The Sagas of a Fist in a City

Athens

2006-09-18T01:03:00.000+01:00

"We should not build around the dead city, like ants slowly raping a corpse; where taxis shuffle about a tenement blocks, it all ought just be left to rot."

- so said the Eyes, overlooking Athens from the Acropolis, wishing this messy corner of the modern world was stopped, silent and unseen. But then, this fist of fingers itched with a different twitch:

"True, lives hobble about below this grandeur where, once, blind prophets gained visions from their gods. In the image of a sad old cripple - limping on only by creating clever tools - they foresaw this, our future. And then, shrugging, sailed the Styx to Hades, wishing they could no longer walk, no longer see, no longer feel. So defeated, they did not even dare to dream in vanity of haunting us.

"Yet, eyes, see deeper still than the underworld of a dead city, mourning what's crumbled. For even cast in scaffolds, the columns up on the hills of Athens have just performed their usual duty: to rule the mind and the fist by visible beauty. A cheap trick of an architect! Or consider say this, their celebrated lie: that democracy and the gods can live together, that neither one nor both in their mix must die. Yet the vast hands of history wear rings made of cracked skulls, a billion for each finger; caked in blood, and labelled with the names of defeats and disasters, added to daily.

"And now new Athens sprawls below, ugly and unbold. Where once great gods thundered, slept and strolled, see a postcard picturing a palm-tree, here in this graveyard of land, without clarity or conclusion, and whilst the lightening bolt is unavailable to fist, admit that some form of record is still best forged by hand."

Quote of the day

2006-01-31T13:28:00.000Z

Whoever saw, as many did, a whole city reduced to rubble - kilometers of streets on which there remained no trace of life, not even a cat, not even a homeless dog - emerged with a rather ironic attitude toward descriptions of the hell of the big city by contemporary poets, descriptions of the hell in their own souls. A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one. Whoever has not dwelt in the midst of horror and dread cannot know how strongly a witness and participant protests against himself, against his own neglect and egoism. Destruction and suffering are the school of social thought.

(Czesław Miłosz.)

For you to indulge me in the luxury of this confession, half of which you already know - that I am a man and not a fist, and that, frankly, too much have I sliced up this city, as easy as a cake - I should offer you some thing or other in return, friend. How about this?

City of Trees

2005-08-05T23:03:00.000+01:00

The knives of youth scratch into your bark, O city of trees, their emblems for eternal love, and in a graveyard, your ground is dotted with the dregs of piss and puke; may deeper still reach your unpoisoned roots.

They find no reason not to call you home, those twitching birds, those scurrying squirrels, that the city still has left. While on whatever breeze, your branches still bend just enough - whether north or south or east or west - as about you human lives break human lives, over much much less. A religion that breathes only light and air: Your leaves attract no quarrel, no calamity, as they whisper ancient, rustling prayers. And in the city of excited light, of relentless sirens and tourist sights - Oak, Ash, Beech, Willow; your quiet names speak nothings to you.

Your tiny points of green dot a patchwork of grey, it's true: From thirty-five thousand feet you look like nothing much, hardly a city at all. With the gridded roads and groping scrapers, so tiny and so tall, under the in-flight and metal wings, there you race away. Indescribable things; in the dappling of your summer light, let a man sense something of a man's true height.

City of Hatred

2005-07-19T22:02:00.000+01:00

"O City, city of hope and pain," asked I, the writing Fist, "when will I learn how to hate you again?

"London! Just a look over you, a listen to you, and the ways to hate you line up in a list.

The maurading dogs, snapping at feet.
The hypocrisy of fear and hurt, for we do not yet need reports like this.
The Friday night puke, still dotting the street.
The old shrew, moaning that she's late for her hair-do, should go first in the bus queue.
The sirens chasing the happy slappers, under hoods on stolen bikes down side-streets.
The boombox of the next beloved car, shouting of love clothes cars love in some song, almost drowning out stupidity and misery, and drowning the sound of the breeze rustling upon the leaves.
The piss-coated trunks of the remaining trees.
The hands of heat, palming dots of city dirt, slapping into sweats, itching the collar, clawing the neck.
Etc etc.

All things that might easily do the job. But they do not."

And the city does not answer. The church bells sing their chimes, of mysterious rites at mysterious times, while a child strolls the streets, made happy for the moment by an SMS text. All for her eyes, only, and then another and then the next. All day the planes plot graphs upon the sky, patterned with unknown cargoes of who's and why's. Surprise, city without answers; tonight I can only confess you my ignorance - something different, and harder to do, than the clichés of hate, or of hope, or of fists, or of fear, or of pain, that you may have gotten used to.

Fragments of a City

2005-07-08T18:08:00.000+01:00

We walked home in masses, droves, knowing that somewhere beneath the streets, people were still trapped; still people dying down there in the tube trains, buried, still people escaping from tube trains, saved, still people being rescued, dragged from down there in the tube trains, hanging on... And still we walked on, directly above them, resolved to go on; still we phoned our friends, let them know we were safe; still we headed on our way, knowing homes awaited us.

We'd been warned about this from officials and politicians, told it was coming, told it was inevitable, that however many they caught, that however many flats full of chemicals and plans they found and caught and stopped, that it was coming. Before it came, we were resolved already to get through it, to go on. Some would act the fool, some be heroes, there would be the strong-minded and the trembling - perhaps all were to be found in part in each of us - still, we would each try to go on, resolved, through it.

Most of us came from our offices, left early, after a morning of texting non-stop from mobile phones, of office phones used for personal calls and no questions asked, of relentless non-work related emails, with all the deadlines suspended, a morning of TV streamed into laptops, of in-trays sliding to the corners of desks: instead the demands of the day became simple, became family, friends, lovers, husbands, wives; what counted was making contact, checking life was still life.

And so on the day a roof was ripped from a busying bus, on the day the lucky ones emerged from underground covered only in smoke, or cut only slightly, we were surrounded acutely with love. As the numbers of dead mounted, as the reports made clear this was no electrical fault, as the politicians quivered on our screens, the love for one another that is always there invisibly, in the background, the shadows, quiet and subtle, became a current circulating amongst us all, as we checked that each other were still alive; watched our Inboxes for new names, infinitely thankful as we read Colin, Peggy, Queeny, Karla, Rob, Amy, Kate, Mike, Rhian, Chris, Claire, Tom, Kim, Cindy, Adam.

And so we walked home above the dying, the struggling and the dead, who were still somewhere in blackness beneath our streets; we walked home thankful that others lived on; we walked passed the houses and estates and flats, not knowing which of the windows contained grieving widows, or which sobbing students, or which terrified children, the word orphan waiting for them on official forms.

Nor did we know behind which of the buildings were the bombers, which windows homed those who hated us, us there in the crowd, us there on the streets with our hidden love; the bombers whose eyes saw a city of seven million people as one, as one not deserving its love and its life. Somewhere their fists punched the air. Somewhere were those who judged to be on the number 30 bus that morning, or on the Piccadilly Line, or leaving a train at Edgware Road - that such a thing was sufficient reason for slaughter.

And so through the city of fragments, the city of the dead, of the grieving, of the dying, of the living, of the thankful, of the hateful, the city I walked home through to stare, to drink, to weep, to talk, to thank, the city of broken boundaries, where good and evil interlocked at random points, where nation and hope dissolved and recombined with each passing moment or person, where civilisation found its opposite, through the city circulated an invisible love; just for now, all I can do is tell you about it.

Questions

2005-07-07T00:36:00.000+01:00

Whose fists flip the planet like a pancake, upside downside up, in the frying pan of space - then spin it on next like a spinning-top, whirling away on a black, wide-open, table-top? Whose eyes race along the surface of the oceans, dodging the dark ridges down in the depths, chasing the blue of the horizon, and on to the next continent - to dive down into a side-street of a coastal city, where the grey shapes of sky-scrapers rise from the sidewalk, and coffee shops offer themselves up like tick boxes? And then jumps to the view from a million miles of space, without even breaking a sweat in their socks, or on their forehead, to start in a second the whole journey again? Not God's, not Hollywood's with their SFX, nor NASA's and their super computers - but anyone's. Anyone. Anyone, who can download that link to their notebook or desktop.

Anyone, of one in lucky seven, at most. Question, Fist: for you of the lucky few, does that fairy tale still exist - that tale of the Door of doors? Which opens into the world of love, forever warm, welcoming forever, the door of the golden Her, the eternal Her - the door of forgetting, the door of blindness, the door that shuts behind it the cruel uneven planet, that stops its spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning?

James Joyce

2005-06-28T02:00:00.000+01:00

Of all the things his fists and fingers did or did not do - depending on what biography or rumour you wish to buy into (the insanity of incest with his mad daughter, a candle-stick exploration of a Jewess's anus, slipping a wedding ring with love onto Nora Barnacle's finger, wrote the artwork of the century, or a minor one of stylish excess) one thing the big-city rebel Joyce decidedly never did do, was name a book Finnegan's Wake. Instead, he plucked, like a flea from a head, that apostrophe from between the n and the s.

So what? All this is to announce, in a roundabout way, that Fist has a new purpose; a new blog.

Hands of Heat

2005-06-20T22:09:00.000+01:00

"Down through the city palm the hands of heat, massaging the scrapers to a drowsy daze; there they shimmer like summer glasses of hazy lemonade. Gone on the gone breeze, the rustling anarchy of tree-top leaves, and in amongst their corners of the shade, the squirrels lounge like lazy sentries.

"Dribbled away like a leisurely piss, the usual daydreams of the office: the in-tray shuffled to a royal flush; some temp locking the door behind her - smile, wink, bend, spank, purr, hard, moist, bang bang, gush.

"Anything, anything, instead, to laze the feet, chill the head, as down through the city palm the hands of heat."

- from each freckle and down into each bone, there that same drone. Of lethary and of laze, of a man knocked into nothingness, by the hands of the heat haze. And who might even try to resist? (Only I, the well-wintered Fist.)

The Thief of Fists II

2005-06-16T01:50:00.000+01:00

Just last night, he – the Thief of Fists – was lurking in the pubs: O, how many fists there were poised, ready to rise and lay a punch? Then found themselves unfurled, with a finger pointing at a pint; with the lips mouthing off, about buying a round.

The bath, too. Where was she, the little whore, perched on the seat of the loo, bent over and groping (his anarchy of pleasure, her regime of pleasure, trading), splashed, nude, there with her train-track arms, there with her fisted little life and feminine charms?

Instead: light filtered through the fingers, slotted among the pages of a book. Ticklish when turning, like slow feathers, they fluttered in the steam. “Come fight with me,” I said “Or go fuck with me. Just wake from this civilized dream.”

Nothing. “And who has thieved your fists,” I ask him now. “Who?” And stupid man, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t know why the Fist falls open, and the fingertips type. “But,” he says, “at least they are free to.”

Vultures

2005-06-13T23:54:00.000+01:00

Life, a list – fistfuls of violence, a veil of tears, adult decisions and baby fears, prayers to an X above, your child’s first words, first breath, holidays good and bad, city smog and a country breeze, health and disease, wealth and pain, maybe something mad, perhaps even love, or the logic of gain, or of the Kamasutra, or etc et cetera … and then to finish, death. After which, the Parsi leave their corpses in the temples. Quiet, waiting for the descent of the vultures.

The same for two millennia. Up fly the dead from the temple of silence, up the blood smeared on the shining beak, up the slice of hot liver a slither down the slender throat. Up the feet and fists and genitalia, losing their fleshy shapes in the foaming gut, up the remnants of a muscle, some debris of fat, perfectly hooked, in the curve of a glistening claw. Up the dead soar.

Two short hours: the body is devoured. What once was human life – our simple shell of skin and flesh, our fingers, our hairs, our bellies, our ears – with the vulture departs and lopes and drifts; becomes a horizonal dot, then disappears. And into the eternal afterlife, the freed soul lifts.

The same for two millennia. And then one day, among the tomatoes in the old market, fell the iris of a human eye. A trader blinks in shock: brown – her father’s? rejected by the endless blue of the sky? Soon, a little black cloud will flick a couple of clods of blood, all about a field, and half an arm will fist through a feeble roof. And all the pieces of human flesh and life that you could list, will lie strewn about the whole of the land. A child points up at crag: a young vulture, bloated; look Mother, now it tumbles...

To the vultures, to the living, to the Parsi dead: What god would do such a thing? Easy, no mystery. Just a young one, a minor one: Diclofenac, god of soothed bones. Diclofenac, killer of pain, remover of flame - or the feeling of flame, given a scientific cure, and name. Of course the internet needs no oracle, no prophet, no temple, no Parsi or vulture, to know. Just a dozen lines or so. And the future, it waits for each species, waits with fire, circles with death; anticipates our little human whimpers. Its dark, indecipherable shadows wheel all about, waiting to swoop, bearing unknown claws, gnashing unnamed teeth - perhaps more ugly, perhaps more enduring, than the vulture.

Answers

2005-06-11T16:25:00.000+01:00

The answer to the question in this post is:

Someone like a character in a short story I thought up but never wrote.

I wished to write a tale of two halves: first a walk to work, happy; second, its mirror, a walk home, identical route, yet misery. This character is an average office man, the biographical details of his life somewhat dull, although he has a lively but sensitive inner-life. (Not me, but not unlike me in some ways.) So first thing in the morning he is filled with smiles, the world is beautiful; birds sing, the sun beams, buildings shimmer and shine. He is floating on air; he will tell his secretary how pretty she looks, shout the new chap lunch, clear his in-tray, try some charm on a dinner lady. The world is wonderful, he tells himself, his company produces educational textbooks which help children and adults learn, that in turn helps them improve their life; where he works make a difference to the world, even if his own role is merely middle-management-clerical. People and things nudge the world in one of two directions: to good or to evil, he tells himself. His company is good, so that guarantees him as good; plus, he is kind and pleasant to others. And really, what else is there? Moods and wanders: so it’s a cheery walk to work, full of promise and promises.

Something happens at work. What? Maybe something as minor as someone being rude to him, sneering at him, a young and beautiful temp. And then she calls him aging and balding and fattening and boring – behind his back, but he overhears. And suddenly like a character in a Chekhov short-story, he sees that a large swathe of his unremarkable life is gone already, and that his love-life is not right, and elsewhere, and perhaps all around him but invisible to him, different, better lives rollick on. How horrible the city, that has produced him, he thinks wandering back alone through average streets, past locked doors containing lovers, drugs, wonderful musicians. Lives, luminous as brilliant starlight. And what can he offer such people with his sole trait and soul hobby of unambitious decency? Such questions… But he’s tired, and must sleep… Dream of a different tomorrow…

Or perhaps something major happens at work. A bit of plot, a story. That would need a little hook a paragraph or two ahead of it, a cipher for: mystery! Secret… Perhaps a short one too. With short sentences. Meaning: heightened tension. Events will happen.

But before the major event, the story requires the introduction of another character: Dot. Dot, one of the women whom he manages. An old bat, a bit mad, grey hair, spits when she speaks, wears thick glasses, incompetent. But no-one has ever had the heart to sack her. So instead she’s been made responsible for posting out certain types of letters, answering certain types of calls – to do with run-of-the-mill payments, that kind of thing, at most. In general, despite the simplicity of her tasks, she still gets confused, sometimes forgets to do something or forgets what she’s actually done; and the files by her desk are covered with post-it notes and reminders, and she hasn’t even learnt how to use a computer (even the post room staff have a computer to share), she is slow and no-one likes her; in fact, the best for her of human contact comes in the form of sympathetic kindness, such as that of our main character.

Her character established, his phone rings: it is a policeman. Yesterday morning a man jumped off a tower-block roof on the outskirts of the city. (Resolving one hook – the promised mysterious major event – while striking up another – why did he jump? What’s this got to do with our character?) Then the policeman gives the back-story that leads up to the suicide. First, let’s give the dead man a name; Tim, say, or, say, Vic. The facts of his life: he lived alone, was unemployed, had an IQ of 78. But just recently, in these last few months, Tim/Vic had been trying to improve himself – by studying mathematics, hoping for maybe a job behind a counter in a shop, as he’d written in his diary, the policeman explains. So he’d bought himself a whole series of books from our main character’s company, on his credit card, and you can imagine his pride and hope amidst the promises of victorious self-improvement.

Then, an invoice had came for the books, from Dot. He phoned her up, slowly, timidly explained he’d already paid, asked if the invoice could be cancelled. Dot checked and had said yes – she’d make a note of it on a post-it, do it later. A few days later, he received another invoice from her. Timidly he’d phoned back: was all this his fault? Had he underpaid before, or not understood the price? He was poor, too, could they give him more time? And Dot had said it’d just been another mistake, she was sorry and would make a note of it. Silence for three weeks. Then, another invoice from Dot. This time, for thirty-six-thousand-six-hundred-and-sixty-pounds. And ninety nine pence.

He knew he couldn’t pay.

A phone call would only make it worse, like before.

Another invoice was coming tomorrow.

He had no money.

New job or none, the future was debt.

Debt he could never pay.

He was better off dead.

And after scribbling a brief goodbye – addressed “To Who May It Consern” – he had no family – and explaining why – in barely legible writing – how shaky must his hand have been – and saying sorry, so sorry to Dot – the page smudging with tear drops – Vic/Tim ran up to the roof, and jumped right off.

Our man, so happy this morning, everything right in his world, listens to all this from the policeman on the phone, staring over at Dot. She’s eating a cookie he bought her, with a simple grin. The crumbs drop onto a letter. She wafts them away, and with that little flick of her feeble fist, a post-it note drifts down off her desk. Onto a corner of the hard indifferent floor, to get kicked around by feet, then binned, indifferently.

The policeman explains what will happen next: they will take statements, the paper-trail, computer records; there’ll be an inquest, and almost certainly some level of attention from the press. They must meet soon to sort it all out. White and mumbling, the main character says he’ll phone back, will need to discuss it with work, and his manager is out until tomorrow anyway. He tells his team he’s not feeling quite right and is going home early. The streets are lined with school children; they do not care about mathematics, the fate of life, or the welfare of the city; they are swearing, smoking, posing, drinking, snogging, fighting, rapping, stealing, and throwing litter amongst the sporadic trees.

And each one is the future.

And not one is a killer.

And so what, that they don’t admire the birds, the sun, the buildings? Bullshit, that’s all he was thinking on the morning walk, bullshit. At least they do not pretend their bullshit society or their bullshit company or their bullshit school makes them good because it says itself to be good; at least their barbarian selfishness is honest. At least they’re not a killer. Not full of bull.

At this point in the story, had I ever written it, I’d have wanted to definitely steer clear of political symbolism, which the narrative is veering toward. What I mean is, our main character is obviously a Leftist of sorts: he is paternalistic toward Dot, he doesn’t seek to ruthlessly rationalise bureaucracy, by sacking individual humans for the sake of profit and share prices. Yet this outlook has lead to incompetence and death, and now he’s rejecting those views in favour of ruthless individualism. So, symbolism in favour of right-wing politics seems on the cards here. But on the other hand, Vic/Tim was clearly operating as an economic individual: buying books himself (no government scheme), and then when economic problems loomed too large, there was no kind, social net in which to catch him as he started to panic, and then fall. The kind that has clearly caught the terminally flawed Dot, for example. If only our main character’s attitudes were fully expressed in social policy, Vic/Tim would be a Victor.

So as a writer, I could clearly now steer the story toward either political pole. And why not? Well, a whole host of reasons. These are the most important. Political propaganda, mostly, makes poor art. And symbolism, so very often, simplifies reality to a message that school teachers can pass onto school children, trying to make them docile and obedient to the demands of society. Lots of writers slot themselves into that kind of scheme, and lots of those living provincial lives attempt to plug into it to, in one way or another. Probably, for example, our main character reads nice novels on quiet Sundays with proper-thinking messages, was brought up in the provinces, and just look where it’s got him: Now he is trembling all over, and his soul tumbles down darkening city streets... (Hook: but where next?) But more importantly, there is simply not a political-symbolic language good enough to guarantee the affiliation of art; in fact, probably there can never be a supergrand perfect politics, all such philosophy is incomplete. Anyway, however lame writing is and this blog is, this fist still shall not wave false flags (although one way to deal with such issues to express the contradictions – via contrasting characters, perhaps…) But all that’s another debate, a big one, perhaps for some other time. Message-giving slows down a story and reveals the stupidity and arrogance of the writer too much – as this paragraph has. Thus truly symbolising the falsity of symbolising.

Our main character is staring about the city, externalising his dark mood. He’s bought a few cans of beer, is lonely, and is soon sat in a park. Night is falling. His home is a minute walk away, but what home is it? He lives alone, a little, ludicrously expensive flat. Sparsely decorated, beige wooden floors, simple light colours, virtually empty except for a large tidy book case of novels he’s read, the spines all neat and unbent.

He’s calming down a bit now, amongst the shadowed ugliness of the city. His thoughts are spacing themselves out. Hyperventillating panic, that's fading, that's going ... that's over.

And so from emotion to thought, via something like an internal monologue of moral ratiocinations. Is it really his fault? Could anyone have ever know? Perhaps we are all just shadows, bumping up against shapes in the mists of human dreams and misery, hearing distant calls of “timber!” in the form of thudding echoes, which announce the next random death. What was Vic/Tim really a victim of, anyway? His own stupidity? His lack of family, of friends? Of his ambitious dreams, and not accepting their probable passing? Of Dot? Of our main character? Of capitalism? Of fate, that decrees death will happen when it will happen?

And how can he find out, know something like that for sure, anyway? There will be a cover-up, and a computer error will be blamed - while Dot’s job will be downgraded even more. The press will shout shrill judgements about modern tragedies for a day or two, if they have nothing better to do, then grow bored, move on, with the final findings reported in a tiny mid-section paragraph months later. The inquest result will be filed away, the judge bored, the police in a hurry, his company thanking their luck that the dead man was so alone.

Cause and effect, right and wrong, who can say? And so nothing can be done, nothing is left for our character's day. Even if he had sacked Dot years ago, when a rat manager, passing through his Department while racing up a career ladder, had suggested it in a review, she might well be dead now too.

Nothing left for the main character's day? One thing. He’ll tell himself how lucky his life is: four walls and a good job. A boring life true, not worth - say - being the main character in a story, just slotting in, keeping going, not thinking too much. True, the interviews and investigation will be a minor hassle for a while, but it’ll not really add up to much. Just a minor interruption, like overhearing an insult that hurts, that spoils a sunny day, working out why it might not be right, then under the shadows of doubt, getting on and forgetting. And now is the time to sleep. And take a tiny walk through a world of dreams.

The Official Interview Game

2005-06-10T14:57:00.000+01:00

Questions in bold from Snapperhead.

1. When veach st glines created a derivation of your work, specifically: an edited version of your post Bathing last night, from 11 May, which was - and, clearly, still is - in explicit violation of your stated Creative Commons Deed, how did the human brain that guides your tightly balled self react? Was it strongly enough to either alter your CC (and, ergo, permit future derivations) or request he revise his post? Why or why not?

I put that in ages ago, because it seemed less severe than copyright, and other people had it too. I'm not actually sure of the details of what it says, but anyone's welcome to quote and link or be creative with my stuff. Paranoid and somewhat vainly, I suppose the message of that button for me is: don't secretly publish this yourself and make money from it.

2. Steven Lock appears to be a fully realized character; albeit written by yourself and your lazy-left partner speaking in a strikingly different voice. When will we (your audience) be privy to more creative non-fiction along the same vein?

January 12th, 2011, 4.37pm GMT.

No, in fact I'm not sure. I wrote the Adam blog I link to, which again is a different voice. I do have a few other short stories knocking about, but I'm not really satisfied with them. If by same vein you mean style of voice, then they are closer to Monsieur Lock than the blog is. But if by same vein you mean subject matter, probably I have left that sort of stuff behind. O, my post tomorrow will be short-story-esque.

3. Did your fingers type the entire Search! entry from 21 Jan, or were all those bytes of Jack-Torranceque-effluvium cut and pasted from some keyword cache geared to insure 'raunchy fat girl' would gain it's rightful place? Which line of the diatribe is your favorite and why?

The list was posted on an obscure forum, and I copied it from there. Not sure where it originated before that. I had to take out a few things - forum flames that had been hidden in the text. My favourite lines are the beginning and end lines - up to 'FIST' at the start, below 'FIST' at the bottom. I moved them there deliberately. I also like the non-sexual phrase I put in that list, it reminds me of a certain mood I was in at the time, so that's kind of a favourite.

Ok, time to decide. My favourite part of the Search! post is: "massive dildos horendous dildos". The phrase "horendous dildos" just makes be laugh, and the whole thing has this beautiful prosody.

4. Complete this list of how-ever-many seems appropriate: masturbate, punch, . . .

... finger, Judy.

5. What, where, or whom, during your big apple holiday, did you find the most and least interesting? If money were no object, where would you spend the best holiday-fortnight of your life?

Least interesting: "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" by Jules Verne. A boring novel for a reader nowadays, albeit with a couple of nice descriptive passages.

Most interesting: a lecture celebrating the Hamburger, which inspired me to eat a whole bunch.

If money were no object... tricky, I'm not really that into travelling or holidays. It'd definitely involve good food, moderate temperatures, a few friends, and chess. Maybe somewhere in the French countryside?

The Official Interview Game Rules

1 If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying “interview me.”

2 I will respond by asking you five questions — each person’s will be different.

3 You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.

4 You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.

5 When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Answer to previous post's question: stay tuned, it'll be up tomorrow.

Cities and Eyes IV

2005-06-09T00:33:00.000+01:00

Whose eyes, in amongst this city, speak as this?

“First thing in the morning, and the world is gleaming. Look! The horizon is tickled pink with warm promises. The towers and scrapers cluster in mist, it clears, they admire each other in their own mirrors. Miracle-devices – bikes, buses, motorcars – roam the roads, while behind curtains closed, beautiful women straighten shirts, fasten bras. And into the mass of offices I shall go, admiring the features of each passing face, the majestic grandeur of the whole place. And I shall fill with smiles the people I know.”

Then, last thing at night, alone under a duvet, speak as this?

“Eyelids, let me look upon you, look soon; you, as alien to the earthly day as the cold distant moon. The secretaries are bored with me acting the clown, and Mister Manager looks on with a silent frown. The crowds are impatient, the busy bustle borderline-violent. The street is lined with litter underfoot, and the dirty air is aswirl with soot. Eyelids, come tight down like blank tiles. And over such questionning, come closing: When I woke and stared out with a smile - was that when I truly was dreaming?”

Answer to previous post’s question: the fifty foot woman.

Cities and Eyes III

2005-06-07T21:13:00.000+01:00

Whose eyes - all liner, a flutter, mascara - and electric flashes of blue - sidle through a city with this kind of view?

"O, this and that, tit and tat ... And now there saunters up to me a gleaming skyscraper, with such resplendent height, and heavenly reach: almost a rival to my legs, to my thighs! And next some shop window, the clothes stupidly hung on dummies, with their inferior, pale, and flat plastic tummies. And then after a coffee with a blind date - those sideburns! - soon a swift dash - to the street and some tramp, begging for cash. Eep! but he called me lady, so maybe...

"And the windows amidst the walls are mirrors, and the tall and the small are admirers, and the man on the street is there to charm me, and the bells only sing and do not alarm me, and the blue of the sky is just a mirror, jealous of the colours in my eye, and, me O men!, look, here in the City, all there is to see is me."

(No, not I, not Fist.)

Answer to the question in the previous post: Stereotypical Poets.

(To be continued...)

Cities and Eyes II

2005-06-03T19:27:00.000+01:00

Whose eyes scan a city, and see it like this?

"Nothing but skeletons aslither down the side-streets; for look, already their ghosts haunt the photographs. The bracelets and bandlets that dangle, there on the bare arms of swirling dancers - how cold they clink against the wrist-bones; with a hollow sound, knock, knock knock. Death haunts the dance, death, travelling back and forth and through, the one known fact of the future, coming for you, too; death.

"Death, look how it drifts with the music in amongst the dancers, and waits for the transient drums to fade. It lingers with a knife in the shade, it prowls the shadows as poison in a pill; it surprises you, you tumble off a window cill. Dance, dance, while you can, beautiful woman, beautiful man. It has no worth, the skeleton dance, but then neither does this dance of words, destined, too, for the same dirt of the earth."

No, not I, not Fist.

Answer to the question in the previous post: A young Alfred Hitchcock.

(To be continued...)

Cities and Eyes I

2005-06-03T00:18:00.000+01:00

Whose eye scan a city-scape, and see it like this?

Grey, grey, breasts, grey, grey. Nothing, boobies, nothing, boobies, nothing. Something, nipples, something, nipples, nipples. Zzzz Zeds, jiggles, ripples, bounces, boing-boings. Yawn yawns, apples, melons, omelettes, pumpkins. Balloons, headlights, pillows, planets, moons; and a slither of cum, aglisten, drools down a graffiti’d wall, in some train station’s public toilet. And outside! Waiting there again are the packets of jangling and jumping, bumping and bouncing, pleasure-flesh, kept in a prison of bras and shirts, levitating down so many streets. Get to the city, say the eyes, go look, go cum, you're free, you're young.

Not I, not Fist.

(To be continued...)

Fist: on holiday

2005-05-18T09:34:00.000+01:00

Starting with this painfully-large, repetitive, and boring sentence, I, Fist, am exiting the blogosphere for a holiday (for two weeks): BUT, if you are in New York or nearby, and would like to meet up with me some time next week, do let me know: And then you can judge for yourself how the blogosphere imitates life, as I bore into you repeatedly with such a painfully large fist.

Here are two jokes, to keep you laughing hysterically while I'm gone:

"There go my aims in life!"

"If I've said this once, I've said it five times a week. To my mom. For the past thirty years."

Don't miss me too hard.

Clearance

2005-05-16T21:48:00.000+01:00

"Fool," flicked the lips with a spit - as I, Fist, cleaned the desk clear, clear of the debris of these past few working years.

"Fool! Look: buried in a box under the table, way over two years of filing, simply not done. And simply not checked for, not asked for, not missed, either. Not even a single sheet of it. Not one.

"And all the unanswered letters, and deleted unchecked emails, and half-scanned memo's - the corners perhaps showing a blue-biro doodle, da-da. All nonsense going nowhere making nothing, all.

"And so what: the tick boxes of your moronic manager, at the door grinning with a bad joke each morning? While the beautiful temps have floated on through, and are now gone, your name and face for them forgotten.

"To spend your time here, like this - fool!"

The body took a pause, here amongst drifting piles of shifting paper, behind the usual closed door, up on the fourth floor. Then:

"What clearance would you have instead, O lips?" asked, I, Fist. "The whole clearance of this sweating city, its spires and crowds and towers, to run once again in the blue-bell beds of a forest, there amongst the meandering fingers of Spring's first luminous light?

"That the curl of a yes? But to face away from doings and searchings, lips, into that daydream begs another question: how then to sleep well, in the deep, dark, dead of the adult night?"

Victory.

2005-05-13T18:39:00.000+01:00

The life-changing luck of a lottery ticket. A genie's lantern ready to rub. The blubber-balloon boobs of Ewa Sonnet. The controls of a playboy hot tub. Of all the usual things that I, Fist, have not fingered this week, add cigarettes to the list.

So! Time for the pub and its blokes, time to stay out late, time to drink and to celebrate - perhaps with a smoke.

I want your advice

2005-05-12T16:18:00.000+01:00

At the end of this month, Fist is going part-time in his office job. In the extra time, Fist is going to pursue a career in writing - of fiction, probably. Fist is seeking advice on what's good in contemporary fiction, to see what the competition is like, that kind of thing. Fist has tended to avoid contemporary fiction, largely because most of it looks rubbish. Tell Fist why he's wrong in the comments box below.

BUT, please only suggest books if you have similar tastes to Fist or have read widely and are thus qualified. The below are examples of Fist-taste in prose.

Fistingly great:

Sherlock Holmes stories
Lolita - Nabokov
Dubliners - Joyce
Chekhov's short stories
Doestoyevsky
First 4/5ths of Jane Austen novels
Kingsley Amis letters
Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriella Garcia Marquez

Ok by Fist:

The Corrections - Franzen
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Kafka
Ian McEwan
Madame Bovary - Flaubert
Italo Calvino
Hemmingway
Steinbeck

Should get fisted:

Portrait of the Artist - Joyce
Last 1/5th of Jane Austen novels
Philip Roth
Don DeLillo
Kingsley Amis novels
Martin Amis
Iain Banks
Terry Pratchett
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriella Garcia Marquez
Margarat Atwood, and up the crapper too.

The next post will feature a short story by Fist from a while back, if you're curious about that. Normal service will resume on Friday.

Bathing last night

2005-05-11T16:41:00.000+01:00

Glowing from the window to the floor, then to the towels hung up on the door: orange street-light streams in a dense diaganol. To the side, the shadows of splashes wave back, from white enamel. Fist gives a finger to the sky of night and city light outside, drops deeper down in the width of warmth.

The demands of the day almost are past. Silent, still, alone at last... Only for a moment: and there was the tomato, the corner of a cherry tomato, slipped out from the well of the anus, circling the tree of the leg, dragged by the plash of current to the land's-end of the toe, before dawdling along to settle up, on the plain-like expanse of the gut.

Beautiful thing! It had survived the gang-bang of the stomach, and the teeth falling down like grand-pianos, and the thundering highways of the internal tubes, and the blood at the wall of the gut - baying like the obese for their burgers - to emerge red (reddish-brown) and dancing, drifting then darting, before nestling by the cave of the belly button, in the end, as if to say: hello, friend.

Its last ordeal was yet to come. I, Fist, would decide what to be done. Tease out the seeds, and add to the garden a new breed? Or to avoid waste, season to taste? Or evacuate the thing, here from its new city, to the waste land of a rubbish dump, along with plastic wrappers, disintigrating toothbrushes, and probably a tampon, via the bin?

The Pianos of Destiny

2005-05-10T19:32:00.000+01:00

Each person has a file. Each file a number. To be put in order. All afternoon. The Left Fist lazes louche in a pocket, is laughing a little, and mockeringly muttering. Eventually says,

"... Monsieur le Fist, tonight the stars will fall out of the sky, will they, like you said yesterday? In the form of grand pianos, as if in a Tom & Jerry cartoon? No, night shall fall without unusual incident, and you shall blush for speaking too soon..."

Back into the pocket he retires. I try to say this answer:

"Each person here is a number, on this or that file, this form or that office, a million and one times over. To speak a truth is to say: they're each as detached as each other, as detached as the moon. Yet the moon is laced with lines of stars, who sing around him a different tune: that we are not all alone, but all joined up, as if on one whole painted canvas, or a child's dot-to-dot."

Even a silly song or post or horoscope can sing, I know, of such a thing. But he will not listen, and anyway, is it true? So instead, I Fist, shall wait for nightfall, and see if that does in fact come into view.

Your Horoscope This Week, by Fist-O-Futures

2005-05-09T10:22:00.000+01:00

Aries (March 21 to April 19)

A balcony, canapés and cocktails circulating, the moon coy behind the distant clouds, and cool figures drifting amongst each another. But shouldn’t someone shut that “music” up? Take a risk. You’re Aries, after all.

Taurus (April 20 to May 20)

Like Shakespeare you’re reliable, also with a sentimental attachment toward certain people, like Hitler had toward his Aryans. So what? you’ll ask at least once this week, predicts Fist-O-Futures. So what? (Maybe twice.)

Gemini (May 21 to June 21)

Impress your friends today with your unique wit and wide-ranging knowledge. You’ll want pleasant eulogies on Friday, after Tuesday surprises you with a freak accident involving a piano falling from a party.

Cancer (June 22 to July 22)

Nasty Master Mars this week will fire thick, fat, hard and 14-inch-long fists of rock and flame into Uranus. But it could be worse: think of Gemini, think of the dinosaurs, think of cancer.

Leo (July 23 to August 22)

Look: How supremely striking, the stars streaming through space! Alas a lost spanner, dropped by a spaceman’s weak fist, has just floated into a corner of your chart. Suddenly you picture boobies. Vast, blobby boobies.

Virgo (August 23 to September 22)

One in twelve of your friends will die on Tuesday, approx. What an opportunity to buy a brand new black hat! Or a new black suit, black shoes. And perhaps some novelty cufflinks (not of musical notes though.)

Libra (September 23 to October 22)

Despite your pleasant manner and decent mind, just like my Libran mother in fact, you will not remotely comprehend the imaginary lesbians that flow around a shuffling fist this Thursday.

Scorpio (October 23 to Nobarnum 21)

Amongst the usual stuff Fist-O-Futures forecasts for Scorpio this week – shopping, shitting, sleeping, and a certain quota of funerals – I see a secret that will be kept secret. Wow!

Sagittarius (November 22 to December 21)

This week is not a good week to try out a new musical instrument. Especially when you’re somewhat drunk, at a party, a floor or two above the street, and there’s a piano over by the window.

Capricorn (December 22 to January 19)

I – Fist-O-Futures, Seer of Secrets, Finder of Fates, Surfer of Stars, Master of Motions, Scanner of Skies, Zeus of the Zodiac – and, incidentally, a Capricorn too – am convinced this week that, at long last, all Capricorn genitals will, once again, finally, be licked into loveliness by lesbians. Possibly on Thursday.

Aquarius (January 20 to February 18)

One of you regular websites will load so slowly on Tuesday. What could be worse! But on Wednesday, you’ll see something there that you really like. Isn’t life grand!

Pisces (February 19 to March 20)

What will your 1,073,394,145 fists have in common, even the 178,899,024 fists in absolute poverty, this week, O fishy Pisceans? The widow of the late King Nairatsif of Suomynona, and the bank account she emails about.

No

2005-05-06T15:44:00.000+01:00

train-track veins on the naked arms - late last night on channel 934 - and no scars on the arse, no scratches or scabs, no blotchy patches or sags around those straight hips, no flakes of skin irritating the nips, and not even a hint of boredom in the smiling eyes, as the phone again rings and she, the pornostar, licks her lips, while some stranger cums on the other end of the line, somewhere amongst the beauty of Italy.

4am. Flowing along the flesh-flute, the usual rhythms of Fist. The connosieur Eyes inspect the scene on the screen, and then ask: "Where are the usual hints of drugs or rapes? The background of damaged life expected, there behind the leisuerly surface of self-pleasure? Such an unharmed angel! She of self-love and luxury! Money and endless nudity! She of such fresh pert breasts, and that all-body tan!"

"But look at that firm chin, those flat feet, that knob of a nose," say, I, Fist, as the spunk-javelin fires along the fingers, and then up past the wrist. "She used to be a man. A man," I add as the white slick reaches the chest, the whole body squirming in a brief and vast yes.

Tonight's The Night

2005-05-05T17:26:00.000+01:00

where I, Fist, will find between my fingers and thumb, this: a remote control. News from today will trickle in, until the early hours and the declaration of a win. The fifth day of the fifth month, two thousand and five. Day of power, day of fate for our future lives, spent for fist meandering amongst such numerous marvels as this.

Or perhaps I will reach higher and higher, to 934, where flickering Italian porn stars undress, a caller panting in their ear-piece, the screen scrolling with numbers to phone, as she touches her hard lumpen breasts with a moan, and where the winners and losers aren't announced, although the reflection on the glass hazards a guess.