Sinister: where i'm calling from

[Rachel Playforth]

well i have been a busy archel, moving in proper and yelling at my
boyfriend and trying to start various ill-advised new projects.  had a
meeting for one of these last night in the noisiest pub in brighton (a
hotly contested title) and after i gave up trying to hear people i
started drawing everyone instead (i was inspired to mention this after
kirsten's Reportage Back on her receipt portraits.)  i was surprised to
find that my drunken state gave me artistic talent when none had been
before - but after lifelike renderings of matt and myself i lost it
again and produced a highly insulting picture of our friend fiona, who
may now not be our friend any more.

i'm in a great mood today.  this always happens when i've been
unreasonably busy.  this is really stupid, but it gives me a sense of
properly existing - i hate those days when i feel more like lisa in
She's Losing It: 'she doesn't speak to anyone til 4 o'clock'.

meanwhile on sinister... there was talk of naming of cats and then
johnny posted with some ts eliot, and it was like the good old days of
the poetry parrot all over again.  except he didn't send it on to
anyone, but i'll pretend he sent it to me, because frankly it's always
hanging around outside my window anyway.

it's been too long since i thought about raymond carver, and i just
found this poem - which made me feel less alone in my chronic anxiety
induced by the beginning of 2002...

Fear

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.
Fear of psychological profiles.
Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.
Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes.
Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty.
Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.

I've said that.

by Raymond Carver
Copyright 1996 by Tess Gallagher

hm, maybe i'm not in such a great mood after all.  oh well.

yesterday i foisted the idea of a brighton meet-up on the folks at
#sinister, promising sex (well, SSX snowboarding on the playstation 2),
drugs (well, alcohol), and rock and roll (well, DDR).  what i'll do now
is keep mentioning it here until you all think it's as inevitable as
death and taxes and can't remember a time when you weren't going to come
to brighton on <actually i haven't picked a date yet>.

luv archel

ps. brighton meetup!

******************
Visit www.buzzwords.org.uk for the best new writing on the web.
Email submissions to buzzwords at bigfoot.com
<nb: site undergoing maintenance>


*******************
Rachel Playforth
Resources Assistant
Sussex Language Institute
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton
BN1 9QN
++44 (0)1273 678006
*******************

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  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!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+