Today I look at photographs by Simon Roberts, taken as he travelled through Russia. They are exquisitely bleak. These places look very quiet and very still. Half-forgotten, becalmed. I want to step into them.
The images of housing blocks remind me of Pruitt-Igoe, which you can see getting partly demolished in this sequence from Koyaanisqatsi
Today sitting in the sun, I entered the world of Gormenghast. "This tower.. arose like a mutilated finger". His sentences taste delicious so far. I want to tear off the pages and pin them in my hair.
I also ate a duck egg. I was apprehensive. It was big. I had to slam it hard to crack it open. If you hold it up to the sunlight it becomes semi-transparent and etheral, like an opal. And inside the yolk is a deep, dirty orange like 1970s wallpaper and those seat covers you get on the Bakerloo line.
I'm beginning to like hills. Pedal pedal wheeze creak wheeze.
So I can breathe freely and stand at the sharp edge of things. I could s-t-r-i-d-e along the cliffs, in yellow galoshes.
I'd fill a house with fossils and crustaceans and big chunks of boats. I'd nail dead birds to the rickety roof to keep out the wind. I'd boil up a muddy slug and seaweed brew, knit jumpers out of crab nets and make shoes out of dried eels (they'll sell like hot cakes)
I'd build a boat out of tourists' crumpled umbrellas and go late-night mackerel fishing. I'd spend time with rogues and fishermen. We'd belt out sea shanties, with mugs of dark rum that sloshes over fingers and sticks to wind-tangled beards.
I was looking for images of vintage octopuses and found these pictures.. along with a Japanese illustration of lady-octopus sexy stuff, which um, I won't include.
The internet also tells me that all octopuses are venomous, but only the blue-ringed octopuses are known to be deadly to humans. Octopuses have three hearts, and their beak is the only hard part of their body (Here is an anatomical diagram of our tentacled friend). They can defend themselves with camouflage, ejecting thick black ink to aid escape, and autotomising limbs (self amputation). The crawling arm serves to distract the predators..
Stealth attack from above.
You are next.
6 ships are lost to tentacled sea beasts every minute. Please donate.
Lunch is a feast that I have not had time to build an appetite for. I chew slowly.
Then i'm tidying and stacking and folding. I load grey clothes into the washing machine, I rub jellied grease and porridge skins off the pans. Things shine amidst the mess, and I am satisfied that it all looks okay for that one guilt-free minute before I turn my back and layers of hectic dirt begins to slyly settle again..
I am free until tomorrow. I bike bike bike. I fly through concrete and scrubby patches of greenery until my legs ache and then I keep on pedaling until I forget the aching. I stop to pick up a lost pound coin. I sit by the weed-tangled lake and read the last few pages of my book, wherein the protagonist slips past her jailer (lost in gin-soaked dreams), and sets alight to the house..
An ant crawls up my arm. A dog buries it's nose in my bag of bread rolls. Then the clouds sneak in and a chill hits my skin.
I pick up my bike, we leave the park and I loop round the city to home. As I ride I watch the sky darken, red-purple flames lick about the jagged edges of buildings. Streetlamps glow orange. Headlights blind me over and over again, and like a moth I never learn..
I climb the last hill, wheel on into the house and kick off my shoes.
Inside it seems dim and stale. I search for some wine and chocolate and drop down into an enormous chair. I zone out on a forgettable film. Some man gets punched a lot and then goes and shoots people he's told to shoot.
There was something else I needed to do. Something still undone..
Where do I want to get to? Who do I want? What for?
I don't remember.
It'll come back.
