crane or water-buffalo?

...
well we've been here two weeks
which is the longest i've been anywhere since we quit copenhagen in february
and priscilla is heading for completion of her first draft
...
and well, we're going to have trouble leaving
alot of trouble
so i reckon, we either hire a crane to dig ourselves out of here
or we find a team of friendly water-buffalo to drag our heavying carcasses off the beach
which do you think?
...
last time i was here i hired a crane
to extract myself from the idyllic luxury of it all
and it worked
...
so which, crane or buffalo?
...
and will it take us two days or two weeks?
cos its gonna be tough
can we make it?
...

some ginger rogers

...
ballroom dancing news:
two ballroom dancers honeymooning in Goa were briefly hospitalised after catching too much sun whilst illegally sunbathing in the nude
however, it is reported they still managed to return to their holiday bungalow for some ginger rogers

two ronnies joke?
...

you think you think...

...

you think you think?

I no longer think I think

now I find its much better to shrivel and shrink

to stand and mouth and … blink

you think you think?

I no longer think I think

cos I was booted up but now I am on stand-by

on dim on mute on dumb on numb on schtumm

and like a pigeon caught in a crocodile’s mouth

all i can do is blink

you think you think?

I no longer think I think

...

...

your bowel

you cannot scrape out your bowel

for much of the shit has become you

and some of it

is good shit

...

patnem

PATNEM

...

The distant dolphins out in the wide blue bay

The shoals of tiny fish fizzing the water in dark patches

The cows by the cool of the sea

The sandpipers, their impossibly small legs working double time to take them up the beach

The noisy packs of noisy dogs like adolescent boys all territorial in a playground

The dogs madly chasing the sandpipers and crows... do they, ever, catch one?

The White-Throated Kingfisher, the common Kingfisher,

The crabs ever scuttling to their holes as you approach

The dragonflies

The crabs with their borrowed conical shells

The Indian Sea Eagles and Brahminy Kites wheeling above the trees and the head

The diverse large butterflies

The sandflies, the mosquitoes, the flies

The big black bumblebee buzzing around behind

The big red ants, tiny red ants, the tiny black ants, the giant black ants

The roosters crowing

The occasional cat

The dead grey-black cow by the river past the head

The dogs and crows tugging at the fresh, newly stenching carcass

The midsized fish leaping in the sea

The occasional large monkey, long tailed and whitefaced

The bobbing head of the swimming tourists

The jewelery sellers hawking forlornly the early season beach, too numerous for too few tourists

The waiters looking out for business

The fishermen in the boats way out

The boys and youths playing cricket and football

The tourists playing bat and ball

The sun-lounging Germans

The acrobat kids on the makeshift tightropes with their makeshifting mothers

The youth with his needles and his ear scam [?]

The bored uniformed armed policemen occasionally strolling the length of the beach

The cleavages and pectorals, the fat European guts and the pregnant bulges

The strong black English swimmers way out to sea, front-crawling from headland to headland

The occasional gaggle of young Indian men, gawking slyly from the side of their eyes at all the Caucasian female flesh

The English guys on the pull, and the apparently keen Swedish and German girls

The early-lunching old women

The milk white toddlers laughing

The tottering local infants with their laughing mothers and/ or fathers

The yesterday today and tomorrow
...

it was all to get the roosters out of our hair

...
freedom by proxy
a freedom only in the
imagining of future others
enjoying that freedom

...
it was all to get the roosters out of our hair
all
i mean, civilization as we know it
it was a long-term altruistic project, the longest ever
the wheel, walls, printing, the steam engine, the light bulb
tarmac, clocks, plastic
all for one goal, peace, freedom from the unceasing din
cos way back when, over a 1000 years ago, whatever, some folks, some smart and very good guys, were utterly tired of all the roosters crowing all the time
truly deeply heartily pig sick of them
were weary to the very marrow of their bones with it
because it'd been going on forever, for 1000s of years, in every city, every town, every village, all over the world
roosters
crowing
waking them early, way too early in the morning
the headache
the great god forever headache of it all
and it looked like it would go on forever as well
unless someone did something
and it wouldn't be easy
so, those guys, were they in China, Granada, Babylon, or even in Italy?
no-one knows
but, whoever those marvelous guys were, they needed a break, and they wanted to save us, the following generations, from it as well
for the only freedom they could have from the din was the notion that someday the roosters would be gone, someday other more blessed humans would live that freedom
that was the only peace they could find in their minds... a freedom by proxy
because it was going to be a very long job, getting roosters and their bloody morning crowing out of our lives
i mean, it wasn't going to happen overnight,
it was plainly going to be an incremental job,
and a job for millions of individuals very raising the human race out of roosterdom
was for a goal far but nearer all the time,
till long long after they were dead it might succeed
so they battled
wells, clothes pegs, wheelbarrows, plastic bucket,
and they battled
incremental it was, dogged they were
and long were the centuries
and incessant were the cocks
and countless were the hours, the days, the evenings, the midnight lucubrations
all striving to one goal
getting the rooster out of our lives
till one day, far from the beginning, they got there
one day, after, because, they got there.. where they were no roosters

town, villages, whole cities,

rooster free

without the dawn cacophony
after so much effort, so much striving...
they finally got there...
aahhh the sleep of it, the deep deep sleep of it,

ahhh, it makes me drowsy thinking about it,

i think i'll lie down, isn't it quiet?...

hmmm...

if those guys are up there watching, the sight of me sleeping will really cheer them up
so
ahhhh
ta
ahhhh
zzzz
...
...

or maybe it was to get rid of the bloody dogs

no choice but to...

...

the past was a disaster
a nightmare
behind you is the abyss
chasming the ground from under you
like sloughing cliffs
no choice but to go for it...

...

i kingfish

...
so we're eating kingfish, tandooried, fresh, with fries and salad, roti and veg masala... 330 rupees
and we're drinking kingfisher... 60 rupees in tantra

and there are kingfisher around... flashes of blue in the brown and green... or against the rocks at the end of the beach... and there's a white-throated kingfisher with a long beak which sits on the bamboo rail of the bridge of the bridge inn, which is where we're staying and where we lounge for morning coffee and maybe porridge for herself... and where the small kingfisher seems to have a pretty easy time of it... it sits for only a minute on the rail, often shorter, watching the water of the still stream before it darts down and picks out a small fish which it holds wriggling in its beak for a couple of minutes till it swallows it, then swoops down for a quick drink of water and sits there again [do birds hiccup?] till it swoops for another... it did it yesterday, the day before and now this morning

patnem, for a good while yet

she very pretty, you very lucky

is what they said in thailand
cambodia
vietnam
and
lao
earlier this year
...
and its what they say here too

she very pretty, you very lucky

AN EXPERT ON LITTLE BUT... the spaces between the words

...
So,
if i have an annual cycle of life,
the old-fashioned nomadic-poet annual trail
well i also have an
annual cycle of knowledgelessness
an annual cycle of knowing nothing
an annual hoving to at Port Nowhere…
do you?
i do
in October November
after the tour is done
and before i start writing again...
the mind isn't just lifeless
its empty
Tis the season for nescience and grunting
and I’m amazed that, after all these years
all that reading
all that committed or casual hard-thinking
all those piles and piles and shelves and shelves and boxes and boxes of
books and books and books and boooks
all those random laterals and all that semi-scientific seeking
that after all this, all that
i can know so little…
can know so nothing
so zero
zilch
nil
nada
so nought point nought nought nought recurring
can sit here, again, mourning, crying out to the empty heavens
TO HAVE COME SO FAR AND KNOW SO LITTLE…
…
Yes, every year i have this zeroid phase of knowing sod all
Where, once again, all thought, lines, poetry, ideas, learning, seem
pointless
feeble
inconsistent
biased
self-serving
convenient
smug
Does this happen to you?
a time, a phase, a season, when no questions seem important
when answers are wholly unconscionable
when what you do know seems utterly insignificant
and everything you ever thought you knew is of paltry relevance
of miniscule worth, of nulled …
notness
?
does it?
it does to me
…
And my few ideas
my occasional thoughts
my mumbled words
my lumpy sentences
my quarterlit mind
seem to be nothing but opinions and prejudices
self-inflicted blinkerednesses and wilful stupidities
do you?
when all thinking, all reason, seems to be the emperor's new bollocks

seems solely based on
confidence
on self-assurance
on a willingness to ignore obstacular objections
cavilling counter-arguments
enfeebling flaws
disabling facts
seems based on unreason
on what it shuts out
on what its decided it can exclude,
on what its conveniently chosen to invalidate,
to reject, to rule out
on what exceptions
or objections
it has neatly forgotten
or happened to ignore
or blindspottedly blinkered-out
with opinion
with loaded and slanted adjectives
with your own
positive and negative assumptions
your own beliefs
presumptions
guesses
inferences
intuitions
hunches
fancies
and who’s to say which one?
and what the difference is?
and what they all mean ?
when all thought seems to be the product of a barely heard
and badly articulated
internal monologue/ dialogue …
a oneandahalfalogue… [or maybe a semilogue]
a oneandahalfalogue itself composed of little but
hearsay and
rumour and
gossip and
chinese whispers and
chitchatty tittle-tattle and
pubbish anecdote and
unabashed fable
...
so you've spent years and years,
and hours and hours,
and months and months,
and days and days,
decades,
casually or assiduously acquiring
knowledge
facts
details
patterns
ideas
metaphors
resemblances
and now none of it has any worth
it all fails to even begin to achieve...
...
I used to do this line
well there's more and more questions
but i don't trust answers
they stop the free moves of this
mental dancer
...
Well right now I don’t have any questions
Let alone any answers
…
You know what I mean?
do you get this feeling much?
i do
every autumn
the futility of knowledge
the pointlessness of trying
the delusion it could for anything worthwhile

a year zero of the head
i mean, a few weeks back i saw Baba Brinkman do some of his,
Rap Guide To Evolution
which was killer
one of the best things i've seen all year
and a great use of his intelligence
where me
i can't do that
cannot so confidently know
i have real trouble acting like I know anything at all
have real trouble writing with the certainty of knowledge
of specific knowledge
of any knowledge
of bulletproof thinking
of decent logic
of any logic
and i have to work and work and
slowly build things up
in order to know anything at all
little of it comes easy
i have to build up to it bit by bit, but by but, if by if
dodgy reasoning by spurious thinking by iffy logic by …
two step forwards by two steps back
and it don't come easy
and it don’t lead to any solid certain ground
and even if it could it wouldn’t
or would, it couldn’t…?
whatever,
cos all logic and knowledge is
in part at least,
blahdeblah,
made of language
which makes it even worse
because that’s words
and after no time at all
the words themselves
the things you use to explain the things you no longer feel like you know
start to get in trouble themselves,
they run into some deep doo-doo,
meet all manner of snaggy tribulation
they get to seem… blurred…
blahdeblurr …
indistinct…
unfocused…
not uptothejob…
friable…
inadequate…
poorly lit…
badly edited…
unrounded…
they get to seem like squarepegs in round holes…
or roundpegs in squareholes…
or Square Metaphors in Round Holes …
or Square Words in Round Metaphors
and they fray at the edges… or they crumble away… they fade… they lose conviction… they lose all hope faith in themselves…
and/ or they break off in chunks… they disappear on you… they give up trying and bugger off to the pub… to a club… to ibiza… to goa…
and/ or they go and get a job in basildon… they quit school… quit trying… quit even putting on the appearance of trying…
and/ or they abandon thinking as a bad venture returning little on investment
or they really get going, get better, get somewhere, get on with it…
they speed up, they speed themselves up, they accelerate at an ever acccelerating rate…
they roll downhill and keep on rolling…
they ramify, they divagate, they digress multiply, and again… they inspire themselves to greater and greater heights… they give birth to a multitude of monsters and then they start the real cross-pollinating…
they set themselves up as a style of art and then they evolve a whole subgenre which starts to grow bigger than the entire original genre which fades into forgotten desuetude…
yet the whole new subgenre is shit, is cheesy bollocks, even the money-grubbing tossers making the shitty music know its shite, even the writers of the fantasy garbage know how shameless their potboiling disregard of their own integrity and talent is…

...
and, even worse, and even more debilitating, is that knowledge,
and language,
are, at least in part, made up of groups of these iffy words
and the line from one word to another seems to be over a
high and precarious bridge
on some very ricketty towers
which could easily slip, tumble, collapse
into any and many other possible meanings…
it’s a tightrope…
a thin and ricketty gangplank…
an old and thin and ricketty ropebridge from Indiana Jones…
a hot tin roof…
a slippery roof …
a slidey roof in the rain…
so this stops you from wanting to move…
yet you can’t stand still … on language… on words…
on that surface of nothing…
that soapbubble interface between airs…
that insubstantial membrane
if you stop look down, to examine the ground
you fall,
you sink,
you fall through…
off…
out of…
down…
into
its like a jesuslizard skittering across water…
if you move fast enough you can keep going but if you stop that’s it
you’re going down
it’s a membrane …
a skin…
a film
a shell…
a paper …
a meniscus …
a bubble…
too thin,
too skimpy,
too light,
too fragile,
to take your weight…
so, if you stop, you fall,
you tumble,
you careen,
you collapse…
you turn to liquid to dust to powder
to bone-dry component bits
…
but is it the words or their meanings [and what’s the difference], which are
fraying to nothing…
are powdering at the edges…
are corrupting…
are buckling under their own weight…
are disintegrating
whose unwieldy motion is loosening their screws and bending their axels,
breaking their threads and skewing their chassis
is breaking them apart
???
??
?
???…
So its becomes impossible to say, to write, to speak, to know
impossible to think
impossible to…
…
So this is me croaking, grunting, blurting, throating
neither consonant now vowel
this is me
now
knowledgeless and grunting
tis the season for nescience and grunting

…

forgive me, someone forgive me
for i have fallen through the space between the words
my mind leapt
but it landed in the gaps between the words
or fell off the end of the line
and I leapt again and again
and I fell through the gaps again and again
fell into the space between the
discrete in the continuum
through the hyphen between stop-motion
into the space between the frames of the film
forgive me, someone forgive me
for i fell
and i am falling still
perhaps i made of words a science
and they are not a mathematic
they are an ineffable
an infinite
the mind can skim like a stone across the water of language
but it cannot stop to stand, to examine, to over-analyse
for there is no substance there
words are only lines and curves on paper
only hieroglyphs on the water
only smoke in the air
they are not real
they only exist in the flight across them
the journey
the skate the slide the skim the ski the surf
they are like an image in a flicker of paper
are too few layers of gossamer to hold a standing weight
are buoyed by their own air
are a fleeting triumph of their own self-belief
each word can only be explained by many
and each of them by many more
and each of them dissolves on too hard an examination
they all escape themselves
no rules can contain them
for too many exceptions burst their walls at will
and they become too little more than nothing
a copy of a copy of a copy
ever more blurred
so the trick is to handle then lightly
to not dissect them too much
for few definitions stand up for long
…

And those books, those five-speed words exchanged for money
those words which work for the bottom line
their sentences are solid
are soldered tight
their words are particles
locked together
in finished matter
in tight sentences
their punctuation as nuts and bolts and cogs and screws
they exchange set meaning for set meaning
they seek first and foremost to succeed
to safely make their meaning
well I want sentences like waves
i want the threat of danger
of falling off meaning
of failing to land
of falling through the gaps between the words
i want sentences vibrating
threatening to throw you off into the void
want sentences vibrating like string
in tune in harmony in pitch in discord
in cacophony
and so I sought the words the lines the energy to achieve this
and so I fell
and I am falling still
for i sought the fall
and I am falling still
for I succeeded
and I am falling still

for I wanted a permanent revolution of the mind
but what I got was a cyclic nadir of the head

Was there ever an age where meaning was so mercury on a griddle?
Where all purity so mixes and all fixity so unfixes.
Where nothing means wholly one thing.
And everything means something else.
And all single meanings drown in the
weight and currents and tides of the
ever-growing sea of all the meanings with all its
localised riptides, storms and doldrums
all its hurricanes and cyclones, its el ninos
…
For it was as if certain hard facts of reality…
One empire more powerful than any had ever been.
Possible destruction of everything.
Unstoppability of power due to self-interest of powerful and their creators.
Long-term self-inflicted environmental catastrophe as birthright of grandchildren.
Religious fanatics out to destroy whole cities,
Were facts harder than any hard facts before,
It was as if these facts had sucked up all the possible meaning.
were a synthesized boron compound harder than diamond,
and had been apportioned all the hardness so that
everything else blew in the wind,
as ash as paper as dust as powder,
as if most things blew into myriads immediately,
while a few things were as rays and paper,
slowly fading and flaking and fraying to nothing.
…
As if beyond the walled compounds of high-rise meanings,
there was nothing but chaos.

god of motion

...
i threw myself out upon the
vast and open ocean
and sold my soul to the ...
...

which is nice

except actually we've stopped

i've stayed in 55-60 beds this year already

and i'm finally going to stay somewhere [paradisic] for more than two weeks

...

why not?

...

500rupee bamboo hut just by the beach

high blue skies, flat warm seas, hot light sand, great tandoori fish, cheap beer
...

luxury

...

itchy though
...

lucky cow/ good advert for prayer

patnem beach

goa

back in paradise

[after 24 hour dash from east subcontinent to west subcontinent

after the rainy season washout out east]

was here in very south of goa for 20 days three years ago

came for 2 days, it took me a whole 18 hours to realise it was paradise

and then after three weeks of failing to leave cos i liked it so much

i finally had to hire a crane to dig myself out of the place

and even then i regretted it

gokarna was ok but this is....

paradise

where there are fifteen or so cows on the beach
and boy, do they look happy...
firstly they're in india, which has certain advantages for a cow
secondly, they're right by the shoreline which is
thirdly, cool
and fourthly, free of flies and mosquitoes
and you know that truly contented look cows can have
all placid and ruminating, with kind of a smile
well they've got it, they've really got it
to the point where it looks like they're about to burst into a big broad grin
and maybe even a bollywood happycow dance routine
the lucky cows

i bet they pray to a few gods

...

and they're a good advert for prayer

oops [part one]

tirupati, AP
off the map, off the guidebook,
off compass, off bearings, off axle, off metaphor
...
the country ridgy, red soiled...now friendly and green, now stark and rocky ... not bad
super-friendly waiters, touching to their hearts as you leave... not bad
but... the million strong, unheard-of town... with...thunderous downpour, grubby bedlam streets, blaring lights blaring horns, veg veg veg, dark corners, stinking sewers, friendly folks, stuffy hotel rooms, limbless beggars, colds migraine etc, numbheaded numbum busrides, tomato farms, suicidal dogs, lumps and lurgeys, 1000s of quietly queueing pilgrims up the windy hillroad at tirumala, indiana jones on tv, dr zhivago and last exit to brooklyn in book, cheap cheap cheap, yet another bollocks coffee made in the teapot/pan [hideous], rooms of cot-sleeping men... and more thunderous downpour
oops
so, no hoorah for our dash, via hypochondriacal delays, straight to the rainy season
oops
unerring, triumphant even in its heading for the great wet oops
cos yes we're heading for mal and pondy and what happens?
we find its the bloody monsoon on the south-east coast...
which is right where we're going
oops
so...do we scrap this plan and jump on a 22 hour train to goa?
we probably do
i thought i knew the climate and i didn't... and no-one told me about november being the wettest month
oops
and which rainy season is already deluging upon our sniffly heads
oops
and the weather forecast for the coast says, six days of thunderstorms
yes six
oops
...

my favorite line from withnall and i is

apparently we've come on holiday by mistake

well we've come on holiday by mistake

to make more mistakes when we get there

here

...

oops

and the [part one] in the title of this blog is a cheering piece of self-awareness, don't you think?

especially when you realise how self-awareness has never been my strongest suit

self-deprecation for comic effect has, of course, long been part of all repertoires... on and off stage... but not self-awareness

so... coming sooner rather than later... you guessed it... i-i-iiiIITTTS... [part two]

...

whatever

oops

...

the pig

...

And the lateral leaps travelling brings to you

For a pig is many things

But here, more than anything else perhaps, it is a very good way of creating nourishment from waste

And seen like that it is amazing, miraculous even...

...

how many big bangs does it take to change a lightbulb?

...
...

...

...

...

puttaparthi still
marooned by lurgeys
hoping the trip to vellore, via either tirupathi or bangalore
isn't as hellish as the trip here
long will i remember anantapur bus station on a wet sunday afternoon
...

cos yeah, its been raining, alot
i forgot it did that
which has rather shortened the long walks across the flatness, by the lakes, past the herons, beneath the low puffy whites
luckly we are that if we're not that into a place well, we can just get the notes or the laptop out...
and write
sequester in cafe or hotel
and write
which isn't bad
and write
...
and write

to condemn the children of these shoeless children to shoelessness

...

...

one wonders if

preaching the unimportance of

material things,

the transience of all

earthly matters,

is to

encourage a way of life of

mass poverty,

is to

condemn the children

of these

shoeless children

to shoelessness

...

...

hyderabad samosa

a new one on me
the street stall samosa sellers crumble the samosa onto a hot plate, chuck on some chickpea curry, griddle it for a minute and serve it in a small leaf bowl with some diced onion on top...
not bad at all...

puttaparthi

a gruelling 3 bus, eleven hour ride, an ok bus, followed by a diaboliocal bashcrangy bus, followed by a bad bus

so it was a jaded and starving undynamic duo who limped off the bus into the capable hands of the first smooth hotel seller they encountered

whoops

followed by a nice veg meal at sai tanaya, served by a dementedly friendly puttaparthi family of utmost courtesy

...tomorrow we explore

DRAWNoNWARD

so...below is a piece i thirty months ago wrote after returning from six months in India... i wonder how different this time will seem

drawnOnward

Even the grooviest grooves can get so smooth they turn into a rut… yes, even the grooviest grooves can get so smooth they turn into a rut… so… India… NEW WORLD, SAME ME… in the seeming chaos of the Delhi bazar the best way to walk is in the path of the oncoming traffic, cos it’s the only place where you can possibly see most of what’s coming… for I got taken away, by the way taken … and on day one, outside the British Council, the eight year old knows no English but he knows enough to try and sell me his body… he twirls like a girl and singsongs by rote “with me you can do anything you like”… across the road, his tennish sister grins a wide mouthful of teeth at me… rendered unknowledged, disclued, everything to learn… so, when I return in five months, will it be, SAME WORLD, NEW ME?… the police motto is, with you, for you, always… the relentless mind, putting the world together, pulls itself apart… the tube is nicer than London …and ooo, only a twentieth of the price…in fact it’s nicer than Toronto and Montreal…they even say please when they say “Mind the gap”… but they do also say, “do not befriend anyone” …??? ...and yet, passing directly under Chandni Chowk, and Old Delhi station, you look at all the shiny metal around you, the cleanliness, the expense, and you think, this is a country run by Brahmins for Brahmins, above is mass poverty, are people living in lean-tos, is life brimming from squalid corners, is bright colour arrayed over blacks and browns and long sullied whites and crumbling concrete, are ragged children on rubble, and you think, this is a country run by Brahmins for Brahmins … hour by hour, day by day, let me draw you, let me piece fragments of knowledge, let me put one word after another to get closer and closer to the truth … and the voiceover at the show says, “building a new vocabulary within the kathak dance, a movement woven with the aesthetic”… and I am stupid question man, am a rising glut of idiot queries, I have to stem and plug… what is, how do, when did, what if, can they????… and this part of the blog is like a cow in the street, it doesn’t do anything, good or bad, its just there, momentarily getting in the way … on the toy train the six year old boy holds his mother’s phone while she holds his head on her lap and picks out the lice… GOOD ADVERT/ up the road from the dalai lama’s pad in dharamsala, on the large banner-sign over the entrance to the mountaineering centre, a family of monkeys swing and fall and swiftly clamber, and you think, are they the instructors? they're bloody good, i'm going in … the golden temple of Amritsar …about as unbogstandard as unbogstandard can get…a pure pleasure, in fact the purest pleasure, to stroll slowly around it three times a day … the most aweing religious building I have ever seen … and the cleanest toilets in India… PYRRHIC VICTORY On the painting in the temple, a man holding a bloodstained sword, triumphantly brandishes by the hair, his own severed head, …hmmm, maybe i'm not privy to the mythology, or the symbology, but surely, something of a pyrrhic victory no? … and I held the sacred spear while the friendly temple guard fixed my headscarf…and it’s a funny bit of guardwork when he gives you his weapon so he can smilingly adjust your headgear ?... to journey up the dark river into the jungle of oneself and find the brawling mess of uglinesses that is me, The Horror! The Horror … DOES IT MATTER if it was a great place to be for an hour, and you only got there by wandering at random, and there were no street-signs, and you weren't paying attention anyway, and you got away by auto-rickshaw, which went past no landmarks, so you don't know what it was called, and could never find it again, but will never be back in Amritsar anyway, does it matter you have no idea where you were? or what it was called?… people are the same the world over, kids are really the same the world over, and teenage motorcyclists and SUV drivers, they are definitely the most the same the world over of all same-the-world-overs … in Chandigarh the first thing I write is… the shitiest shitehole that ever got shitier …yes, the shitiest shitehole that ever got shitier …council estates in Glasgow have nightmares that one day they'll wake up and they'll become this place… half of which resemble a series of unpaved car parks where most people can't afford a car … where wide-boulevard saminess and no road signs means it was designed to confuse invading armies…apparently the Pakistani army lost an entire tank corps here in the 1971 invasion… they'd heard it was built by le Corbusier and cruised in, like many a misguided tourist, to find they'd made a horrible mistake… apparently they were in such a hurry to leave they all bust the accelerator pedals in their T54s and got wiped out like sitting ducks…it seems they were offered apartments but they understandably preferred death by immolation … cos yes its, chandigarh, the shitiest shitehole that ever got shitier … and this part of the poem is like a cow in the street, it doesn’t do anything, good or bad, its just there, momentarily getting in the way … [two days later I rather liked Chandigarh and I’m sorry to leave] … to journey up the dark river and come out, much to your surprise, into the full blaring festival of oneself, The Hurrah! The Hurrah… its very difficult to learn more about your own country, you’ve known them so long you think you know everything already, and its very difficult to learn about a new people, there’s so much you don’t know, how do you start? … in Lucknow, on sunset’s river, the branches drift into the sun, the wreaths of the day… a haiku? ... it doesn’t cost peanuts, it costs peanut… MY INTESTINES/ my intestines are like the bassiest bass string on a doubly done-in double bass being played by a large cheerful stupid and wholly arhythmic bear… down below in the wasteland between varanasi hotels... two women each carry a precariously high-stacked basket of precarious cowpats ... and, fifteen minutes ago, the dogs killed a dog in a frenzy of agonised yelping, the top dog has torn and ripped and chewed and sated himself, and now the number two is having his turn while nearby a pair of smaller wogs watchfully await theirs… and Salman Rushdie writes, we inhale the world and breathe out meaning, while we can, while we can… and Henry Miller says, drink cold, piss warm … and this part of the piece is like cows in the street, it doesn’t do anything, good or bad, its just there, momentarily getting in the way … and it is the holy places that I like best, Dharamsala, Amritsar, Varanasi, where the tourism is not the main thing… in Varanasi the Ganges is first, the holy of Hindu holies, and secondly, its functioning everyday lived-in workspace, and only third, is it tourist zone… and on sunset’s river, by the ghat where they burn the bodies, we are in the flight path of oooo, half a million swallows swooping swarming soaring and flitting, a reality I can only describe by cheap resource to the unreal, 3D movie-like, CGI-like, in their at-you at-you at-you-ness … and the rime on my neck is from burnt human flesh trying to become my second skin … STARBUCKS ON THE MOON/ in the hotel pond in Khajuraho, the largest goldfish sucks at air at the pool's edge, and tries to lift itself with its fins, as if trying to climb out, as if trying to evolve, but if it succeeds i hope its not too disappointed, it might be like climbing Everest, to discover there's a McDonalds on top!... One by one the stars are coming out… my baseless opinions are like walls without foundation, one good push and they fall right down… MOHAMHED GAUS, GWALIOR/ well it looks pretty marvelous, but its not in the, lonely planet, so it must be crap …but, are you sure?... cos it looks great…but its not in , and what do I know, so it must be crap… why do waiters the world over take the menus away when you’ve ordered… hold it, it is in the lonely planet, it’s the mohammed gaus, and the tamsen temple, the map's scale is way iffy, told you it was great … isn’t it lovely?... to journey up the dark river into oneself, and come out into a strange mystical land The Aura! The Aura! … the most ordered spaces are the petrol stations… and this part of the piece is like a cow in the street, it doesn’t do anything, good or bad, its just there, momentarily getting in the way … WHAT IS CURRY the kind of misunderstanding its too easy for me to create, which leads to the superfriendly and worryingly serious waiter, with no English, trying to explain to me, with no Hindi, exactly what a curry is, ... because he thinks i, with our broken communication, have asked...and blimey was it hard for him… by the time i realized what he was doing, we'd been round every house in the village, twice… in Gwalior the largest human statue I have ever seen, its dick long since axed off by the Muslim horde, has half a beard on its chin … which is the largest beehive I have ever seen, a speckled black surface rippling with menace … and well, its just like touring FringeCanada, no-one understands anything I say but I do seem to provide lots of entertainment … whole families come out of their houses simply to laugh at me… just like Winnipeg … and my hair has plainly got of such a condition that everyone is trying to sell me dope... in fact i am such an inviting mark that no-one can resist me, doctors dash out their surgeries, mullahs motor down from their minarets, and priests pop out of the pulpit, all on the excellent on-chance just cos my hair is passing... which means i am spending even more time than before saying no... to journey up the dark river into oneself , and come out paddleless into a swirling murky brown eddy you can't get out of, The Error! The Error… as i blunder proliferously, ever English, in temple hotel bus-station cafe train place street restaurant autorickshaw-queue mosque I KNOW WHAT THE INDIANS ARE THINKNG they’re thinking, "how did these people conquer a third of the world, and why did we let them stay for so long?"

are we narcissistic or...

hyderabad
hot grubby and chocabloc...
long walks, great food, easy heat

heading south tomorrow to we're not sure where...
we have to decided to rotate roughly clockwise around this vast country...
though this might change... because...
FREEDOM, FREEDOM, WE HAVE SO MUCH FREEDOM
many many people would wholly envy our freedom...
because we have so much time its infinite...
and this country is so big its infinite...
so we have time to go anywhere
which is almost too much freedom
and its tough to not let the freedom sit on us and stop us from acting...
to cloak
to stifle our action
for there are so many possibilities we could spend forever working out which one is best
so we might as well go with impulse... south

i always say its good to be tall... but, in a tuk tuk, with their covered tops, where you have to stoop to see anything, it really ain't so great... in fact its a pest... and i would grow my neck like a giraffe ... except

except i am already do-do-doing the eurindian head nobble... cos i come from a land where you nod your head to say yes... and i'm in a land where they wobble their head in [what i take to be] an affirmative... though there is plainly a whole language to the gesture of the head wobble, of which i know nothing... yet i have instantly caught the wobble, which i don't understand anyway, but haven't got rid of the lifelong nod... meaning i do this diagonal all-over-the-place headshake which means nothing to anyone... so i have become mr headtwitchtic headnobble... and the poor Indians have even more reason to stare at me uncertainly... in fact some of them look ... constantly apprehensive i am about to do SOMETHING ELSE THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND

so, looking at that giant concrete metal plastic heath- robinson contraption in the middle of the road, i think ...well, if you took someone who is not a engineer and gave them a pile of concrete, iron girders and large thick sheets of plastic... and asked them to make a model of a giant squid... then it might well look like that

are we narcissistic or...

is everyone staring at us?

well they might be... in fact they are... especially in streets and markets but also in cafes and restaurants ... and, out at the somewhat grand golconda fort, i looked up at the ramparts and, everyone was staring at us... it was very a movie scene ... people walk past us in a devious swerve so their friends can photograph them seemingly next to us
and everywhere we go, yes they are staring at us, children come out of their houses to better stare at priscilla... who is getting blonder by the daylight hour...
so are we narcissistic, well at least one of us might be but, yes, everyone is staring at us

Hi...

hyderabad

too tired for words
hot and grubby, two long walks, vast quantities of veg, grimy rimy neck, unbuilt sidewalks, beeping lights in darkness, teeming people, gaudy colours, same moon, platoons of waiters,
safe landing... a matter of fact city, just so, 5 million lives being lived
too tired for words, lagjet syllables in wrong order
short sentences, terse words, no adjectives, few verbs, a series of grunts and nouns
see you
j