we must remember him…

… as he was in dying, not as he was in life. i nearly wrote a post about sz a few days ago, before people started arguing over whether or not it was still sad. and in a sense i needed to write it then. before the obits and the tributes started coming out. before he was canonised as a lovable larrikan. a bloke who loved to stir the pot. a big softy back at home. i don’t care for any of that shit. to a degree, i don’t even care about the man behind the persona. he probably was a big softie at heart, but he was a vile and violent person in his career, and really i have no sympathy for him. but when a few days ago i went to this article, i was seized by something. i wouldn’t call it compassion or empathy necessarily. but that image of him paralysed me. there’s something so distinctive about a cancer death. all the sitting beside them. it all happens so quickly, and then nothing happens for days on end. and that hopeless imperiousness of his posture in the photo. look at him. you can see straight through him. insofar as he knows anything, he knows that he is gone here. like every piece of information that we come to think of as known, it comes and goes. it becomes at turns unbelievable and ridiculous, then obvious and undeniable. it becomes all that he has ever known. it’s more concrete than his sensual experiences. he’s dead.

 

writing rongs.

so is that, like learning how to write, or how to read, or teaching people? ‘cos i can’t even read the newspaper,

it doesn’t sound right. i can’t follow it.

how do we read it? one breath at a time, i suppose. but with medication breaks, of course.

 

in light of recent threats, a summary:

a death in the family. one that came so fast and then so slow. so slow that it wouldn’t come, couldn’t come, never came. it just went. just like that.

a viewing, a eulogy forced out, that couldn’t come out, hauled out like a barb. (a bee’s not a wasp’s). a bearing of a paul, a narrow aisle. a guarding of honour, a hymn heard at the hanging of washing, a hymn sung. sweets eaten, taken home and left behind.

then down time. crisis, resolution. then work. saving money, coins and notes.

paul celan, the eyeless godmonster, drinking him at morning, drinking him at midday, in the evening.

a new café.

a haircut (do i really look like sinead o’connor?).

it really is a different world out here isn’t it? of course they’re all different, but here is different to my different.

plaster funhouse! the anticipation of sport.

- still no internet though edging closer, fridge broken again -

 

i think that ten is a nice round number

well, it would seem that naomi robson is leaving today tonight. this is a good round-up of her year. for those who want to see her heart-rending goodbye, go here.

the words fucken freak! come to mind. as well as a little long-winded. my favourite line is: i feel so privileged that you’ve trusted me with your thoughts and your ideas… and naomi, didn’t you return those thoughts and ideas to your fans better informed!

so long naomi, and thanks for the memories.

now go away and die. ten times over. because i think that ten is a nice round number too.

 

ecstatic demises

deaths by drowning:

- paul celan

- lao she

- virginia woolf

- gherasim luca

- le corbusier