THEN I SAID

This is as close as I get, no kidding. Any closer it sort of slips out of hand, to one side or the other, mostly the other. Depending, usually, it’s like that, days like seasick swallows.

So the truth, what really happens is something I can’t see. What? The truth? This is as close as I’m allowed, I think. I don’t really know. This comparison, if that’s what it is. Afraid of most things. Stupid, isn’t it? And made up from what? And even smaller parts unknown, flutter out of reach, under the bed, under my fumbling hand.

I Sleep with books. Pathetic. About fifteen in my bed right now. Way too many. They curl up and find some warmth under an arm or a leg. Bastards. They fall to the floor and wake me up. Insufferable things. I grab one and read it till I fall asleep again, and wake up, in the middle of the day, with books around me, on top of me. Nonsense. Very depressing.

From that point it’s impossible to tell. From any point really. Looking at the stained ceiling. Nothing there, except stains. Damn stains, how did they get there?

This starts in a weird place. I’m leaning out a window. It’s a small tight window, and I’m smoking a cigarette, looking at a window-door-wholesaler-place across the road, and I’m drunk. Beer and vodka mostly. I’m quite happy just watching those big slow snowflakes fall and melt and the sound of the drain filling up. I suck the cigarette too hard. It starts to look like a lipstick. So I chuck it half-smoked, feeling bad for smoking here, out of this window, in my mother’s house. I close it, the window, and open the fridge, her fridge, and get another beer, and stagger back to the couch and start watching something stupid on TV.

Simon here. Just got back in. Been out cycling you see. For such a jet-setter I sure travel like the common folk. Nights are colder than just a few weeks ago. Dark streets a little darker. The few light-posts just that bit further apart it seems. It’s only me out there. I use the breadth of the street, doing large, slow, lazy turns. The crank makes a noise like a broken collarbone when I need to pedal. I have a small rusty chain for a lock. It’s a women’s bike a friend said. Down Montana, a left onto 6th, past the school and the basket court, a right onto California. I roll down the slight hill, one foot resting heavy on one pedal, the other bent, just touching the other; most of the weight on the handles.

I spent last weekend in a villa in the Hollywood Hills, by the pool, sipping vodka tonics and squeezing grapefruitjuice from a grapefruit that I took from a tree (when reaching for the grapefruit I knocked my head against an avocado, yes, hanging from an avocado tree) Apparently we went out and had dinner at a diner on Franklin, but I can’t remember the eating part, only the numerous vodka tonics and throwing a napkin at the owner (a feisty lady) Waking up I felt a heaviness I hadn’t felt before, a sort of hole in me, that pinned me to the soft bed, under the comfortable sheets (Egyptian cotton, if I’m not mistaken) and made me sort of worried that I was well. I didn’t have a headache, just felt heavy, heavy and strangely dizzy, probably drunk still. I threw myself into the cold pool, the heating was off for some reason, and heard a strong ticking from the pool cleaner that continually kissed the bottom tiles. Tick tick tick tick. There was no stopping that automatic pool cleaner from kissing those tiles. So I got up and lay down on a nicely upholstered sunbed, very dizzy, clearly very drunk still.

And now sitting in my wonderful and bright and simply smashing pad in Santa Monica I’m halfway down a quart of Bushmills and smiling as the election results are ticking in, announced on the radio, seen on the TV, whooped out on the WWW. I’m ecstatic, semi-stupefied, sunburned (it was hot today, 85, at least) and I read good stuff on the beach, some ironic Stendahl and the hysterical Proust (that guy must have been one hell of a bore, so connected and in-tune with his past, his memories. What about today M. Proust?)

So, If I could have voted I would have voted today, and voted well. I’m a hell of a voter once given the voting right and opportunity. Anyway, as the saying is these days, I do promise some more special privy Hollywood reporting as soon as I can get my ass over there and start sampling those bottomless vodka tonics. Must we all pray I don’t fall asleep again.

Yours truly devoted,
Simon Robertson

Old Man: Do you work at the doctor’s?
Young woman: yeah
How long you been there for?
Three months now
Are you a patient there?
Not yet
I work next door
Trust me you don’t wanna go there

Old man: What are you getting for christmas?
Young woman with two young sons: What are you getting son, don’t know yet, do ya?

(the young boys are eating cross-buns, drinking orange juice, dangling their feet, just looking around, holding the buns with both hands, taking very small bites, not really touching the juice)

It felt like an elevator coasting in my guts/the brakes grinding sparks/something to eat perhaps to chew/the deep breath the light crashing at you
curled up like a hollow tree you asked/when will I be able to/bite my cheek/throw that pillow/take this/sit down

through the chimney/whoa/new haircut/new friend/knuckle sore
/pretty please/my matinee is late and neither of us care

To keep an index of more or less important moments:
a phenomenology of neurological imbalances and consequent unease
ok I’m starting now: Interestingly someone started drilling the wall next door just as I woke up. It was already late in the day. For instance, the cats had settled down after fighting all night. They barely noticed me as I came into the room.

I forget things, all the time. It’s as if I forget for a living. I thought forgetting was supposed to be nothing, but it’s actually something. The coat was ready. Very nice. The arms no longer too long, but just right. One for the scoreboard.

I forgot where the barbershop was. One in the sack, behind my back. One all at this point. I found it though, and some celebrity kept being bothered by the staff. I thought: phew and felt very sleepy. Nice cold day. Nescafe. Question for ya: do you like dogs, and if so, what kind? Let us go then, you and I.

On the fifth floor stands a wireless router. That’s good. Buss number 8 is not a good option from Hackney to Victoria, much too touristy. Impressions of Remembrance Day (slapdash-style):
103: chiselled suits on chiselled men
102: beautiful sunshine through some trees near Westminster Abbey
105: The light makes everyone dignified
1029: really?
111: bagpipe makes me shiver, always
130: played by bearded corpulent man
101: for a while I was listening to Wilco, Big Ben blending in
&*^$: but then I thought about it and turned it off
100: the glorious dead

He lifted his head from the book, looked at the picture on the desk and sighed. From the kitchen downstairs the sounds of the early evening reached his study. They distracted him. Bottles being opened, chit-chat, laughter.

The smell of perfume followed the staircase to his room, a breeze above the mundane. Visitors: his aunt, his sister, his mother. Friday evening with the promise of gossip; tall tales and upbeat faces. Friday night, early still, and expectation and restlessness overpowering him.

He put his head back down to the book, determined to win, but he knew he was losing, and so he would soon open the door, descend the stairs and join his family. Another weekend in the making.

Hamburg Airport. A woman, slightly red hair, is emptying the trashcans before she puts on some yellow latex gloves and picks up two paper-cups of coffee. The girl next to is Russian, she talks on the cell-phone. Long distance? This little kid is sapping some revolving doors of their playfulness and his mother’s patience. The floor is shiny smooth and someone standing in the distance is reflected full length, floating, levitating, lighter. The kid has forcefully been removed from the revolution he so enjoyed. His mother carrying him head down, shirt and hands dragging along the shiny floor. His navel looks funny.

He said I should drive. “OK” I said, “but I don’t like your clutch". “What do you mean
you don’t like my clutch?” “Well it’s just no good, it’s all burned up and makes me nervous
at lights". “whatever, just drive, I’ll tell you where to go".

Off we went, him and I. I didn’t know what he was thinking, if he was thinking at all. But
who cared at this point. Who damn cared about thinking anymore.

I revved the car onto the freeway and it obeyed, took the road in its stride, you might say.
Past some old trees and some old houses, old as hell. I started feeling better. The sight of
old houses doesn’t matter much when you’re driving.

“So what do you think?” “Are we gonna be alright?” “I don’t know “, I said.
“Turn on the radio, will you?”

In his essay “The German Reporter", Douglas Coupland sites the following lines from Truman Capote:

As for me
I could leave the world
with today
in my eyes

Coupland says he wrote these lines on an old t-shirt he used to wear and gave it to the German reporter, hoping the lines would seep into his bloodstream, and then into the heart of the ghost of his own former self .

I put the book down, holding it sort of weakly, lying on my bed in the house I grew up in. I was staring vacantly into the air, dust particles arrested in the autumn sun. I don’t know, I seemed like a ghost to myself, but I knew how he felt, and it made me want to go to Vancouver.

What’s with sitting in Germany and thinking about Stinson Beach?
Thinking about the shark-attack that occured in 5 feet of water, at dawn. There’s a little motel just up from the beach: Sandspit. It has a fake fire and nice chairs. I walked to the beach barefoot. Got dirty. The local shop sells Bushmills in three different sizes. Handy.

If you want to, you can drive there from Monterey. Monterey, where you can lie in the pool at the The Monterey Bay Lodge, at night. It’s blue at night, the water, lit from underneath. And above, the Magnolia trees filter the moonlight, and the sound of jets landing.

then I said: what will tomorrow bring?
And they told me it would look like nothing I could ever imagine,
that I could only do what I was already doing.
And by doing it, I would invent the future.