A sky so white seagulls wheeled in it


Happy Go Lucky, dir. Mike Leigh



mouths his own predicament
too scared to act on his right brain's impulse
driving lessons put us on edge

we've seen Leigh's portrait of a cerebral nutter before
and Timothy Spall as a cab driver

luminescent scenes in the classroom

begins badly with a girls night out
a la Career Girls

you make your own luck

we left the tap running
but we've found a boat

the damaged - some people never get near to it

homeless or emotionally damaged

she isn't scared of approaching people.



The Orphanage


The horror of never aging

Why would a boy wear such a terrifying sack mask?

Never watch horror films in THX!



Printing terminology


2 pull press

spindle

Mainz

type foundry

strike a matrix from that
impress it into a piece of metal

rubrication



Dream

Mother expectant, father bashful, proud.

From The Word:

You may as well admire sleet. Your admiration is not necessary for wet ice to fall from the sky.

Stewart Lee on being a fan of The Fall

Three extracts


The release of putting off
who and where we've come from,
then meeting in this room
with no clothes on -
to believe in nothing,
to be nothing.



all my life
was pitched in the risk
of seeing and touching you.



Just comfort,
no more than that

Fivemiletown, Tom Paulin

In ‘Destiny,’ a short story by Ethan Coen, a private eye scrupulously details the sound as a hollow metal tube strikes the back of his head. Coen Brothers films often contain things you don’t normally see: a heavily-pregnant police officer bending in the snow (Fargo), a pitched coffee cup bouncing off someone’s head (The Big Lebowski), a girl fastened to her mother with a piece of string (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) or a hand pinned to the windowsill of an adjoining room with a knife (Blood Simple). No Country contains numerous such moments, chief among them a dead dog with bullet-holes in its coat, a pit bull pursuing a man along a fast-flowing river, and door-locks being knocked clean out of their doorframes with a bolt gun.

Even the dialogue, inherited from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, is not standard: ‘You ain’t heard from him?’ ‘Not word one.’ A cinematic nod to Psycho, as Woody Harrelson’s private investigator mounts the stairs, suggests we might anticipate a plot-turn which left the audience among whom I watched the film audibly dumbfounded. Yet this is not so much an action movie as a ‘what-happens after the action?’ movie. The film opens and closes with Tommy Lee Jones’ meditation on sheriffs and men of the past, events and the times having outpaced him. ‘You can’t stop what’s comin. Ain’t all waitin’ on you … That’s vanity,’ he is informed by an ex-policeman disabled in the line of duty.

This film offers a world as polarised as the celebrated Fargo, whose pregnant police officer Marge Gunderson cannot comprehend the motives of the evil-doers she apprehends. In this film, minor characters display a comic ignorance of the gravity of the situation: ‘Shouldn’t be doin’ that. Even a young man like you … Hitchhikin,’’ Moss is warned. ‘You don’t understand,’ he is later told by a private investigator who is also found to be out of his depth.

With its surety of tone, constant shocks and invention, this takes its place, for me, alongside Fargo and The Big Lebowski among the triptych of the brothers’ greatest work.

Recent Dreams


17 March 08


Swimming around a pool in Preston
Pulling off more and more layers - long socks;
having to head back for a lesson,
weights.
I slot my feet into the side.
Children leave us four frozen fish, including
two halibut, slightly red as if with tomato
garnish.
Also, tomato / garlic pizza to take back

We walk past the pool assistant without paying.
You paid for me to go swimming.
I put my eye to one of the fisheyes in the wall,
glimpse another pool. A guy walks in - 20s -
and starts to undress. There is a sign: for serious swimming
I told you about how someone else took me swimming
and you got jealous.
We got dressed to go back to class.

19 March


Literally a big fish in a small pond.
In a boat, in a lake the size of four / six sandlots
overlooked by flats, buffeted.

A school-friend passes, unimpressed.

The water like wet, flapping washing.


I leave. Return to a backyard, the dogs
friendly - under blankets, big.

18 March


Military, accompanied back to Beckenham
Regimented,

3 April


A view from between gateposts/ doorway,
She is at table with date.
She is sitting on the floor,
then she is lounging on the windowsill talking to her date.
The Restaurant boos and hisses.
She is not there anymore
from the window I see her.
She is moaning - running blindly,
against a wall, her fingers pressing the brick,
then turns, runs along the wall


2 April


Bikes along railway tracks
trains come they fly off silently,
burn

their heads down like Tour de France
competitors


March


Looking down from high-ceiling room.
Jon talks to Ivy (animated.) I see the tops of their heads.

By shore. Jon holds Ivy on his lap, their feet pointed, and slides down (snow?)bank, careering up again in an arc, hitting their toes.

Pub incidents.

Sit in room for MES's spoken word. A PC atmosphere, dusty, mucky. MES sets up. DCI Cartwright sits next to me. Why?

March

I walked atop the dough's surface
It folding up under me

Trussed a student up
and lowered him as he responded to questions

He never quite touched the bottom of the hub

We walked to a bar, my cousin and I
The owner told us not to leave

We found the Jewish balcony [?]
entered under its arch