27/30! Rocks and Swords!

Given the unrest, and the absence of justice, those removed from the situation
had nothing to do but tend to their swan gardens and write songs on their lutes
about the sunshine and pose for daughereotypes with portions of grilled pheasant.

In the common areas, the constables and squires rode through the crowd waving
swords, taking heads off here, heads off there, and filing with the magistrate
when their shiny armor was nicked or dented.

Given the absence of solutions, or willingness of those with swords to listen,
ever, to the unsworded whom they swore to protect, those removed from the
situation danced on tavern tables and bemoaned the lack of civility from
those whose relatives and lovers had been beheaded and land ceased.
'Cannot they desist from such raucous thronging? They're disturbing my
path to the teahouse! It really is such a pity.'

Given the givens, a long stream of blood, rows of gallows, minted indifference
and calls for calm from those in towers, the priests exhortations about heaven
struck as simple and reductive, but hell we could believe in.

Soft Limits

“Okay, what the HELL?”
He jumped backwards, knocked the knife out of her hand. “I gotta go. Call you later.”
Crunching through leaves to his apartment, he held his bloodied arm, kneaded his
windpipe, reflecting that the smartest thing he’d learned those months in Corvallis was
that there comes a time where it is neither fun, nor sexy, and knowing when to say so.

It was a tepid autumn and his ears itched and scratched up shoulders chafed against
his sweater and he decided to call her back; he was a romantic at heart and all the renewed
tensions between the U.S. and Russia had him cataloguing the best spots to lie naked, bruised,
to watch ash hit the clouds with force.

____________________________________________________________________

This is a riff on a couple of pieces I wrote in high school (!) that for whatever reason, sauntered into my head today. The original piece was a bait and switch (I wrote a lot of those for a while) and the "what the HELL" signaled the switch. there's a oblique reference  to "Time to Destroy" in the last lines, but I fear it'll never be as awesome without lines like "I know that you like it when my troops are deployed. . . "

Sleep through the winter, awake in Spring-- adjust your eyes to the state of things

This morning Wood loaded up the car with kids and myself and we took a brief trip to the lovely Llansamlet retail park, where the Big Post Office is, and a letter I needed to sign for but wasn't In yesterday for, yes, you see where this is going, that letter, from a certain Home Office in Yorkshire, arrived.

They said "no." Like, in fact, I knew they would all along. I tried to communicate this to everyone, that Mozarts in fact does not and couldn't/wouldn't get a certificate of sponsorship which is sort of a vital fact when you are being sponsored. Granted, I didn't want to jinx myself with negativity or post the raw facts on the internet for obvious reasons, but I always knew it was a long shot. I knew that if I was granted leave to stay, it'd be Divine Intervention of some order, because the Home Office isn't given to leniency.

But any time I'd so much as imply impending departure, the person I was talking to would do that "Butbutbutbut. . . you MIGHT stay, they CAN'T kick you out" thing, which is sort of the grown-up equivalent of sticking ones fingers in ones ears and shoutsinging LALALALA. Or there was the (far worse) response consisting soley of immediately watered-over eyes and a quivering lip.

Which is all to say, there are a few quick decisions to be made and then lots and lots of explaining those decisions and whether its a year or two weeks before you know it I'll be gone.

I can't believe we've lost our cool

Started the day with a goodbye to two very old friends, opened my e-mail to bad news from home. Tonight I work at a local pub during the rugby match between Wales and England.
This is the beginning of the longest two weeks e-var.

on an up(?)side, I got a couple in www.heroinlovesongsjournal.blogspot.com. Apparently there will be a print edition as well. Credibility and all that.

September First.

Summer may not end officially for a few weeks, but with the onset of September hopefully there will be less whinging about how it "doesn't feel like summer." Because it isn't.

Speaking of: The Summer Project Which Never Had an Awesome Name.
I think I'll continue this until I've turned in my dissertation or at least until I have to focus all my efforts on editing. The posting of poems here weekly has kept me at writing and has encouraged me to dig out and dust off a few pieces that I'm a lot happier with now. I've probably produced almost as many poems I'm satisfied with in this three month period as I did during the two terms of Poetry Class. This isn't a comment on the class- it was great- but I do think just now some of the things I learned are catching up with me. Or the groove is more consistent. Or perhaps in two months I'll hate everything I wrote here. Either way, it'll continue at least for another month or so. Thanks for the advice and encouragement I've got from those of you who've been reading.

As for my disseration: I've got some ideas, not as far into them as I'd like. What I have so far are the following finished stories (titles subject to change:
My Ugly Twin A first person account of a deteriorating relationship between identical twins. Lots of unreliable narration.
Seagulls Flash fiction I posted here about the guy and his hat.
Bob and Janet Beat the Light or Have You Tried the new FenTech Navigation System? A couple gets stuck at a red light for twelve hours. You learn lots of stuff about their relationship, blah blah, characterisation. This is the one my professor likes. At the end they die.
I'll Only Fuck You If You Keep Your Mouth Shut or I Was a Sexy Teenage Cannibal and All I Got Was a Bit Part in an Ed Wood Film The teenage son of the aforementioned Bob and Janet and his girlfriend are gonna, you know. Do it. But they can't, because the son is too bummed out that his parents are dead. Also because the last time they saw him was when they walked in on him and his girlfriend about to, you know. Do it.

Other stories I've got in mind: Letters from the Third Checkout Line A girl who works at Tesco and has one of those adopt-a-orphan things going on (through the mail) meets a friendly hippie who tries to get her to join his protest organisation. Comparing/contrasting different types of political action and personal responsibility. I also think the organisation ends up spurring the apocalypse in the final story entitled. . .
The World Can End Just Let Me Finish My Pint First A fairly weak, not very well organised group decides to initiate the apocalypse here in Swansea. You'd think they'd be easily stopped, but people really just can't be bothered. A few try, of course, but they're not getting paid for this, you know? Terror and destruction reign, but what you gonna do, innit?

secret blog's adventures in travel, cold, callous reasoning

Just back from Scotland. Blogging comes before shaving or washing, apparently. Toothpastefordinner have a comic about that somewhere, or not because it's too obvious.

I had a good time in Glasgow/Edinburgh with Chelsea. I was feeling pretty under the weather for most of it with sneezing and the headaches that come from needing to sneeze but not allowing yourself. That, I fear, made me less awesome at being a guest/rekindling old acquaintanceships.
Nonetheless, I'm glad I went. I'm actually really glad to be in my room now, with no set comitted plans for the rest of the weekend.

my room. it's currently a lot of papers and wrapping and suitcase. Checking the mail has been futile for the last month, but the week I was gone I hit a jackpot.

___----_____-----_____

In Port Talbot, there are lots of industrial parks. Granted, trains always run through that part of town, and I've never been to Port Talbot but I've been by it a few times, as it lies between Cardiff and Swansea on pretty much any line you take.
There's a couple factories in particular that tend to strike me hard, especially in the dark. I'm used to smokestacks, I'm used to solid, opaque black smoke bunching up over buildings and I'm getting used to seeing it float over sheep pastures. Still not used to smokestacks shooting out bolts of yellow flame at all times. Against the night sky it's sharp and bright and makes the factory look like something from hell. Same goes for the stack with blue smoke.
Next to these factories there's something (I'm assuming gas/energy building) with all the pipes and round lights. . . it doesn't look like something from a horror/sci fi movie because I've seen a lot of those, a lot of movies like that have been made because of buildings like this.
Sights like that do a lot more for my pessimism re: the state of the world than any war-casualty reports. After all, the factories are new.

++++++++++++++++++
I'm already starting to feel torn in social priorities. I talked with Anne, my mother's friend and my adopted auntie as she drove me to Cardiff Central to ride up to Glasgow. How Tuesday is both the Gerald House (my "real" friends, for the sake of afterschool special) Christmas Party and the Framework Social (a open-to-public gathering for creative types in Swansea to meet and mingle-- i.e.: the "cool/fake" friends our hero cruelly betrays his "real" friends for only to realize What Really Matters in the End). . . cough, cough.

Yeah, I'm going to the Social. Time's gone on and I've found that very few people who'd play the "real friends" card care as much about you as they think they do.

It's not as cynical as it sounds, or it's more so; I'm here for a year and I want to do a lot. I need to meet fellow creative types who also want to do a lot. Very often this is not people in school. I think this is an Ecclesiastes thing; everything in it's time.

I'm here for a year and I gotta know about this stuff for a reason.