Jason Phillips's Blog, page 2

Udders

It had been about 4 month’s since i had seen him so i was excited to see Will.

I got a text in the afternoon:

‘Just got ur steak in you fat fuk’

ah meat! great i hopped on the train and was buzzing the intercom  by 7pm. Located in the concrete sprawl of a scummy estate,  looking run down to fuck, no people in sight, but through every window glowed a 65″ tv taking up an entire wall.

I was buzzed in and the door was creaked open on the 1st floor. a huge cloud of black smoke bellowed out of the door hole and william emerged with eyes like flying saucers.

ALRIGHT MATE. he said calmly.

WHAT THE FUCK MAN!!! i ran through the cloud threw the smoking wok off the hob and turned off the cooker. i got down low and got into the living room opened the windows wide and chucked my obese ruck sack onto the sofa. Will was shuffling from foot to foot looking completely wired in the kitchen, enveloped by thick black clouds. he was completely off his tits and unperturbed by the smoke invasion. i opened the balcony door and stepped back into the corridor and coughed my throat out. fuck me will! what the fuuuuuck

jesus. fuckin.

the  smoke slowly shifted and a steak and chips was slapped on the living room table next to a huge bucket of drying sick lumps, a foot high pile of fag butts – i assume on top of an ash tray, and tobacco bits and gunk convered glasses and empty cans. Will was getting over being invaded with crazy fucking chemicals, thanks to the mental health system,  that was completely ruining all of his organs. he hadnt been injected for 4 months, but was still recovering from the fucked up chemicals even now. we have managed to help him escape their grip, in a harrowing ordeal in june, but he was clearly still completely mental and i was wondering we should have in fact left him in there to be abused on lock down.

i moved my meal to a seat on the other side of the room away from the sick bucket. and got tucked into a surprisingly tasty meal!

the footy come on and considering how much i cant be arsed watching the fairies rolling around holding their shins normally, i was locked into one of  the best games i’d ever witnessed being beamed via will’s new 90″ tv in this dump of a room with the lovely aroma of puke filling my nostrils. i drank some vino,. breaking my religion, just to escape the discomfort  of my environment, and celebrate being home and seeing me old mucker.

a few more lines flew up wills nose., but i werent partaking./ not tonight. fuck that./

the phone was going and will was getting excited blabbing to someone on the other end. half time and we headed up the shop to get some more vino on the instruction of his expected mystery guest.

in the Londis the assistant looked baffled as william requested their finest Bordeuax…. shuffling from foot to foot and looking completely fuckin murderous./ the assistant offered a echo falls and locked himself behind the counter.

back at the flat and Lolo came in from the dark./ her face was caked in make up and on her face was painted the biggest smile and the most surprised eyebrows you can imagine. she was excited. very excited. and so was will. lola recognised me from school but i didnt recgnonise here, but that may have been because of all the paint on her head. i asked to see a photo of her in school which she said she had on her phone. but she kept getting disturbed by her own really long detailed stories, with lots of emotion, and no endings.

will and lola  ranted at each other at earth shattering volumes. neither giving a fuck what the other whad to say and both so excited to have company to unload their utter madness upon.  they ordered some more twat powder from the local drugrat, which was outside as  slick a deliveroo for the nose.   each time they troughed a line the volume and the speed of the ranting would go through the roof and slowly wind down til another line was rammed up their nosril. lola went for a piss and came back  into the living room heaving and shaking her head. she was disgusted by the solid encrusted stripe of shite that was cemented to the toilet bowl. she sat there for a further hour crossing her legs and ranting not allowing anyone else to say a word; it transpired that her boyfriend had hung himself on the same branch his brother had, a few days earlier.  will was telling her that he liked to prey on vulnerable women and that he was going to seduce her. she managed to talk so much that she forgot she needed a piss.

she sniffed in a rare millisecond of silence. she turned her attention to the sick bucket and said he needed to take it out or she was leaving. they ended up wrestling the stinking bucket back n forth and screaming at each other. she eventually won the fight and lobbed the disgusting vessel downstairs and out the front door.  next up she was holding her nose, screaming and squirting bleach all over the 10 year old build up of shit on the bowl.

‘your voice is fucking unbearable, my head is fucking pounding. and i need to go to bed, as i cant take it for a single minute longer.’ i announced

she looked dumbfounded and completely offended.

‘look i like you but i just cannot bare you for a further single second!’

i got to the infamous ‘Wank Room’ and cuddled up in bed. she came in and started ranting again, screaming, and again the sick bucket had found its way back into the flat and they were in my room playing tug of war with it. i kicked the fuckers out. said please FUCK OFF. slammed the door and piled up a load of old records and boxes against it.

i read some of my book and listened to them scream at each other til i drifted off. i was woken up aagain when they had made their way into will’s bedroom about 4am. she was as loud and relentless and mental as earlier. William had devolved into a slug and was lying on the bed, and wa snot only displaying how desperate he was for love, but also had appeared to lost the ability to speak.

BUUUTIIILOOOOOOVE U LOOLO

WILLIAM I WIL NEVER EVER GO WITH YUOU

CAN I PLAY WITH YOUR UDDERSS MERRRRRR

NOOO YOU CANNOT.

an hour of this absolute fucking retarded bullshit and lola burst into my room. the boxes and records spilling all over the place.

WAKE UP !!!! ROLL ME A CIGARETTE > WILL’s too fucked and i cant rooll. can you please roll me a fag/

FUCK OFF NOW YOU TWAT i announced and the door creaked shut.

i slept til ten. walked into the living room where lola was asleep on the arm shair./ i washed the dishes from the dinner and. made a coffee. i went back to my room to devour some more of my book, in peace. i heard will stir. i  came out of my room to find lola gone and will dribbling and puking into the bucket. it fuckin stunk.

will i cant stay in here with that bucket i have to go.

ok i commmmm

his ability to speak hadn quite returned.

we left the shit hole and walked into a sunny day. WIlliam had pukey carrots stuck to his chin and big bubble of snot glistening in the sun. he kept shouting UDDERS. we took a coffee and i was glad to leave him finally and get the fuck out of there. my head was killing. back to the Attic! for some much needed SILENCE

Jason’s Story

 

This is the first page of my new business book (may change on publication):

 

JASON’S STORY 

photo © Norris Nuvo

Jason was born in 1976 to a dinner lady and a milk man in the Welsh Valleys. He came out alone despite being a twin and immediately decided to ignore everyone he met. They tested him for deafness but the Doctor confirmed he was in fact just ignorant. Jason preferred to look at tiny worms made of light floating down, while gawping out of the living room window, dribbling. Jason sometimes laid on the sofa pretending to be ill so he didn’t have to go to school, and ignore everyone there. Mam would always be picking up the arm chair covers and putting them back on. He wasn’t allowed downstairs at night, so laid in bed thinking about death.

Jason wanted to be a robber when he grew up. When the family moved to South Wales, when Jason was 9, he went to school dressed as Danny Zuko from Grease. Sporting his Mam’s fake purple leather jacket, his hair soaking wet and smothered in frothy conditioner, and a green comb with a googly eye stuck out of his back pocket. He told a little kid to stop picking on a fat kid and at play time the little bully knocked out Jason Zuko cold, with one punch to the nose in front of the entire school.

Jason later became a detective by watching Poirot every single week and never once guessing who the murderer was. He set up a detective agency in his dad’s shed next to a lawnmower, a rusty rowing machine and Jimmy Cricket’s wellies. Where his dad had slammed nails through the ceiling to stop the pigeons shitting on the roof, rain dripped onto the young detectives tense loaf. ‘J-Sun & Co Detective Services Ltd’ ceased trading in 1989 when he cracked a case, and discovered that it was actually he, himself, that had in fact stolen his best friends ‘Operation Wolf’ computer game that the poor bastard had just got for christmas.

Jason grew up with 3 brothers. Bim, an army-sergeant little baby brother who liked to leave turd bombs round the house.  Sexy Bryn, a Casanova ultra popular hunk of a big bro, who didn’t want him hanging round his arse cramping his style. And was somewhat overshadowed by Justybabes – the Disco Queen: his sequinned, tap-dancing Cilla Blackesque brother.

Jason rebelled in 1992 by drinking a litre of Thunderbird Red and eating a Penguin (the acid trip not the chocolate bar nor the animal). This happened in an old man’s house near his school, that he and all his teenage friends had ambushed, and turned into a drugs den with the old man also drugged out of his eye balls. Puking his organs out, laughing until his entire outer crust split open, Jason gave birth to a brand new weirder version of himself.

He became unbearable to anyone he lived with, found it impossible to do anything conventional and began staring at light worms again. He installed a 5k sound system in his box bedroom, and fitted a hefty lock to keep out any intruders. His family and the entire street were driven to despair and baldness, until his mother kicked the door off its hinges and dragged him by his hair to the chip pan and burnt his arm off to a stump.

Cue 43 shit jobs, several failed relationships, crippling debt, 20 years of alcohol and drug abuse, failed businesses, mental collapses, abortions, vagabonding, more debt, over thinking, body image psychosis, loneliness, squatting, brain experimentation, unplanned adventures, devouring 900 self help books, 15 councillors, a period living in the NCP in Bristol with a pycho from Cwmbran and a botched NHS operation on his face. After Jason came out of the Gwent Hospital looking like a freak (OR DID HE? – a la Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky) he grew his hair completely over his face and began to make some weird-arsed music. For a few years he took that music with a band of freaks on a debauched 8 year long tour around the UK and Europe to much success. Until one of his band members died and the project fell apart in a teenage-girl-like bitching session on facebook.

Today Jason, now 41, sublets his entire flat out because he can’t afford to live there, and sits in his attic like Ann Frank, freezing his balls off and writing shit like this.  Forever searching for something but not entirely sure what, this book is Jason’s final attempt at getting his head round Capitalism and becoming a ‘success’. His Dad, once so full of hope, has already said it’s too late. And, in the words of his ever-wise Tipping-Point-addicted Mother, “Jase, what are you doing with your life?”

______________________________________________________




a lot of the subsequent updates for ‘Making It’ will be patreon only, so head over there and get involved with all that!

https://www.patreon.com/jasonofwales

the final book will be sent (Ebook version) to all supporters there too!









or you can buy just the Ebook alone (includes all versions) HERE.

 Im struggling with it to be honest, and finding myself disagreeing with my self far too often. Its hard to nail down your opinion and stick by it, as i feel it changes on a daily basis! but i’m trying for this short book to make some points about creativity and money and life.



but I am ON IT, so expect regular updates now!


oh and….

 

New WORKING TITLE:

MAKING IT: The Losers Guide to Surviving Capitalism

or 

Making It:  Surviving in a Capitalist World if You’re Not A Greedy Selfish Bastard

 

any feedback appreciated on that or anything else!

 

Ciao bellas 

 

Brand New Book for Losers

had to delay the release date by a week as been hectic journey back home. got a week in a quiet house now to nail it

DECISION FATIGUE… and what to do about it.

throwing myself into the unknown… how will i survive, who will i meet, where will i end up?

This is one of my favourite things to do. I like to wake up and not know what the day has in store for me… this is fucking living!

But it comes with its draw backs.

most people have their routine. and even people without preset routines in their lives tend to fall into natural routines, and eventually our days all start blending into one. we can no longer differentiate them, and our life becomes one long gloop of sameness. groundhog dayish…. we often counteract this void of boredom with quick injections of extreme action or escape, such as getting completely slaughtered on drink or drugs on the weekend, or a week holiday in some exotic place, or riding a motor bike at breakneck speeds down a slippery welsh mountain.

but this is like modern medicine: attacking the symptom instead of the problem. looking at the problem then, should we be giving up on routine all together? or simply be changing our routine, regularly? this sounds like a nice idea, but it comes with it’s problems. firstly we are SCARED! of change. also, we are stuck! people expect us to be in the places we are everyday and it often pays money to us in order to keep everything the same in our lives. another big one for me, after reading Mason Curry’s DAILY RITUALS, i realised that nearly all of the great creative minds of the past have all favoured working to a routine. Some of the best works of art, and most innovative inventions have been the product of daily routines from weird and interesting, and obsessed minds! why wouldn’t i want to join this league of superior talent!

the only difference there i see is that they LOVED their (self- made) routine…. some would literally write the same time and the same number of words every single day of their lives and create the most memorable art that touched the souls of millions or changed humanity and the future. With these creative self-designed routines, a paradox is created, where on one hand we are rigidly getting the work done every day almost militarily, but while sticking to this regime, we are free to fly and discover new worlds almost as if we weren’t even there, stuck in that routine… we set the routine up in order to escape reality and dream! it works on every level. So i see, routine has its place! And can be vital in a creative life.

The problem comes when a routine is forced upon us, or designed by others, and is lacking the opposite paradox that ensures we escape reality and create. instead we are doing the dog’s work for some faceless entity who ‘rewards’ us only in cash and pointless job titles. This can only work to slowly erode away our character and stunt our growth. Yes it may pay the rent, and feed the kids, but what’s the cost to your soul? Don’t worry, a week in the Costof De Soul, that’ll fix it. And while tucking into the Alchemist with a Carling on a sun lounger, we’ll be secretly dreading the return to the same old prostitution of our only life. But your CV is good, and the company will recognise when your falling apart, breaking at the seams, don’t worry!  They will either get rid of you with a pay off, or increase the incentives for you to stay with a new job title or an extra few quid each year.

Now the benefits of these packages we take, these pre-designed routines for money, are very real. as mentioned, we can pay for things! and most importantly we can pay for crucial things in life. such as Rent, and electric, and water, and food, and things. It’s a very easy option to look at the ‘routine packages’ on offer, (ie jobs) and select one and begin. everything is done for you. the only thing you need to learn is how to fulfill the tasks set by your invisible boss. you can often learn this on the job, you can even lie to get the job, by overselling yourself on your CV (an advert every person in the world has of themselves to show to Routine Package Designers). If you like the advert of the Job and they like your advert (both usually packed with misinformation) and you both agree to go into business, then you begin. a slave? not quite. you’re being paid! and you no longer have to think! even if you have lied all over the CV, usually the work is so mind numbingly simple that you can pick it up in no time, and your in the fold and earning and all your time has gone, and your days are all the same in no time. if the job does require a special set of skills in order to fulfill the tasks to get paid, you usually would be required to train, this can be done in-house, and often is, or for more complicated tasks you would need to study at a university, who design their courses specifically with modern job in mind. the more complicated the task fulfillment and the more training needed usually the more money you get for giving up your time.

now, it’s not to say all jobs are horrible, life draining, routines that eat your very soul. some offer all the benefits you might be looking for. these jobs exist! and instead of pounding away in your mum’s dusty basement for 25 years with no company and no income and no way of moving out and eventually just being surrounded by piles of your own self obsessed, insular ramblings that no one wants to read, a job may actually get you out of the house and connecting with other humans and give you some experiences to write about (a la bukowski in post office – the book that got him out of the post office after 13 years) and offer you some income so you can rent a dump and buy some noodles.  you can attach your own routine onto the end of your forced routine and find a balance of paying the rent and writing a masterpiece. this could be a sane approach.

the other option is shunning the pre-designed routine packages all together, and living off your own ideas. This is a dangerous route and comes with a plethora of traps and difficulties, the biggest being how the fuck do you pay the rent?

aside from the obvious money worries, which can drain as much mental energy as actually holding down a shitty job, there are the other things…

how do you pay for things?

loneliness

debt

decision making (you are on your own here!)

routine design (what do you DO with all this time! _

laziness, (no boss… why bother.)

 

so i’ve chosen the self made routine path… and here i wanna explore just one of the problems: DECISION MAKING! there is no system, there is no boss, there is no pre-designed routine for me…. so how do i decide WHAT to do next?

well, i’m currently traveling, and into my 11th week in Europe this summer, and just hitting a block with DECISION MAKING (and also money and other things but that’s for another blog) so here’s where i am at:

When you are on your own, traveling in this example, or just living your own life, you are presented with unlimited options. you can literally do anything! and this can be so debilitating. It can freeze you. sometimes less choice is EASIER! and thus the attraction of package holidays, and pre-designed routines aka jobs, soap operas tv etc.

A very real phenomena called DECISION FATIGUE, rears its ugly head, when we choose the path of FREEDOM! and freedom hides its claws well. We don’t get to see the ugly sides until it’s too late, after we have thrown ourselves into the abyss!

Decision fatigue, you’ve probably had it at some point,. it’s like when you are trying to weigh up the options, and you go back and forth… kind of mental obsessive pros and cons, and then you literally don’t know anymore and you feel completely insane, miserable, tired and useless. a failure. and you still haven’t chosen. And you still can’t. It happens in every day life, with all sorts of things.

it’s horrible.

it happens a lot when you travel. now the simple fact is: IT DOES NOT MATTER what you choose, as each path has it’s own unknown adventures and lessons and goodies ahead. BUT these words of wisdom are of no use to a poor soul impaled on the horns of a dilemma.

i’ve gone completely insane in the last few days (and written 46 lists) trying to chose the right path for my continued travels. and finally, after a serendipitous phone call from a friend in Beijing yesterday, he pulled me out of the abyss and made a choice for me! it felt amazing and of course as the day went on i questioned my choice, and thought, fuck, was that the right thing after all.? standard.

But this is how he helped me……

He simply asked me, what are your reasons for traveling. why did you go away in the first place?

I was transported back to my bed in the dead of winter, in my slave box, with the window open and the smoke from the restaurant chimney pouring in, and the silence, and the complete lack of connection to humanity. utterly alone… i wanted to Create more than anything, but was struggling to find similar minded folk to get excited with and my buzz to create things was whimpering and shriveled on the carpet with the dirty socks. Not just music, but all sorts of things! i needed connection…  creativity,… community even! i was utterly alone. the modern disease of being disconnected completely! i was in my duvet, unwashed and silent, hadn’t spoke to anyone in weeks, surrounded by dozens of books and a fat notepad stuffed full of madness. but no amount of journalling was going to pull me out of this crazed solitude. i needed fucking people! a job? maybe… whatever. but in the bottom of that dark cold winter well, i called up the echoey cold walls and cried to the sky. I NEED TO CONNECT! and so i made a kind of new years resolution, i would seek:

CONNECTION, COMMUNITY AND CREATIVITY!

and that is why i have spent more than half of this year away from my slave box, thrown into the unknown, staying with strangers, making new music, writing, connecting and putting myself in situations where i have no choice but to connect. thus forcing myself away from the easy option of reading and thinking and rotting away.

Sam! With one simple question you have made the decision very easy for me… of the options i have ahead of me (which i wont go into here as this post is already a monster – fueled by coffee, which has crept back into my life after 5 years!) i simply had to weigh them up through the lens of which offer the best fulfillment of my vision:

of Connection, Creativity, and Community…..

it was obvious within a split second…. A lift in the van with Gypsie Jack and his lovely kids, from Bratislava tomorrow, 2000km to Brittany, stay with him and see his land and help him build things, make music with him, go fishing with him, and spend time at the local squat, where all the people i had met in the Czech Fest were living a communal creative  life, full of connection, and where they ran workshops every day for all things creative and communal… this satisfied all my reasons for traveling. OBVIOUS!

as much as i wanted to go East into new territory, and go to Turkey and Finland, and Croatia, and bla bla bla…. i knew heading west made more sense. it also meant i was closer to home (even thought i was trying to avoid it) to nip back and tidy up a few things which were bothering me, to house sit for a friend i had promised, to get a few creative projects wrapped up and to visit my family, and friends (connect!). and then plan onward WORLD travel from there, to escape the fierce Welsh winter, of which 13 in a row was beginning to take it’s toll.

After 4 or 5 days of going completely insane with indecision, and crashing with decision fatigue, kick starting myself with coffeeeeeee ,…. i was suddenly cured. Thank you Sam for reminding me, We need to know the reasons for doing what we do in order to make a clear snap decision, or we suffer!

so that was a long post, but here is the answer:

ask WHY are you doing this. and then Make a snap decision. Now COMMIT to it 110%, stop pro and conning, and forget all other options.

the teasing voice of the pros of the other options will try to creep into your psyche: ‘Oi, what about me! you’ve chosen that over me! i’m amazing, and you are missing out! you idiot!’ you need to stamp on that bastard til it bleeds, and commit to the Snap!

Still not working? then phone a friend and tell him how you feel. He may just help by letting you talk it out. (do it!)

 

SO WHATS YOUR REASONS?

CONNECTION.
COMMUNITY.
CREATIVITY.
*thats mine, right now. what’s yours?

 

that’s why i am here, and it’s what needs to steer my travels and my decision making.

thank you Sam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

i have 6 minutes battery left and ive promised to write a new blog post for my only blog fan….

so, the battery… i do love a deadline, but 6 mins? fuckinell. what can i say in 6 minutes?

what shall i talk about? im in slovakia… let me try and keep it short n sweet. lets look at just today.. a few notes on whats hppened.!

made lists, lots of lists, of things i have to do and tried to prioritise by rewriting lists and then made smaller list of things i needed to do today.
ate 5 raw eggs cracked into kefir.
had 4 coffees, only just started drinking again this week after 5 years without!
caffeine had me bouncing off the walls. made another 9 lists.
lists and coffee brought me to the brink of a nervous breakdown. done nothing off lists, left the house.
i went to bank machine and finally got some money from bank, and spoke to them on phone and complained about the security device i have to cart round the world with me when you can pay for things contactless without even a pin. but to check my online account i have to break thru fort fuckin knox.
took the gypsy family out for Thai Duck dinner to say thank you for being great fucking hosts. LOVELY FOLKS…
Accidentally squirted hot sauce in Yunka, the daughter’s, eye ball.
went back to pad and was asked to babysit Yunka for few hours.
Yunka screamed in my face for two hours, full volume…about 14 octaves above middle c. cried.
managed to read some VAGABONDING book for inspiration on continuing travels
tweaked new track.
came to internet cafe to escape the noise
misophonia off the scale.
dogs barked at me all the way down the street. I NEED SILENCE!!!!!
got to internet bar. ordered PINT. been drinking last week or so, first time in over 5 years.
a car skidded across the pavement across the road. a woman got out and started screaming. a man shouted back at her. then another woman came along and punched the woman from the car in the chops. more screaming. then she weelspun off into the distance. i need silence. please.
girl now sat behind me in bar blowing thru straw into her drink. right on my left ear lobe.
gypsy friends invited me into bratislava tonight, going to decline and get to fucking bed.
just checked youtube channel, new vid doing well. chuffed. here tis. fuck battry gonna pop! arrrrrg

 

 

 

21. yunka just turned up, LITERALLY JUST NOW, with the family at the bar, and started screamign in my face and punching me repeatedly!

nowt

sometimes i feel like doing fuck all. so, i do fuck all.

goat boy

the massive red mountains glowed all around a large expanse of sparse land covered in sticky dry shrubs. i stepped on through knowing that i would have to try and put this tent up soon. the sun was dropping fast. the tent had cost me 9 pounds from asda about 8 years or so ago and it was refusing to die. i had left it in spain and now i was back i found it again and it was on my back accompanying me into the Sierra Nevada mountains.

there was no place to discretely pitch the tent but i thought its probably ok just in the open as i dont imagine anyone passing here in the dark.

from around a bend a goat boy appeared with 3 sheep dogs and about 40 goats. their bells clinked in the silent golden evening evoking a dream from a lifetime ago. as i approached the goat boy, his eyes looked at different heights and his hair was matted up into two dirty curly horns atop his sunburned, dirty head. he  whacked his dogs with a short stick and they seemed unhappy with this arrangement. as i passed them one of the dogs spun around and clamped its gnarly jaw into my calf. i pulled back just in time for it to still bite me but avoid burying deep into the muscle. OI!! FOR FUCKSAKE i shouted. Goat boy didnt even turn back . I squealed again, only to be ignored again. The horned goat boy and his 3 dogs kept on walking. The goats all wobbled past on their bendy legs and one stopped and turned to me, eyeing me up. i looked down at my calf and blood dripped down to my sock. i sat on my rucksack and was fucking fuming. never had i been bitten by a dog before, despite being wary of the crazy jawed bastards since being a kid, when i used to have to pass a barking maniac every fucking morning on the way to school. im sure i kicked the fucker when he came at me once and he never came for me again. but now i had just been bitten in front of a dogs owner and he didnt appear to give a flying fuck.

fuck camping, i thought, id better get this wound cleaned up. i turned around, and at a safe distance followed the pack into the night. the distant misty mountains swallowed up the beautiful red sun and a tiny slither of a moon winked above the deserted mountains. the goats all veered off the dusty path and began to graze up near a farm house. i could see the dogs sat surrounding them. i veered off the other side of the path and walked a huge curve around and back down the mountain to my friends place where i had been staying. my leg was stinging like fuck when i finally got back. the house was silent and the garden dark as the bowels of hell. i got to the pool and stripped off. the water glimmered ripples of the moon as i fell forwards into it. i melted into the water like a curl of butter in a hot soup. bats flew down nipping at my head and i heard a dog bark from miles above in the mountains, i wondered if it was the little fucker that had feasted on my leg. i know where you live now. i rippled through the waters under a starry night dreaming up a revenge plan for the horny goat boy and his hounds of hell.

justice above all

justice. he was hellbent on it. but his wife knew it would bring him only to himself again even if nature played fair. he would still ultimately be left with himself, one problem out of the way, one less distraction, one step closer to being alone. so he kept his fight in place as a barrier from reality. his wife knew this. and so did jim deep down. but he couldnt see it. he was too busy fighting the good fight. he wanted revenge or at least to be treated fairly in all of the mess. he wanted people to know it wasnt all his fault. it was time to move on thought sandra. but she couldn’t tell him. he kept this there. this block from living from facing now. he kept it there . and it was slowly destroying him. he wasnt looking after himself, or engaging with his loved ones, only feeling sorry for himself.  and this was when she left.

he had hardly noticed at first. and was even a little relieved in the beginning.  there was no love for a long time. and now she was out of the way there was more time to devote to fighting the fight. there was now no way they could get away with what they had, he had all the time in the world to make sure of that.

he lit up a cigarette and laid on the bed. looking into the distance he hardly noticed the weight of his solitude filling the apartment. the dishes were unwashed and clothes were piled up in the corners. he blew smoke into the room and stared more. he was so obsessed he was vacant. there was no room for anything else. he switched off from the world around him and, like a stuffed foie gras goose, choked on his own thoughts.

the phone rang, shrieking like a drunken woman in the dead of the night. he lay there, still puffing. the phone stopped ringing. he closed his eyes and for the first time in months his thoughts turned to his wife. he sat up in his blue boxer shorts, on the edge of the bed. stubbed his cigarette out, lit another, put his head in his hands and began to cry.

a key entered the front door and slowly turned from outside. he looked up as the door slowly creaked open. stood in the doorway was a dark figure. he wore a long trench coat which flapped in the wind and rain and his head looked large and square. jim blinked once and the figure stepped inside.

the rolling cheese

i never commit, i just keep moving. run and hide . run and hide. theres no way to begin my life in this way. like the rolling stone. i never gather moss. but who the fuck wants to be covered in moss? and in this famous anology what the hell is moss supposed to represent? stuff? stuff that clings to us? and eventually suffocates us. covering us over, until there is no part of you left to see. just stuff covering you/ superficial stuff. where are you? buried in a matt of stuff. fluffy green moist stuff/. fuck that. lob me down the hill like the lump of cheese that a thousand people chase and risk breaking their limbs trying to catch. i am the rolling cheese! fuck moss.

Six Inches by Bukowski

had to share this. Stopped blogging recently as i kept on upsetting friends and family by writing about them publicly. I been thinking of going fiction. I know Buk would fictionalize his real life. Then i came across this… had to share. Love the guy. Might start again soon, feeling inspired, watch this space….

 

The first three months of my marriage to Sarah were acceptable but I’d say a little after that our troubles began. She was a good cook, and for the first time in years I was eating well. I began to put on weight. And Sarah began to make remarks.

“Ah, Henry, you’re beginning to look like a turkey they’re plumping for Thanksgiving.”

“At’s right, baby,” I told her.

I was a shipping clerk in an auto parts warehouse and the pay was hardly sufficient. My only joys were eating, drinking beer and going to bed with Sarah. Not exactly a grounded life but a man had to take what he could get. Sarah was plenty. Everything about her spelled S-E-X. I had really gotten to know her at a Christmas party for the employees at the warehouse. Sarah was a secretary there. I noticed none of the fellows got near her at the party and I couldn’t understand it. I had never seen a sexier woman and she didn’t act the fool either. I got close to her and we drank and talked. She was beautiful. There was something odd about her eyes, though. They just kept looking into you and the eyelids didn’t seem to blink.

When she went to the restroom I walked over to Harry the truck driver. “Listen, Harry,” I asked, “how come none of the boys make a play for Sarah?”

“She’s a witch, man, a real witch. Stay away.”

“There’s no such thing as witches, Harry. All that has been disproven. All those women they burned at the stake in the old days, it was a cruel and a horrible mistake. There’s no such thing as a witch.”

“Well, maybe they did burn a lot of women wrongly, I can’t say. But this bitch is a witch, take it from me.”

“All she needs, Harry, is understanding.”

“All she needs,” said Harry, “is a victim.”

“How do you know?”

“Facts,” said Harry. “Two guys here, Manny, a salesman. And Lincoln, a clerk.”

“What happened?”

“They just kind of disappeared in front of our eyes, only so slowly—you could see them going, vanishng…”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. You’d think I was crazy.”

Harry walked off. Then Sarah came out of the lady’s room. She looked beautiful.

“What did Harry tell you about me?” she asked.

“How did you know I was talking to Harry?”

“I know,” she said.

“He didn’t say much.”

“Whatever he said, forget it. It’s bullshit. I won’t let him have any and he’s jealous. He
 likes to badmouth people.”

“I’m not concerned with Harry’s opinions,” I told her.

“You and I are going to make it, Henry,” she said.

She went to my apartment with me after the party and I’m telling you I’ve never been laid like that. She was the woman of all women. It was a month or so later that we were married. She quit her job right off, but I didn’t say anything because I was so glad to have her. Sarah made her own clothes, did her own hair. She was a remarkable woman. Very remarkable.

But, as I said, it was after about 3 months that she began making these remarks about my weight. At first they were just genial little remarks, then she began to get scornful about it. I came home one night and she said, “Take off your damned clothes!”

“What, my darling?”

“You heard me, bastard! Strip!”

Sarah was a little different then than I had ever seen her. I took off my clothes and underwear and threw them on the couch. She stared at me.

“Awful,” she said, “what a lot of shit!”

“What, dear?”

“I said you look just like a big tub of shit!”

“Listen, honey, what’s wrong? You got the rag on tonight?”

“Shut up! Look at that stuff hanging at your sides!”

She was right. There seemed to be a little pouch of fat on each side, hanging just above the hips. Then she doubled up her fists and hit me hard several times on each of the pouches.

“We’ve got to punch that shit! Break up the fat tissues, the cells…” She punched me again, several times.

“Ow! Baby, that hurts!”

“Good! Now, hit yourself!”

“Hit myself?”

“Go ahead, damn you!”

I hit myself several times, quite hard. When I was finished the things were still there, though now they looked quite red.

“We’re going to get that shit off of you,” she told me.

I figured that is was love and decided to cooperate… Sarah began counting my calories. She took away my fried foods, bread and potatoes, salad dressing, but I kept my beer. I had to show her who was wearing the pants in our family.

“No, damn it,” I said, “I won’t give up my beer. I love you very much but the beer stays!”

“All right,” said Sarah, “we’ll make it work anyway.”

“Make what work?”

“I mean, get that shit off you, get you down to a desirable size.”

“And what’s a desirable size?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

Each night when I got home she’d ask me the same question: “Did you punch your sides today?”

“Oh, hell yes!”

“How many times?”

“400 punches on both sides, hard.”

I would walk down the streets punching at my sides. People looked at me but it didn’t matter after a while because I knew that I was accomplishing something and they weren’t.”

Things were working, marvelously. I came down from 225 to 197. Then from 197 to 184. I felt ten years younger. People remarked about how good I looked. Everybody except Harry the truck driver. Of course, he was just jealous because he never got into Sarah’s panties. His tough shit.

One night on the scales I was down to 179. I said to Sarah, “Don’t you think we’ve come down enough? Look at me!” The things on my sides were long gone. My belly hung in. My cheeks looked as if I were sucking them in.

“According to the charts,” said Sarah, “according to my charts, you’ve not yet reached a desirable size.”

“Look,” I told her, “I’m six feet tall. What is the desireable weight?”

And then Sarah answered me quite strangely. “I didn’t say ‘desirable weight’,” I said, ‘desireable size’. This is the New Age, the Atomic Age, and most important the Age of Overpopulation. I am the Saviour of the World. I have the answer to the Overpopulation Explosion. Explosion. Let others work on Pollution. Solving Over population is the root; it will solve Pollution and many other things too.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, ripping the cap off a bottle of beer.

“Don’t worry about it,” she answered, “you’ll find out.”

Then I began to notice, as I stepped on the scales, that although I was still losing weight I didn’t seem to be getting any thinner. It was strange. And then I noticed that my pants cuffs were hanging down over my shoes—ever so slightly, and that my shirt cuffs were hanging down a bit over my wrists. When I drove to work I noticed that the steering wheel seemed further away. I had to pull the car seat up a notch.

One night I got on the scales. 155. “Look here, Sarah.”

“Yes, darling?”

“There’s something I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“I seem to be shrinking.”

“Shrinking?”

“Oh, you fool! That’s incredible! How can a man shrink? Do you really think that your diet is shrinking your bones? Bones melt! Reduction of calories only reduces fat. Don’t be an idiot! Shrinking? Impossible!” Then she laughed.

“All right,” I said, “come here. Here’s a pencil. Now I’m gonna stand against this wall. My mother used to do this with me as a kid when I was growing. Now put a line right there on the wall where the pencil hits after you place it straight across the top of my head.”

“All right, silly,” she said. She drew the line.

A week later I was down to 131. It was happening faster and faster.

“Come here, Sarah.”

“Yes, silly boy.”

“Now, draw the line.”

She drew the line, I turned around.

“Now see here, I’ve lost 24 pounds and 8 inches in the last week. I’m melting away! I’m now five feet two. This is madness! Madness! I’ve had enough. I’ve caught you cutting my pants legs, my shirt sleeves. It won’t work. I’m going to begin eating again. I think that you are some kind of witch!”

It was soon after that the boss called me into the office I climbed into the chair across from his desk.

“Henry Markson Jones II?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Well, Jones, we’ve been watching you carefully. I’m afraid you just don’t fit this job anymore. We hate to see you go like this…I mean , we hate to let you go like this, but…”

“Look, sir, I always do my best.”

“We know you do, Jones, but you’re just not doing a man’s job back there anymore.”

He let me go. Of course, I knew that I would get my unemployment compensation. But I thought it was small of him to let me go like that…

I stayed home with Sarah. Which made it worse—she fed me. It got so I couldn’t reach the refrigerator door anymore. And then she put me on a small silver chain. Soon I was two feet tall. I had to use a potty chair to shit. But she
 still let me have my beer, as promised. “Ah, my little pet,” she said, “you’re so small and cute!”

“I’m not a duck, I’m a man!”

“Oh my little sweet man-y-man!” She picked me up and kissed me with her red lips…

Sarah got me down to being 6 inches tall. She carried me to the store 
in her purse. I could look out at the people through the little air holes 
she had poked in her purse. I will say one thing for the woman. She still
 allowed me to have my beer. I drank it by the thimble. A quart would last me
 a month. In the old days it was gone in 45 minutes. I was resigned. I knew 
that if she wished to do so she could make me vanish entirely. Better 6 inches than nothing. Even a little life becomes very dear when you near the
 end of life. So, I amused Sarah. It was all I could do. She made me little
 clothes and shoes and put me on top of the radio and turned on the music and
 said, “Dance, little one! Dance, my dunce! Dance, my fool!”

Well, I couldn’t collect my unemployment compensation so I danced on 
top of the radio while she clapped her hands and laughed. You know, spiders frightened me terribly and flies were the size of giant eagles, and if a cat ever caught me it would torture me like a small mouse. But life was still dear to me. I danced and sang and hung on. No matter how little a man has he will find that he will always settle for less. When I shit on the rug I would get spanked. Sarah put little pieces of paper around and I shit on them. And I ripped off little pieces of that paper to wipe my butt with. It felt like cardboard. I got hemorrhoids. Couldn’t sleep nights. Feelings of inferiority, of being trapped. Paranoia? Anyhow, I felt good when I sang and danced and Sarah let me have my beer. She kept me at an exact six inches for some reason. What the reason was, it was beyond me. As almost everything else was beyond me. I made up songs for Sarah, that’s what I called them: Songs for Sarah:

“o, I’m just a little snot, that’s all right until I get hot, then there’s nothing to stick it in except the fucking head of a pin!

Sarah would clap her hands and laugh.

“if ya wanna be an admir in the queen’s navy just be a clark for the fuckin’ nark,grow 6 inches tall and when the Queen goes to pee you can peek up inter drippin’ pussy…”

And Sarah would clap her hands and laugh. Well, that was all right. It
 had to be…

But one night something very disgusting happened. I was singing and dancing and Sarah was on the bed, naked, clapping her hands, drinking wine and laughing. I was putting on a good show. One of my best. But, as always, the top of the radio got hot and started burning my feet. I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Look, baby,” I said, “I’ve had it. Take me down. Gimme a beer. No wine. You drink that cheapass wine. Gimme a thimble of that good beer.”

“Sure, sweetie,” she said, “you put on a wonderful show tonight. If Manny and Lincoln had acted as nice as you, they’d be here tonight. But they didn’t sing or dance, she brooded. And worst of all, they objected to the Final Act.”

“And what was the Final Act?” I asked.

“Now, sweetie, just drink your beer and relax. I want you to enjoy the Final Act. You are evidently a much more talented person than Manny or Lincoln. I do believe that we can have the Culmination of the Opposites.”

“O, hell yes,” I said, draining my beer. “Now give me a refill. And just what is the Culmination of the Opposites?”

“Enjoy your beer, little sweetie, you’ll know soon enough.”

I finished my beer and then the disgusting thing happened, a most disgusting thing. Sarah picked me up and placed me down between her legs, which she spread open just a bit. Then I was facing a forest of hair. I hardened my back and neck muscles, sensing what was to come. I was jammed into darkness and stench. I heard Sarah moan. Then Sarah began to move me slowly back and forth. As I said, the stench was unbearable, and it was difficult to breathe, but somehow there was air in there—various side-pockets and drafts of oxygen. Now and then my head, the top of my head bumped The Man in the Boat and then Sarah would let out an extra-illuminated moan. Sarah began moving me faster and faster. My skin began to burn, it became harder to breathe; the stench became worse. I could hear her panting. It occured to me that the sooner I ended the thing the less I would suffer. Each time I was rammed forward I would arch my back and neck, tilt everything of me into this hooking curve of a thing, bumping The Man in the Boat. Suddenly I was ripped out of that terrible tunnel. Sarah held me up to her face. “Come, you damned fiend of a thing! Come!” she demanded. Sarah was totally drunk on wine and passion. I felt myself being rushed back into the tunnel. She worked me rapidly back and forth. Then suddenly I sucked air into my lungs to increase my size and then I gathered saliva intlo my jaws and spit it out—once, twice, 3 times, 4, 5, six times, then I stopped…The stench increased beyond all imagination and then, at last, I was lifted out into the air. Sarah lifted me into the lamplight and began kissing me all over my head and shoulders.

“O, my darling! o, my precious little cock! I love you!” Then she kissed me with those horrible red and painted lips. I vomited. Then, spent in a swoon of wine and passion, she placed me between her breasts. I rested there and listened to her heart beat. She had taken me off of her damned leash, that silver chain, but it didn’t matter. I was hardly free. One of her massive breasts had fallen to one side and I seemed to be right over the heart. The heart of the witch.

If I were the answer to the Population Explosion then why hadn’t she used me as more than a thing of entertainment, a sexual toy? I stretched out there and listened to that heart. I decided that she was a witch. Then I glanced up. Do you know what I saw? A most amazing thing. Up in that little crevice below the headboard. A hat pin. Yes, a hat pin, long with one of those round purple glass things at the end of it. I walked up between her breasts, climbed her throat, got up on her chin (after much trouble), then walked quietly across her lips, and then she stirred a bit as I almost fell and had to grab to a nostril for support. Very slowly I got up by the right eye— her head was tilted slightly to the left—and then I was up on the forehead, having gone past the temple, and I was up into the hair—very difficult, wading through. Then I stood and stretched—reached up and just managed to grab the hat pin. Coming down was faster but more treacherous. I almost lost my balance several times, carrying that hat pin. One fall and it was over. I laughed several times because it was so ridiculous. The outcome of an office party for the gang, Merry Christmas. Then I was down under that massive breast again. I laid the hat pin down and listened again. I listened for the exact sound of the heart. I determined it to be at a spot exactly below a small brown birthmark. Then I stood up. I picked up the hat pin with its purple glass end, beautiful in the lamplight. And I thought, will it work? I was 6 inches tall and I judged the hat pin to be half again longer than 1.9 inches. The heart seemed closer than that. I lifted the pin and plunged it in. Just below the birthmark. Sarah rolled and convulsed. I held onto the hat pin. She almost threw me to the floor—which by comparative size seemed a thousand feet or more and would have killed me. I hung on. Her lips formed an odd sound. Then she seemed to quiver all over like a woman freezing. I reached up and jammed the remaining 3 inches of the pin down into her chest until the beautiful purple glass head of the pin was up against her skin.

Then Sarah was still, I listened. I heard the heart, one two, one two, one two, one two, one…It stopped. And then with my little killer’s hands, I clutched and gripped the bedsheet and made my way to the floor. I was 6 inches tall and real and frightened and hungry. I found a hole in one of the bedroom screens which faced east and ran from ceiling to floor. I grabbed at the branch of a bush, climbed on, clambered along the branch to the inside of the bush. Nobody knew that Sarah was dead but I. But that had no realistic good. If I were to go on, I would have to have something to eat. But I couldn’t help wondering how my case would be evolved in a court of law? Was I guilty? I ripped off a leaf and tried to eat it. No good. Hardly. Then I saw the lady in the court to the south set out a plate of catfood for her cat. I crawled out of the bush and worked my way toward the catfood, watching for animals and movements. It tasted worse than anything I had ever eaten but I had no choice. I ate all the cat food I could—death tasted worse. Then I walked over to the bush and climbed back into it. There I was, 6 inches tall, the answer to The Population Explosion, I’m hanging in a bush with a bellyful of catfood. There are details I don’t want to bore you with. Escapes from cats and dogs and rats. Feeling myself growing bit by bit. Watching them carry Sarah’s body out of there. Going in there and finding myself too small, still, to open the refrigerator door. The day the cat almost caught me as I ate at his bowl. I had to breakaway. I was then 8 or 10 inches tall, I was growing. I even scared pigeons. When you scare pigeons you know that you are getting there.

I simply ran down the street one day, hiding along the shadows of buildings and down beneath hedges and the like. I kept running and hiding until I got outside a supermarket and I hid under a newspaper stand just outside the entrance to the store. Then, as a big woman walked up and the electric door opened, I walked in behind her. One of the clerks at a checkstand looked up as I walked in behind the woman: “Hey, what the hell’s that?”

“What?” a customer asked him.

“I thought I saw something,” said the clerk, “maybe not. I hope not.”

I somehow sneaked back to the storeroom without being seen. I hid behind some cartons of baked beans. That night I came out and had a fine feed. Potato salad, pickles, ham on rye, potato chips and beer, plenty of beer. It became about the same routine. Each day, all day, I hid in the store room and at night I’d come out and have a party. But I was growing and hiding was becoming more difficult. I got to watching the manager put the money in the safe each night. He was the last to leave. I counted the pauses as he put the money away each night. It seemed to be—7 right, 6 left, 4right, 6 left, 3 right, open. I went over to the safe each night and tried the numbers. I had to make a kind of stairway out of empty cartons in order to get up to the dial. It didn’t seem to work but I kept trying. Each night, I mean. Meanwhile I was growing fast. Perhaps I was 3 feet tall. The store had a small clothing section and I had to keep going into the larger sizes. The population problem was returning. Then one night the safe opened. I had 23 thousand dollars in cash. I must have hit them the night before banking time. I took the key the manager used in order to get out without the burglar alarm ringing. Then I walked down the street and got a week’s worth of lodging at the Sunset Motel. I told the lady I worked as a midget in the movies. It just seemed to bore her.

“No television or loud noises after ten p. m. That’s our rule here.” She took my money, gave me a receipt and closed her door.

The key said room 103. I hadn’t even looked at the room. The doors said 98, 99, 100, 101, I was walking north toward the Hollywood Hills, toward those mountains behind them, with the great and golden light of the Lord shining upon me, growing.

 

from The Most Beautiful Woman in the World and other Stories by Charles Bukowski

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