at a chop shop today. It's a stall by platform 1 at Euston station and you have to buy a ticket for a haircut at a machine and wait on a bench for your number to come up on a screen. I am intrigued by the coldness of it all, especially because I hate having to make small talk with stylists. I am assuming the cutting is done by some sort of scissor-wielding robot whose controls are all labelled in Japanese. Today's the last day I can get this done and I really, really need it; it's always bad juju to do anything that involves photographic documentation without getting a haircut first, I have performance documentation that makes me wince not because the work was bad but because my hair was stupid. So, Chopatron 3000, do your automatic worst.

February 7, 2008.

2008-05-20T04:35:00.001-07:00

I felt something today that I haven't felt in some time. I can't put my finger on it, but it had me skipping up the steps in Liverpool Street station.

It could be more daylight that's putting some bloom on me.

It could be a stroke.

It could be something else.

April 6, 2008.

2008-05-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

For the first time in - fuck, who knows, a long-ass time - I feel a fluttering in my dusty old kickabout heart. Awakening like a smoke-strangled Lazarus, pulling the cobwebs off itself, trying to straighten up and look decent like it's been doing its job this whole time instead of hibernating through the winters of my discontent.

April 14, 2008.

2008-05-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

I keep marvelling at how far I've come from the mess that showed up here ten months ago shaking the Berlin hangover out of her eyes, carrying four pairs of trousers and a laptop on her back, twenty more pounds on her ass and thighs and very little else. I keep thinking back to all those sunsets I was spending at the lake around this time last year, staring out at where the water met the horizon and wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself. I am propelled by unseen forces, held up by invisible hands, blessed in ways I can't even begin to count, so lucky to know the people I know, to do the things I do, to be able to get up every day and see the things that pass into and out of my world. Every day I breathe a silent uptilted thank you to whoever has been pushing me along for this past year. I feel at once like I earned it and that I'm getting more than I deserve. Does that make sense?

Undated.

2008-05-19T06:08:00.000-07:00

At the moment all I am interested in is the proximity of and mathematical relationship between your body and mine, the space that my mind leaves that yours wraps around to fill, the discarded box of all the things I keep feeling like I should have said but didn't have time for. Stop and stay with me for awhile. Stop and stay here, I have things to say. Stop and look at me, do you smell that. Stop and listen, I can hear worlds colliding. Stop and close your eyes, can you still see everything I see. Stop and stay here, I want to talk. Stop and think about this, this is rare and interesting. Just when we were convinced we were going to feel everything we were going to feel, just when it looked like it was all just going to be reruns, here's something new. Squander at your own peril.

February 24, 2008.

2008-05-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

There is a Buddhist monk sitting in the departure lounge, facing me in profile. He wears orange robes and thick glasses. The slanting and lingering sunlight has found its way over the horizon, through the window and is exploding through his lenses, making a tiny supernova so bright that I can't look at it. He doesn't notice. He is asleep.

February 13, 2008.

2008-05-18T15:50:00.000-07:00

The only good thing about working in the morning is that I get to buy a cherry slice from the hot man who works in the coffee shop across the road. He always calls me Angel when I go in there. I hope he never finds out my real name.

February 1, 2008.

2008-05-18T15:45:00.003-07:00

I was waiting at the bus stop in Shoreditch last night, idly gazing across the street when I noticed one of those scrolling ad signs that display advertising posters on rolls so they move but never seem to end. I looked at the sign as a new ad slid into position. It said:

"ANSWERS ARE COMING."

It seemed significant so I started paying attention. I waited for the poster to scroll to the next ad, wondering if there was more. It went on:

"HOTELS FROM £49 PER NIGHT."

You win some, you lose some.

January 7, 2008.

2008-05-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

Was reading in a cafe this afternoon while refuelling with as much coffee as possible. There was a toilet with the door unlatched; walking in there was like stepping into some other dimension and had the flavour of Naked Lunch. The place was bathed in flourescent light coloured blue to prevent the junkies from shooting up, it stank heavily of pine-scented cleaner, the maroon floor and metal doors made my eyeballs rattle against each other, that harsh light unrelenting. I half-expected a foot long centipede to emerge from behind a broken tile. I was strangely at ease.

London reverberates with daylight today. Purple clouds smudge the horizon and promise more rain but for now the shadows are in sharp focus and fall everywhere, the place braced and alert after a cold shower. Walked through the city and had the sensation of standing in a brook with the water rushing past my feet. A man with a giant broom brushed cigarette butts over my shoes. The sidewalks were wet and perfect black, like those dark mirrors that were fashionable and ridiculous in the 80s and still enjoy decorative status in whorehouses the world over.

January 2, 2007.

2008-05-18T15:18:00.001-07:00

A little while ago I was trying to remember what it was like to get into bed with him and I couldn't - I could only recall flashes, like the way his skin smelled or the outline of his nose. I really believe that you don't lose someone all at once, you lose them in pieces: the way their scent fades from your clothes, the way your customs together are replaced, the way the in-jokes start to happen with someone else.

Undated.

2008-05-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

I was at work tonight doing a credit card transaction and waiting for the card to be approved, staring at the little screen on the stupid machine and watching the line of dots grow as I waited. The guy whose card it was suddenly said, "Are you happy?" I replied with the first thing that came to mind: "Probably." It's the worst idea to ask me that when I'm idly contemplating how many cumulative years of my twenties I've spent staring at little screens, and regretting.

December 21, 2007.

2008-05-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

There's this great bit of the DLR, right before Canary Wharf, where there's a stock ticker on the side of a building that runs alongside the train tracks at the window level. Usually the train travels about the same speed as the scrolling stock prices. Today I had a short journey alongside the current price of Merck; you'll be relieved to know that it's up one and a quarter points.

May 5, 2008.

2008-05-18T09:19:00.001-07:00

We were the same stripe of castaways bobbing about on the open water where we grew up, although she proved to be infinitely more palatable than I was. She had black hair and olive skin and a proper name, while I was the pale little freckled short probably-lesbian with the inexplicable big ass and a ridiculous name. Ironically, lots of girls I knew grew up to fuck women but I wasn't one of them.

I remember clearly the last time I saw her. It was the spring of 1995, at the reservoir, this wooded area behind the houses the mafia building company had put up a couple of years earlier. I was fifteen or perhaps newly sixteen. I can't remember who I was with or why we were there - it wasn't for drugs or sex, at least not yet - and she and her friend Cheryl were sat there on a rock smoking cigarettes and looking breathlessly punk rock.

Before this gets any more idyllic let me make one thing clear: until my twenties everyone there treated me like I had either beamed down from another planet or deserved to be shot on sight. I remember walking up to the two of them with the same tightness in my chest that always went with encountering anyone unfamiliar, afraid of being humiliated or beaten up. They did neither - instead we sat there in the sun watching the leaves come out on the trees in that yellow light that only happens there in May and talked about music. She and Cheryl left after awhile; you don't look like they did and not have somewhere to be. I heard, a few years later, that she had run off to Vancouver. Turns out the rumours were true.

May 11, 2008.

2008-05-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

I fell asleep against the cold bus window, green turning to black outside and rushing by in a blur, my heart in my lap. It's a little malformed, bugeyed, slack-mouthed flesh lump about the size of my fist that sits there, speechless and stupid, leaking slowly onto everything around it. We have worked out some mutual tolerance, if only because we're bound by some measure of history and biology. I hate to be seen with it, it's like an old friend who's turned embarrassing and won't take a hint. It's always hanging around, tied to my ankle and bouncing along the street behind me and I feel like everyone can see it, like I walk to the shop in the morning for a Snickers bar and the neighbours say "Oh, there goes Astrid and her heart again, don't stare."

Undated.

2008-05-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Oh my love, whose eyes/voice/shoulders/hands/etc make me weak in the knees, you're no good for me but that's never stopped me before. I can't write I can't sleep I can't eat I can't work for the terrible burning inside me and I know what you'll say, that I should have known better and you're probably right, in fact I know you are which is why my pride is fluttering behind me in a million pieces, dancing on the breeze and taunting me. I thought I was impervious to this sort of thing, that I was untouchable and could never be brought back down to earth but then you caught me by the tail and reminded me of gravity and my mortal soul. I don't know whether to punch you or thank you. Maybe both.

Since doing either would require an honesty and drop of facade however momentary I'll just quietly repose on pins and needles, like some ersatz Olympia without the servant or flowers or scores of suitors. This isn't the end of me but oh it hurts, completely against my will. I start to wonder if this is what I've done to others in my blissful stage of utter freedom and all I can do is ask karma for mercy and forgiveness. I don't want to learn, I don't want this to be a lesson to me, I don't even necessarily want the burn to stop burning because, you know, in spite of everything,

it
reminds
me
that
my
heart
is
still
alive.

May 17, 2008.

2008-05-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Circle line, Edgware Road, 5.26pm.

A pretty woman with a baby asks for change. I refuse and feel guilty. I read a newspaper over someone's shoulder. They turn the pages too quickly. I never buy papers; when I do I don't bother reading them, nothing is more interesting than the news under someone else's control. Sort of a weak and accidental censorship. I have noticed that the most lingered-upon sections are the football pages. You'd think that this would inspire me to know something about football. It hasn't. The man with the newspaper notices my quiet theft and changes his seat. I want to apologize.

A woman and her husband sit across from me. They look benign and I sense a quiet middle-aged affection between them. They have nice clothes and nice hair cuts and are likely on their way somewhere, you know, nice. Nice food and nice wine and nice conversation. In another time and place they might be nice people that I know - parents of friends, inlaws, something like that. The woman has kind eyes that look like she's been crying. I fancy that this is because they've just been at the wedding of the children of some of their nice friends, she's the kind of person who gets choked up at the happiness of others. It's what nice people do.

May 16, 2008.

2008-05-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

It struck me today that these notebooks will likely become my greatest asset. This occurred to me while gazing at bullshit in Waterstone's, and I immediately felt an overwhelming need to get somewhere and write. I paid for my slightly embarrassing purchase and left, Soho Square just around the corner. Choose a bench - a man plays accordion nearby, I pass a guy who looks like the type I usually end up in bed with - and promptly sit down in fresh bird shit. An Oxfam worker comes up to me, asking me to pledge my allegiance to their latest cause. I lie and say I've already signed up. I don't have the heart to say FUCK OFF I'M BUSY, I know how hard their hustle is and I honestly admire it, as long as it's directed at someone other than me. Stop poverty? Sure. Save the world? Yeah, cool, but right after I'm done here. This is likely the kind of attitude that will be humanity's undoing, but there also seem to be plenty of purple t-shirted saints around to pick up my karmic slack. Bless them, every one.