Vertebrae

2011-06-18T12:12:00.000-05:00

1.
When she was scared she disappeared. Not quite invisibility or a cute aversion to being scolded, this was like being cookie-cuttered out of the world.
There had been that town square in Germany with British and Australian travellers. Like a threatened guppy in front of the sleazy local she had sunk into her surroundings. Her companions had been vaguely aware of her dimming silhouette in the lamplight before she wasn't even there in memory. They may have wondered at the half-drunk beer spilled on the table beside them. Her hand still cradling an absent skein she awoke in the hostel bed, the distant and disappearing rush of waves in her ears.

2.
Standing on the prow of the Wayfarer, she inspected the skyline. The squall up ahead almost looked like a tsunami if she squinted. She squinted some more just to be sure, and slowly it came into view. The wave's gaping mouth was huge, cavernous above the glassy ocean surface. As the quickly-impending reality hit her she stumbled and slid to the other end of the craft, colliding painfully with the rudder. There was no way she'd be able to escape the drag, already inverting her sails as she was pulled forward. As she groped for a steady surface the dinghy lurched and rolled, throwing her headfirst into a solid blue wall.

3.
There was that night her friends had encountered a mugger on their way home from a bar. She found herself on the last train home feeling seasick. How lucky she'd left early, they told her. She wasn't even in the photos when they later appeared online; The Night We Were Robbed! minus lucky Karen!!
She had learned to play along with this quirk of her own reality, taking the relocations in her stride and even relying on it occasionally. But there seemed to be no logic to it; karaoke was off limits entirely. Her driver's license had been a nightmare. Every time she'd flicker out of the car and back to the driveway, shaking salt from her hair, wondering how she'd find yet another instructor.

4.
Suddenly she was aware of everything once more. Her open eyes stung with salt, her open mouth choking and trying not to swallow more. She scooped handfuls of water out of her way, seeking the surface until her fingertips hit something solid. She kicked frantically, following the curved hull up and into oxygen. Her breath caught in her chest, heaving brine out of her airways as she pulled herself free of the water.

In Cairo

2010-08-31T17:20:00.000-05:00

Her parents filled her youth with books. Stories about courageous girls, brave and clever girls, strong and funny girls. Girls Who Would Not Let The Wool Be Pulled Over Their Eyes. And they told her not to listen when the world told her she was not good enough.
There was one book she read when she was six or eight or eleven about a girl who lived in Egypt. This girl wore a white tunic and had dark long hair and eyes the colour of sweet toffee. She was beautiful and her face was purposeful, this was how she remembered the girl to be. In Cairo all the houses were all painted white for the Heat, though at the time she couldn't imagine why, and all the houses had flat rooftops. In the desert night and the absence of clouds the family would bring their beds out onto roof and the girl would look up at the stars. She would dream of their lives and their troubles and their conversations in the arid, bustling night.

Years later she lies in bed in her parents house and imagines the desert heat is what makes the room so warm. She imagines the study in which she sleeps has no roof, no walls, no ceiling or barrier between her and the naked, enigmatic stars. She sees the strange white city full of little girls watching the sky for sparks of life.
She pushes the sheets away with her feet and dreams of the limitless night, stretching away in every direction.

London

2009-08-04T11:50:00.001-05:00

Liquid boundary between timeless sleep and sharp reality. She seeps sleeps slips in through the cracks. Couples seek out the dark, deserted corners of her memories where they kiss unseen.

Sky painted heavy with lead and gunmetal, solid cloud eddying the breeze which passes across them. Leaving her is strange and reluctant. As the distance grows the connection pulls at my bones, vertebrae popping out from under taut skin.

passage

2009-07-18T17:21:00.000-05:00

"Whichever is the hardest path to take, that is usually the right path."

Passage

2009-06-03T15:11:00.003-05:00

Short breaths caught in her lungs as the bus pulled away from the station. She'd missed it. With a curse she dropped her heavy suitcase to the floor, and seemingly in slow motion watched the latch hit the kerb and catapult across the road. A hairdryer, underwear, lipstick, European currency spilled onto the hot tarmac of the forecourt. She sat on the case and let herself cry a little, tears mingling with sweat on her face.

Passers-by watched as she collected her belongings and hauled them to the plastic benches by the ticket booth. She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. As smoke congealed in the still air and dust she sighed, and it seemed to deflate her. Hair hung over her face, the glow of the cigarette end barely visible. Her high heels dangled from her feet showing the blisters underneath. She sat there for a time and then slowly, as if she had melted to the chair, she pulled herself upright.

Fracture

2009-05-13T05:31:00.005-05:00

Obfuscate: make communication intentionally vague, unclear, ambiguous.

Guilt

2009-04-29T20:30:00.001-05:00

In Geology episodic refers to events that occur or have occurred periodically. Length of the period may be even thousands or millions of years.

Guilt

2009-03-10T19:05:00.001-05:00

Less a guest overstaying its visit.
More of a poltergeist.

Legendary

2009-02-16T19:58:00.006-05:00

Of course, he was a wonderful man. Then, I suppose they all were. It was a very long time I ago that I last had a man about, you know. They never stuck around, or I never put up with them. Either way, either way the papers had their fun, didn't they? I was a serial man-breaker, leaving them all behind.

Why didn't you marry any of them?

Oh, I didn't really have time. Not then, anyway, not with matches and publicity and everything. And later I didn't have the time, I was doing all those ad campaigns, you know? The ones for watches, wearing things I'd never buy. I think I was expected to marry them, everybody asked. But they would be just as keen to see me divorce them, too. No, I wouldn't do all that. My bloody manager said weddings were good for publicity, get me doing interviews and Hello shoots, no thanks. I would have thought sportsmen had different rules.

Sportswomen, too?

[Pause]

But you did marry in the end, didn't you? More recently?

Oh, Lawrence. Yes, we met after I retired, after I moved here. He passed away a few years ago.

I'm sorry to hear that.

I quite like it now he's gone, actually. I'm used to being alone, see? I like it better that way. I don't find all ... [inaudible] ...

Draught

2009-01-22T11:46:00.000-05:00

As she rounded the crest of the hill the first tentative fingers of dawn were tearing through the clouds. He was like orchestras, she decided, to her solo violin. He was like warm, fresh bread to her mouthful of sweetness.
There was a delicious pleasure in her spine, as the chill wind swept her coat aside and prickled her skin into goosebumps.

2009-01-19T13:28:00.002-05:00

After her second helping, her mother leaned over and said "Stop". It was obviously meant with a love, and it was said with a smile.
Under the pretence of clearing pans she snuck a third plate of pasta in the kitchen.

Unlikely

2008-08-29T22:59:00.008-05:00

I've never been hit in the face before. Being a short white girl I guess that's not surprising, but the fight surprised me.
It started when we cycled from the bar to the party. We stopped to let people catch up and decide our route, but some cock thought he'd call us hippies in front of the drunkest of our number. Suddenly this guy is throwing punches over my head at the guy behind me. Suddenly my head hits the tarmac and I'm watching this bizarre scene upside-down until a foot meets my thigh. But my friend is in the line of this cokehead's punches, so unwisely I rejoin the fracas.
All I can remember is thinking this guy must be high, my hands are pretty tightly wrapped in his hair and he's still going, he's hit my head a few times on the way to his perceived threat.
The police van arrives, and half a dozen people are in handcuffs. I see blood smeared on the back of my hand, and wonder where I am bleeding from. I worry about the half-bottle of wine in my bag, whether this will make things more difficult for me. I am very nearly sober, and this is not fun.
A stout policewoman tries to get my details, while I ask her questions about the man in handcuffs. She takes my phone number and hands me a tissue, but I still don't know where the blood is coming from. I suddenly hope it's mine. People are crying, people are leaving the scene for home.

Later, walking back because I'm shaking too hard to cycle, the police phone me. My friend answers and tells them where to stick it, because I'm in a complete state and she doesn't want me to give a statement. They tell me they will come to my house if I don't co-operate, take me into custody. Nobody else believes them, so neither do I.

Eventually the police hang up on me, because I am talking too much.

Passage

2008-07-19T13:32:00.006-05:00

She decides to begin this journey nameless, and then ponders the difference between being nameless and anonymous. She sticks with nameless because she wants to be remembered.
At the moment she's occupying an aisle seat on a cross country train, impatiently. Delays, language barriers, lost tickets and thieves. It all sets her on edge. She has no suitcase but a huge handbag filled to bursting. Not necessarily easier or more convenient, she decides it's a challenge.
Besides, she likes presenting a puzzle to the other inhabitants of the carriage. Sitting on a rush-hour train with her long hair loose and messy, her long legs tucked neatly under the seat, almost hiding her bright silver sandals and tanned toes. She likes to think they will wonder where she is going, or why. She has a cocktail dress but no makeup on, wide eyes and no tinny headphones to hide between.
To pass time she flirts with a shy-looking office clerk, blowing a kiss to the girl as she leaves the train in the suburbs. A little later, a man with a guitar case sits next to her and strikes up conversation. He's a musician. He thinks she is beautiful, he wonders if he could write a song for her. Not right here, she hopes. Play me something nobody else here will recognise, she says. Play me your favourite. So he does, right there in the carriage, and she doesn't know the song. She watches his face as he sings and decides that he is beautiful.

Discovered

2008-06-17T22:54:00.005-05:00

Gradually she became obsessed. Everyone could see it, she was sure. Ten minutes before leaving the house she would take up her post: hair, makeup, tug the sleeves of her shirt into place. That 3/4 profile could kill.

Unable to Sleep and Scornful of Temazepam

2008-05-22T04:52:00.005-05:00

Crackling, stiff. Starched still and devoid of moisture. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be burned alive, that initial crisping of the flesh. The first transition from hot to cooked. So inelastic, movements of my arms and even my legs have repercussions. I visualise the small of my back like tarmac, folding reluctantly in the waves of an earthquake.

2008-03-07T07:03:00.004-05:00

Kisses
and all the songs you didn't realise you sang to yourself in the mornings.

Every little place. Under your ear, the line of your hip, the skin between your shoulder-blades.

Passage

2007-12-09T14:48:00.000-05:00

Unexpectedly her forehead touches the window as the train lurches sideways. A single bead of sweat remains on the glass, true to the sticky heat and apprehension.
The train must be moving at walking pace, so slow to gather speed. She wills it to gather speed. A child's face at the window of a house, a run-down play park, young mothers with cigarettes, newsagents, hedgerows, dogs, sun. Finally blurred together, the landscape is safe to watch. Unsettled without knowing why, she scratches the skin of her thighs with her fingernails. Wonders if opening a window will help in the slightest.

2007-10-23T06:36:00.001-05:00

She tastes fresh, clean. Like the dewy air at dawn, or water melting from an ice-cube. At the crook of her neck and between her breasts her skin is warm and smooth, and sweet-smelling.

2007-09-17T17:35:00.000-05:00

fluoresce: to emit visible light

florescere: to begin to bloom

2007-07-28T20:22:00.001-05:00

The grief was sudden and terrible to live with. Her love being unrequited, it was kept a secret. She sobbed in daylit corners and under dark duvets, often dry-eyed.
Conversely, it was the fierce shock that stayed with her. Shock that she'd loved him so hopelessly for so long or that he would never apologise for what he'd done, she couldn't yet tell.

She was waiting for anger, because she knew it to be cleansing.

2007-06-02T12:01:00.003-05:00

Get a girlfriend

Blonde, thin, delicate somehow. Met early on, at a gig where we reminisced. And though she was charming and her hair was soft I knew she was only being polite.
-
I stared discreetly for weeks until we were thrown together. Loud, dirty jokes and barked laughter. I wanted her with an immediacy that I dream of.
-
Propositioned, almost. Comparing outfits, the joy of halloween. She's a pirate wench, laughs at my jokes and orders rum. She's a mess and I know it, but as usual I can't keep away.
-
Not pretty, but statuesque. More intimidating than I've been known to pursue. When I got closer I realised it's only herself she's scared of.
-
She knows about my bruises, my vices and downfalls, my ever-changing faults. We are similar, and damaged in different ways. We drink together now.

2007-06-02T11:55:00.003-05:00

Eight weeks.

I cycled around Berlin but not Amsterdam. I got food poisoning on opposite ends of the continent (lesson 1: don't eat salad abroad.) I had my towel and sunglasses stolen. I kissed a Polish girl (lesson 2: when in doubt, ask a native) and she tasted of my Marlboros. I saw the Berlin Love Parade and an orchestra, or two. I climbed a mountain (a cliff) and splashed my feet in the Danube. I didn't get sunburn (lesson 3: factor 30). My hair has grown, my nails have been bitten. I have none of the books I left home with, and the same pair of jeans.

Nothing was broken, no-one was hurt.

passage

2007-06-02T11:47:00.001-05:00

"I kiss her tenderly on the forehead. Gently I unlock her arms. The others are going to take her again. I can't bear seeing that. I must go. I must run. For a full minute, however, I stand and look at her. Her eyes seem to have grown enormous. Two great round eyes, full and black as the night, staring at me uncomprehendingly. No maniac can look that way. No idiot can look that way. Only an angel or a saint."
Henry Miller, Black Spring

"The sea smelled like a sail whose billows had caught up water, salt and a cold sun. It had a simple smell, the sea, but at the same time it smelled immense and unique... Nothing pleased him more than the image of himself high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast of a ship, gliding on through the endless smell of the sea - which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhalation of a breath, the end of all smells - dissolving with pleasure in that breath."
Patrick Suskind, Perfume

"She pulled her by the hands and her feet crashed to the floor. Pam stood up, the shock of her feet transmitted to her blank eyes, and pushing her upstairs in front of her, Sidonie rested her fist in the small of the back she had not touched for so long. She slammed the kitchen door and pulled her into her arms and kissed her hard on the mouth, pressing her against herself until she heard her shoulders crack. Then the woman she had been going to kill, for whom her hand groped towards the knife-and-fork drawer, began to kiss her back, and this time tears fell from her eyes and poured down her face in a stream of incoherence and lipstick... She tried to kid herself she would love her forever."
Shena Mackay, Music Upstairs

2007-02-11T12:59:00.001-05:00

He paused after he'd taken a bite, and wiped crumbs from around his mouth. Then with unbreakable concentration, he licked his fingertip and gathered each individual crumb left on the plate. Still inspecting his mouth for residue with his tongue, he took the straw between his fingers and steered it towards his mouth. Before he closed his lips around it he blinked slowly, and spoke to her.
"What are you writing?"
"Nothing"
She watched silently as he took three short sips as though to determine the content of the cup, and then one long. She imagined the cold, sweet shake sliding over her tongue and it made her think twice about ordering coffee.

2006-10-03T11:48:00.001-05:00

Walking home from the bus-stop. The birds are singing. I can see the red streetlamp sunrise in the distance, beyond the tower blocks.
At most, two hours sleep. At worst, one. But we went for coffee and cake after the club, so it's unlikely I'll sleep, only doze.
Brushing my teeth in the dark. Shedding coat, scarf, bag, shoes. Collapsing into bed, knees aching, shins bruised, mouth dry. Smelling my hair, my fingers. smoky club stink.
And suddenly I'm on the bus to work, only a half-hour late. And i'm wearing the same skirt as last night, the whole office will smell the cigarettes. And i'm still wearing the same earrings, same makeup. The same empty bottle in my bag, the same grin plastered across my face.

summer

2006-05-14T15:35:00.000-05:00

He turned the corner and fell in love. Small breasts, open-necked shirt. Birkenstocks and cropped trousers. Short brown hair, just the right amount of bounce in her walk.
He could see the first date, faltering steps, half-gestures. Beer and tentative conversation, wine and arms about shoulders. Birthday presents, a toothbrush at sink, an afternoon spent in bed. Long car journeys together...

She turned her head and the sun sparked off her necklace. His heart broke as she crossed the road away from him. The clouds scuttled across the sky. He turned the corner and fell in love.

massacre at camber sands

2006-03-30T09:02:00.002-05:00

He looked at the debris scattered over the beach. Cans, bottles, discarded and sprayed with red.

He'd found himself eye to eye with this lithe, brown-haired thing. She beckoned with her hips and swung away from him. He had followed, hypnotised, out of the heaving crowd.

He was cold. The clean dawn light spilled shadows under every turned head, ripped shirt, wrenched arm. An upturned box of beer cans glinted despite the cloud cover. The spectacle refused to register, his brain wouldn't to respond. He was still high, nerves scraping, eyes wide. He willed himself to react but couldn't drag from his mind the deafening euphoria.

He collided with her when she stopped just before the treeline. Pressed against him, swaying to the still audible music, his mind almost painfully focused on her body against his. She whispered sticky words to him and pulled him to the ground with her.

He'd heard screams. Unfamiliar, out of place. Sharp crashes followed by a thud, then terrifying silence.

She was standing before he was, both suddenly animal, wordless, instinctual. She sprang away, searching the sand-covered faces, back towards the town.

Who had she lost? There was a nugget of civilisation in him that wanted to smoke a joint, have a night's sleep and retreat. He dismissed this as impractical. Curiosity was a more immediate concern.

workday

2006-03-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

Suspect number one: apparently sweet-natured, talkative. Buck-toothed and almost too innocent-looking for a woman of thirty years.
Suspect number two: soft-spoken, prone to outbursts without warning. history of family violence. Not many close friends.
Suspect number three: twitchy, small, sharp-eyed. Always looking over his shoulder...

She paused, and looked over her shoulder. The bustle continued. As long as her screen was filled with periodically expanding text, nothing was amiss. In reality, she hadn't worked for the best part of this month. She wasn't needed and took advantage of the chaos around her. An island of order and cleanliness in a dust storm. On really quiet days she would take her book and read in the little-used top floor lavatories.

The snapper turtle lurched from his glass-walled office, gurning and screeching. Legs jointed awkwardly to stiff hips and numb feet. Adjacent, the frog sits, sqaulid, dripping stagnant water onto the carpet and upholstery. His throat billows as he calls across the room.

Intent on the screen, glasses slipping down her nose. An escaped lock of hair dances in the breeze from an electric fan. She is motionless in a deserted room, quiet but for the tapping of fingertips against plastic.

Suspect number three is sleepless. He has attributed this to mythical 'nerves'. Pressing his face into the pillow, he breathes erratically and tries to stop thinking.

hair and nails

2006-02-21T11:48:00.000-05:00

All the trouble started when her parents locked her in a third-storey room of their house. No castle, but it was pretty big. In her favour, she was a practically-minded girl, and didn't hesitate to utilise every available resource to solve the problem of her house-arrest.

He hadn't wanted to be in the horseback corps. He hadn't really wanted to join the king's army in the first place, but he couldn't think of anything better to do when he left school. He'd had no ambition beyond ground infantry, but for some reason he catapulted up and up. Before he knew it, he was a decorated peacetime Seargeant Major. Which meant full chain mail, plate suit and helmet.
In the winter, he could overcome his GMT (Genital Magnetic Tendencies) by wearing thick woollen under-drawers. They itched terribly, but it was better than getting cosy with chainmail while in the saddle...

Since birth, she had coped with endlessly ample body hair. In actual fact, it had never been a significant problem. It just meant she kept her leg hair in check with hair-cutting shears instead of a razor. And then there was that first date when she'd tried to carry off a sleeveless gown. But the boy was easily forgotten...

In the summer things became difficult. More often than not he would forego the chainmail, as that was frankly dangerous. He just gritted his teeth and cantered along, testicles clinging to the inside of his metal armour.

She first saw him standing behind a rhodedendron in the grounds behind her parent's house, not far from her window. He was naked from the waist down, urinating with audible relief. As he turned around she gasped, never having seen a naked man before. He looked up, saw her face in the high window and screamed, running to hide behind his horse nearby.
He asked why she was in that room, with a barred window. She explained she was condemned to be captive for the rest of her life. Hearing this, and being a gentleman, he was outraged. Inside he was boyishly excited. A damsel to rescue...here was his change for fame, glory! But then he realised he had no trousers on.
"How can i get up there?"
"There's no stairway, I think it's been blocked off at both ends"
"But there's...a drainpipe! I will climb up to you"
"No, i'm fine, really! Listen..."
"Fear not, damsel"

With that, he took a running leap at the drainpipe stretching from ground to gutter. His penis adhered to the cast iron with a resounding 'chunnngg'. He bit his lip till blood drew, and then locked his arms around the pipe. Slowly, amid protests shouted from above, he hauled himself skywards.

He didn't reach her windowsill till past nightfall. He was panting, dizzy with exhaustion and pain. She took him under the arms and pulled him into her room. The last thing he saw was her face above his, her lips moving without sound.
As he came to, he moaned sleepily and tried to turn over. Agony shot through his body and he lay tense and rigid, waiting for it to subside. His penis was so painful it made him dizzy every time he shifted his weight.
...But he had made it all the way up the drainpipe. Three storeys on determination and magnetism alone. Why did he do it? The girl. The girl...

She watched him stir, and cry out in pain. She'd bandaged him up as best she could, given her embarassment (and honest facination with the man.) She'd washed his face and body, dressed his wounded limbs and genitals and wrapped him in her own sheets. Stupid boy. The rope she'd made was strong enough for her, she knew, but what about him? Now she would have to figure out a way to get them both down to ground level...

He sat up in the weak morning sunlight to see her sitting on the floor with her skirt up around her knees, facing away from him. He cleared his throat quietly. She looked over her shoulder at him, and he wondered if feigning sleep was a good idea. But then she rose, the hem of her dress dropping to the floor. He tore his eyes from the swirl of shin and petticoat and met hers. She blushed furiously.
"Your dressings need changing. It's been a day"
"A day? How long have I been here?"
There was an awkward pause.
"My, uh, dressings?"
Suddenly she was at the side of the bed, her hands on his arm, grinning broadly.
"I feel like I should ask your permission, or something..."

The next four days passed comfortably and quickly. There was no lingering awkwardness between them, even after she'd explained that they were to escape using a rope knitted from her own abundant leg hair. Especially after he'd healed, and his bandages were removed. He'd leapt upon her, simply his way of making his reciprocal fascination clear.

The prospect of escape suddenly seemed one which could be ignored in the meantime...

fighting boredom in the workplace part II

2006-01-31T19:30:00.001-05:00

continued collaboration with sookraj and ellie

#30. Starting with a birth certificate slowly steal a co-workers identity, supplying them with a second life as a gambling porn baron. After they have have had all their belongings repossessed, turn up at their court hearing to speak on behalf of the prosecution. They clearly have problems and you believe that prison will be the lesson to open their eyes.
#31. Put your hand in your pants (secretly). Now try to touch as many of your workmates possessions as you can. Allow yourself a smile when you see a colleague chewing on *that* pen.
#32. pour warm water onto people's swivel chairs when they're away from their desks
#33. get a pair of scissors, and crawl around the office slicing people's shoelaces. when questioned, tell them you are saving their souls.
#34. wear shorts to work. smear chocolate sauce all over your legs and lick at them throughout the day.
#35. throw your favourite mug into the air repeatedly, while singing 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day'. make no attempt to catch the mug.
#36. Can-can.
#37. Send all memos in the form of paper aeroplanes, the more extravagant the better.
#38. Buy a megaphone.
#39. Tell co-workers that email is the root of all evil (by email).
#40. Become inappropriately touchy-feely all of a sudden. Blame your parents.
#41. Join as many internet special-interest forums as physically possible. Embroidery, toby-jug collecting and yodelling should be of special note.
#42. Sit at your desk not moving or touching anything. When people ask what you're doing, tell them you're making virtual phone-calls.
#43. Send someone else into work in place of you. The next day act like nothing happened. See who cracks first.
#44. Demand to be paid by the hour. Every hour. ON the hour. In cash. In coppers.
#45. Learn Swahili. Practice at every available opportunity. If questioned, say you are the new cultural relations spokesperson. Report them.
#46. Create a shrine to Boris Johnson underneath your desk. Complete with incense, candles and life-size cardboard cut-outs.
#47. Award yourself an Oscar. Dress appropriately and thank everyone in your office for everything they've done to help you achieve this great honour. Keep the statuette in the kitchen.
#48. Arrange the bisuits into intricate patterns, placing Jammy Dodgers in the exact centre and all Bourbons at right angles.
#49. Rustle mysteriously.
#50. Bring a gramophone to work, and instigate office tea dances.

digging

2006-01-14T17:14:00.002-05:00

this one's really, really old. i found it last night and removed half the commas. now it's good.

He sits alone on a park bench. Patiently, for hours he has waited.

The sun has wheeled around to nestle in other clouds. All his shadows would point east, but for the streetlights. Instead, they pool around his feet, dripping out from under his chin and from the space beneath his folded leg. He exhales loudly, watching his breath condense in the air. It billows white and then dissipates, drifting away like smoke. He curls a hand around his forearm. He feels the wind bite into his cheek, into his leg through the fabric of his trousers.

He is alone but he acts as if he is not. Occasionally he stretches out an arm to comfort the air on the bench next to him. He looks around him, unconcerned. There is nobody else in view. A fox creeps unnoticed across the path, dashing for cover under another rhododendron.

Clouds cover the moon and the light dims. Old memories are brought to mind. A fairy story, a goodnight rhyme, recited each night like clockwork. Flitting and flashing through his mind, leaving no impression. They have flitted before. Hurried on, driven away by more urgent thoughts. He is visibly focused.

He slowly extends an arm and glances at his watch. A silhouette rounds the crest of the hill.

IV

2006-01-11T16:38:00.001-05:00

As the days wore on, and once I had managed to exchange the first few words with him, we grew almost companionable.
Every morning I'd go downstairs to make coffee and say hi. He'd generally have been awake a while longer than me, as the hot water pipes are loud in the basement. Conversation was sometimes stilted. We knew nothing about each other. So, as is often the way with relative strangers, we talked about culture. And what was more appropriate than the books I had given him myself?

"...but the German word is actually more correctly translated as 'vermin', not as 'beetle'. If you read the story with 'vermin' instead, it puts a whole different light on it. It explains things that didn't quite follow on..."

We worked through whole bookshelves together. I loved how he thought, the way he pointed things out to me, unsure and knowledgable at the same time. The way he spoke made me want to like what he liked, read what he had read. It made me love him more.

Once, in the middle of the night, I felt guilty for keeping him all this time. Maybe there were people in the outside world to miss him, people he had never mentioned? But I knew I could never let him out. It was better this way. Much safer this way.

III

2006-01-08T14:39:00.001-05:00

The first week was difficult. He was noisy, and I found myself leaving the house for hours at a time to get some peace. When I realised what I was doing, I sat down to work out a solution. Of course, he was scared. Waking up in strange surroundings with no explanation... He needed me to engage with him. I realised I didn't even know his first name (his surname had been on the University of East London IdentiCard attached to his jeans pocket.)
So the next morning before he woke I placed a package at the bottom of the steps into the basement, locking the door behind me. I had wrapped a note from myself explaining that he was safe, along with a deck of cards and some of my favourite books in a tea-towel. How could a boy be bored in the company of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Patrick Suskind, Henry Miller, Salman Rushdie, Franz Kafka and James Joyce...? Then I left the house to buy apples, bread and pasta sauce, all of which I had run out of the previous day.

On my return the house was completely silent.

II

2006-01-04T13:09:00.001-05:00

As soon as I got him in the door, I started to worry. While fairly slim, I had no idea how tall he was. What if my basement wasn't big enough? Would he be warm down there? Would he get scared? Bored? To be on the safe side, I decided to sedate him. I laid him on the blankets I'd padded the floor with, and placed a bottle of water near him. Then I climbed the ladder, bolted the door and made coffee while I waited for him to come around.

dangerous I

2006-01-03T17:59:00.001-05:00

It was a miracle I’d never met him before that, or maybe he was new in the area. But I’d seen him three times in as many days. On the way to work, at the station on the way to town, and then waiting in the queue at the Post Office. That was when I decided. Things were getting risky…what if I spotted him while out with a friend? They’d wonder why I stopped in my tracks. What if I ran into him with an armful of shopping? I’d drop it on the floor, without a doubt. What if I saw him while I was driving? It didn’t bear thinking about. I decided I would kidnap the strange boy who made me go weak at the knees.
It was much simpler than I’d imagined. I was part-way through drawing up elaborate plans, some involving extremist political action or the involvement of the Triads, when I collided with him at the top of the road I lived on. He smiled at me, and I knew I had to act fast. Knocking him unconscious was the easy part. Luckily there were no passers-by to observe me hauling him the 100 metres or so to my front door….

a chill

2005-12-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

Frozen puddles on the walk home, slippery sloped paving slabs. Frost glitters
with the falling lamp-light. Worn rubber soles slip, toes curl inside. The figure walking a dozen paces ahead seems to grow and shrink, as streetlights cast moving shadows.

The first time she saw frost, she was frightened. It wasn't her white breath hanging in the air. It wasn't the sting on her cheeks, but the ice. She stood perfectly still, observing, digesting. All the time ready to leap back through the door, stung. The world looked alien, almost as if it were coated in icing sugar. But there was a harshness that scared her. Unforgiving, and worse, uncaring.

soak

2005-11-30T04:46:00.000-05:00

now in first-person, as originally written

Lying in the water, semi-dozing. I've just finished the book he sent me. At the end, I cried down the sides of my face.

Feeling the water swirl against my skin when I move. My knees and my breasts and my face above the water. Underwater. I can hear my pulse in my ears, like the rhythmic thrum of a generator.

I can feel my skin is waterlogged. Maybe if I lie here long enough, I will dissolve into the bath. Maybe if I lie here long enough, my skin will soak clean off my body. Suddenly I long to slough the soft shell of skin off, shed it like a snake. To emerge raw, and tender, and new.
So i stand in the bath and I scrub myself from head to foot. I can see swirls of soap bubbles on my side as I work my way up one arm, across my shoulder-blades and down to my other wrist.
Then lean back in the water, feel the too-hot sting and smart. I imagine hundreds of tiny abrasions on my skin. Thousands of nerve endings pricking, firing.

I have lain here so long I can't feel the difference between the water and the misty air. I lower my heel, trynig to guess when it hits the surface. I mis-judge, and open my eyes only after my toes are submerged. Then I watch ripples appear with the rise and fall of my stomach.

I cried a little into the water, my heart is still pounding in my throat.

nightlight

2005-11-26T08:09:00.000-05:00

She looked around, checking the street was empty. Then with a practiced flick of the thumb, she popped the latch. Then ducked inside and closed the door behind her in one swift movement.

It never failed to amaze her how she managed to fit inside the street-light. It didn't make sense, she shouldn't be able to fit. But every night since the first time she heard his voice, she'd felt that wierd sensation of the doorway ballooning around her as she swung into the circular room.
The first time had been terrifying. A tinny, muffled voice called her name as she walked home from work one night. Possibilities scrolled through her head; had somebody followed he, was somebody behind her? When she realised it was coming from the street-light she had to stop, check herself. When she was much younger, she'd entertained the thought that each and every street-light was powered by a tiny person on an exercise-bike, living in the wide base of the post. And hearing that voice brought the childhood fantasy back to her abruptly. She steadied herself, and placed a cautious hand on the lamp door. She'd half expected it to smoothly swing open, but the hinges were rusty, and the fastening stuck.
"Turn it left"
Came the voice from the lamp. She jiggled the catch, but it refused to budge.
"Left, fahking left. Christ, it's not that difficult."
After a few noisy minutes, and the application of her door-keys for leverage, she'd managed to open the door a crack. Inside was, exactly as she'd imagined, a man on a bicycle, in a tiny circular bedsit.

And now here she sat, drinking strong, sweet tea from a mug she knew to be smaller than an eggcup, but filled her hands like one at home. The man looked up at her. He'd been stirring a pan on the stove. Was he even a man? She hesitated to call him an elf, a pixie, a faerie, a gnome, because he seemed so very real. And he swore like a bouncer.
"Fahkin 'ell. Can't believe I went an ran outa eggs the night you come rahnd. Yew must fink I'm a proper batchelor, innit? Can't take care of meself or naffink."
She'd taken to doing his washing up when she was there. It did tend to build up, and she felt better if her hands were busy. Conversation could get awkward when he was puffing away on the bike, and she curled up comfortably on the sofa.

the untucked shirt

2005-11-15T13:05:00.000-05:00

It was too big for him, the big white shirt. And it was a cold day. He liked being warm on cold, frosty days like that. So he wore the big white shirt and tucked it securely into his jeans. The comfortable overlap between his underwear and the shirt would keep his back warm even when he sat down.

Once upon a time, two lovers stood on a station platform. They were saying goodbye.
They kissed slowly, their breath clouding white under the strip-lights. She put her arm under his coat and slid it under his sweater, hoping to steal some heat from his back. Her hand was stopped by the big white shirt, and she looked at him. He smiled apologetically as she pulled a handful of the shirt out of his jeans, and felt a shiver along his spine with the cold air.

When her train had gone, and her on it, he climbed the stairs to his platform. Then he boarded his own train home, wandering down the aisle to a suitably empty square of seats. As he sat down he felt cold rise up his back, and immediately felt her phantom lips on his once more. Then he leaned forward to tuck his shirt in.

chapter one

2005-11-13T16:54:00.000-05:00

It began childishly, as so many of these things do. A record of the day-to-day angst. The blames, pointed fingers and whispered conversations of girls. Later, when she looked back on those few years, she would not remember the intensity of feeling. The awful indecision. She would only be embarassed at her inaccurate use of extravagant words. She kept none of the hardback notebooks she wrote in. They reminded her of the crippling self-consciousness of being 15.
As she grew older (and, as promised, it did get better as the years clicked by) she continued to write. But not in noteboks, on scraps of paper. The back of an old birthday card. Bus tickets, ragged handfuls of lined A4. She threw these away immediately. She had no desire to be reminded of yesterday's feelings.

The week after her 25th birthday she stopped writing. It was not a conscious decision. The words were pushed out of her head.

His relationship with words was uneasy at best. He spoke intelligently, but not eloquently. Secretly, he would like to be thought of as eloquent. But he could never bring himself to say the words aloud distinct, insufferable, unparalleled... the risk was what silenced him. He didn't want to stand out. He didn't want to be laughed at. He had a horrible feeling that the words lined up in his head would come out of his mouth somehow distorted distended, macabre, grotesque...

When they first met (casually, through a friend of his brother's) neither of them would have guessed these things of each other. He thought her cold and reserved. She thought him over-familiar and drunk. Neither suspected the depths they would glimpse over the subsequent months of courtship.

He, though sexually adventurous, was less experienced. He had slept with two women since he drunkenly lost his virginity at a stranger's new years party. One was his first proper girlfriend. Mentally, he salutes every time he thinks of her. They fucked infrequently and clumsily, and she left him the day after their final exams.
The second was a stunning and manipulative actress. The relationship lasted for two years, but should have ended before six months. It was unhealthy, and sex rose more from a cloying need for closeness than from physical desire.
He enjoyed being single, primarily because it meant he didn't have to shower daily.

She had been promiscuous as a teenager, but had never had a 'lover' in the idealised sense. She had never had the opportunity to enjoy sex. She didn't know it, but it occasionally kept her up at night.

So their relationship began tentatively, with as much reassurance as flirting. When eventually they did share a bed she wept afterwards, once he was asleep, because she thought she loved him.

He woke early, before she did, and crept into the kitchen to make coffee. In the dark he collided with a bin in the hallway, scattering paper, used tissues and food packaging over the floor. Then fumbling for a lightswitch, cramming handfuls of rubbish into the plastic bin, trying not to wake any of the irritable flatmates.
Sitting in the kitchen ten minutes later, coffee brewing, he realises he still has a scrap of handwritten notepaper in his hand. The fact that he reads it could reveal one of several things about him. It could show that he loves the thrill of invading secrecy. It could show that he deeply wants to know more about her, and anything in her handwriting draws him like a magnet. It could show that the coffee is still in the pot, and he's too tired to think before he reads it.
Still clutching the piece of paper, he walked into her bedroom and shut the door behind him. She stirred at the noise, and opened her eyes. As he kissed her, she put her arms around his neck and pulled him onto the bed. He dropped the paper to the floor, and they made love again by the thin light shining through the curtains.

Every day after that, he wrote page after page of his thoughts. She wrote none at all.

awake

2005-11-01T13:12:00.000-05:00

He shifted on the bed, the better to rest his cheek on her bare shoulder. She raised her hand and started tracing her fingertips along his jaw-line. Then he kissed her arm lightly, and broke the soft silence

"You were singing in your sleep last night."
"Was I? I thought I'd stopped doing that years ago."
"It was nice. Peaceful."

There was a pause.
He breathed, felt her skin warm on his face. Listened to her faintly audible heartbeat. She sighed once, a long, sleepy exhalation.

"What was I singing?"
"Talking Heads"

She gave a short bark of laughter

"Which album?"
"I don't have a fucking clue. You know I don't like Talking Heads."

She craned her neck around to kiss his forehead, and then sank back into the pillows.

fighting boredom in the workplace

2005-10-26T12:33:00.001-05:00

a collaboration with sookraj

#01. Write a short, brutally honest description of each of your workmates.
#02. Wander round the office stapling everyone's description to their foreheads.
#03. Laugh maniacally .
#04. Barricade yourself in the copy room, shout a lot, ask for a negotiator.
#05. You've heard of dirty protests, right?
#06. Demand emotionally raw PJ Harvey albums, especially "Rid of Me".
#07. Go the copy room, get yourself a ream of paper, return to your desk and proceed to ball up sheets and throw them at your nearest co-worker until they snap and proceed through steps #01 to #06.
#8. Boil the kettle and walk around pouring water into people's processors when they're away from their desks.
#9. Take the head of the mop off and wear it like a wig.
#10. Belch loudly.
#11. Jump up and down on every piece of paper you are given.
#12. Go to the toilets and take comedy pictures of yourself.
#13. Walk with a pronounced gangsta limp.
#14. Talk to yourself, twitch (your workmates will LOVE this).
#15. Hide under your desk, time how long it takes for somebody to check you're ok. When they do, leap out and thank them for saving your life. Then ask for a glass of water.
#16. Chew the top off a biro, smear the ink all around your face. Act like everything is normal.
#17. Approach a randomly chosen co-worker, grip their shoulder, tell them not to worry (loud enough so your peers can hear).
#18. Go to the bathroom twenty times in an hour.
#19. Speak into you lapel, relay your co-workers every move to your CIA buddies. "Target is now moving the filing cabinet..."
#20. Lace the office coffee with Ketamine. Enjoy the ensuing slow-motion hilarity.
#21. Secrete a drum-n-bass playing walkman somewhere in the office. Make sure it is loud enough to be heard, but impossible to find. Watch as psychotic episodes unfold.
#22. Take advantage of the large amount of free floorspace to remember how to do a backwards roll.
#23. Do handstands against the door to the kitchen.
#24. Refuse to speak to anyone, conduct all communication via the art of mime.
#25. Sellotape a tabloid newspaper into one very long sheet of tat. Wrap yourself in it, head to toe.
#26. Make a round of tea, and put eight sugars in each. Dissolve biscuits into some of them.
#27. Turn the thermostat up to a tropical temperature. Leave the room.
#28. Pretend to fall asleep standing up, snoring loudly.
#29. Add more options to this list...

unfinished

2005-10-14T13:04:00.002-05:00

3am. Untidy bedroom, clothes and empty plates on every surface. A man is slouched over a desk with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

I remember when we met.
I remember, the music too loud. Your shoes too small, you told me. And then you spent the rest of the evening with one hand resting on my shoulder, the other working its way deep into my chest. Making the little hole in my heart that aches so empty.
I remember the first time you followed me in through my front door. I was terrified you’d be gone when I turned around. But you straightened up from putting your bag on the sofa and said music?

I remember that morning, when you woke me up by coming back to bed. You pulled the sheets up to your shoulders and stroked your finger down my arm. Then you told me where you had to go, and how long you’d been thinking about it. And I think it was only last week, that morning. When she whipped her hand from the hole in my heart. Still raw and unhealed, still losing blood. Maybe it makes the time move slower.

Remembering every moment she was close to me. Sitting in a restaurant, her arm curled around mine. Her fingers stroking gently along my upper arm. Then touching the sleeve of my shirt and tucking into the fold of my elbow. Anywhere to be closer.

mumps part 3

2005-10-13T04:33:00.002-05:00

3.14
My ears are numb. My neck is agony. My whole face feels a different shape, my eyes are too wide. My shoulders even feel odd. The skin all over my body is dead. I scratched my neck. I scratched my shoulders my cheek my stomach. I have all these scratches and no memory of slicing myself. That sounds odd, like I’m taking a kitchen knife to my fingers, slicing them thin and placing them in a cooking pot. Or scoring little lines in my flesh. Like a tally. Or a line-drawing.

6.28
I’d rather be at work. I’d rather be on my feet, making my own decisions, making my own fucking meals. I’m wasting away. Shaking away. I feel inhuman. Less than? Just different. I don’t feel like who I am. And the punctuation is fairly arbitrary.
Watch her get restless.
Dammit. I liked my neck. It was long and it has those little tendons running down the sides. I had hollows and indentations around my collarbones. It was pretty. I liked my neck. Now I have some round, swollen trunk keeping my head up. I want me back. I look different, but I only feel different when I remember that I’m sick.

mumps part 2

2005-10-13T04:32:00.000-05:00

10.11
Fucking hell. I can only eat after taking painkillers. Cloudy apple juice, plain yoghurt and honey, liquidised soup. I want TOAST! I want dark chocolate, straight from the fridge so I have to chunk it off with my back teeth. Melted butter, hot milk, glutinous bread sticking to my teeth.

Sitting in bed with my jaw pushed forward. It’s weird not having an overbite. None of my teeth meet. Taptaptaptap tapping my front teeth will have to do.

5.17
There is Belladonna on the table by my bed. And cups and bowls on the floor. A bottle of prescription-labelled pills. They look so ugly, blue lines and grey printed words and yellow lines.
Some other sweet white pill to put under my tongue every two hours. Ecinachea for immune system. Orange juice for recovery. Hot chocolate for my flagging morale.
Suddenly dozing, drifting off. Time is moving in odd ways. This song has been playing for hours, this minute has lasted for days. Melting away. I feel hot and feeble and cranky. All my chin wobbles every time I move.

9.47
I had a dream I was choking up blood clots. I had a dream I was coughing up droplets of blood, splashing in perfect circles on the tiled bathroom floor. How poetic. Reminds me of a song, but I couldn’t say which.

mumps part 1

2005-10-13T04:29:00.002-05:00

(this was all written over the three of four worst days. i appear not to have left AM or PM on any times. testament to the fact i was only semi-aware of the world at best, and in agony at worst)

9.18
Impossible to flick my fringe. Impossible to drink the dregs. Impossible to yawn. My neck is so painful that my ears feel numb. How bizarre. The skin on my shoulders feels like rubber. Morphine, or something like it.

7.22
I never had much truck with recording the passing of time. Calendars, clocks, deadlines. And it’s always the same. The only reason I’d look at a calendar would be when my period came. Record start, record end, neglect once more.
And clocks. They surround me, walls, tables, phones, wrists. And they’re all telling subtly different lies. The only time I’ll listen is when I’m ill. “1 or 2 tablets every 3-4 hours” allowing 20 minutes for the drugs to hit my system...
I’m lucky I’m not vain. I find it hilarious. I look like some kind of retired opera singer, neck sagging but face still taut like canvas, courtesy of the tent pegs in their hairline.

Puffy neck puffy face. While I’ve been writing this the drugs have kicked in. My head throbs less. The sieve-holes in the pain are letting my sense of humour leak through. Possibly. My sentences are getting longer, always a sure sign…

hip heaven

2005-10-04T09:54:00.001-05:00

You know that feeling

You've been sitting in a smoky, windowless room for... an hour? two hours? three? The third drink and fourth cigarette since you paid on the door. Smoke and dark corners. Water, sweat and a poet waving his arms at the walls.
And there's this guy. He's been sitting at the table next to yours and you've registered him, just like everyone else in the room. Just another punter, another listener, another addition to the applause. Just like you, in fact. Wearing black and denim and stubble. Drinking flat beer like everyone else. Laughing in the right places.
Walking down the stairs from the toilets, moving your bag off your chair to sit down again you meet eyes. He suddenly looks awake. You feel very conscious of your arm extended over your chair, your hips slanted as one foot takes your weight. He is only a few feet away, and you want to say to him "Where have I seen you before?".... But the music is too loud. The space between you is filled with people.

"Theoretical Girl"
"Pies Not Pills"
"Repetition, Percussive Breathing"

The posters stick in your mind like the poetry never will. You can feel his gaze on the side of your face, and return it when he's looking away.

fifty hours

2005-09-04T05:50:00.002-05:00

The concrete and the sun do strange things to my mind.
Right now I can see the scent rising off my skin in waves. And the small damp curls of hair above my ears. And i can feel the thoughts scrolling through my head, leaving vapour trails. And the discords creep their little trails through the bark of the tree that's half-rotten inside.

And the little chemical monsters coursing around the racetrack. Mostly delusion. I'm turned inside out, something else is more distracting.

old

2005-09-02T02:06:00.000-05:00

I am a lonely painter. I live in a box of paints.
(Joni Mitchell, a case of you)

I am a lonely writer. I live in a computer screen.
I am a lonely scientist. I live in a test-tube.
I am a lonely doctor. I live in a stethoscope.
I am a lonely mathematician. I live in a box with parameters constructed of logarithms and imaginary numbers.
I am a lonely Spaniard. I live in a bottle of mescal. Para borracharse.
I am a lonely dog trainer. I live in a dog.
I am a lonely midwife. I live in a box of emergency delivery equipment.
I am a lonely teacher. I live in a stationery cupboard.
I am a lonely tiger. I live in a cage.
I am a lonely antibody. I live in your lymphatic system.
I am a lonely student. I live in a textbook.
I am a lonely single mother. I live in sub-standard council housing.
I am a lonely dictionary. I live on the dustiest shelf.
I am a lonely novel. I live in the mind of an unpublished writer.
I am a lonely receptionist. I live in the speed-dial.
I am a lonely plant. I live in the dirt.
I am a lonely session musician. I live in the P.A.
I am a lonely teenager. I live behind my bedroom door.
I am a lonely airline pilot. I live in the departure lounge.
I am a lonely model. I live in an airbrushed photograph.
I am a lonely cardboard box. I live in the attic.
I am a lonely song. I live in the throat of a cabaret singer.
I am a lonely sponge. I live in a pineapple under the sea.
I am a lonely temp. I live too far away from my place of work.
I am a lonely bartender. I live in a clean pint glass.

I am a lonely blogger. I live in a computer screen.

holiday

2005-08-03T11:24:00.001-05:00

Looking out through the rain-stained window. Looking up seeing the trees shoot past under the still sky. The clouds look grainy, like grey sand. After focusing closely, I zoom out to take in the whole sky. And i'm not looking at the sky, I'm seeing sand under the pure turquoise shallows, dotted with white surf. Zooming past, far overhead.

- - -

Wet skin rolls across dry sand. Pulls away, encrusted in glittering beige. The cold grips my ankles, crawls up my legs, grainy spiders. A million minute fragments of rock. I tread on a sharp patch, and stumble. Heels sink into the powdery sand, in my cuts, in my crevices, in my mouth and eyes.
Plunge in headfirst, the only way to forget the salt-cold slap. I surface, gasping. The sunlight stings my eyes. I swim far, far out until I leave the children behind, leave the surfers behind, way out of my depth. It feels good. I catch waves before they break, curving my body over the swell. Feeling the lift in the small of my back.
I spend hours at a time longing for immersion, longing for cool, longing for something else bigger and stronger. And now here i am, neck-deep in the Atlantic Ocean.
It feels good.

- - - -

Words keep slipping out of my head. As soon as they arrive they trail off, leaving a lingering taste. Nothing more.
The TV is slowly sapping my brain of thought. And more. It is turning every though to glass and setting my brain at a diagonal. Everything slides off and crashes onto the tiled floor. Crashing, crystalline and fragile.

notation

2005-07-06T10:18:00.002-05:00

All these fleeting, fictional distractions.
I have little to offer, and nothing that you want.
Summarise and condense
condense and conspire
constrict.
Sift the rocks from the sand
and set them in a ring.

This squirming mass of muscle contractions
and keratin.

definition

2005-06-26T12:37:00.001-05:00

A heaped spoonful of soft brown sugar, crumbling into my coffee.
The sky was blue. Now it is uniform white like a school shirt, crisp and fresh. The clouds writhe. Summer has evaporated in the heat, spinning us back to April in confusion.
Pour in the milk, watch the white billowing up through murky brown.
You are my breath condensing in the night air. A cool breeze in the oppressive heat. You are the tingle in my spine when I'm falling asleep.

blank

2005-06-07T03:28:00.001-05:00

murky is sexy; muddy is sexier

binding is sexy; bilingual is sexier

chased is sexy; chaste is sexier

blanks

2005-05-13T15:23:00.000-05:00

drums are sexy; bass is sexier

glamorous is sexy; amorous is sexier

sound is sexy; noise is sexier

black is sexy; grey is sexier

in despair is sexy; incoherent is sexier

colour

2005-05-11T18:56:00.000-05:00

“red is angry, green is jealous”
(joni mitchell, marcie)

yellow is curious, and talkative
orange is inherent joy, and sunlight, and hazy summer memories
blue is isolated, but deep as souls, brimming over
white is cold and cruel, and sharp-edged
black is empty and endless
pink is fleshy, pliable, smooth
purple is seductive and velvet soft
grey is tired and scuffed, and worn thin
brown is sunken, rich, thick
gold is brutal and brash
silver is tricky, evasive, slick