A world without meaning Yesterday I wrote about a visitation from an old friend (with a line borrowed from Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence). It was one of those posts that are all fire and fury, where words cascade and you run with them. I probably wasn’t as lucid as I should have been. I […]
Existentialism
I Am/Am I
I am unknown, unknowing, unknowable. Amounting to the same. I mean…What am I meaning? I glean…What am I gleaning? The purring of moments slink and drape themselves across my face, time is feline and graceful but get too close and that feral old bitch will bite. I am a silent limping disease scuttling across the carpet, […]
Keeping the Absurd Alive: Camus and Suicide
Introduction In writing my novel I wanted to ask some questions regarding our perception of reality, the nature of existence, suicide, and our relationship with the absurd. I wanted to find out more about this, and this lead me to Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. The title of this essay refers to the Greek myth […]
The Unremarkable World of David
David wakes on swollen mud banks, under the shadow of dead trees where dull rushes struggle to stretch into the brown haze of sky; a lone crow dives and caws above. This is David’s world, this is his mind — where he decided to live long ago — where stories were born, residents became characters, and time was held within its own sphere; where, when real […]
Inexplicable Splendour (Part 1)
‘It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.’ — Arthur Schopenhauer One cold Wednesday afternoon Harry stood up and said, ‘Fuck this, […]
Sartre, Beckett, and Kafka
Jean-Paul Sartre, I wished he woulda Lightened up and lived a little, Wrote a treatise and taught me how to do it too. Samuel Beckett Couldn’t hack it, A psychiatrist helped him see tomorrow — Wonder if he’s still waiting for Godot. Franz Kafka Felt the angst of Gregor Samsa — A man morphed giant insect — But he, like Josef K., just wanted […]
On the Road
I’m sorry you have to join in the middle like this. You were probably expecting a beginning, a middle, and end. But my story’s beginning is lost, unknown to me now, and equally the future. Our narrator has gone. But just to keep moving, I have decided to narrate myself. You’ll have to forgive me though, […]
An Ordinary Life
There is a quotation somewhere at the back of Tallow’s mind. He remembers it from a book, he remembers the large, gold letters that glimmered in the sun when he could still sit by windows. But he doesn’t remember the words, he doesn’t remember much these days. Tallow thinks they spoke of ‘walking’ and ‘stooping’ and ‘never giving up’ […]
I, Gretel
Tooth fairies flutter against her shoulder as Gretel scans the shadows. Her eyes are accustomed to darkness, she doesn’t feel the cold, but still struggles to process the function of existence. His papers and apparatus remain strewn — some as ashes in the oven. Gretel twitches her head and outputs a smile as fireflies dance in the rain outside the window. Her self-learning systems have created […]
Warning Signs
he just went in, i told him, i said to him, i remember, i was almost in the water, ‘get out you silly bastard, stop it!’ i was mad, i was shouting, ‘stop playing games, it’s not funny!’, but it just drove him on, he was laughing, said he needed a swim, i remember, his coat, it got snagged on the wires, […]
Candy Says
The journos were back again this morning asking me about her. ‘Candy says this’, ‘Candy says that’ they say. What do you say? they ask. And what should I say after all these years? What story does this old fool have to tell? Should I say that she was dirty and sweet? No, as true as it was, that would make me sound like […]