Man, if I were starting a list of things that are itchy, I'd put wool sweaters just right at the top.

That last post was, in brief, the result of a discussion on Quantum Physics that was forced upon me under the delightful conditions of not enough sleep and soaring overcaffeination, and a healthy (by which I of course mean decidedly unhealthy) amount of stress. But of course if we look at caffeine as preserving ideas of locality, in opposition with the Copenhagen interpretation, then our assumptions about the nature of sleep as a positive quantity can only be accounted for by the creation of a hidden variable theory. All we have to do is fire particles through a tube AT MY BRAIN AND END THE PAIN OF QUANTUM THEORY!!!!! Or, uhm, something like that.

My room is cold. I think they shut off the heaters late at night when they think we'll be asleep. Bastards.

Righto, anyway, back to work.

Have you ever had a dream where you can't understand how to speak anymore? Your brain works fine and you're having a nice normal chat with someone, and then when you open your mouth the sounds that come out are in some other language, some dead and ancient tongue that no one can understands? Even you can't understand what your words mean, and you don't know where you learned those sounds from. You are hearing yourself speak but your ears can't translate what your mouth has said aloud. And the people around you go white and wide-eyed with shock; you feel frightened by your unreadable babbling but they are aghast at it, your gibberish sounding to them like archane, screaming obscenities. And you flee before they can stone you for your words, your horrible sharp words that are rake like shards of broken glass upon their minds; you flee.

Laundry money, return to me!! Blast! Where have you gone? I had you here, I know it. Damn. Khaaaaaan!

Dear Friends,
I find myself come upon honestly-not-too-desperate times, and must inform you of something that has not had any real tragic significance in my life, but still, from a certain (albeit quite skewed) point of view, represents a loss. I come to tell you the story of my first houseplant, now deceased, one Greenstem P. Alvarez. Alvarez’s life in this house was neither a particularly smooth nor joyful existence, I will admit. From the very first there were signs that he would not long remain a healthy resident, for instance the fact that he was not a flowering or hanging plant, or really even any kind of houseplant at all, but was in fact, parsley. This tragic and immutable aspect of his character bespoke a sad and early doom for poor Alvarez. He was also marked “parsley to eat” and not “parsley to grow” which, a friend informed me, meant that I was supposed to use and replace him speedily before he had a chance to die on me. That heartless monster.

Things had started off very well for me and Alvarez – I had found him on sale at Sainsbury’s for a scant 45p, marked down because he was to ‘expire’ the next morning. At the time I thought that was ludicrous: do plants expire, I asked myself? Well now I know.

After joyfully bringing him home and furnishing him with his own luxurious and honorable place on the far corner of my desk, things were looking great for us. But then disaster struck: hunger. It struck, and struck again. I believe in retrospect that my periodic grazing upon Alvarez had only bad effects upon our relationship. Each time I nibbled of his lush, herby leaves or tore into the watery lower stalks, I could feel him growing a bit colder inside, retreating from the life we had built up together; but I could not stop myself. Things were getting critical between us, and I knew that pretty soon our relationship would probably draw to an end. Still, optimistic, as I prepared for a holiday away in Bath last weekend I hoped that the time apart might do us some good. Tragically I had forgotten to provide any water for Alvarez during my absence (or in fact at any single point during his stay here), and when I returned he was no longer alive.

I think that it was a combination of factors; mainly his being cooking parsley, my eating him, and my never watering him, ever. Alvarez, you will be missed, and hopefully your replacement, sorry, “successor” will be something less immediately edible. Here are some pictures:


Also, Bath was really great and I took snazzy pictures and had good adventures and ate homecooked meals, and will tell all about it soon.

Some people seem invested with the idea that Time is a very smoothly flowing thing. The way you hear some folks talk, you’d think Time just scooped you up in its hands and carried you along from one day to the next, step by easy step. I’m starting to think that this is just nonsense. There’s not supposed to be any consistency in how you move through your days, that would be a boring trip indeed; really, time rides about as smoothly as a bike with a bent-up front tire. I don't say this to worry you though, quite the opposite: this has not been the screaming and perilous part of the trip where the pavement rushes forward and you and see your entire dental history flash before your eyes, but the quick downhill exciting part where everything whirrs by and you think you're flying. I’ve been in London for a while now and I swear that the last week has been more full and vital than maybe any of the time leading up to it.

“We’re at Now now.”

I will tell you about where it all started a week or so ago, at a Blues Bar, a great, totally fucking great little place with a cheesy catchy name down around Oxford Circus. It’s trapped in the midst of all these horrific boutiquey places, window after window and store after store of bald mannequins with tight cheeks staring at you expensively in short skirts and lingerie, and by the time you find the door to the place you feel like your whole body’s covered with dirt. You can feel it all over your skin, it’s greasy and polished and impossible to rub off; it’s in your hair and in your jacket like cigarette smoke that stays sank into you after a party. By the time you get to that door you’ve almost had it, I’d almost had it, the city was just too much there for too long without a break, and even if it’s cold and not New York you can still feel the air lick you when walk the streets. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here, but you can get to needing a break. I needed one, and I found that door.

You walk in and it all comes off a you, it’s like they’ve got some magic machine by the door that just wipes you clean from top to bottom and blows something cool on your face. God what a great feeling! It was like plunging into cold water. The door closes and smoke and beer and sawdust swim up to hit your nose, and the light on your skin is clean and just bright enough to let you see who you are again, and then you look down and you say “that’s me!” and you keep on walking in. There’s music too, it’s perched up in a black box on the ceiling and when it notices you it spreads its wings and takes off. It ducks around a cloud of smoke swerves past the big men’s shoulders’ and skinny ladies’ necks and finds you clean but nervous in the thicket of bodies and clinking glasses, and it hovers there in front of your face and you stare up into its strange glass eyes and it’s just the most beautiful thing you thought you’d ever see, and here it flew all that way just to say hello to you. Then all real suddenly it comes in close and gives you a little kiss on the inside of your ear and you shiver all happy like the first time you ever got touched by a girl in the dark; now have a drink, or have two, it’s happy hour and they might have named it just for you!

And there are your friends, happy and clean like you are, and glad to see you. Really glad, what a thing! You drink and you joke with them, you meet new friends, friends of friends, friends of strangers, there’s a girl from Minnesota with her shoulders showing and a guy from Brussels with a cowboy hat and a leather zipper jacket, there’s nowhere to sit and nowhere to stand and everywhere to be and you’re smiling from your belly the way old men tell you to do for your health. And then the band finally makes it from the bar to the stage, an hour later than advertised but you couldn’t think to care or complain because the second they’re up they start making love to you and everyone else all at once. Magic. They’re good, man; even without the harmonica who won’t make it up from his bottle for another good hour, they are really good. The drummer’s sat up on a milk crate with his back leaning on the wall, his whole body looks relaxed but boy, you just try to follow his hands moving. A Hammond organ blesses us with the sweet sounds of a human soul made electric melody, and above a lanky dark electric bass, guitar licks fill it all in. There’s a big man singing whose voice sounds like it’s a hundred years older than you’ll ever be in your life. The music ripples through you, it touches everything in the room and bounces off again and it touched you too but it stays there. It bounces off the postered ceiling and off the stained sheet-music on the walls and off the racks of colored glass bottles behind the bar, but when it touches you it stays and just hits you again and again and again as it comes back off everything else, it hits you harder and softer and you feel like you’re standing under a waterfall and you can see those glass eyes hovering in front of your face and you can feel the bird kiss you on the insides of your ears.