Buying a lull in the crossfire with your last dollar

I was floating around Los Angeles for two and a half months. It was the first time I had been unemployed in over 12 years. Officially it was a long holiday, long vacation, more than just a career gap; a change of life, total, absolute. I needed it. London had run it's course. Good years, easy years, party years, but it was time to move on. I threw the dice and lit the fuse on my life there. I was headed to Australia on a sponsored resident visa thanks to my brother. On the face of it, it was a dream ticket anyone would be jealous of. I was just happy to be getting out of the rain.

So I sold up everything I owned, which wasnt that much, I had already gone some way to emptying my life out after my 7 year relationship had gone down the tubes a couple of years before. The money from the house I had put away, it was all I had, anything before that I had put up my nose. London had been an 18 year party only some of which I could remember. That was the 90's for you. I bought a ticket to LA and went to stay with my mum and her boyfriend in a flat in Century City that overlooked the Fox Studios. My family were scattered round the world, we had always been adventurers.

I did the whole tour thing, even spent a week or so clubbing, but then thought better of it when I realised the budget was getting hammered. I cycled up the West Coast some 180 miles camping as I went, it was solitary but a worthwhile experience all the same. Then I was back to LA, and in coming back I realised I had fallen in love with the place. I had found an actress too. But she had a life, and I was just passing through, and though we fell in well together it was kind of hard to see it going very far. Sure, it felt like love but then what could I do. I was strapped into a ride I knew only a fool would get off of before it finished.

Los Angeles had been good to me. You could holiday in a place for maybe a month but after that you are starting to become part of the furniture. After that month a part of you begins to try to lay roots, it is beyond your control, it is nature working from inside of you and it actually makes things kind of difficult. You get a little confused. And that is when a place can start to beat you up a bit. A place like LA is tough. Tougher than I had expected, crazier too, but I still loved it maybe because I recognised myself in her.

I guess if I was a bit better with strangers I would have made a bundle of new friends out there and had a multitude of things to do. As it was I generally dont like too many people, they rub me up wrong or vice versa, so it takes me usually about a year in a place to really find a pal or two I can hang with and feel relaxed around. It isnt a bother. I am a private person anyway, I write, I do my thing, I dont generally suffer loneliness too hard, I can always find something to do, to throw myself into. But those last weeks in LA brought up some things I had forgotten;

Times when I first left college and was unemployed living in the back room of a house in Oxford spending my days alone writing music, dreaming of the day I would be an internationally famous rock star with a pool, a studio and a load of busty models helping me pass the time with a good cocaine habit. I made it to LA at least, but that was as far as the dream went.

So, I sat days out on the balcony in those last few weeks in LA and let the hollow feeling in my chest work on me some. I hadnt felt it in all those years. When the reality of being unemployed, hungry, lonely, and growing aware that the dream has turned into a dirty dead-end with nothing but rats and garbage to keep you company. I was clearly more of a bum than a rock star. In the end something saved me; A woman. They always came to my rescue with their beauty, and light, and love. She got me on my feet, got me eating right, got me back feeling some sense of pride, because that hollow feeling sucks it right out of you. It kills your self worth dead, and when you hit that bottom you are in no fit state to get a job; life is too terrifying, you are bound for the mad house or hell. I got lucky. A woman saved me. 3 years later I was earning a living, enjoying it even, having money was new to me. I had to sacrifice the dream of rock stardom of course, but I guess you sell your soul to the devil, or to a corporation in life. Either road you dont get to keep it.

I puff on a cigarette and watch squirrels bounce along the wall that bounds the movie studios. Over the other side I can just make out Nicole Kidman's prefab. She isnt in it. I check daily when I hang out there to smoke. Over that wall it seems to me are the 'haves', those who make it. Over that wall is where dreams get built into set designs and eventually into movies. Over that wall people's dreams become reality for cash. Stardom exists over that wall. Over there it is real.
I puff on my smoke, and watch it billow up to tuck under the patio above me and disappear into the breeze that flows gently down this back alley. The eucalyptus trees shimmer in the afternoon sun, I feel pretty good because I know I can still make it. 2 months out here showed me I still got something that can pull things out of the world, pull them together and make a life. Still, a shame to be leaving that actress, she was good for me. I hear a crow caw and look up into the trees. See a plane going by over head, hear drills building sets in the Fox yard someplace. I feel the hollow ache inside my chest and focus on it a while. It makes me sigh, long and deep. Makes me feel scared but I am able to control it, it doesnt overwhelm me. I dont know what the future holds. I am on a dream ticket and I keep reminding myself of that. I still got money left, I am not on skid row today, nor tomorrow. I still have some time to hold out from those dirty jobs that rob you of time, and energy, and life. Still holding out a while to think here, to smoke, to let the dreams inflate inside me and hold out against that hollowness, that fear.

I look over that wall, seems to me they are all pretty busy over there turning dreams into reality. It sounds like hard work. I think about climbing over it to join them, grab a spanner, or a fax, and make like I am really busy doing something, going somewhere. But I figure I will just sit here, smoke and enjoy the Los Angeles sun a while longer. The squirrels watch me and I smile. I think we understand each other.

The Veterans

I sold out all my morals. broke every code I could. It took a few years. I didnt even know it was my intent to do so until I managed to hit some kind of personal low. I was lying to people I liked, I was playing dirty games, I would fuck over anyone for personal gain and I would go to any lengths if I thought I could get away with it. I was cunning scum, so cunning, people didnt even know. I didnt fully understand what was driving my behaviour, but somehow I felt it was a necessary evil. I felt eventually all would be revealed, I wasnt sure why.

I didnt enjoy it at all but this didnt stop me. If your woman gave me the eye I would be in there, you wouldnt even know. If you bad mouthed me in a bar, I would be round the back a week later and when you came out, you wouldnt see it coming, wouldnt know what hit you. I wasnt interested in money, I wasnt interested in stealing material things at all. I was just interested in some kind of control of things. Knowing I was on top maybe. Feeling that the world was mine because I could take from it without anyone even knowing. Like a thief, like a pirate, I felt justified because the world took from me without question. I didnt use charm, I guess I had pretty much lost that along the way. Instead, I just bulldozed in with a sense of abandon so exquisite, that while I committed my crime, I cared for nothing. It was maybe some kind of high. I was getting high on debasing my own moral code.

Finally I had simply had enough. It was time to quit. Time to account and atone for my sins. I didnt think they were sins, I still dont, they were just the behaviours of a man who had let the animal within take over. I had done enough, I had stripped myself of all innocence. I was a veteran of the world. I had done everything. Now I had to figure out how to return.

Stopping wasnt so hard, it was just a case of letting the good in you rise to the surface again and take the reigns. It felt a lot better, things felt lighter, I could smile again with a genuine smile. I could like people again. There was just one problem; I had crossed the lines, it didnt matter that no one else knew, it was that the experience was in me, and that was something I would never be able to remove; The experience.

'I once killed a man' I told a girl who I had been seeing for a while, we had been getting to know each other and truths were sneaking out. I felt I was giving up far more than she but I didnt mind that. I figured people needed to cling onto the privacy sometimes to stay afloat, to stay safe from the sharks. I felt I might be a dangerous kind of fish though I didnt have cold eyes of black, still I belonged in the deep. I really wasnt sure what I was. I knew underneath my sickness I was a good, kind, genuine, person, but I also knew I had teeth and a bad habit that could get out of control on occasion and wreak havoc. Murder was no sweat to me if I felt it justified. She didnt understand this. She hadnt seen what the world could do to a person. Her life had been hard, but nothing compared to mine. She had no idea what crossing the lines meant. She was a doe. My words made her go quiet. I think she even felt a little afraid.
'I didnt want to but I had to' I said but it didnt help matters. She was looking edgy.
'Look honey, sometimes guys fight, we get forced into it and you dont get a choice, it is kill or be killed, I dont like it but I have to deal with the game when it comes around' I was getting a little exasperated. I wanted her to understand. I felt a heat in me, heat of annoyance. Innocent people had to know what those who lost their innocence were suffering. But she wanted to go home then, I could sense it. Drawn to me by my wildness, she had gotten out of her depth and now she was afraid. I looked in her eyes, I could see she thought I was a crazy man.

This was unexpected to me. I guess I thought I was some kind of hero. Truth was, I had sunk into low life ways and was marked by them. I was one of them. I didnt know how to heal the wrongs I had done. I was alone then, more alone than ever before and tied up with secrets I would never be able to share. I was finally one of the damned.
Well that's just great! I thought, What on earth have I gotten myself into?

I now had a shit load of enemies who would never let up. I was damned but worse, I was hunted and that wouldnt ever change. Life was a god damn one way street. I couldnt understand what had drawn me to seek out the position I now held. I was strong, sure, but I would never be whole until I found a way back to the beginning again. I wasnt sure it could be done. I had to figure out something.

I was sat drinking a latte in a Cafe on Third St in Santa Monica. I would sit there sometimes on the way back from the beach. I liked to watch the people passing by or the buskers doing their thing. It was an interesting street. A guy hovered beside me, when I realised he wasnt moving I looked up at him. I knew it was a beg coming and prepared to give him the look.
The look had gotten me called an asshole but hadnt gotten me in a fight...yet. It was only a matter of time but I was intent on being a good person. I was re-educating myself on moral behaviour. Even so, I didnt like to be begged from.

'You got a buck Mister' he said. normally this would annoy me but I hadnt been expecting to see a Vietnam veteran when I looked up. This made things a little different. I guess everyone has their story but we all know these guy suffered genuinely so they come with a stamp of authentication where being a deserved bum is concerned. Even so, as we know from dog training, it is bad form to give charity for nothing, a guy should be given the right to earn his money. So I said,

'Maybe, but it will cost you a story'

'What do you mean a story maaaan.' he asked looking a little annoyed.

'I give you a buck for your story' I said.
'It's worth more than a buck motherfucker' he said.

And it went on like this for a while until we agreed a price of 5 bucks and he would tell me something of interest.

'Where's your family?' I asked him. He looked annoyed but I could see he wanted that 5 bucks. I felt kind of bad but then at the same time I didnt. He had started this whole thing.
'Dead' he said blankly.
'Why are you on the streets?' I asked him
He had a flat cap army style, camouflaged pants and a jacket with some patch stitched on it with a dogs head I couldnt quite make out, I guessed he probably hadnt changed since the war ended. If indeed it had ended for him.
'Did you ever kill a man?' I asked him and he prickled. for a minute I thought he was going to hit me so I braced myself. I hoped he wouldnt just break my neck, somehow I felt I almost deserved it for asking him something so personal, so likely to cause a guy to go nuts. I was good at such questions. The punch didnt come. He just screwed up his face. I felt for a moment he looked like a kid when he did it, looked innocent, hurt, childlike, but I knew the man in front of me could kill, my instincts sensed it. I was fucking with some very dangerous and possibly stupid material but I needed to know. He didnt answer. He just struggled with something inside and was about to move off when I said
'I have, thats why I asked, I am sorry I probably shouldnt have'
He stopped moving and looked back at me then, looked into my eyes. The penny dropped I could see it.
'You seen some shit too aint you boy?' he said
'I guess' I replied.
'So how come you do so well for yourself' he said motioning towards my cycling shorts and freshly washed top.
'I dont' I said 'I am fucked up on the inside'

Some people moved around me to get to a table a little further away, they were well dressed and gave the Vietnam guy a wide berth and a dirty look as they did so, they didnt like him being in the cafe garden area.
'Go fuck yourselves you prim uptight assholes' I said to them. I wasnt quite sure why, I guess I was getting carried away with trying to bond with this guy. I didnt know why I was doing that either. I was just letting something loose. I was a little scared too.
They looked shocked and left the garden. But I felt no guilt. I doubted they had ever had to do anything in their well formed lives other than go to the bank to withdraw cash for a new car/house/face lift/cock implant. Experience spoke. You didnt pull faces like that at people who did time in Vietnam. They were the whole reason you were living your fat assed life in cafes not being frogmarched by Nazi's or Korean Militants round a concentration camp while your wife was impregnated and your kids cut up for DNA experiments. Shit happened. The world needed educating. I felt I had been surprisingly kind in retrospect. The Vet hadnt noticed, he was clearly used to being abused. I didnt much care anyway, I was in this for my own reasons.

So we sat there maybe an hour. He told me some shit about holding his best friends head in his hands after they set off a booby trap bomb. Told me about his dream of fighting for his country and how different the reality had been. He wasnt sane, the guy had some seriously shit stuff loose in his head. He had been lower, seen darker stuff than me and I gulped in a few moments. He tired of my questions and the effect they were having on him and demanded his 5 bucks. I gave him ten. He didnt say thanks, he didnt have to. I didnt say anything either. I just wanted to meet someone more fucked up than me. I felt better then. I knew maybe I could make it back somehow.


'The Buddha talked of morality as being the true beauty of a person.
It is the goodness that really shines on the inside of a person.
This is one of the greatest contributions we can give to the world,
for our non-harming offers the gift of safety and trust to all those around us.'
- Joseph Goldstein

Last bastion of the Gods

We drove along listening to the radio, it should have been raining but it was a beautiful clear sunny morning. I thought luck was with me then and I think I may have even whistled a little. Things were good.
She was sad, she hid it, but I could feel it in my gut, like a tension, like there was some kind of umbilical chord that went between us. It got like this with any girl, it was sex that connected us up. I wondered how guys could keep three or four relationships going at once, it must have worked to suck them dry, must have felt like they were being punched. How in hell did they fend off all that emotion coming at them down that tube? Connected by the gut to four women, there were some tough ass guys out there, I concluded.
I struggled on with mine, the sense of impending freedom worked like a ballast against the pressure she was pushing out on me. It wasnt her fault. People were emotion, and that pressure cut into the open wound. This is how fights started, I thought.
I turned the radio up a bit to distract myself from thinking about it. I was intent on having a good day. The sun was shining, it should have been raining. I wasnt going to miss England very much.

We joined a queue of traffic,
'Looks like we arent the first here' I said.
'Are they normally this busy?' she asked, it was the first time she had been to a car boot sale. It was my second.
'Maybe' I replied.
As we waited in the queue that slowly edged forward one car at a time I listened to the radio. It was Radio London or something, not one I usually listened to. The DJ was talking a lot,

We want to hear from you if you have any special places you go to in London, spiritual places, places that give you that sense of peace. Give us a call and tell us about them. We are looking for places of refuge in the city. Spiritual places. The number is .....

'That's odd to hear on the radio, is this a religious station or something?' I said
'What is?' she said, her head was bobbing sideways, I guess she was hearing a music of her own, waiting for the next tune to come on. But it had interested me. I fumbled about in my bag and pulled out my mobile phone, then waited for the DJ to give the number out again.

I rang the station and spoke to a girl, had a quick chat, and she seemed eager for me to talk to the DJ. It felt strange, I realised I wasnt used to people wanting to hear what I had to say,
'Mark, can we ring you back I know they would like to get you on air, you have some interesting stuff to say.'
'Sure, no problem' I said a little shocked. I gave her my number.
I was standing outside the car as it was slowly edging towards the entrance. I got out because I knew the radio would feedback otherwise. I tapped on the window and she rolled it down.

'They are going to put me on air' I said.
'Wow, cool!' she said and got all excited. I felt impending fame and respect. Spiritual shit, yea that was my forte.

The DJ came on and I was surprised at his politeness. I guess Sunday morning DJ's arent so fickle and feisty as the other ones. I always thought radio dj's were defeated people, they generally seemed bitter and sarcastic. Reminded me of small terrier dogs with ginger coats, I had no idea why, maybe it was the incessant yapping.

'Hey Mark, how are you doing today, thanks for calling in. So you have some spiritual places you go to in London when you want to get away from the city right?' He paused at this point. I figured that was my cue.
'Hi, yea that's right' I said and paused the same. I felt it had begun well.
There was a brief silence, during which I thought that it must be pretty tough being a DJ. I could have thrown any word into it all then, good or bad, could have ruined his day. I thought better of it.
'Do you want to tell us about some of them' He offered, just to confirm to me he was waiting for me to start talking.
I began slowly, I thought he might butt in and take over but he didnt, he let me talk. So I got up to normal pace.
I listed a couple of sights like Neils Yard and St James Church in Piccadilly. Explained why I felt they were relevant. I was saving the biggies for last but then I got intrigued by how many people were listening. I asked him but he swerved answering. I wondered if it was just me and the girl.

Then as I was about to tell him the last few, I had a sudden flash and it dawned on me that this was exactly the kind of mistake people made. They found some place; a paradise, a heaven, a secret garden and in the desire to share it, they told someone about it, that was the beginning of the end. History proved this, and it hit me then that I was making a big mistake. I no longer wanted to talk. Fuck fame and getting off on my own knowledge. This was an error.

'Mark you said there was one real special place, you want to tell us about that' he said.
'Look, I dont think I can' I said. There was a silence.
'Come on, I think it is important to share these things with people.' he said.
'I did,' I said 'but now I dont' there was another pause. I felt I might be annoying him.
'The trouble is that if I tell your listeners, for all I know you have a million people listening to this show right now, then the special place is going to become like a tourist spot and thats going to ruin it for me. I am sorry, I think I have given you enough.' I thanked him and put the phone down. I could have just ruined the last bastions of refuge in this stinking concrete jungle.

I got back in the car. she looked at me with a shrug as if to say, what was that about.
I just smiled. I didnt think I could have explained it. The car got the wave from a man with a beard and dirty clothes who stood on the gate, and we pulled into the field to unload. I was selling the last of my worldly possessions. I was leaving England, I was leaving her, I was leaving everything. The sun shone, it was a good day. And there was one last spiritual bastion still standing that the enemy didnt know about.

Fame, Infamy, Success, Obscurity, Life

I was a musician, or so I thought. I dont fully know how it happened, I guess the path found me and I took to it young. By the time I woke up, I was halfway along the precipice carrying a guitar plectrum, a bottle of whisky and looking for signs of a nearby coke dealer. That was the mark. You didnt even have to make music, you just had to act like you knew what being rock and roll was all about. I think I pulled that off well enough.

But where it all goes wrong, is the day it dawns on you that you really actually want to make it in the business. Then whatever feeble talent you were clinging to in life suddenly becomes all you have to work with. Then, being rock and roll matters a lot less than making it. At least it does when you are hungry, lonely and utterly dispossessed. This is the moment you become nothing less than a prostitute. You get on the game, you try to sell what you have, you start to go crazy. It isnt enough anymore to lie in the sun, carefree and happy, not a thought in the world, no money, no love, no home, no job. These things are no longer a freedom, but rather something you fear.

Sane men return to the fold at this point. They give up, call it all a 'phase they went through', marry the first girl they can find that will have them, squeeze out some pups and struggle in a 9 to 5 until death comes to save them from the dishonour of failure. Some even make it, buy houses in expensive locations, mingle with friends at hi-falutin parties, go home, eat well, watch TV, work hard, for all I know they even get some enjoyment out of life, they sure seem to be smiling in the brochures I see of perfect lives, of perfect people.

A real select few actually make it in the industry. You may see them on large posters, on videos, in music stores, in limousines, at parties, in the newspapers, on the stage, but these people are no longer artists, they are business men and women. You have to be if you wish to remain in the industry, remain a part of it.

I was 37 before I really came to accept that there was no such thing as 'making it.' The whole illusion was a sham, a lie, a fucking farce of grandiose proportion. I dont know the exact moment it hit me, but I know I was K.O'd when it did. I guess I staggered about the ring for a couple of years after that. Punch drunk and hearing echoes of promises of success, dreams of riches, fame, infamy. Pretty lies finding my ears and dragging my attention out of the numbness for a moment. Whenever I came to, invariably I was alone in a place I didnt recognise. I was in shock. Here I was on a journey to nowhere. The tough thing was, I had been born to do it, really there was nothing else I could do.

So I took to writing, journals mainly, diaries of my thoughts. It passed the time and made me feel like I was serving some kind of purpose on the planet. Then it started all over again. I started thinking I could make it as a writer. I dont know what got into me but I sent some stuff off to publishers, and excitedly awaited the return post. Sure enough it came but it was hardly surprising that it would prove to be a dead end. I should have known. I guess I was more deluded than I thought. Still just a naive kid at 40.

Death was a craggy faced hag with long dirty fingernails and a smell of fish about her. I knew this because I had seen her face over, and over again on the nights the whisky took me down or the cocaine badger gave me a hearty kicking. I could hear her wings beating about my head, cold shivers rattled my soul. I was close enough to know that it was over. I considered suicide, not in any normal way, just by maybe pushing it with any of the poisons one night, and seeing what lay over the edge. It wasnt far away, and it was easy to find. Any night. You just had to look for it and be willing to go there. Anyone could do it. But maybe that was too easy. Maybe the pain wasnt really painful enough, the loneliness wasnt quite lonely enough, the shit wasnt quite shitty enough. I didnt dare believe it was my own strength of spirit that stopped me, I know that would have been a lie; I was nothing more than a weak spirited artist, that is what made us artists after all.

So I stuck it out. Cleaned up a bit, retired from the rock and roll illusion I was making of myself. Dying as a nobody I could handle, being a pathetic caricature of myself, I couldnt. I did a load of bad things, pissed a load of people off, had a few tantrums about my life, and then left the city I had been looking for my pot of gold in the last 18 years.

I flew up high, high enough to feel the dust drop off my wings and the roar of the wind cleansing me as I soared into some kind of freedom. It felt good, real good, I let go of the whole damn charade. My mind cleared, I levelled off. I hung up there, solitary, wise, smiling, aware. I looked down and the world seemed like a crazy place, people looked like ants, the whole damn game was a load of bollocks, and I knew it. Even so, it was my world, it was the only one I knew, for some reason I belonged there.

I stayed up in that clean air for as long as I could hold it. Time was my enemy but the gods held her off just long enough for me to breathe. I breathed. God, how I breathed, and it felt fresh for the first time since I was a kid. But I knew stuff now, I was no innocent child. I could feel the pressure of fate, of destiny, of the call, and I knew it was time to go, and there was only one place to go. Back down into the soup, into life, into death, into the game. I shut my eyes, prayed, and closed my wings for the fall.

Life after death in Hollywood

You can walk her streets and you can suck in the history from the glaze and aura that gets repainted every year, sustained by those that strive to maintain her golden beacon of light; the starlight that draws new moths to the flame. It isnt evil per se, it is just that too much sugar inevitably drives people crazy. You can follow star maps and feel your own heart sparkle for a moment, thinking maybe at any moment you might see one, could be eating at a restaurant, shopping, or they might just pass you in the street like a regular person. This is their town after all, this is what you came here for. A little fix. A little rush. A little taste of the drug that feeds us all, it has it's spring here, in Hollywood.

There is something in the earth here, maybe Los Angeles is an angel after all, an angel feeding all the suckling mouths of her children with her own kind of divine blood. Every soul here inevitably becomes a vampire, but then who is to say that is such a bad thing, and show me somewhere on this earth where people are free of need. It is just that here it gets amped. Could be the fault line, or the blood of past atrocities that dripped from dying souls into the earth beneath my feet even as I write this, the earth does not forget even if we do.

I dont know, I felt myself glide in my own kind of carriage along her streets, down to her ocean, out to her wilderness reaches and back again. Looking, looking for something, the echo of a good detective movie or maybe the realisation of some Gothic romance that carried in my soul, I wasnt even sure. I felt something in every step I took, something new, something enlightening and sometimes even a little dangerous, I realised that even though it was a dream, it was real enough to kill me if I took the wrong corner at the wrong time.
Remember this is real.
I kept trying to tell myself, but it was impossible. I just couldnt get it into perspective, out here, I no longer had any idea what real was.
I knew then I was falling and there was nothing to cling to, but I wasnt such a novice anymore, I wasnt so afraid of life, so I let go.

Death didnt really matter all that much, whatever you did, ultimately you were reminded that you were still nothing. That was the whole point, being nothing meant you could be anything you wished to be. Even the greatest; the Babylonian gods and goddesses, they were just soft bags of shit, piss, blood and confused emotion if you looked close enough. Every single one. Jesus! What the fuck was I doing in Hollywood? I wasnt sure if I should be concerned. I was on my way to Oz and the irony was not lost on me.

I wondered where it had all began. I figured it was like a disease, if you could just work out how it had gotten into you and where it had started, you could maybe work on finding the cure. I came across a book one morning as I sipped coffee in the house of a lover that she had brought to me, I felt possibly by fate but wasnt sure, the book was called Hollywood Babylon. I opened it and read the first few chapters.

hmmm, I thought, just as I had surmised

It seemed it all began with a Babylonian set design of devilish proportions. circa 1920. The first true Hollywood death was a starlet by the name of Olive Thomas. She had, of course, been thought to be the perfect American girl child. Little surprise she was found dead of an overdose after spending a night in Parisian clubs with the mafia earnestly trying to score heroin for her lover, or was he husband, I cannot remember and am no longer interested. I turned the book around in my hands. Reading it somehow felt like looking for suicide. I noticed the publishers address was 666 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Does no one ever realise that Revelations was a self fulfilling prophecy? I sighed a little exasperated. Sometimes I felt I was the only person on the planet that understood it was in constant revolution and all the mad fools aboard her were just laughing uncontrollably desperate. I wondered if we didnt all deserve to die for our sins, not against each other or some invented god, but against the truth. We shied from it because it burnt us. The lie was our protector until Death would come to set us free. We liked death, liked to watch it in the amphitheatre or upon a movie screen it didnt matter. It fed us, like it or not, that was true. Every single one of us was ultimately a vampire, the thing was that only some of us understood this while still alive.

I sipped again on my coffee and stared a little soft eyed out the mesh window into the dusty yard and the sunshine of a hot California day in June. Two cats played with each other, all claws and teeth, nature playing, training her own for the kill. I wondered what would get me ultimately. I tried not to think about it, my heart was racing with the coffee and I didnt need the stress. I didnt have long left. I wasnt sure if I was glad to be leaving Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, her streets, her romance, her poor, her rich, her crazy, her prophetic, her divine, the angel, the city of lost angels. I wondered if she would let me go.

I sipped again.
The cats played.
I felt inspired to write,
but time was never going to be on my side.
I tried to imagine what came after all this,
but like always, I just drew a blank.
I felt in control, but I knew something else was throwing the dice.
It was always going to be this way so long as I was here.

I sighed, then stepped out into the sunshine to let her warm me once again.

Time becomes a bored lover

He lay on the couch looking up at the ceiling, his eyes lazed over the mottled shapes created by tainted magnolia long overdue a repaint. He tried to think of something to do, something worth doing but nothing came to him. He wasnt exactly bored, he just felt maybe he should be doing something. He continued to look at the ceiling and wait.

He figured it had been now maybe 30 minutes since he took position on the couch, he moved his head up and to the right, he could just make out the small clock on the mantlepiece.

11:30

He was right, it had been about 30 minutes. As his eyes moved back to find the shape on the ceiling, the one he had felt looked a little like a small bird or a penguin, he caught the reflection of the couch in the dark green hue of the switched off television set. He swung his glance back to it and tried to see himself, it appeared that he could only see the couch. He gave the clock one last glance,

11:32

Then went back to looking at the ceiling. It seemed to him now it was probably more like a horse than a bird. He studied it a while longer then felt a pang, guilt gurgled into his middle chest as he remembered he probably ought to be doing something constructive but he could think of nothing he wanted to do. His eyes flashed to the clock,

11:45

He sighed deeply, as his body worked to eject the sense of guilt. He felt a little more peaceful but noticed his heart had sped up. He breathed to try to calm it. He thought about work,
then his wife,
then his life as a whole,
and then his future.
He looked again at the clock,

11:50

He didnt feel so good. He tried to think of something to do. He looked back at the ceiling.
Maybe there is something wrong with me - he thought and immediately began to compare himself with other men he knew. He could think of no one who ever mentioned feeling they didnt know what to do with themselves. Everyone seemed to be busy doing something. Maybe they were lying, he thought, or pretending. He wasnt sure. Pretty soon his mind had moved on to other unrelated topics, it snapped back again when he felt himself look again at the clock in reflex,

12:15

He sighed once more, and went back to looking at the ceiling.

At 12:25 he looked again at the clock and realised he could not recall what he had been thinking about since the last time he looked at it. He found this interesting. How did memories work? he wondered, how could I be thinking stuff without even knowing I was thinking it? He felt a little jump of excitement in his chest. He thought about cigarettes and decided it was time to have one. He looked at the clock,

12:29

Maybe a little early in the day but he needed a lift. Maybe a smoke would help him think of something he could be doing. He didnt feel so good.

He sat out on the porch, she didnt like him smoking inside. Just as he lit up he saw the neighbour walking round the front of the house. She was coming to collect her post from the mailbox that was there. Their eyes met at the same time, she stopped walking for the briefest moment, he stopped too. In that moment they both knew that the other wished they had timed it better so as to avoid meeting. It wasnt that they didnt like each other, it was just that they had nothing to say. The next few moments were uncomfortable for them both, the impending moment when they had to speak was imminent. She reached the mailbox as he dragged a little nervously on the cigarette.

'Good morning' he said
'Good morning' she replied
He had hoped she would say something more, but it was obvious she didnt plan to.
She waited for him to speak, she felt it was impolite for a woman to lead with the conversation.
At that moment the kitten came out from under his porch chair, he rushed the next line slightly in the excitement of having something to comment on,

'Be careful he doesnt nip your feet' he said and immediately felt a mild flush of rouge blemish his cheeks, he felt his comment was somehow stupid. He felt socially inept and this troubled him. He could think of nothing more to say. He wanted her to go away.

She picked up the kitten, she didnt say anything, she no longer felt she had to.
She stroked the kitten a few times then put it down, smiled at him and then returned back round the side of the house.

He sighed, glad it was over. The kitten played with some ants that were walking from the porch steps to the side of the house. He thought how much easier things would be if people didnt have to speak. The kitten seemed content, recieved attention and coo's. He tried to think how he might learn to be more like a kitten.

He dubbed out the cigarette and stepped back inside. He still didnt feel so good and the day was already getting on top of him. He lay down on the couch, looked up at the ceiling, remembered he hadnt checked the time,

12:56

He shuffled a little to try to find the comfortable position he had been in before. He looked back to the ceiling and sighed. It seemed to him it was in fact more like a bird than a horse after all, but not a penguin, maybe something else.

Memories of a place

I lived for a year or so in a small house in Northolt, Middlesex. I lived there with the girl I was seeing at the time, it was a nice area, just a corner pocket of Northolt which wasnt such a nice area, but this professed to be Northolt Village and my house was right near a small hill that led up to an old church, it always reminded me of the kind of church you would see in 'Little House on the Prairie', it looked American to me, white washed, maybe made of wood, a small steeple. You could see it as you drove West up the A40 leaving London. It was well placed. I liked hills like that, I felt they had a good energy.

I liked my little house too, it was the first time I had lived in one that I rented wholly, before then it was always rooms or flats if I could afford them. There was something odd about the house though; it had a good atmosphere but it was where my insomnia began. I used to wake in the early hours with the feeling there was light coming from somewhere, the light seemed to fizz, if that was possible, and it was the fizzing that stirred my mind to life and made me wake. It was some months before I realised I was waking in the dark and there was in fact no light. This bemused me. Where was this damn light coming from? I observed the next time it woke me and discovered that the light was in my head. Kind of in my forehead someplace. It was like my subconscious mind was conjuring up this light, convincing my conscious mind it was time to get up and once I woke that was it, I couldnt get back to sleep, the memory of the fizzing light remained and whatever chemicals my body used to wake me were all in effect. It became annoying and I found myself often tired and flopped out in that house at the end of a working day. Still, I liked the place, it's mood somehow calmed me.

The insomnia was sporadic and not enough to really effect my life so I just accepted it but I didnt forget it and I couldnt ignore it. It remained just a mystery. I mentioned it to my girlfriend one day. She just looked at me with that look that said - 'Don't start this shit with me today'.
I guess it did sound kind of cranky; a light in my head. But the source of this light was really starting to puzzle me, I no longer felt it was in my head but rather being presented in my head from someplace else. I decided not to enlighten her as to this new development.

Then a month before our contract was up and we were due to move to another place I had one of the strangest experiences of my life. I was woken in the small hours, not by a light, but by the face of a snarling brown bear that's teeth were literally upon my face, and I could see wild anger in it's eyes. The sense of being attacked literally threw me across the room in a panic. No sooner than I was up, the whole hallucination was gone. My fear dispelled very quickly but it had been as intense as it might have been had I really found a bear about to maul me in the night. I didnt mention it to her despite my waking her. I didnt think she would be interested and I wasnt sure how to describe it without sounding ridiculous.

Nothing else happened in that house. A month later we moved out. When I went to take the keys round to the land-lady I also took a lot of post, we had been collecting it but she never came by, so there was a lot of it and most of it was addressed to a guy. I handed her the keys, then the bag with the post.

'Maybe you could forward these on to him, we kept anything the whole year, I was surprised he never contacted you for it' I said.
'Oh he died' she replied matter of factly. She reminded me of a tough little bird, she was Indian, young, but rich and quite a stern business woman.
'Oh, right' I said, then as I was turning to leave it struck me that if he was dead and I was receiving his post, then that meant he probably died while living in my house. I turned back to her.
'Was he living there when he died?' I asked her
'Yes, he died there in fact' she said and then the phone rang in her office, she answered it. I felt a shiver go down my back. We had been sleeping in a dead mans bed. Jesus!

The whole incident got me to thinking about how often we must pass through places or stay in places where someone, sometime through the course of history had probably died, been murdered, or one way or another, exited the world. I began to wonder about that light which had kept waking me up. Christ, what if it had been him trying to get my attention, then there was the bear. That made no sense. I didnt know what to think. I put it all down to nightmares, drugs, madness, anything. I wasnt afraid, but I had no answer.

One day some years later I got to talk to an African shaman for reasons too long to explain here. I recalled the whole incident and mentioned it to him to see his take on it. He nodded all the way through my recount and then when I had finished paused a while and said,
'Yes that is right, the spirit of the man may do that, the memory of the place carries a charge you were picking up because you are sensitive to it.'
'But what about the bear?' I said
'What about the bear?' he replied
'Well we dont have bears in England so what do you think that was?' I said
'No, you dont' he said 'but once you did'

Ultimately the whole experience brought my view of life and death into question as well as the things we see for the briefest of moments out of the corner of our eyes before something snaps our reality back into place and we forget all about them. From then on I didnt dismiss them quite so readily.

I loved that little house in Northolt, I love to remember it, the overall mood of the place was one of calm, of peace. It had about it a sense of home I havent felt anywhere else. And I wonder sometimes if maybe the presence of the other world was more pronounced there, if such a thing is possible, and just sometimes something was able to push through a little stronger than it might anywhere else. I never thought too hard on it all, it isnt something we could ever hope to really answer, not yet anyway.