i've been carrying this napkin with a scribble on it
since yesterday -
obviously in the heimatspreschen -
chcem stanąć przed sędzią, który może
osądzić sędziów - i.e.
i want to stand before the judge, who can
pass judgement on all judges -
and a lesson for a few:
e. e. cummings does not even tickle
orthography...
noMatter howOrWhy you write so so,
and the not so... that's not orthography...
you don't get teach people orthography
with a language that has no diacritical
aesthetic... orthography goes hand in hand with
the application of diacritical marks,
and, since english has none: i consider
the interpretation of e. e. cummings'
works as: on the sly orthographic: absolute
diatribe.
you want to know what orthography
looks like?
exhibit (a)
chcem stanąć przed sędzią, który może
osądzić sędziów - correct - orthodox -
exhibit (b)
hcem stanąć przed sędzią, ktury morze
osądzić sędziuw
esp. on the może (maybe)
and morze (sea)...
that's orthography!
take your ****** little e. e. cummings
******* and... *******!
so much for an intro...
today i found myself in possession of a 6 zone
travel card...
little essex boy went sightseeing into
london, his adventure would end at
alexandra palace, wood green,
the piccadilly line, zone 3,
so off little essex boy went,
got on the train from lil' market town into
liverpool st., started walking on the platform
thinking: thank **** no owls and quarters
and hidden passageways into & through
brick walls...
as any wordsmith will tell you:
once you enter the urban environment proper,
you start to realise, well, a permanent
insignificance of your effort dawns on you,
how you're overshadowed by all the clogs
in the machinery of the civilised world...
awe? far from it... i was barraged,
pulverised by the ant in an ant-topia -
or should i say: a utopia is a place where
there's a seemingly infinite demand for work,
not necessarily a seemingly infinite
supply for work, but certainly a demand for
work...
the most ******* job has to exist
to accommodate the people -
it doesn't have to, but is has to exist in
order to be a bit like housing space.
so i passed them, the train operators,
the ticket inspectors, the men on the tracks
improvising improvements from ilford to
stratford (manor park, forest gate, maryland
etc.) -
it really didn't matter whether one worked
and two snoozed on the job -
the idea perpetuated itself:
if not actually doing anything:
**** it, act, look busy, or look perplexed
by some "unfathomable" obstacle,
most notably thought.
oh you better believe me that i have
great respect for even the most menial
professions -
or as i like to call them: flip flop hopping just
shy of heaven -
the daydreamers' jobs -
******'s on that till telling train tickets,
ever so often waking up by an imaginary
coconut falling on his head when
a new customer arrives and wakes the
**** up.
london... ah, what a place...
someone once said you're never a meter away
from a rat on these streets...
no ****, and half a meter from a rat with wings
and probably an eager tourist feeding these
"penguins"...
but i took the trip because
i thought i'd feel inspired, change of environment,
like: i honestly can't remember the last
time i sat on a bus, or a train, or the tube...
me in a sitting position,
inside a belly of some mechanical diesel
caterpillar...
just for the occasion i thought i'd
dress up, put on a pair of socks and a pair of jeans...
well, i thought: these londoners can't suspect me
coming from the home counties...
gotta look the part, in some remote way...
fat face attire all, from the waist up;
but the people in their number
and disorientation hit be like a saharan gust
of wind, remnants of a hurricane -
everywhere i turned at liverpool st.
there was either a zombie apocalypse,
or some crack-******* ***** late for a train...
i got some fine red wine prior to
the expedition...
and so i headed to alexandra palace...
why? well... it looked mighty fine 11 years ago
from the rooftop of the scottish widows h.q.
near st. pauls...
sitting pretty on top of a hill...
so i got there, ensuring i let the arsenal fans
get the first two trains from st. pancreas to
pass me by, extending my wait for about 10 minutes...
who was arsenal playing today?
tottenham? the punters on the train said:
2 - nil.
don't know the score.
so i got to wood green...
no one actually said there was a hill to climb!
**** it, i climbed it, and when i got to the top...
to be honest, alexandra palace looks more
spectacular from a distance akin to st. paul's
on the 19th floor...
it actually looks bigger from that sort of
distance...
but i reached the top, and still had my wine,
and i even brought with myself a glass...
so i opened the bottle and began to forget
the initial: the **** am i doing next to
alexandra palace?!
shouldn't i be sitting comfortably finishing
the second season of versailles at home?!
ah... never mind... so i drank the wine and
became shocked at the horizon before me...
as a connoisseur of drinking partners -
yes, you might have suspected all along,
i was drinking the wine alone... aha! but i wasn't:
i was drinking a bottle of wine, with, the view;
on the up side, the view from alexandra palace
is so much better than the view from
primrose hill - sure, maybe st. paul's isn't
visible, and you get to see much more of
the ferris wheel by the thames -
but when it comes to a drinking buddy -
the view from alexandra palace is so much
better than the view from primrose hill.
- and as ever, a highlight from the voyage,
helping god disguised as an old lady in
a hindi shawl with her shopping -
in one of those wheely bags... down
the escalator, onto the tube, then off the tube...
why did i imply god disguised as an old lady,
she said she's 70, i compliment her that she
looks 60... and believe me... that bag of hers
weighed about 30 / 40 kg...
and then back to romford,
for a quick pint of guinness on romford high st.,
aah... home... home with the "****"...
with the sort of people that make sense -
born and bred and sooner or later
to be dead...
at least this apparent
"*******" is not as much a farce as the entirety of
london put together...
i can feel at home here,
mind you, a pint of guinness costs 3.15 over here,
which isn't exactly extortion down by
liverpool st. at 5 quid a pop.
london used to make sense once,
even for me, but these days -
it's just a ouroboros -
it's in its own stratosphere of "busy",
******* jobs, ******* rent,
and as much as any noah's arc translated
into a city state as you can think of,
with only rats on board...
but when you stand on either primrose
hill, or next to alexandra palace,
with a bottle of wine and your drinking
buddy that's the view -
you can only start citing bilbo baggins:
i feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter
scraped over too much bread;
because that's what london is: superficial -
which is why i immediately known what
i'm going to get when i step onto
the romford high street...
sooner or later it's all going to turn
into superficiality central, the mimic cities
of l.a. (and thank ****, that i can only imagine
this to be the case of said imitation).
