Mitsein
Mitsein “Not much, I know you prize
What pleasures may be had,
Who look on life with eyes
Estranged, like mine, and sad…” Matthew Arnold, ‘The Hymn of Empedocles’ Raymond Chandler was wounded near Chateau Thierry with the Canadian Army in 1918, leaving him the only survivor. Coincidence? Norman Mailer about the state of becoming, not being. The quest is the thing. It feels right to live like this, but somehow unsatisfactory, incomplete, on the page; everything more real, non-negotiable, stark. It’s the perfectability, this slavish perfectability of words I love. In Dashiell Hammett’s unfinished autobiographical novel, Tulip, a man asks him to write his life, living outrageously with the end product in mind. Laughable, ridiculous, but it’s what we do. So profoundly rooted in interpretation, so self-contained within this voice, I may have to abandon plot completely. *** Kenneth Tynan neighbours Toby Kay, died at birth, 16 July 1982. Two days before my first birthday. Universal energy maintains, soap clichés precise; someone’s born, someone dies. An initial, a blazon. Would he steal from me, fall in love with me? Would – to briefly remove myself from the earth’s core – our paths never have crossed at all? ‘Death’; a harsh, rasped last breath, the muted click of the ‘d’ the mouths of Plath’s dead, shutting on their Communion tablets. Alex follows Eric, and I can no longer help these pensioner friends. Refuse Verfallensein, deny Mitsein. Something’s sounding, vague oscillations in the air.
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves
The way I feel today - 10 July 2004
Just seventeen - 17 March 2004
Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004
Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004
Manchester, united - 25 February 2004