Confessions of Leonard Miller

Wishing I was a superhero, then my mind burns itself

2008-05-20T22:46:32Z

I was walking round the corner, out of the train station, thinking about lighting a cigarette. There were three men on the other side of the road. Immediately I saw that they were drunk and not to be trifled with. They were trying to cross, drunkenly negotiating and dodging the traffic. They stumbled.
One of them stopped to ask a gentleman for change. The gentleman was one I recognised. He walks home with headphones on and walks like there’s something wrong with him; he’s a big fellow. He shakes his head vigorously. “No change.” The drunk starts shouting at him. Already I feel sick. I have walked into drunks before and have not come off well. They’ll snap you up. When you stare into their eyes, there is absence and a waiting deathbed with nothing else. They stood in front of me, blocking the pavement. They were wolves, salivating and rabid, waiting for me. I crossed the road on trembling knees.
You are yellow, I thought to myself, looking over my shoulder. I felt dismal. The sun was there but that cold wind was coming off the sea. I cannot wait to leave you behind, mean old sea wind. I tried to light my cigarette and watched the flame flicker with my fingers.

I sat down with my beer and Leonard Cohen playing through the speakers. I sat at my modest desk, freckled with white paint and black ink, and tried to draw. My strokes were too small. Before, I could do sweeping strokes that captured every curve just to my liking. I will work on that: getting my strokes to come from my wrist just to my liking. But after staring at my drawing, sweating from anger and disappointment, I struggled not to tear the page to shreds as I would when a child. I was burning up and all because of passion. I dashed outside and glugged my beer and coughed in my cigarettes. My head was in my hands.

P.S. I wish I was the Human Torch. Nobody’d mess with me then.
P.P.S. Thinking I should be Bukowski or London. Thinking I should be Lautrec. If the world doesn’t turn me inside-out-mad, I will myself with mad aspirations.

No gusto left in me

2008-05-19T22:44:56Z

I lie in bed, unable to sleep and am, by now, neurotic. It is black, sooty but I can make out shapes from the lamplight outside the window. The room pulses like a ticking clock with me in the middle, howling at the moon and bashing my chest. I can’t paint. I can’t draw. I can’t take photographs. Art is nothing to me now but the most beautiful woman in town and I can’t have her. I hate her and spit on her when I see her. I lie in bed thinking this. I had a homosexual art teacher who told me I drew like Toulouse Lautrec, that little socialite midget with vaginal juices propping up his easel. I was never that good. Hell, I might have been if I hadn’t given in to the shaking that retards my body or the absolute artistic apathy that crippled me as an adolescent. Maybe I need a model, a muse. I hate art and will kill it. Just give me a knife and a bottle of brandy for afterwards.
I hear my father coughing in a nearby room. The man is really hard with it; mild fits, short blackouts, spitting uncontrollably and going purple all over. He doesn’t want to go to a doctor. “They’ll take my license away,” he says, somewhat hysterically. Seeing your father sick and helpless for it reminds you firmly that one day he will die. Then I lie and think about death. If I die now? Well, it will be very little, I sense. I will have done nothing for anyone. I will have to keep my death quiet to save embarrassment. I imagine the disappointment in my body to be like that one feels after realising the bright star they are admiring is, in fact, an aeroplane.

Look

2008-05-18T00:06:03Z

I left my ability to credibly write about art in the Art History class I foolishly dropped out of six years ago. Nevertheless, here are some of my favourite images from Flickr... written about very badly but, hey, you get the idea, right?

This guy’s photography is truly breathtaking, individual and, well, weird. I think he’s one of the best artists/photographers I’ve seen on Flickr.

I am usually indifferent about babies but this photograph looks like something from a movie – perhaps a science fiction or thriller.

When I decorate my new room, I want this girl’s prints on the walls. She & her friends are all young Argentinean photographers and too good for their age.

A great gig shot of one of my favourite bands, Mogwai. I stumbled upon this; I’m guessing the guy is a pro because most gig shots are terrible on Flickr.

Where the fuck is Scarlett these days? Anyway, this girl’s good. Despite being so pretty, her images are often slightly sinister but I’m not sure why.

Just because he’s my idol and the lighting is spot on (no pun intended).

I saw this photo and thought, “Yes, that is why I love pubic hair so much.”

This girl’s photographs, infested with surrealism and charmingly like a bedtime story, have recently got into the habit of knocking my socks off – which is something you should all do before you got to bed anyway.

This lady is always freaking out over Flickr-pervs wanking over her photos because she is aesthetically stunning (and in the habit of posting self-portraits very often). However, her shots that aren’t self portraits I find much more endearing.

Greek guy did this and I stuck it on my desktop wallpaper at work. I got tired of the “Fucking hell! What is that?!” and the “Is that a dead person?” so I took it down.

Simple but I love the tones. If I did an album/book, I’d probably get this guy to do the artwork.

I saw this and told Alex, “That’s brilliant and scary!” A month or so later, I got it in the post and now it lives on my bedroom wall next to my sleeping head.

Those fucking indie girls, as well as balloons and animal masks, are obsessed with Native American headdresses but this is the photographer as a kid from 1963. I loved it.

This fellow has done work for Okkervil River, Black Ox Orkestar & GY!BE, he never stops pushing a wide range of media. Another print I want to adorn my future bedroom wall.

Whaling

2008-05-13T23:02:31Z

I was so choked up on loathing I could hardly see straight. Every now and then a thick chill went up my spine and I felt so electrified with it I was joyous. It was true: I was surrounded by people yet apparently, in my mind at least, completely alone. Sickness rested in me.
“I can’t go for a drink tonight. Sorry, man.”
Now I was denying my company to the only other man in the place as insane as me. The rest can tumble, roll down the hills of rock and crag and never get up at the bottom.
Some minutes later, he walked slowly over to me. “Any particular reason?”
“I’m in a bad place and it’ll only get worse.”
“You’re in a bad place?”
“Yes. Not a good place.” And he left me – to my desk, to the trembling feeling inside me, like a bird on fire.
Now I had walked out the office. I was walking, slower than the crowd but in the same direction as them, a rolled cigarette between my lips, my eyes taking in the grey pavement. I was walking to the bookstore where it would be quiet and cool and I could get away. It was as cool as I’d wished, and empty too. There was a young girl behind the counter who was sorting through some new books and ignoring me, and two other shoppers – one near the revolting books about finance and another in the crime section. I walked over to my favourite writers. My stride was comfortable and well-measured, as if strutting up to them in bar. “What’ll you have?” asks Hamsun. “Get me a cold beer and a double bourbon & Coke, it’s been a tough day, Hamsun.” Hamsun gets my drinks. Fante sits there, snarling, waiting for me to talk to him and I will because I love him.
I pick up Hamsun off the shelf and turn to a page between 100 and 150. I read a couple of pages; something about a dream and vines and snakes, but more sublime than you can imagine. “You did well in that one, Hamsun?” “Thank you.”
I walk along to Fante, already feeling better and miles away from the office. Fante sat there, familiar, speckled in freckles and eyeing the barmaid. “It is you I love the most, sir.” I kiss his hand and read a couple of his pages, 146-148, I believe. “O, I must go. My train will leave soon.” I shake their hands and put them back in the shelf.
Ah, there is Rebecca walking in front of me towards the platform. Can’t any of these old faces leave me alone, I think to myself. I take my time, fumbling my ticket into the gate so that I don’t have to walk beside her. Instead I walk behind her. I see her Achilles tendon all cut up from bad shoes and I resent her, hair all glossy and stride so feminine yet look at her Achilles tendon! It is all scabby and tattered. She does not even buy herself good and fitting shoes. She is surely a fool.
I sit on the dark train near some grey businessmen. I think about whaling. Recently I have grown very interested and excited about whaling. I might consider a career change. I will not kill them and will not drag their behemoth bleeding bodies onboard my shiny ship. No, instead they will play with me in the waves and challenge my ship and my men, the most loyal sailors in the seven seas, and we will chase them and catch them. The whales will laugh and my men will cheer and I will be stood on the bow, smoking my little browning cigarette and tapping my foot to the chants of the ocean, blue and unfolding, infinite and noble.

You got to hold onto yourself

2008-05-12T22:16:43Z

Now we were on the train home, the last train home. The last train home is always a mobile crypt of drunks and sleazy characters yapping and shrieking. The lights in the carriage made it appear, with dark windows, like the engine room on a sinking ship. Alex was beside me. I had forgotten how her accent sounded – as soon as I heard it again eleven hours previous I remembered the sound, unlike any other I knew, so angelic. Imagine a young German girl who is lost but altogether joyful for being disorientated from where she should be; that is how she sounds.
Alex was very different now. Maybe she has just heard some terrible news. She stared forward, not at me, never at me. Only when I asked her again and again, “Are you OK?” did she turn to me and lie so sorrowfully. On one side of me was the suffocating abyss of night and on the other were her eyes, the prettiest eyes I have ever seen, looking so sad. Still, she told me nothing. “Do not make a fuss of this,” she said eventually. I clasped her hand and it sweated. It dripped with sweat, clammy, yet I held tight because her tongue would tell me nothing. I put my head on her shoulder and she put her fingers through my hair. I felt useless, no function to her, and she accused me of not enjoying the gig! I had, so much, I had. I sensed she didn’t believe me because my face is always so miserable and blasé. Alex, my dear, I enjoyed it, my organs shocked with sound as Nick Cave gyrated on stage as cool as anything and you stood beside me, a smile ear-to-ear and unable to contain yourself. I will not contain you and you seemed happy. Now she was not. Now she stared straightforward and my heart was becoming heavy.
Finally we got in a taxi and I made chitchat with the driver while she said nothing. All I could see was that silhouette of black against the passing streetlights. It was as if she had ascended from her body. She had strictly told me to not fuss about this but I was, and how!
When we said goodnight, I leaned my head on the banister and she looked up at me from the black & white tiled floor, light from her guestroom glowing faintly on one side of her face. “I hope you had a good day.” “I did. Did you?” “Very much so.” And I lay in bed thinking I should go talk to her but it was obvious she did not want to talk. My ears rung with a frequency I’ll never hear again. She was smothered by sheets beneath me, her immaculate eyes covered in the thin skin of eyelids, twitching with the reveries of deep sleep.

I made you a muxtape

2008-05-11T20:49:58Z

mansion.muxtape.com

Let me know what you think.
I was going to do a long track-by-track breakdown.
If you want to know why I chose certain tracks, I'll explain.
It's a bit here-and-there.
Enjoy, my friends.

PS. I might start doing different themed ones if people are going to listen.

I remember

2008-05-06T22:39:54Z

“What are you doing this lunchtime?”
“I’m gonna go for a walk.”
“O, where to?”
“To St Bartholomew’s.”
“Ah, you’re religious?”
“No, not at all, I just feel like a nice walk. You can’t stay in the office in this lovely weather. Besides it’s pretty quiet down there. No city-boys.”
The real reason I was going was to take a photograph for Hannah’s letter (which I still haven’t finished) but I didn’t feel like telling Rod that.
At twelve-forty-five it was sunny and heavenly. If heaven existed with a sun in its sky, it would have shone like it shone today in London at twelve-forty-five. Everyone was out, on the warm pavements drinking or laughing or talking or standing in the shade of shop-fronts. I walked swiftly, through the crowds, cursing the odd slow gentleman. And the flesh was out as well. Women amongst the people with their legs out or their breasts out, yet with charm, and beautiful, I will tell you, and no time in the world for a man like me but I never salivated much. It seemed to me that when the sun arrived with birds tweeting and clouds that parted like stage-curtains, women so beautiful rose from the soil and wandered the world. I was astounded. Every patch of grass was covered with people, every flat surface above the ground was covered by the bottom of someone eating lunch. It was glorious and nothing less (Earlier in the day, during a cigarette break, I told a fellow smoker, “This is what it’s about!” and pointed to the blue cloudless sky. “It should be like this everyday,” he replied. I felt like saying, “But then we would not appreciate it.” I decided not to).
Down London Wall there were no more goddamn people in suits. Tower 42 and City Point were still visible but the city boys dare not stray so far. Instead labourers holding cheap cigarettes stood about swearing and chuckling. I moved through them feeling perhaps that I should wish them a good day.
I got to St Bartholomew’s and there was a young African woman sitting with a tramp who had a great white beard. The two were talking and eating from similar containers – she must have fed him, I thought – and he was laughing a jolly laugh, his belly shaking.
I sat down in the courtyard and pulled out my book but decided against reading it. Why come, I thought, to such a wondrous place in such wondrous weather to look at the pages of a book? This is where I sat with Hannah and we kissed, our knees touching, and she asked me such questions about ex-girlfriends and I could only answer too honestly but she was not slighted. Instead, her knees pressed harder into mine and we kissed more under that dying winter moon. That seemed so long ago, Hannah. A Malaysian woman beside me kept throwing the crusts of her bread to the pigeons that fought over it till the scene appeared to me like some fervent orgy. At one point, the crust was on a pigeon’s back and all the other pigeons pecked at him causing him to tumble. A pretty girl in scarlet shoes sat on the other side of the water fountain. Two men with blue stubble smoked cigarettes and talked angrily. Nurses in uniform gossiped. A rotund woman left her bench and sat beside me. I wondered for a moment that she might fancy me and that, being of her size and age, she would surely eat me alive and I would go into her arms willingly, if only out of boredom and interest. She read her newspaper while I smoked and took a photograph. When I was done, I coughed violently, stared at the bench (reminiscing) and got out of there.

In the evening, I was sat on the train reading my book in the disgraceful heat of the carriage. I opened all the windows but they did nothing. The book didn’t grasp me enough and I looked out of the window at the constant rush of people heading down the platform to their train. I stared at the women and said to myself, “Yes, I would fuck her” or “No, I wouldn’t fuck her” and felt like a misogynist. Then I recognised someone. Ah, it is Rachael! The girl who I’ve been friends with for eleven years. The girl who I grew up with. The girl I was best friends with. The girl whose wedding I was an usher at. The girl whose wedding dissolved five months after it was made. The girl who I could no longer give a damn about. She was dressed smart and she saw me. For a moment I pretended I hadn’t seen her, after all, I didn’t want to speak to her but instead wanted to read my book a bit longer then fall asleep. Both of those activities would be jeopardised if she sat in the chair next to me. No, ignore her, Rhys. Too late. That courtesy my mother impregnated me with at a young age won through and I smiled at her. I expected her to come in and join me.
She didn’t!
Brilliant!
She smiled back and walked on.
I burst out laughing. O, I laughed. Of course I haven’t spoken to her in seven months and since then she’s been divorced. She is too embarrassed to talk to me. She knows that her wedding was a travesty and that she’d rather not talk to me about it. I would point out that, yes, the wedding was a joke and that she was the butt of the joke but that getting rotten drunk, smashing glasses, harassing waitresses and hitting on her fifteen-year-old cousin before telling her auntie that she was “fucking gorgeous” more than made up for it. If anything, we were even.
But she just walked on. I smiled and got back to my book. Kerouac’s The Subterraneans was still not enough to hold my attention and I fell into sweat-filled sleep.

What's the big idea?

2008-04-29T22:28:34Z

Some sort of hell had befallen me. The train was rammed with people and I was standing. It was quarter-past-five or somewhere near that. I could have laughed a what a hard time I was having. These are sardines. I am a sardine. Or is this a cattle-truck? I lose track. I put my bag onto the overhead rack. A tall gentleman helped me. He was not a gentleman – he was a giant! A bearded giant and his head touched the ceiling of the train and he ate his tuna sandwich and the whole thing wobbled. I took out my book and began reading. It seemed everyone was looking at me. I had no doubt they were – the whole aisle made me tick with nerves. Yes, everyone was looking at me. The girl standing next to me, she was looking at me and tapping her finger on the rail, most unimpressed. Ah, I couldn’t even hold my book! I could not read it! I was shaking so much that the words were blurry a foot in front of me. The rows of people sat there, munching on free newspapers and John Grisham novels.
My skin was leaking. I felt it collecting in my hair; little ants of perspiration playing among the strands, tickling my scalp. Then after a while, the ants were at my forehead, knocking on my eyebrows. My whole face was wet now. Fingers of sweat ran down my face and I brushed them off before they could fall onto the man I was stood over. He would have looked up: “HEY! WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? YOU’RE SWEATING ON ME!” “I can’t help it. I think I’m losing in the great game of nerves.” The sweat came and came. It exploded gradually through my flesh till my shirt was saturated and it asked me through my jacket (that I could not remove because there was no room): “HEY! WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? YOU’RE SWEATING ON ME!” To which I would blush in reply then offer to remove him in front of everyone.
Soon I could not keep up with catching the drops and they plopped and plipped into the pages of my book. O, Kerouac, I did not mean to soak your words but today you are tiring me.
I began to daydream – after all, I could not hold my book steady enough to read much. I dreamed I was on my own with the summer whispering sunshine hymns from my shoulder into my ear. I was in a meadow and completely nude. I was stripped of everything, physical and not. The grass was tall, reaching up to my hipbones like the thin arms of adoring women dressed in yellow. I would run through them and they would graze and whip at my knees and my bottom and my pubic hair and my hands would reach into them and pull them out with glee. In the distance a mound of trees hummed in the forest and watched me and the lake with her blue iliac crest loving herself gently with stickleback fingers. The land provided me food and shelter at night and I was never alone.
I dreamed all this surrounded by the sedated criminals on this commuter train. I was far from heaven but also far from hell, swelled up in grace maybe. I could no longer move because my clothes had stuck to me and were so restrictive. I was finally afforded a seat and a woman sat down opposite me. She was beautiful in the reflection of the window. When I looked at her though, she was covered in liver-spots. I didn’t understand what the window meant, not with its charming reflections. She sat there eating sweets wrapped in white paper. I could not sleep but instead looked at the fields longingly and with an eye for romance.

for_oceans @ 2008-04-27T23:49:00

2008-04-27T22:51:44Z

I met Walsh outside the bar after he had gone to get money out and I had bought a packet of cigarettes. Finishing our smokes opposite a shop that dealt in Cuban cigars and metal lighters, he talked about work briefly – that horrid talk of losing yourself in something so foolish as he realised he had worked an extra day overtime during the course of four consecutive evenings. Tired from the week, we went inside. It wasn’t busy at all and I bought us a couple of pints, we sat down and made talk. Stone arrived, laughing and burping. “You fucking chickened out, did you?” he asked me, while simultaneously groaning as we hadn’t bought him a drink.
I knew what he was on about. He had told us to meet him at The Bull but I no longer wish to frequent that place, especially on a Friday night. You see, last Friday, frightfully drunk, I had almost got into a fight with a wandering caricaturist and his model. The model had disgusted me. The model was apparently another regular of The Bull but I didn’t recognise him. He ended up threatening me and when I could no longer bear him, and without the balls to beat him into the ground, I let him know what I thought of him then left for home.
“He was there. He was stood opposite me.” Stone thought the whole thing was very funny but, in the way peculiar friends do, thought I needed to calm down more often and perhaps get my head checked. I told him that was out of the question and that the man was definitely a cunt.
“Congratulations in choosing the emptiest bar in London.”
“I don’t care. I just want a quiet drink, just a couple.”
Walsh agreed with me.
Stone was due at some 30th birthday party. He didn’t really want to go (As it ended up, he left and texted me to let me know it was in a Scottish bar and, along with Australians, Stone loathes the Scots as much as anyone – quite unreasonably I might add).
So then it was just me and Walsh. I was on stronger beer than Walsh and felt it taking a hold of me in fermented wings, relaxing and ruling.
Walsh is the only person in the company I consider to have actually done anything with his life. He hasn’t been to university or had kids or got married or been promoted to some ridiculous level. He has driven across America, met his German sweetheart in Australia, shat on the humid floors of some backstreet Singapore bar. His eyes are wild, wide-open, searching. He exudes calm and I often rely on him – without him knowing of course – to chill me out when I am going insane on my desk, quoting Ginsberg and citing Hitler as an underachiever.
The evening stretched on and a couple of beers turned into many. At times, I was so inclined to tell him about my trouble with women, and did so with regret and quiet. Without any cause at all, I told him of Hannah and my crazy infatuation (although recollection is fuzzy, I may have presented him the quarter). He sat there smiling and hearing me out. Sometimes I can really talk.
My parents were away for the weekend so I did very little. I watched the cheeky blackbird pecking at the birdseed my mother placed by our patio. She is such a confident bird that she’ll let me get within a couple of feet of her. My dog comes outside and plops herself (poor thing is crippled, after knee operations that haven’t worked, her hind legs are more a burden than an ally) by the garage and she just watches. She watches the blossom on the apple tree, pink and white, holding strong to the twigs and branches. She watches the squirrel bouncing along the neighbour’s shed. She watches me smoking and coughing till I spit everywhere.

Am I just getting going?

2008-04-24T23:03:26Z

Spring is being Spring. It is leaping in the air and cackling with sunshine. It is not an “It” but a “she” and she is beautiful, wondrous, blasphemously divine. She is truly Spring. She opens up in the mornings and has her breakfast over the east end of London as I awake on the train. The colours are all there but floating like ghosts in the morning mist. I see them.
I am so forgetful these days. This morning I forgot Hannah’s quarter (it was buried underneath the snotty tissues on my bedside desk) and this afternoon I forgot my phone at work. I think it is the antibiotics I’m on; they are making me forgetful and making my urine smell quite unbearable. Unbearable is a word I lost the meaning to a while ago now. If I cope, I cope. If I don’t, then leave me out with the rubbish. All of us must push on. Spring is the season for struggling. We all have soil to push through after all.
This afternoon I was getting hot flushes as some moron tried to work with me. “Just go stand near the window!” he told me. That wasn’t enough. I walked downstairs for a cigarette but the shelter under which I usually stand was full of pedestrians avoiding the rain. It was coming down hard and I didn’t much feel like standing amongst them – I was feeling sick as it was. So I went to the other side of the building to smoke there.
The sky was brushed with so many colours but was rejoicing in grey mostly; the grey with its belly like a robin’s breast. I lit up and leaned against the wall. People carried umbrellas and stiletto heels got soaked in puddles. What was that?! O, a tongue of lightning coming from the blackened heavens to lick the rooftops. I’m quite sure it grazed the top of that tower. Then the rush of sound! Why can’t I write the sound down? It is not a human sound. Smiling, I looked up. The skyscrapers, the church spire, the old pubs – all waiting for a bolt to call their own. Another! I didn’t see that one but it was there. Ah, then… the sound, the blast, the rocket through my ears.
Spring, you are righteous. You have been missed and your return is welcome. Put Winter to bed in your green blanket. Tuck it in and we will find our way with you for these times have been dark for us also.

Two years,

2008-04-15T22:17:56Z

Just noticed my livejournal is two years old today. How odd its birthday arrives at such a time; a time that finds me in the middle of the worst & longest writing block I've ever had. I'm not quite sure how much longer it will last. I occasionally try to write but you wouldn't believe how shit it turns out to be! Wait, says Bukowski. There is a thin line between patience and laziness, says Jason. Hell, I'll wait. I'm not too hot at waiting but I have no choice and I'd rather be silent than commit something to writing that is utter bullshit.
So yes, my journal is two years old. I will be sticking with this journal. Each journal has ended up representing different phases in my life and although I don't think I'm stuck in a phase at the moment it costs to start a new account so fuck that.
And I suppose a "Thank you" to you folks. Some of you I'm rather indifferent about but there are some of you out there that I think are quite wonderful. Either way, if I put shit out there I like that somebody can read it and, hell, perhaps they can even relate - and that is truly a delightful thing.
If I didn't have this thing to write in, I would have gone insane by now and have eaten my bedroom walls. So thank you to this site. Jason asked me why I write in here (as opposed to keeping it to myself). I believe I answered him something like this: "If you create something beautiful, what's the fucking point keeping it locked in a shoebox in your bedroom? Put it out there. And if someone relates to what you've said or has found solace in it or anything like that - it's a fucking wonderful thing." I stand by it.
Here's to many more years of writing.

Yours patiently,

Rhys Leonard Miller

P.S. This is such twaddle.

Apropos of nothing,

2008-04-13T22:47:17Z

Stone & I were stood outside the pub on Friday night. Everyone else had left and, as usual, it had whittled down to just us two. Light was disappearing, it had been there in force but the air was so cool. I had bourbon & coke (given up on beer) and he had a pint. Against the wall I could witness the dissipating crowds. I was sick but had turned to drink like any other good man in need.
“What’s the matter with you lately? You haven’t been yourself.” Stone said, apropos of nothing.
I sucked in. “You know that girl I met a few weeks ago, Hannah?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Well – and I know you’re going to say “O SHUT UP!” or something but just listen – I think I’m in love with her. In love! That’s right! I can’t believe it myself. I really miss her something rotten. I don’t stop thinking about her!” My hand was already gripping the quarter so all I needed to do was draw it out, which I did. “Look! I carry around her fuckin’ quarter all the time! It’s always in my pocket and I’m always holding it!” I held the quarter up in front of his eyes as if it was the quarter that had committed some devilish crime and deserved to be reprimanded. I put the quarter back in my pocket and stopped speaking. I felt so miserable I could have cried. Some people say I’m living in another world at the moment. Either way, Stone didn’t say anything to me. He just sipped his beer and lit another cigarette. I liked that; just one outburst of emotion. I was no more settled than before but shedding my ridiculous infatuation onto his insensitive gaze brought relief, even if it was only brief.

All for a photograph,

2008-04-10T22:45:00Z

I had been in a meeting all morning, not saying much but coughing and looking longingly at the sunshine outside. The sunshine was glorious, all radiant white & yellow on the dust-covered balconies jutting out over Devonshire Row. I had a rotten headache from hunger and my shakes were bad, exasperated by the coffee I was gulping. Dying to get out of there, I planned my lunch. I will walk out of here down to Saint Bartholomew’s Hopsital, to the courtyard where I had sat with Hannah some weeks previous. It is a long walk and I am tired from lack of food but I will do it, why, I have the sun for company.
The meeting ended and I rushed out of the door. Now the daylight was upon me, upon my black suited shoulders. You are good company, fair sun, I am grateful for you. This bag is heavy with my camera but you will lighten my load and the path. Cigarette in hand, I walked down Bishopsgate, then to Liverpool Street and into Finsbury Circus. For a moment I waited in Finsbury Circus. It is too far to St Bartholomew’s, you might not make it back and you have so much work to do. Linger in the gardens of Finsbury Circus. You have Dostoevsky in your bag, sit with him. No, I must push on. I tossed my cigarette aside and moved with fervour. I walked on the paths through the people seated eating their lunch and reading their own books. So long, people, I am off to visit memories. Past the wine bar and smoking builders on their break and onto London Wall. People walked slow along here as the street was electric with road works and taxis.
That is where I first took Hannah’s hand. I was so uninvited to take that hand but how much I had wanted it. We walked along here and the wind came down that lane with the rain and we walked to closed pubs. Do you have to walk so fast? I wondered. My legs were beginning to ache and I was so hungry now that I was in pain. I ignored it and took out another cigarette. The more my legs ached, the faster I walked, pushing against them, rising victorious with every step.
A car pulled up to the traffic lights and a young hooligan was leaning out the window. He began shouting at me but I had no time to stop and chat with him! Didn’t he know I was busy? Maybe some other time, sir. He cursed me from the window and sped off. How foolish!
Ah, that is where we kissed. I remember that. That was a Sunday night, now it is Wednesday lunch and the spot seemed completely different but I was quite sure we kissed there. I was filled with vigour and checked my watch – plenty of time. Down Aldersgate I was walking behind a builder and we walked as fast as each other. Move aside, I thought, unless of course you are searching for your sweetheart then move with me! Lovely day, isn’t it?
Smithfield Markets looked beautiful. I walked past as it begged me to take a photograph. The road was made up of small little bakers and cafes selling day-old rolls and cheap Coke. It was formica heaven.
The West Smithfield garden was sprouting small yellow flowers, old women sat amongst them, chatting and smoking. I noticed then that I was out of the city, that there were no rotten suits around. I was even happier and sweating heavily. I could feel big patches of wet under my arms and kept wiping my brow on my sleeve. It was there that Hannah spun me around till our lips met. I remember that, sure enough; how could I forget?
I walked through the gate of St Bartholomew’s hospital. There was a security guard watching. I prayed he wouldn’t stop me. After all, I had been walking frantically for thirty-five minutes now and couldn’t be stopped at the last hurdle. I got in and there it was, what I had come to photograph: a bench.
The bench was in front of a water fountain in the hospital courtyard. It was empty but I daren’t sit down. Worried about time, I pulled my camera out and took a Polaroid of it. I spent barely a minute there before turning around and leaving. There was the pub where she took a photograph of me. I checked on my Polaroid… it was lousy. No matter. I was so lively from the memories that were flooding me afresh, I could find little else to care about (although the throbbing pain in my legs was hard to ignore now). I hadn’t realised it but I had her quarter in my fist, so often do I clench it that I no longer notice!
Walk fast now, Rhys. Sweat was running off me. I finally got back to Liverpool Street. Rod was walking towards me and I didn’t look upon him favourably but could not ignore him.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“For a walk.”
“Where to?”
“Saint Bartholomew’s hospital. Just thought I’d go for a nice long walk at lunch.”
He told me he was going to buy a Kashmir sweater or something. “Do you want to get a pint?”
He realised what I thought of him and wanted to make friends again. I was so thirsty and tired that a pint would have been euphoric, let alone to rekindle a friendship.
“I’m sorry. I must get back to the office. I have so much work to do and have already run out my lunch break.”
“O, O.K. then. Laters.”
I got back to my desk and used some napkins to dry my face. As I ate my modest lunch of hummus & bread, I fingered the wet patches under my arm while the sunshine tapped at the window, waiting for me.

The slow deterioration of someone once sane,

2008-04-08T22:41:46Z

RHYS: I actually want to kill myself. I might do it tonight.
WALSH: How will you do it?
RHYS: I’ll swallow coins.
WALSH: You have a lot of them?
RHYS: I have a lot of coins in my room.
WALSH: Coppers?
RHYS: Yes. One pence coins, two pence coins, five pence coins.
WALSH: Two pence will be a bit big.
RHYS: I’ll cut them in half. They could lacerate my windpipe.
WALSH: How will you cut them?
RHYS: With a saw – which then presents the risk of cutting my hand if I slip or something.
WALSH: Do it at work.
RHYS: Yes, I might do it in front of everyone. Or in a bar. I’ll probably do it in a bar.

…

MARK: Rhys, are you going on this night out with Clive?
RHYS: I don’t know.
MARK: If it’s anything like the one before Christmas – I’m going! That was the shit!
RHYS: I might not shit till we go out then just defecate myself in front of everyone.
MARK: (laughs, pause) What does “defecate” mean?
RHYS: It means I’ll shit myself in front of everyone.

…

No one makes good paper anymore.
I might visit St Bartholomew’s church tomorrow during my lunch break.

…

STONE: … Which is the good thing about you: you think everyone’s out to get you.
RHYS: They are out to get me. Cunts.

New shoes, smug cunts & the clap,

2008-04-07T23:24:44Z

I had my new shoes on. They are a gift from my parents and are comfortable. They fit perfectly and still shine that new-shoe shine. I had already told Andy about them and went to show them off to him before I’d even sat down at my desk.
“I’m not too sure…”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer as I stood before him with his eyes upon my new shoes.
“They were twenty-nine quid! And look! rubber soles.” He wasn’t impressed with them. Disappointed, I sat back down. Hannah had quoted Hamsun in her journal; it brought a warm smile to my face. My shoes were bothering me though. What is wrong with them? I thought and studied them meticulously. “Stone! I have new shoes! These ones don’t have holes in!”
He looked at them. “Did you buy those off your granddad?”
I couldn’t see what was wrong with my shoes. I had started off so proud of them but now they just seemed a burden and, in a way, I wanted the old pair back – holes and all. I stood outside looking down at them, twisting them into every angle so I could gauge just what was wrong with them. As I walked across the tiled floor of the reception though, my shoes were silent. They didn’t CLIP CLOP like my old pair. You’re not so bad, I said to them.
I stood by the printer, waiting for a drawing and tossing my quarter into the air. “Good weekend, Rhys?” asked Jackie.
“No, it was miserable, lousy.”
Rod turned around. Rod always has something to say, often uninvited.
“Is that because you don’t have any friends and you can’t wait to get back to work?” He grinned like a smug cunt.
I thought, “To an extent, yes. I don’t much care for the people I went to school and college with. They’re all idiots. It was one of their birthdays this weekend – I was invited but they were going out Saturday night and then paintballing on Sunday. I hate both of those things.”
“I knew you’d say that!” Rod retorted.
“Well I do! They’re all fucking idiots anyway.”
Work has become too much of me these days. I can no longer write but I can work. Working never lets me down. I can work alright. Just watch me. I struggle with writing. It is a lover that sleeps in another room of the house, on the sofa. But, o, how I work. The MD (managing director) says I’d make employee of the month (though we don’t have such things) and I was lost for words. I just drank and drank after he said it, dealing with the inappropriateness of my existence and how the two things I love most are not with me, ending up quite drunk and tired. This is no way to live. It will break me. Someday I we be buried in a pile of leaves with the autumn.
“Frank called me up. Said he went away for the weekend with his bird.” Scott told me. “‘How did it go?’ I asked him and he said, ‘Not good. She dumped me.’ Frank’s got the clap and he told his bird so she dumped him.”
“Well, that’s understandable.”
My mum says I should go on holiday, says I’ve been working too much. I certainly need something. This has gone on too long. It has lasted since Christmas and I am tired of it, red eyes glowing and hunched on my shoulder, sneering.

for_oceans @ 2008-04-06T23:44:00

2008-04-06T22:44:35Z

This morning it was snowing so I made myself an espresso and sat outside in the cold, smoking. The snow sometimes slowed. The snow sometimes flowed like all the gods of mankind were dying in the sky and melting on the patio, right near my feet. I was so cold but the coffee was warm and so was my Marlboro smoke.

How nice to come home from work to an email from Jamie Stewart/Xiu Xiu,

2008-04-03T18:49:08Z

At the pinnacle of a horrendous day, during which I wanted no more of anything, I put on Knife Play and after a while decided I should thank the artist:

Dear Xiu Xiu,

I am sat at work, cautiously avoiding it. My face is grotesquely decorated in horrendous spots and blood boils. I will not speak to anyone but it is sunny outside. I am completely lovesick.
I am listening to Knife Play loudly and all I really wanted to say is Thank You.

Yours adoringly,

Rhys Leonard Miller

* * *

thank you
hope you are free from work soon
i once had a job... etc etc etc

The most beautiful thing I’ve seen in 13 days

2008-03-31T22:38:23Z

There are so many beer cans & bottles in my room, I never know which one has beer in. I step from one to the other, lifting them, checking their contents. I don’t care if this house is haunted. I will write ten-page love-letters, burn the edges and then think about not even sending them across the Atlantic. Haven’t heard from her in so long… Thirteen days since her hip bones jutted between my fingers like interlaced crocodile teeth. What I wouldn’t give… My indelible romance smells. My writing smells even worse – like burnt hair.
My sweat smells. Today I was running around for my boss. The stress and pressure excites me. People laughed at me “LOOK AT RHYS RUNNING!” but I didn’t care. I dropped drawings and graphs and pencils and books so I picked them up, smiled, and carried on my way. In his office I became conscious of my smell. My skin was leaking and my pits were clammy, the sweat matted in my hair. When he finally left for a meeting with all my work, I went outside for a slow cigarette. It was the slowest of cigarettes, a stick that burns slowly like you and halts the wind just to ebb smoke gracefully.
A couple of men were walking down the lane. One man was young and one man was old. They were both linking arms. The old man had his arm through the young man’s and they walked very slowly as everyone around them hurried. The old man was Jewish. He had on a skullcap, long curly hair next to his ears on an otherwise shaved head, and a big white beard. He hobbled, his arm through the young man’s. I watched them walk right past me. O sweet couple, shining like six-pointed stars!
The sight of two men linking arms is perhaps the most wonderful sight you will see in a day. It is the most wonderful and charming thing I have seen in thirteen. Feeling invigorated, I threw down my cigarette and went back inside.

for_oceans @ 2008-03-23T00:39:00

2008-03-23T00:42:36Z

It is Easter Bank Holiday weekend and my parents are away. The house is quiet and I am lonely. I am used to being lonely. Loneliness has followed me far longer than it has followed many other people and I am quite used to it. However weariness still grows on my bones from it. During the day I wake up and smoke a cigarette or two, then, without eating, I play piano and sing. I am not used to breathing when singing and my throat ends up hurting and I have to stop. My songs, though, are so tender that they also leave me in a state of exhaustion. Where are my parents? Where are my friends? Well, if you must know I have few friends. I have not one true friend, no one to rely on. It is just me and this pavement, this white bed. There are people I have known for years but I no longer see them because they do not know music or literature or art or even cinema. They know very little and I am not their friend.
So I spend my time alone at home. When I am done at the piano, I lie down and read. Nights bring little sleep. Waking up after six hours, I toss and turn then give up, wanting more. So when I lie down to read, I fall asleep then am stirred by my barking dogs or my brother’s friends… O, there is the quarter. I pull it out of my pocket when I lie down to read and place it on my chest, between my ribs, on the sternum, my sternum. When I feel myself drifting into slumber, I pick it off my chest and place it on my bedside table. Sometimes I clutch it so hard that my hand aches.
I have not heard from Hannah since Wednesday. I think that she is tired and spending time with her friends. All of it seems too far away to tell. All I know is that I miss her, think about her and long to be with her again. The hours pass so slowly that I must restrain from smoking too much and wish it was a week ago so I could relive this whole heart-rending mess.
The book I am reading, for a second time, is a love story – perhaps my favourite love story. It is a book that describes love with every word and a book that I wish I could write. Do I know what love is? Do I know if it falls from trees or collects in clouds? Do I believe it is hidden in each one of us or that it rarely sings a sweet song? It is all hazy to me, inside like a fog.
It is supposedly Spring but I do not feel it. The sun came down today but it was weak and frail. The wind was stronger and fought with my hair as I walked to the tobacconist. I must have looked so ridiculous! O how I wish I could afford to get it cut. My mother has offered to pay for it but I am not in the habit of accepting charity.
Ah, my body aches! If I could just sleep long enough to refresh it. Maybe it is my heart that aches and is taking it out on my flesh.
Tomorrow is Easter, the Christian holiday. My parents might be home in the afternoon. I believe there is a family gathering of some sort. There will be beer there and empty company.
How are you, Rhys?
Yeah, OK.
How are you, Rhys?
Fine thanks.
Ad infinitum.
What I wish is that I could really answer boldly.
How are you, Rhys?
I am crippled, Uncle. I am crippled and under the impression of love. I feel it shaking inside me like I am a womb and love is my baby. Who do I love? Need you ask?! I am in love with the air between us, me and her. I am in love with aeroplane flights and the unmistakeable trembling one gets from reminiscing. Do you not have any advice for me? because I am fragile, a young man of twenty-two and I am not invincible. Love has rubbed me and I am flaking. Do I know if it is love? I do not. But I believe it, just like you believe someone rose from the dead. Love is in my eyes and I see no ghost, no holy spirit. I may let my love smite me and then I will be dead and unable to rise. You will see that for you are my uncle and I was afraid to tell you about my love, my burden, my roaring furnace of infatuation that doesn’t rest at the dying of the day nor lightens at the rising of the sun. Please tell me where they keep the beer in this place.

The night was cold and blue,

2008-03-22T02:17:44Z

We were in a bar and everyone was getting drunk. They were drinking wine. It was raining outside. The bar is a horrid one. It is full of rich people, in finance and so on, and so I hate it. The beer was free, Japanese, and I was the only person drinking it – a whole barrel of ice & beer for me. I drank it steadily watching everyone else get drunk on wine.
Of course I thought about her. Always in my mind, gently singing to my consciousness.
Some people were so drunk they were knocking over wine bottles, smashed glass everywhere.
I rolled a cigarette and stood outside smoking it. I stood in the corner, away from the crowd. So distant was I from the mob that when my colleagues came out they never even noticed me and I laughed watching them and feeling like a spectre. There was an ice rink in the middle of the courtyard and it was melting. The rain added to its pitiful puddles of melting winter. I smoked my cigarette and sipped my beer, feeling glum. I studied the people around me. There was a collection of girls, boring and pretty, laughing on wine and talking and cackling loudly. Damn them, I thought. I missed Hannah even more. The quarter was in my hand (it never leaves). I squeeze it as if it were her hand, tiny and metallic.
What use was it everyone being drunk? And not me. They came up asking for one of my rolled cigarettes. Perhaps I roll good cigarettes – it is of no consequence. The men crowded round the two girls from our office. They were treated like royalty. The food was pulled from under my nose and offered to them. Every man is a waiter, desperate and leering.
The toilet was far away, through rotten crowds of cunts. I fucking hated them. No one said thank you or excuse me. In the toilet someone hummed in the cubicle, an old song resounding off the wooden door. Then he began singing instead of humming. He sang in a rich Italian accent, words I could not understand but full of loss. It was no place for that song. Or maybe it was. Maybe the world was falling apart from the inside out and it all started with the singing Italian in the toilet cubicle who knew more than you or I or anybody.
I was outside enjoying another cigarette on my own when some man came up to me. “Can I have a cigarette?”
“I have rollies. You can have a rollie if you can roll.”
“No, I want a cigarette.”
“Well go buy one. There’s a tobacconist round the corner.”
I thought he was a beggar but then I noticed him with other people talking and holding a cigarette. “You cunt. I’ll fucking glass you, you snivelling shit. I hate you.” I was bitter and spoke under my breath. He was no beggar but someone whose insides had been egested out of his anus, leaving him hollow, full of old cobwebs.
Beside the melting ice rink and the girls who howled, I thought of Tuesday night (with my quarter for company) and my thoughts did wonder…

She had positioned her small knees between mine, our hands clasped in the middle.
“I adore you,” I said with every aching muscle and splintering bone in my body.
“Say it again.” She replied; a cannibal guzzling up my words.
Looking into the pit of her, “I adore you.”
A kiss and then…

I was back in the rain with my cigarette and beer. Because everyone was drunk and I was so heartbroken and keenly alive, I felt alien, detached, lost at sea. Sitting by the edge of the table, away from conversation a waitress was next to me and sweeping up the broken glass from a fallen wine bottle. As she swept, I leaned to her ear. “How can you do this job? How can you serve these people? How can you sweep up after these drunk rich cunts? There must be something else you can do.” She had nothing to say but instead smiled politely at my sunken face and walked off with the collected shards in a black bucket.
There is no reaching some people. You may try. You will fail and be left with only mistimed smiles.
I spoke to Jon. He spoke in his flamboyant Spanish about the universe and our words fell on the Milky Way, black holes, stars light years away but our words were raw and in the wrong bar. It was the only real thing I felt all evening.
When it was time to go, my company was saying goodbye to the girls. I snuck off, undetected. The night was cold and blue. I paid for some cigarettes and boarded my train.

Clutching her quarter,

2008-03-20T00:06:10Z

Hannah gave me a quarter that I carry round with me. She gave me a penny, a dime and a nickel as well. I carry around the quarter. I clutch it firm. I called her yesterday morning at her hotel and she told me that she’d call me around five, when I finished work, to sort something out. I waited, I waited all day, clutching the quarter. Five o clock came and she hadn’t called. Defeated, I packed up my things and put on my coat. My phone began ringing. It was her, roadside, police cars whizzing past sirens blazing, crowds shuffling, chatter.
“My parents have told me I can’t do anything till I’ve packed because we’re leaving so early tomorrow. We’re going to get dinner as well. I don’t know what you wanna do…”
I’ll be damned if I don’t see her again. I’ll wait. I’ll find something to do. Seeing her eventually was the only option. If only to travel to the other side of London just for a few minutes with her – it would be worth it. “Call me when you get to the restaurant. I’ll come meet you afterwards.”
So I went for a drink with Stone, checking my phone every couple of minutes and it annoyed him. “STOP CHECKING YOUR FUCKING PHONE!” I didn’t care. My stomach was in knots as I thought of all the reasons she wouldn’t be able to call me. Sorry, Rhys, I couldn’t get to a phone then it was too late. Sorry, Rhys, we had to get back. Sorry, Rhys. Sorry, Rhys. I even prepared myself for disappointment and drank more. Stone talked to me about all these ways I could fuck her. How to get rid of her parents. How to get into her room. How to leave afterwards. How to do everything but it was all gibberish.
“I don’t want to ‘hang out the back of her’. Jesus! isn’t it enough just to want to see her? What the hell’s the matter with you?” He didn’t understand me. “Haven’t you ever adored a girl?”
“What did you just say? Did you say ‘adore’?”
“Yes.”
“No, I haven’t ever fucking adored a girl and you shouldn’t either.”
I was always watching the bar clock. It was half seven. Now she is eating dinner… or paying for it… or maybe she hasn’t even found a restaurant yet… she won’t meet you… go home.
My phone rang and it was her.
“I’m at the hotel. Can you get here?”
“Yes! Pack your things. I’ll be there in half an hour!”
I smiled. There was no other expression. “IT WAS HER! I’M GOING TO MEET HER NOW. I GOTTA GO, MAN. SORRY, I CAN’T FINISH THIS PINT.” I danced on the spot. I said goodbye to Stone and got on the Circle line. Now the time passed even slower and it seemed hours before I made it from one stop to the other. Stop thinking, I thought so I began reading my favourite book. The words drifted in and then out of me. No use, can’t concentrate. Victoria! I got off.
The streets were cool, calm, people walked about in glowing darkness, busying themselves around bus stops and quiet bars. I walked amongst the tall houses of Fulham. There was a growing vine in my belly, bursting through my lips and opening a flower before my eyes. However the hotel was impossible to find. I asked everyone but no one really knew. One man even ran away from me and I shouted out after him down the street. How peculiar. I am infatuated and no one seems to want to help. I received a text from Stone: “Remember the goal is to get pussy – be powerful – mug.” I laughed. O, how I laughed. This buffoon didn’t get anything! How could he be so foolish?
I saw two men approaching me. Maybe they will know the way.
“Excuse me! Do you know the –”
“Rhys!”
It was Hannah’s father and brother. They led me to the hotel which was round the corner. Hannah was in the foyer, leaning against the window. Seeing her again, surrounded by the reflections from lightbulbs and streetlamps was a vision, a vision from which I awoke into joy. She said goodnight to her brother and father and good evening to me.

It was us two on the desolate streets of Fulham, wandering around smoking my hand-rolled cigarettes and feeling the others fingers. We walked in big circles and she stopped me from being run over. The car whooshed past and I had no fear.
We found some bar and ordered a pint each. On barstools we faced each other once more.
“How was work?”
“OK. I couldn’t concentrate much so I just started planning another mix CD for you.”
“Another?”
“Yes.” Her smile… I can’t describe her smile and the effect it had on me. But it was there, flickering across her face, pulsating with electricity and wonder. “I carry your quarter around with me now. A keepsake.”
“Why?”
“Because it is how far you will end up tomorrow – a quarter of the way around the world from me.”
I rolled her a cigarette and one for myself then we were outside. The shops fronts were all done up in gold and green. The night sky was painted with the colour of her hair. Back inside I told her, “I want you to have something. I already gave you my favourite song. I think you should have my favourite book too.” And I pulled it out of my bag, battered and worn, and placed it in her hands.
“Rhys, I can’t take this!”
“Yes, you can. Take my copy. I’ve read it so many times. I can buy another. Cherish it like I did.” She eventually took it and kissed me for it.
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about this starving writer who wanders round Oslo just going mad really. I love it. It influenced all my other favourite writers: Bukowski, Fante, Hemingway.”
As she read the back, I leaned into her hair and smelt it. I didn’t need to. She had washed it earlier and the air was full of its aroma.
She pulled out a gift for me as well: some of her photos and a note:

To Rhys - -

Thank you for
all those cigarettes
helping me escape my moody family
a soft hand to hold
and most of all,
your company

Hannah

I smiled and kissed her. “I am happy. At this moment, I am happy.” The idea seemed so distant to me but it was there as much as the furniture or the beer pumps. Happiness was there, radiating from the walls, immersing me.
We walked back hand in hand. We stopped to roll cigarettes and laugh, to kiss beneath the bow of tree branches, to sit on stone walls in each others eyes. The hotel approached like a giant mouth I wanted to avoid. She’ll disappear. We held each other for something near forever. Never letting go, kissing, my fingers gracing the feather-soft skin above her hips. Then we broke. And she began walking backwards, towards the hotel door. I stood helpless. She got smaller and smaller till I could no longer smell her hair. We waved and she walked backwards through the doors.
On the tube at half twelve I pulled out her gift. There were two sleeping men opposite me and a couple of others but apart from them it was quiet, the Central line moving like a snake out of the capital. I read her gift again then once more then once more. I noticed something I hadn’t before. Written on the hotel envelope, somehow previously unnoticeable was:

Rhys - - don’t be sad and please don’t miss me.
I don’t want to break your heart. – h.

It is too late, I thought and felt that tickle of tears tiptoeing down my cheeks. I read the notes again. I clutched my quarter.
My Nan was asleep and there was a hot water bottle in the guest bed. I took off all my clothes and folded them so I could wear them again tomorrow. I switched on the bedside light as passing cars outside groaned. I went through her gift and pressed it close to my chest, imagining that she was there. She wasn’t. Just six foot of warm air beneath the 70’s lampshade. Vacant sleep overcame me.

The sun was blinding through the curtains and I took a shower. The note was on my bedside table. I read it and shouted good morning to my Nan. The day was sadly sunny. My Nan fed me and offered me fruit and milk. “Do you have money for the day?” I lied, said I had plenty. “You got enough for the train ticket?” Again I lied. Last night walking back to Victoria station my shoes had finally broken. The leather came away from the sole (which already has a hole straight through it). I didn’t have a penny. All I had was the quarter. “No thanks, Nan. I’m fine for money. Don’t you worry.”
Outside I lit another cigarette and listened to some music, a song already ear-marked for her next mix CD: “O, I wish we could have talked all night, we had to be in Illinois by daylight and what I wouldn’t give to be your man…” All the while I clutched the quarter in my pocket with the fingers that weren’t holding a cigarette. The day was sadly sunny.

for_oceans @ 2008-03-19T12:03:00

2008-03-19T12:03:57Z

I think I'm gonna be sad,
I think it's today, yeah.
The girl that's driving me mad
Is going away.

Foreign infatuation,

2008-03-17T23:19:14Z

“You found me!” she said down the phone from her hotel in the gracious west end of London, near Fulham Broadway. I had called the hotel she was staying at and asked to be put through to the room the Guthries were staying in. We agreed that we would meet up the next day, a Sunday, and wander round London.
Sunday came and it was raining. Under my arm I carried a brown paper bag with a gift for her. I shielded it from the rain that came down hard with a ferocious wind. She didn’t know what I looked like. We had never met before. I knew what she looked like. I had seen her picture and had known she was beautiful and for that I had to make her a gift and to keep that gift dry. I searched round Victoria station at just gone two o clock for the café she was in. Finding it eventually with her sat in the window. Inexplicably she recognised me and smiled, waving. She kissed her family goodbye and we headed away from them. “I need to buy some cigarettes,” she told me and I offered her one of mine. She never bought a packet as I was glad to share with her. One by one they disappeared to our lips. One for her. One for me. Up Victoria Road she took a sip from my bottled drink. I was done with the drink yet awkwardly took another sip so that in some indirect manner our lips had touched. I was already sinking into her. There were no puddles, just the homeless sleeping in closed shop-fronts. “Let’s stop. I want to see your gift.” Outside a Japanese bank, she pulled my gift out of the brown paper bag, not once stained by water, and grinned at it. She thanked me and we had another cigarette. Hannah, that was her name, symmetrical and angelic, like some old forgotten word for grace. Fuck, I thought about myself, not knowing her and already quite helpless around her. She kept looking at me and smiling. Our hands kept touching and every time they did, I tingled.
We got to Westminster. “I know a pub up here.” The pub was busy and I remembered it was because of Saint Patrick’s Day.
“Have you met people from Livejournal before?” she asked.
“Yeah, quite a few. Some of them are weird. Some are great.”
“What are you reading about me?”
“Yeah, you’re weird.” She wasn’t. This darling, in my eyes, was perfect but I daren’t tell her so.
Seated in a pub we drank opposite one another. I was face to face with her and studying the colours of her face. Her dark brown eyes, a nose piercing, glasses resting on the top of her hair, which to me seemed like a falling fire of autumn. Her lips were so full, unintentionally inviting, and often broke in two, exposing pearly teeth. You fall, Rhys. You fall. The pub was busy with the Irish in green, kilts, holding drums & bagpipes, talking gaily and drinking stout. It was an old pub with little room and the bar staff would bump into you every chance they got. She drank as quickly as me. Why was I so impressed? Many men would flee from a girl that drank and smoked as much as they but it made me glad. She showed me her tattoos, black ink embroidered in parchment skin. There were five birds on a wire: her father, her, her mother, her brother and then her sister.
And so I could feel that weightless sense of being one revels in when in the company of someone you adore. That carelessness of the carpet stains, of the clouds, of the wind, overtook me. I was surrendering. I had no hope. I was tormented by Hannah, solid and imaginable, sitting in front of me sipping her amber beer.
We left the pub and caught the tube to Liverpool Street. She had to meet her parents at St Bartholomew’s Church at six o clock. All the pubs were shut as we made our way round Moorgate, Finsbury Circus and Bishopsgate.
I could no longer bear it. You will regret it. She will go and you will regret it. So without invite or being offered I took her hand. She smiled.
“I assume it’s okay for me to hold your hand?”
“Of course.”
Light glazed over every puddle and wet slab, the gale tore at our hair and our fingers till we found a pub. Everyone was watching football on big TV screens and we stood underneath them, speaking while everyone silenced before a goal. We spoke and our tongues were active and charming.
“Will you write about me?” she asked.
“I don’t know. My writing is all over the place these days – but if I do write about you and you’re my muse, that’s bad news.”
“Why?” she exclaimed.
“Because you live on another continent.” The reality deafened me. Why must she fly back so many thousands of miles – so many thousands away from me who wants her more than a continent could ever do? Our fingers entwined on the wooden bar and I was sad.
Down London Wall I did it. With the cars rushing past and the grey overhead, I pulled her lips to mine and kissed her softly. I breathed in, smelling her. Her lips swelled. She blinked and smiled at me. I could cough with passion. I was dumb and struggled hard to say anything after that. So small a kiss! Billowing lust into my veins, dry and hollow, now riotous with red blood and glory! I could not get enough and she didn’t resist.
Her family was not outside Bartholomew’s. They were nowhere to be seen. We got another drink in a quiet pub, just some gentlemen playing darts and cursing out loud. She photographed me staring at the beer-mat, contemplating her absence. Still no sign of her parents so we found a courtyard in the middle of Saint Bartholomew’s hospital. Benches surrounded an extravagant water fountain. We sat down, hand in hand, passing our last cigarette to each other. I was happy; that fact had not escaped me. As our fingers tugged incessantly, her knees against mine, lips meeting, the smell of her hair flourishing in my nostrils – I was happy. The water fountain gurgled and splashed in front of us. Allow me to die here. Throw me in the icy water and I will float and you may watch me but I will be happy.
Her dad called from a payphone. He took her into the church where a service was midway.
Ghostly Christian hymns wept through the stone building. “One second,” she told her dad as he watched us. “I’ll call you,” and we embraced in the church foyer with singing going on all around us.
I walked backwards watching her. Through the glass our eyes met one last time. We waved and then were gone. It ended.
I began thinking over everything. I was sweetly drunk on her. I staggered forward. I went for a cigarette but had none. We had gone through them all. She had taken the empty packet, dismantled it and put it in her bag.

Today I could not help but to think of her. At ten o clock, thinking became painful as I wondered what it would be like never to see her again. You are a fool, Rhys! She doesn’t feel this for you yet you are mad on her! Work wasn’t happening. I was reading her journal again and again with her voice in mind, I was looking at her photographs and feeling sick. O, great sea of London pavements, swallow me up and swill me.
I wanted to tell someone about her but no one listens or cares so I kept her inside, alone. “FUCK THIS!” I slammed my pen on the desk and left in a hurry. Outside the people moved to their place on the train but I was distant from them. Is this love? It cannot be. Love takes time. This is just a maddening lust! O, how I miss her. I sat on the train thinking more and more about never seeing her again and my eyes began to water. Look at you! My eyes were watering and I didn’t wipe them. You are a creep, a fool.
I got home and didn’t eat my dinner but went to my room to play guitar. I strummed sounds so sullen. There was a knock at my door. COME IN. It was my mother.
“What’s the matter? You haven’t seemed OK since you got home.”
“That girl I met yesterday – I really like her.” She felt my voice. “I mean, really like her.”
“Why? What’s so special about her? Is she funny? Beautiful?...”
“Yes, yes. She’s all of that.” I showed her a picture. “I just really like her.”
“Well how does she feel about you?”
“I don’t know.”
“She didn’t give any hints?”
“We held hands and so on, kissed. But that doesn’t matter because she’s going back to America. It was just great fun talking to her and being with her. She has to go back to America on Wednesday. I might never see her again.”
We stood in silence and I fingered some strings on the guitar.
“I’m sorry but I have nothing to say, darling.”
“I know, I know. There’s nothing to say.”
She put her hand on my back then left. I got back to playing guitar and singing with a voice that broke so often under the strain of my wretched emotions.

for_oceans @ 2008-03-16T23:25:00

2008-03-16T23:26:08Z

I had a wonderful day "but gravity always wins".

for_oceans @ 2008-03-14T23:57:00

2008-03-14T23:58:46Z

In Barrow, Alaska
the sun sets on the 18th of November
and there is darkness
for two months.

That’s how it feels not to write
There is no saviour
no hero on a horse
no religion for a man whose art has abandoned him

There is simply the hope for sunlight
but it doesn’t come.

That is how it feels not to write.
And I sit here,
broken and breaking,
waiting
for the sun to
burn me at last.