BIROCO.COM ~ Thinking back over the day at 6.30 in the morning before going to bed

Thinking back over the day at 6.30 in the morning before going to bed

NOVEMBER 15 05

A woman in blue silk lying in mud.

Lying in blue silk in mud, a woman.

I think, how can I do more? I think, how can I do less? I think, come away from thought. I caught myself thinking in the kitchen this evening that if I died right now I wouldn't have to concern myself any longer with what would happen to my stuff, I wouldn't have to face it, I wouldn't have to deal with it at some time in the future. Then I thought, does all this stuff mean so much to me that death is a blessed release from it? Then I wondered, why is walking away from it harder to face than just dying? Isn't being alive the point? What does 'stuff' matter compared with simply being alive? But then what reality do thoughts have? What do they tell us about ourselves, is there any importance to be attached to them merely because they flow through our minds? A woman lying in mud, in blue silk. No idea who she is. At first she wasn't even a she, she was just a piece of blue silk, and then she was a piece of blue silk lying in mud, then she was a woman. And now she is just an image going nowhere, just lying there, with no meaning I can attach to it. Save that she is a thought, and I've said to myself come away from thoughts now.

Three bags of vegetable spring rolls and no more fortune cookies, so I have deduced that the one I got that first week must still be in force, it hasn't changed yet. Walking past the graveyard, fireworks scattering sparks over armless noseless angels, leprosy angels guarding forgotten subsiding slabs, wishing there was a fortune cookie in my bag of ten mini vegetarian spring rolls from Hing Lee's where I read The Sun briefly but took more interest in the tropical fish tank. I feel like ordering in Mandarin but I expect she only speaks Cantonese. Bad omens just mean you won't be able to escape your thoughts for a few days. Nothing happens in an imaginary world, and only occasionally do you draw blood, as today, when my Swiss army knife slipped opening a packet. Considering it's such a vivid red, surprising most use was made of it on the inside where people can't see it, save now and again. Well I planted some daffodil bulbs to complement the grape hyacinths when they come up vivid blue. Laid out sticks over the freshly dug soil so next door's cat might be put off shitting and digging there and what d'you know, there's a bloody great turd with blowflies crawling all over it this afternoon, sticks hardly moved. I'll wait till it firms up then over the fence it goes on a trowel. The parrot was an omen in retrospect. It doesn't matter what of, it's just interesting to look back and see how all things are connected, often in very literal ways. Leprosy angels, yes there's a way the nose goes from grave angels, disintegrates away when they're very old. Will always remember turning into a courtyard in Quito and coming across a kid with leprosy who'd lost his nose.

What else? Oh nothing, oh something… how everyone has more than me. It sets me back into thinking, what have I spent my time doing? Nothing much, so then I think do I do nothing much better than most people? Ah right, so one day maybe I'll get to excel at it, and one day I'll just die like it was floating away, nothing much to leave behind. In a good way, I mean. Read something I wrote last year, about watching a large mosquito with feathery antennae traipse through a bowl of poppy seeds in my kitchen. Thought to myself, a whole afternoon watching poppy seeds spill out of poppy heads. And then this evening I saw a black lamppost that looked like a bottle as I turned the corner where I might give someone a fright, and there were ice crystals forming a halo around the moon, causing an exclamation of delight, and two fat girls go round to the back door of the snooker club past the lamp that looks like a black bottle, but I can't remember a single thing I read in the newspaper and only really noticed the streams of piss staining the pavement, out in the big herring-bone coat my dad was photographed on his honeymoon wearing looking dapper and not suspecting he would have all that gangrenous intestine to deal with later on and now his son wearing the coat that is older than he is and is more like a tramp coat now than a smart coat, bulged out with gloves and woolly hat and looking like it might be hiding a machete under it to deal with thugs like a madman turning a corner. Standing under a lamppost trying to read a fortune cookie slip from three weeks back still in there with the fluff at the bottom of the pocket.