sketch. thing.

paint again.

just thinking

There’s always a word in my head.
It’s usually a shade of deep deep green.
Like when you stand at the foot of a christmas tree
When it isn’t christmas
And look up.
Then a little wind blows around you.
It starts at your feet
And reaches your fingers
Then your hair
Which, often as not, gets into your eye,
Then it plays with the leaves.
The darker ones first.
And then the softer ones.
Where the light doesn’t reach.
And everything is waving.
Waving like it was forever.
Right then.
There’s always a word in my head.

Behind a red light.

The car was a yellowing white sumo – with blackened windows. The left window of the back seat was rolled half down – and inside was complete darkness except a confusing extension of the dazed orange spill from the streetlight a little way ahead. A hand – an immaculate white kurta sleeve and a brown set of fingers – moved up and down, up and down, lifting a cigarette to a hidden mouth. The tip glowed momentarily red like a laser spotter as the smoke was drawn in and the swirls of darkened shifting haziness that followed from behind the glossy paint of the car body drifted across the street and merged, scattering, into the shimmering floodlight outside.
The glaring sounds of an early night were dulled and insignificant – a small picture – an image, clichéd and predictable, had lent a sharp direction to the moment, as confused and meaningless as the reel it was a part of. And a hidden face, the most mysterious and exhausted fantasy in misplaced detached thought, had lent different brushstrokes of possibilities to that direction. A sharp aquiline nose or a straight marble-cut face, eyes still shrouded beneath a hood of simple impenetrable darkness, descriptions from the printed pages, read and reread over and over again, but never really and completely imagined – something from a story, an adventure, waited behind that window, behind the glowing stub of that exhausted cigarette that dimmed and fell and rose again to be lit up and smoke.
And then some fluorescent bar ahead beyond the jammed piles of directionless metal parts waved, or some red ominous light turned to envious green, and the image was lost in another cliché of time taking off again from where it had stopped, with the sounds glaring full volume again in sudden frenzied early night activity. The face, a last and shattering anticlimax, leant forward and looked out the window – a round small nose and stupid but happy ordinary eyes and a mouth that pursed up to say “finally” in a most normal and final tone.
Perhaps the face was never meant to be seen, but to stay that ‘hidden’ face of a half-priced paperback bestseller in toppling piles by the stacks of magazines – each just a little different from the next like jarring semitones. Or maybe the moment wasn’t in the face – but in the life behind it. And those behind all the other people in all the other cars, walking down the road, waiting under the streetlamps, all those who shared – however unknowingly and ignorantly – that single still picture that lost to the traffic signal. A detached, directed but at the same time meaningless infinity of little pockets of personal thoughts.

Fireflies.

Fireflies. For the fireflies.
Dreams and stranded gold dust.
For candy-floss and monsters.
Sweet draughts of trembling whispers.
Tomorrow and day-after. Forever.
Horse-shoe bootstraps.
Upside-down pineapple cake.
Destiny. Desire. Thimbles.
Light. Rippling dappled stretches.
Pine forests. Frosted glass.
Hoods and XXX. Catches of songs.
Forgotten confusion.
Another Simon. Another story.
Another tear in winter. Frozen.
Amen. From the third-floor terraces and water-tank.
Yodelling yesterdays again.
Amen.

the writer

I can build a story out of anything and everything.

A girl said that to me once. Her hair was long and dark. Dark like a clear summer night sky and the stars I think I imagined. The darkness faded into the dull steamy lights behind without any definite edge. Maybe that was because I was a little bit drunk.

She was, too. I’d seen her do away with five. And judging by the number of empty glasses in front of her, she’d been there for a long long time.

She said she’d been telling stories all her life. She had two kids waiting at home to hear them before they fell asleep, a guy waiting at home who’d heard them all his life. And she was sick of it. Everytime she finished a drink she’d smile and say she’d never tell another story. Then she’d break down and ask for another one.

I remember telling her I wrote stories too. That’s all I remember saying.

“Yeah. But not like me. No one does them like me. Not every goddamned day of your goddamned life.”

If I met her again, I’d tell her how wrong she was.

When I walk down the street, my feet falling in turns between the tiny cracks on the sidewalk that no one else can see, I build up my own story. Brick by brick, crack by crack, till the brilliant red-gold monsters that step out suddenly from behind the parking meters and scare me almost into putting my feet right on the cracks blend into the everyday grey-blue of the city and everything – the strange reptilian flying live machine wearing pince-nez, the old lady staring at vacation posters of “YOU GO TOO – TO PERU!!”, the vanilla ice cream dancing with a mad impish toothy grin on the child’s chin by the ice-cream van – swirls into one crazy mesh of abstract forgotten meanings that are so random that I can’t put them together.

By the time I reach my apartment, all that is one screaming chaotic mess of whimsical nonsense in a corner of my brain.

I heave my type writer over to the table by the window – it grinds against the uneven unpolished grains on the wooden surface – nails on a blackboard? I see Mrs. Eckle the preschool English teacher leering at me from behind her thick distorted lenses and I know that she’s really a black witch from the north who plays with black magic and satanic rites, often managing to summon a giant smoky THING that enters your dreams and stays there. Then she, too, joins the screaming chaos in my brain.

I sit in front of the black shiny machine , roll a sheet of empty inviting paper into it and place my hands on the keys, the tips of my fingers fitting satisfyingly into the depressions in them where the letters are painted in bold white.

And I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait.

Like I’ve never tried before. Willing it all to come through. It’s not a long way. Not really. Just out from the corner into the front, down through my neck, my shoulder, into my arms and out…OUT… through my fingertips. Like I’ve imagined and pushed and pushed and pushed so many times.

The ghost in the broom cupboard peeps out a head and stares at me with those horrible sympathetic circled eyes.

The winged gargoyle hunches up to fit into the small window frame and grins, its tail waving at me from behind its stone back.

The little wisps of fire-creatures – tiny little things that breathe and feed fire leap out like forgotten embers in the dead empty fireplace.

Oh, I can too. Make up stories out of everything and anything. But I wish sometimes I could tell them. For real. Not just that fading dull scream tucked somewhere into the back of my brain. They only come alive for me. Only for me.

So I close my eyes and imagine my editor’s fingers drumming incessantly on his polished mahogany desk. Like horse hoofs. And I think of people. Men, women and drinks. Lots and lots of drinks – making them happy, sad, angry or just bored.

Their hair is usually almost always black and their eyes almost always dull brown – like they were fake cartoons drawn by the illustrator of the evening weekly – no life. But my editor never notices that. He never will.

This time I have no problem moving my fingers over the keys.

Mr. Jack

“Mr. Jack” said the brass nameplate on the door. Not “Jack the Giant Killer.” Or even “Jack the Terrible.” Or even just plain “Jack”.
I looked up at the house. It was beautiful. Like something out of a magazine cover. A magazine called “Modern Architecture and Comfort” or something even more boring. Because the house didn’t breathe. It was plastic. Like the nameplate.
All built out of some poor giant’s millions that he’d counted over his dinner table. Towering columns of toppling gold. Gold. Gold. Gold.
I rang the doorbell. It was just a plain old doorbell. Not very plain. Probably the most expensive money can buy. But not shaped like a decapitated giant head or a single bloody thumb or even a butcher’s knife, as you would have expected.
An electronic voice called out from somewhere overhead: “Welcome. State your name and your reasons for visit. The door will be opening shortly.”
And this was supposed to be not only a house, but also a home.
“An old friend planning a surprise.” I said and the machine kept shut. A moment later, the door was opened by a smart little man in white who looked over me in a superior kind of way which I didn’t quite like and led me into the house.
The staircase shone. The ceiling shone. The floor shone. The carpet shone. The walls shone. The doors shone. The windows shone. Even the bald patch on the butler’s head shone as immaculately as Jack’s old hand axe… before each kill. He led me into a huge airy room and made me sit on a giant sofa as red as Bolster’s blood. A huge painting hung on the opposite wall. The cliffs of Cornwall.
I was gazing whimsically at the painting when a tiny cough made me spin around. It was a little girl with Jack’s green eyes. About four years old and tall for her age. A determined little chin and a funny little nose.
I smiled. “Hallo. We haven’t met before. I’m an uncle. Your father’s friend.”
The girl grinned suddenly, a wide smile wrinkling up her face and touching the green of her eyes with a bright twinkle. “No you’re not. You’re Peter Pen Person.”
I stared at her for a bit and then broke into a laugh. “Not quite. Peter Pan I’ve met. He looks nothing like me. We both specialize in broadsword and have killed a pirate or two in our day. But apart from that, we’re chalk and cheese, really.”
She shrugged. “You don’t understand.” Then she gave another quick grin and shouted: “Catch me if you can!” and slipped away.
I chased her around the sofa and across the width of the room around the doorway – and bumped into softness.
“Taylor. Good to see you after all these years.”
I stood back and surveyed my old friend and barely stopped myself from screaming, “Good God, man, what have you done to yourself??”
It was Jack. But he was old. And he was stooping. And he was FAT. Not fat. Obese. Jack the Giant Killer – the tall broad man shouldering his mighty axe – was Jack the Giant Killer no more. The nameplate was right. Jack was dead. And this was Mr. Jack.
“I’ve changed a lot, haven’t I?” He smiled. “And look at you. You’re still the same. Still wearing that stupid belt, I see. I wonder that still fits you. Last I heard from you was when you sent a letter saying you’d changed your name. From ‘i’ to ‘y’. We’re all of us having to keep up with the times, haven’t we?”
I looked around at the electric fittings and the central air-conditioning slits. “Yes, we have.”
“So what’s the news, Taylor? Cormoran still grumbling ‘neath his grave?”
“As usual.”
“And seven’s still your lucky number?”
“Seven in one.”
The girl had been peeping in around the doorframe, trying to catch my eye. Jack turned and caught sight of her and smiled, calling her in with a wave of his arm.
“Met my little girl, Taylor?”
“Fairy Princess of the Green Isle. Yes.”
The child tossed her brown curls back and laughed. “Uncle Peter played catch with me.”
Jack frowned. “Uncle Taylor, darling.”
“That’s a joke between us, Jack. You won’t understand.” I didn’t understand either, but that didn’t matter. I winked at her.
Jack patted her on the head and sent her upstairs. “So what are you really here for?”
I lay back on the sofa and crossed my legs. “Work.”
“What kind?”
“The big kind. This one’s got five entire villages under his thumb.”
“Taylor – ”
“I know what you’re going to say, Jack. You’re too old. But don’t you see, you’re the only one. I can’t do it alone – ”
“Taylor – ”
“Remember the Creature of the Thyrian Isle? The first time we worked together. We’d both be under some old grey nameless tombstone if we hadn’t.”
“The point is, man, I can’t do it any more. I’ve lost the touch. I’ve got a family now.” He gestured vaguely around the living room, the posh sofa set and the shimmer of the marble floor.
I sighed. “Very well then, Jack. I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
Jack didn’t see me to the door. He sat back on his sofa, a dreamy lazy complacent smile on his lips. As the door closed behind me I caught a brief glimpse of a pair of green eyes behind the shrubbery. They followed me up the drive and out into the street. Maybe I’d get that partner in crime of mine yet. It was just a matter of waiting another few years. And what’s another few years to your average immortal?

Nothing at all.

Someone once told me that there was a word that could fix everything. “Jellywurbleponkyboo... at least, that’s not it, but it’s quite close,” he said. “And when you find it, all your troubles are over.”
The doctor said he had something that sounded like ‘asparagus’. Asparagus. I always confuse it with broccoli somehow. I think I mixed them up in a recipe once. It tasted funny, but I think that was because the person I was talking about emptied a packet of baking powder in it when I wasn’t looking.
Anyway, that was a long time ago.
And the coffee was getting cold. I hate black coffee. But another person I once knew used to say it was about the only thing that wasn’t killing you slowly in this world. Turned out he was lying. But I still walk all the way to The White Swan and take my old seat by the window and order a cup every third Saturday of the month at six. It helps keep the monsoons away.
And when the rains come down anyway, little sparkling crystals of fire sprayed across the cracked frosted glass that used to have two painted swans arching their fragile necks across the frame of the doorway once and is now as empty as the old hat stand beside it, I ask for an ash tray and pour the last little bit of the coffee into the ashes, watching it swirl around the grey lumps that wither away at its touch.
I’ve always hated the rain. Ever since I was little and my sister would run into the fields shrieking with laughter at the first sight of those huge grey masses of clouds rumbling in, over the green horizon. Her hair would fly out, jet black swinging braids, behind her and catch the first few invisible drops of rain that fell from the heavens before she reached the scarecrow that stood in the middle of the cotton fields.
My hair was always an aching dull brown.
And the skies are always grey now. Even when everyone else says they’re blue. I can always tell. If you look through the clear glass of a window or at a silvery mirror opposite your window, the blue fades to dull grey and that’s the real colour of the sky. Not what you see. Grey like the smoke that used to rise up from the jute mill that they built over our farmland.
I’ve always loved that colour. It used to mean ‘change’ before but now it means ‘life’. Because I don’t want any change anymore. That used to be all my life was about once. When I woke up in the morning and looked out the little circular window at the last dull stars and before I fell asleep on the damp little pillow that always smelt of mustard oil, I used to pray, not to God because I didn’t think that was allowed, but to the world, in general, “let everything change… change… change.”
And one day everything did.
And I thanked someone and set out to find the perfect word that would fix everything. Only, I haven’t found it yet. I used to think it didn’t really exist. Not for real. But now I know it’s out there somewhere. Waiting for someone who really needs it. I don’t.
Because I’ve never really loved the rain.
And “jellywurbleponkyboo” will always be that perfect word for me. Because it didn’t change anything either. It only made change something I didn’t need anymore. Like my old wooden rocking horse. One day I’d got up and chopped it up for firewood because suddenly I knew that I had no need for it.
It made me realize the same thing about change. My father did, I mean. When he died a few hours after saying that to me.
It was just another of those things you like holding on to. That I liked holding on to. Only they don’t really mean anything. Nothing does, really.
Nothing at all.