Friday, August 29, 2008

The Stars of Order

Recently I've been rifling through my old stuff stored in one of Mum's sheds in Suffolk. Most of this is books and old VHS cassettes destined for little future in the DVD and post-DVD world.

Some of the detritus is going to jumble, some will be thrown out. My Mum needs more space. My dear little niece presumed today that the shed was mine. Yes, in a manner of speaking I replied. Bemused, I elaborated. Most of what's in it is mine but the room itself is Granny's.

Hidden away in a carrier bag in an old gramophone cupboard I found some of my old notebooks. I would say about 60% of these scribblings have been typed up at some point over the past twelve years in fits of little better to do. Much of the rest had been forgotten about. This from the mid 90s, for example, found in an A5 notebook manufactured by 'Europa':

Where have the galaxies of light, the enfolded, woven
threads of the beauty gone.

I wish again to know you
out past bounded fields of pain
taste again your smile
feel and hold in hands
warmths of flesh.

When you're gone
the framework in the head is shaken
spears and daggers of the abyss within
shed blood from the stars of order.

On the opposite page is an (unsent!) letter to a girl I got rather involved with (not her real name).

Dear Michaela,

I have nothing to say to you except:

STOP MASHING MY BRAINS.

Love

Jon


Crikey.

2 comments:

Selena Dreamy said...

STOP MASHING MY BRAINS.


The male is speaking to the female in the only way he comprehends - but the agony continues...

Jonathan said...

Heavens no, I could have written Michaela one of those torturously involved, psycho-emotional, self-reflexive treatises that gushed from my pen in the years immediately before I met her, and that others had to suffer, but I think I'd rather lost the energy by then. Besides, I don't think she was the kind of girl to have wanted to pay attention, or appreciate it. Perhaps some, most or all of the others weren't either, come to think of it. Their lack of replies may indeed indicate this, but who am I to know.

Michaela was equisitiely contradictory and hard to pin down. A Lady of Chaos my friend called her, I believe. My sexual-emotional fixation upon her, thankfully not too long lasting, thank God, I can accept may have skewed the clarity of my perceptions of her, and clouded my ability to understand her objectively. But not so much, I suspect, that it wasn't also the case that her inability to speak directly to me and mean what she said had the effect, indeed, of mashing the brains; something for which I don't believe it is fair to say I am alone responsible for by allowing my brains to be so mashed.

Anyway, it was enriching and intriguing to know her and I'd wish her well if I could. She was indeed vivid and vibrant and very much alive. I, and everyone I know who knew her, have no idea what she is now up to.

Interesting that you, and not I, drew frist blood in the game of sexist allegations. I wasn't implying she was mashing my brains merely because she was a woman.

I can grant that men might do this to me too, if, being gay, I had that kind of emotional investment in them, typical to romance, that makes one vulnerable.