Sinister: what are days for? days are where we live

[Saint Peter]

i built the house entirely of lego.  i knew it was a silly thing to do, but
it appealed to my sense of simplicity.  the walls were a pleasing yellow,
the roof an aldi shade of blue.  my friends had yellow faces, like the
simpsons but squarer and less defined.  they sat on identikit red chairs,
waving their claw-like hands at one another.  we didn't have a fridge.  i
knew i had to leave soon, because every time i used the toilet the water ran
through the cracks and onto the floor.  it didn't seem to trouble the
lego-people.  they didn't eat.  they didn't wash much either.  i tried to
point this out, diplomatically, but they just looked back, their
never-moving faces smiling curiously at me.

i think they felt sorry for me.  they sensed i wasn't one of them.

i miss them.

an interesting fact... if you take kirsten kenyon, and you divide it by
kirsten kenyon, the result is one.  however, if you take sarah clarke and
multiply it by the sunshine that hovvers on the edges of your mind, then
esme will lose her voice again and old mother shipton will never go back to

her cave.  the moral:- as barry manilow once opined - hang on to what you've
got, don't let go, girl, you've got a lot.

i don't know where this post is going.  i don't know where it has been.  my
head was so full of things to say, but my other thoughts all got in the way.
i wanted to tell you all a story, i wanted to sing you all a song, but these
are only dreams, you see, and my voice is quite out of key,  it chants a
chord of somebody, a person who might just be me but somehow doesn't seem to
be and sounds so very wrong.

the last time i met you all was in january.  you were saying lovely things,
you told me about the boy you knew at school, about the woman you loved,
about the smile within the emptiness, and you blew me kisses, even though
you didn't know me.  i would have liked to reply to you,  but my fingers
failed me.  and, now, i would talk about the dreams you had then, but who
wants to talk of old dreams?  they die, as they should, and numerous
nebulous numinous nonsenses fill their place.

do i love you....do i?  doesn't one and one make two?

no, not always.  if you take a lump of plasticine and add it to another lump
of plasticine all you have is one big lump of plasticine.  numbers are a
human construct and bear no relation to reality.  therefore, any theory
constructed from the use of numbers must be infinitely approximate.  this is
not the same as being approximately infinite.
but i don't think cole porter thought of that when he wrote the song..

sometimes i think you want me to touch you.

i reach out to the screen and imagine you're there, on the other side of it.
but all that greets my fingers is the hardness of a screen.  if i could live
in your head, for just one day, would i see the world your way?  and would i
like it any better?

there was an old woman who lived in a shoe.  she would have preferred a
house, but times were hard.  at night, the rain fell in through the
lace-eyelets.  she would lie, looking up at the sky, wishing she hadn't
beaten her children so soundly and made them run away.  cloud mounts on
cloud, until it seems there is another world, only twenty miles above, and
she wonders if life would be any different there, or if it would be just the
same existence, but colder, and greyer.  when the downpour comes, the water
falls in a steady stream onto her forehead, and it runs down her nose and
mingles with the tears on her cheeks.

ever felt like giving up?  i've felt like giving up.

i watched a programme about seal pups.  from the first time they climb in
the water there are sharks lurking underneath, watching them and thinking
about their next meal.  sometimes i think if i was a seal pup, i'd just sit
on a rock, and feel the sunshine on my fur.
but then i'd never know how it felt to dive through a wave.
last night my friend got hit by an iron bar by four men who were shouting
about the taliban.  he'll be okay.  physically.
i'm sure there's a metaphor in the above somewhere.

when i was little, i wanted to be an astronaut.  my mum told me that you
couldn't be an astronaut if you were british, that you had to be american or
russian.  sometimes i wish she hadn't told me.  i still dream of the moon,
but i know i'll never get there.

i'm going to make myself go blind tonight, i'm going to make myself go blind
tonight...i'm going to build a shrine for the wasted days.

i didn't build the shrine from lego.  i learnt from my mistakes.  i found a
record that didn't want to be played any more, and i melted it.  i curved
the sides up into an arch, and i threw a few remnants of used tissue across
the floor.  i built a wall of televisions, all set to switch channels every
five minutes -  a picture of a refugee camp in the congo is replaced by an
advert for toothpaste.
 inside the shrine sits a man.  he is the keeper of the shrine for the
wasted days.  his name is brendan.  brendan watches the wall of images, but
his mind is not on the pictures.  he is too busy wondering if refugees clean
their teeth.

sundays are dark days.  the long, dark teatime of the soul allows no refuge.

i should go.  i love you, yes you.  and i promise i'll write soon.

ian

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
 +-+               Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+