A text for five voices.

Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.

i. Blank copy

I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                    or glide past
                                                the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
                                                dit-dit-dit­-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
                                  as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
                sit there
                for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
                                                Print
  ­                                              I press
                                                        Cop­y
                                                        instead­.
The machine whirs
The light goes
                        across
And out comes this copy this
        Copy of
                nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
                                                This is a copy
                                                                ­of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
                                                             ­   something more
                                                            ­    something
                                                   ­                                imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
                                Carefully
                    ­                            on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
                                                         ­                           I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
                     Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
              I’m looking out of the window as I recall
              without much interest
              that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
                            Until the window is as blank as my copy of
                                                              ­                                           nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
              sit
                     down
                                   yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
                                                        ­Oh shut up I tell it
                                                        out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
                     and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
                     scrawled over in heavy black print
                     and ****** coloured columns
                                                                ­      and smelling
                                                        ­              Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
                                          (or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
       to me
              like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
       I ***** up
                     and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
              What difference could it possibly make
              whether I throw this piece of paper
                                                 which I will now have to print again
              in the black part of the bin for waste
              or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          Yeah.
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
              Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
Then out loud:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
                            a hypermarket
                            a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
       And I will go on holiday
       I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
       And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
                                                         ­      or a couple of hundred
                                                         ­      pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
                                   I don’t know
                                                 “Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
       Down with planes.
                                   And I’ll drive my car home and I will
                                   stop
                                   worrying
                                   about
                                   everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
                            now I have difficulty
                            telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
                     in rapid succession
                                          dit dit dit
                                                        rapid­ eye movement
                                                        ­radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
                                   but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
                                                         ­             I make notes on it.
                                                             ­         My copy of nothing.
                                                        ­              Without really realising
                                                       ­               I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
              disappear
                                int­o the paper
and it is clean again.



ii. Ringing sea

My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
                     having ***
                                          with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
                     Which belongs to me.
                                          It’s my face. I – own it.
                                                        It’s my- my- my-
                                                        And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
                                   His face
                                   His face
                                   His face       It’s him
                                                        It’s him
                                                        It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
                            a face I know intimately
                                                      ­         and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
                                                              ­        what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
                                                         ­      Dit / dit.
                                                            ­   Dit \ dit.
                                                            ­   Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
                                                          ­                   to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
                            and apply it
                                                 carefully
                                                       ­          sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
                                I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
                                without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
                                                        (onl­y mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
                                          I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
                                          the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
                                   a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
                     There are some flowers tied to a railing
                     somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
                                                        It­’s the not knowing.
                                                        ­The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
                                                        ­But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
                                                        No­w I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
                     beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
                                                 out of
                                                            my­ shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
                     howling now
                                          catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
                                          whether my husband will call me or
                                          text me when he lands
and I hurl
       my phone
              into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
                            is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
                                   not the geography
                                          not the conflicts
                                                 not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
                                                               invasion and,
                                                                ­             subsequently,
                                                                ­                                  explosion.
                    ­               We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
                                   between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
                                          and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
                            with brilliant, burning clarity
                                                        m­y phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
                                   I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
       I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
       is as wet
              as my bottom half
                            because the rain
                                          is torrential
                                                      ­  and I can still hear the phone ringing
                                                        b­ut I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
       his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
       and I can’t tell if I’m
              further out
              or if the tide’s further in
                            and the ringing grows louder
                            as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
                                                             ­         the stars rush by overhead.



iii. Acid rain

Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
       Purple
       or green
       I think.
                     One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
                                                            ­   or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
                                   going downhill at 100 miles an hour
                                   the wind blasting through me
                                   the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
                                   everything is turning together
                                   but I’m on a different
                                                       ­                 axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
       Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
       several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
                                                 I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
                                          it feels a bit surreal
                                                         ­      but the world stops spinning
                                                        ­       a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
                            I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
                            but I can’t find the right one
                            even though the fridge must be longer than
                            the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
       the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
       red tops and blue spreads
       and green and purple and green and purple
              and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
                            Missing
                      ­      presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
              (cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
                     so
                         until then
                     they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
       One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
       I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
       which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
                                                 filtered onto the trains and buses
                                                 and out from the sprawling car parks
                                                 to the motorway, and
                                                 onto connecting flights back into Europe
              but none of them will stay in Luton
                                                           ­                  Missing
                                                         ­                    presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
                                                           ­                         which is a *******
                                                 moves with the mundanity of machinery
                                                 like the big car factories by the airport
                                                 the lights on, the production lines rolling
                                                 but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
                                                          ­     excitedly
                                                       ­                      or dejectedly
                                                      ­         but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
                            dead and alive in the air;
                            one or the other on the ground.
                                                         ­      My teachers say I have an
                                                              ­ “odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
                            I look at the departure boards.
                            Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
                            A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
                                                           ­                  green and purple
                                                          ­                   green and purple
                                                          ­                                 Missing
                                                         ­                                  presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
       so they keep darting
                            this way and that
                                                 until my vision is painted over
                                                            ­                 green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
       This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
                                          but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
                            with charge
                                          across the green and purple grass
                                          scorched by a hundred thousand landings
                                          a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
                     glinting in the rain
                     surrounded by blinking amber
       there is my bike
       its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
                                                 pedalling down the runway
                                                 pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
       the acid rain eats away at my clothes
       and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
                     Lighter
                            and lighter until…
                                                 The wheels lift away from the ground
                                                          ­     and in the air I am dead and alive
                                                 and maybe nobody will
                                                                ­                           ever
                                                            ­                               see me
                                                                ­                           again.



iv. Burning sky

The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
                                                            ­                 What?
                     We’re not going very fast at all
                     But it feels like any minute
                                                 we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
                                          and I feel aware of being
                                          light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
       feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
       since we left Victoria but the fight
       we had there
                            in a bistro by the port we
       said things we
       said things that
                            we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
                                   the people kept talking about pirates.
                                   They kept warning us about pirates.
                                   You’re sailing where
                                                        the­y say
                                   You must be careful
                                                        t­hey say
                                   It’s notorious
                                                       ­ they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
       Real pirates.
                     Nasty pirates.
                     With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
                          I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
                          If we’d make national news.
                          Would it be David Cameron to announce,
                                                       ­        regrettably,
                                                    ­           we don’t negotiate with pirates,
                          or would it be someone less important?
                          Maybe just the foreign secretary.
                          What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
       disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
              oh
                                   I
                                                 Sorry
I’m crying.
                     I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
              everything
literally falls to pieces
                            My mug of coffee falls from my hand
                            shatters on the deck
                                                            ­and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
                            No, really.
                            That’s not a metaphor.
                                                       ­        There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
       There.
              ****.
                            **** **** ****.
What is that?
                                   Marc!
I call for Marc.
                                   Marc!
       There is fire in the sky.

–              Katherine.

       Fire in the sky.
       Fire in the
       Fire in

–              Katherine.

       Fire

–              Katherine.

       What
              Marc, what?

–              Are you awake?

       I think so.

–              You were calling out again.

       Calling

–              Calling out. You were shouting.

       What
       where
       What time is it?
                                   Where

–              Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
                They delayed again while you were sleeping.

       Dubai?

–              Katy I really think you should see a doctor.

       Don’t call me that.

–              Pardon?

       Katy.
       Don’t call me that.
                                          Like

–          ­                                       Like what?

       Everything’s okay.

–

       Everything’s not okay.

–               There’s
                 doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
                 well actually since before it even happened.

       You think I’ve been confused.

–              Not right.
                Not you.

       You’re **** right.

–              Forget it.

       Thank you.

–              Go back to sleep. ****.



–              Are you still seeing it?
                The plane? On fire.
                                   You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?

       Yes.

–              It’s affecting you?

       I’m
              just
                     unhappy,
       Marc.

–              That’s not just it though is it?

       What’s that supposed to mean?

–              Something about seeing that
                                                           ­   plane has scared you.

       We don’t know it was the plane.
       The one that –

–                            No. But, right place, right time.
              They said

       Maybe.

–              It’s still a coincidence.
                It’s not

                                   What

–                                   A sign.
                                     From god.
                                     Or
                                          whatever.

     ­                                     Whatever you think it means.



                            Katherine.

       The thing I don’t know, Marc
       is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
       or that it wasn’t.

–

       Imagine.
       Vanishing.
       Into thin air.

–              I know.

                            No, you don’t.
       Disappearing
                            into thin air
       Or falling
                            out of it.

–              Falling.

       You can’t imagine that.

–              I can.



–              I can, Katy.
                I ******* can
                                          Imagine.
       ­         Falling.
                Disappearing.
             ­   Into thin air.

                *******
                            i­nvisible.

                 I am
                           right
                          ­          ******* here,
                                                        K­atherine.

       I see you.
       I see you Marc.
       But you’re not
                            solid.

       I’m not
                            solid.
                          ­                              See?

                           ­                             It passes
                                                          ­     right through.

       Now you see me.
                                   Now yo–



v. 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
                                                        ­       I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
              and I’ve been asleep all day.
                                   I get dressed and grab my camera
                                   and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
       The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
              his daughter is four now
              he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
              and he’s moving, he says,
                                                 near me apparently
                                                 to Southend.
                                                       ­               “London Southend” he jokes
                                                                ­      with a roll of his eye
                                                             ­         and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
       the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
       strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
                                                      ­                but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
       They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
              I wonder what is lost between the
              Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
              and the English spoken by the translator.
                                                     ­          The space between words.
                                                          ­     The space between looking left
                                                            ­                               and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
       except for the British delegates
       including the man from Reuters who speculates
       that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
              I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
                                                            ­          as it falls
              and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
                                          the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
                                          and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                   or glide past
                                                        the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
                            dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
                            as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
                            from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
       I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
                            double,
                 ­           cut with water.
              not because I like it but
              because there’s something about scotch that feels
                                                           ­                         moneyed
              heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
              it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
              even though that’s a lie.
                                                        I’m just a man who takes pictures.
                                                       ­ And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
                                                          ­                   as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
                                          A news alert on my phone says a piece of
                                          plane wreckage
                                          washed up
                                                        on Réunion
                                                        i­n the Indian Ocean,
                                   east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
                                                            ­                 it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
                                          I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
                     endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
                                                 and I imagine
                                                         ­             swimming
                                           ­      in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
                                          maternal
       ­                                   spiritual
                    ­                      nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
                                                               ­              slept
                                                           ­           then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
                                                        don’­t tell anyone.
What
       I say
and she says
              I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
       just in case
                            she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
                                   no-one is looking at her
                                   but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
                                                         ­      yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
                                                 I see the photo I took this evening about
                                                 a dozen times
                                                 or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
                                   What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
                                                        and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
                            It was going from here to Beijing.
                            Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
                     that
                     time
                     precisely
                                   my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
                                                    ­    It looks like I’m going to Beijing.

Grandmère = Grandmother

Peter and I are in Paris, we arrived this morning. We’re staying at my Grandmère’s Champs de Mars residence - near the Eiffel Tower.

One of my Grandmère’s oldest and dearest friends is a Catholic Bishop. When I was little, he was ‘Monsignor Jean-Marc’ but now he’s ‘Bishop Jean-Marc.’ He’s been around so much of my life, he’s almost part of the family. I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that he has his own apartment somewhere in each of her houses.

Jean-Marc is old. I think that’s fair to say. He’s white haired and the kind of short that comes on slowly, with age. He’s a disciplined kind of thin and his deep wrinkles are tanned from years of gardening. His teeth, always visible in his salesmen’s smile, are as white as altar candles.

When I first glimpsed Jean-Marc from the hallway, he was sitting on a cream satin settee, in conversation with my Grandmère. I knew something was up because he was wearing his red trimmed cassock and red sash, instead of his usual black suit.

What I couldn’t see from the hall, was that the room was packed with matronly ladies, dressed in matronly dresses of glittering white, glittering beige, glittering yellow and glittering gold. Argh! I was wearing a white Polo tennis dress, Keds mini canvas sneakers and my hair was ponytailed. I wasn’t dressed for a social. I swiveled to give my Grandmère a sharp look, but she took that moment to be interested in the drapes.

As I’d come into the room, Jean-Marc stood and greeted me cordially saying, “AnnAAAas!” raising both hands up over his head as if he were channeling the pope. Ok, I thought to myself, this is happening. I offered my most innocent smile. “Bishop Jean-Marc,” I said, while performing an involuntary curtsy, conjured from somewhere deep in childhood reflex-memory.

I don’t like priests. Slam me, sue me, **** me. When I’m around a priest, I’m reminded that I’m a sinner and I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. It’s the worst kind of guilt for a Catholic, because we don’t earn any credit for it.

Opp! I just thought of Peter, so there’s lust, right on queue - that’s a sin. Unfortunately, Peter’s not here. He and Charles went on a chauffeured driving tour of Paris. Envy - there, another sin, I’m on the road to hell but I can’t seem to stop, one thought just follows the next. Where’s a priest when I need one? (to confess) Just kidding, there’s one right in front of me.

The bishop began asking me a string of unimaginative questions, like an old friend catching up. “How’ve you been? How's university? As he grilled me, slowly, like a steak in a smoker, the herd of matrons ambled slowly our way, closing in to listen in. It was a scene straight out of the walking dead. I wanted to escape but my Grandmère held me in place, with the full wattage of her proud smile.

Ordinary boredom is an un-experience and all you need to free yourself is a phone. High society boredom is one of Dante’s circles of hell, because you have to interact with strangers when you could be doing something fun instead. The gathering finally broke up about 7pm and I was free to go. I was starving, my throat hurt from talking (about myself) and I hadn’t heard from Peter. When I checked “find my,” it showed him there, somewhere. So I went in search.

Peter was in his (our) room, on his back near the edge of the bed, one shoe off and one shoe on. He was as still as a corpse but a soft snoring suggested he wasn’t dead. I leaned over him, his black hair was somehow more disheveled than usual and his lips, moist and slightly parted, looked invitingly ready to kiss. I didn’t do it though, that would have been asking for trouble. Instead, I smelled his breath, slowly and deeply. Cognac. Charles had gotten him drunk. How helpful.

Once I tucked Peter in, I went looking for Charles, only to find him shooting billiards with Jean-Marc. He looked none the worse for wear and the gleam in his eyes told me he knew what he was doing - avoiding me with the bishop.

As I prowled the room, trying to decide what to do, while picking up objects and weighing them as objects to be thrown, a server brought in a tray with three bowls of cassoulet,* which smelled incredible, my stomach growled, and I remembered I was starving.

Charles, sensing a shift in the mood, said, “He (Peter) needed to reset his body clock. He’s young, he’ll be as good as new in the morning.” I just laughed. Charles knew I’d come looking for him and he’d ordered me dinner. I can’t stay mad at Charles; he knows me too well.

The cassoulet was to die for.
We’ll start our vacation, for reals, in the morning.

Dear Marc (like cheese),
Your hair is soft (like cheese),
Your bed smells cool (like cheese),
Your chin is squishy (like cheese).

I like your basement (like cheese),
I like your drums (like cheese),
I like the ground (like cheese),
I like bubble pipes (like cheese).

Your socks are black (like cheese),
Your eyes are blue (like cheese),
Your hair is yellow (like cheese),
Your floor is carpet (like cheese).

You like cabbage poems (like cheese),
You like play station (like cheese),
You like cigar smoke (like cheese),
You like chocolate (like cheese).

I like your style (like cheese),
I like that you dance (like cheese),
I like your childishness (like cheese),
I like Pokemon (like cheese).

You are tall (like cheese),
You are white (like cheese),
You are my friend (like cheese),
You are Marc (like cheese).

I AM COLE (unlike cheese)

if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah

We argued over that Marc Bolan record
That I knew wasn’t mine anyway
We argued over that Marc Bolan record
It’s my demented way of passing the day

I love to see the lines on your forehead appear
They run so incredibly deep
I love to see the lines on your forehead, my dear
When you’ve got the bit between your teeth

So when I hear ride a white swan
I can’t help but think of your face
Fighting your corner for T.Rex
That cosmic dancer in outer space

My mission, Chanel St. Marc Love every women as my sister negating all ****** desire and my appetite of lust. Regard every man compatible, my brothers, similarities or differences----- no two seeds from the same garden are identical. Yet we are formed in same soil. My attempts to covet godschild are countless to ****** grace from rushing temptations. Prostituting my body for notoriety, Not committing everything to heart .I believe in love but help me in my non-belief. Help me when I ignore friendship for ****** encounters.  Discounting the meaning of trust I raise my eyebrows high whenever *** walks by.  Lord oh lord it’s the vamp in her, the beast in me. Fire attracts fire burning as we sin openly.  For the time being I repent and relapse back in to action. The devil focuses my eyes on the worst decision I will make for days to come. I took back my life for my own and shared it with my demons. Control was given to the worst, my blood is now deadlier than poison and impairs my soul. Free my feelings from filth. Fear of being forsaken before death.   My mission, Chanel St. Marc Love every women as my sister love every man as my brother.

For the fifth year in a row, Kering and Parsons School of Fashion rolled out the ‘Empowering Imagination’ design initiative. The competition engaged twelve 2016 graduates of the Parsons BFA Fashion Design program, who "were selected for their excellence in vision, acute awareness in design identity, and mastery of technical competencies." The winners, Ya Jun Lin and Tiffany Huang, will be awarded a 2-week trip to Kering facilities in Italy in June 2016 and will have their thesis collections featured in Saks Fifth Avenue New York’s windows.

The Kering and Parsons competition, which is currently in its fifth year, is one of a growing number of design competitions, including but not limited to the LVMH Prize, the ANDAM Awards, the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund, and its British counterpart, the Woolmark Prize, the Ecco Domani fashion award, and the Hyères Festival. among others.

In the generations prior, designers were certainly nominated for awards, but it seems that there was not nearly as intense of a focus on design competitions as a means for designers to get their footing, for design houses to scout talent, or for these competitions to select the best of the best in a especially large pool of young talent. Fern Mallis, the former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and an industry consultant, told the New York Times: “Take the Calvin [Kleins] and the Donna [Karans] and the Ralph [Laurens] of the world. Some of these people had money from a friend or a partner who worked with them, but they weren’t out spending their time doing competitions and winning awards to get their business going.” She sheds light on an essential element: The relatively drastic difference between the state of fashion then and fashion now. Fashion then was slower, less global, and (a lot) less dominated by the internet, and so, it made for quite different circumstances for the building of a fashion brand.

Nowadays, young designers are more or less going full speed ahead right off the bat. They show comprehensive collections, many of which consist of garments and an array of accessories. They are expected to be active on social media. They are expected to establish a strong industry presence (think: Go to events and parties). They are expected to cope with the fashion business that has become large-scale and international. They are expected to collaborate to expand their reach, and while it does, at times, feel excessive, this is the reality because the industry is moving at such a quick pace, one that some argue is unsustainably rapid. The result is designers and design houses consistently building their brands and very rarely starting small. Case in point: Young brands showing pre-collections within a few years of setting up shop (for a total of four collections per year, not counting any collaboration or capsule collections), and established brands showing roughly four womenswear collections, four menswear collections, two couture collections, and quite often, a few diffusion collections each year.

The current climate of 'more is more' (more collections, more collaborations, more social media, more international know-how, etc.) in fashion is what sets currently emerging brands apart from older brands, many of which started small. This reality also sheds light on the increasing frequency with which designers rely on competitions as a means of gaining funds, as well as a means of establishing their names and not uncommonly, gaining outside funding.

The Ralphs, Tommys, Calvins and Perrys started off a bit differently. Ralph Lauren, for instance, started a niche business. The empire builder, now 74, got his start working at a department store then worked for a private label tie manufacturer (which made ties for Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart). He eventually convinced them to let him make ties under the Polo label and work out of a drawer in their showroom. After gaining credibility thanks to the impeccable quality of his ties, he expanded into other things. Tommy Hilfiger similarly started with one key garment: Jeans. After making a name for himself by buying jeans, altering them into bellbottoms and reselling them at Brown’s in Manhattan, he opened a store catering to those that wanted a “rock star” aesthetic when he was 18-years old with $150. While the store went bankrupt by the time he was 25, it allowed him to get his foot in the door. He was offered design positions at Calvin Klein (who also got his start by focusing on a single garment: Coats. With $2,000 of his own money and $10,000 lent to him by a friend, he set up shop; in 1973, he got his big break when a major department store buyer accidentally walked into his showroom and placed an order for $50,000). Hilfiger was also offered a design position with Perry Ellis but turned them down to start his eponymous with help from the Murjani Group. Speaking of Perry Ellis, the NYU grad went to work at an upscale retail store in Virginia, where he was promoted to a buying/merchandising position in NYC, where he was eventually offered a chance to start his own label, a small operation. After several years of success, he spun it off as its own entity. Marc Jacobs, who falls into a bit of a younger generation, started out focusing on sweaters.

These few individuals, some of the biggest names in American fashion, obviously share a common technique. They intentionally started very small. They built slowly from there, and they had the luxury of being able to do so. Others, such as Hubert de Givenchy, Alexander McQueen and his successor Sarah Burton, Nicolas Ghesquière, Julien Macdonald, John Galliano and his successor Bill Gaytten, and others, spent time as apprentices, working up to design directors or creative directors, and maybe maintaining a small eponymous label on the side. As I mentioned, attempting to compare these great brand builders or notable creative directors to the young designers of today is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, as the nature of the market now is vastly different from what it looked like 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40 years ago.

With this in mind, fashion competitions have begun to play an important role in helping designers to cope with the increasing need to establish a brand early on. It seems to me that winning (or nearly winning) a prestigious fashion competition results in several key rewards.

Primarily, it puts a designer's name and brand on the map. This is likely the least noteworthy of the rewards, as chances are, if you are selected to participate in a design competition, your name and brand are already out there to some extent as one of the most promising young designers of the moment.

Second are the actual prizes, which commonly include mentoring from industry insiders and monetary grants. We know that participation in competitions, such as the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, the Woolmark Prize, the Swarovski, Ecco Domani, the LVMH Prize, etc., gives emerging designers face time with and mentoring from some of the most successful names in the industry. Chris Peters, half of the label Creatures of the Wind (pictured above), whose brand has been nominated for half of the aforementioned awards says of such participation: “It feels like we’ve talked to possibly everyone in fashion that we can possibly talk to." The grants, which range anywhere from $25,o00 to $400,000 and beyond, are obviously important, as many emerging designers take this money and stage a runway show or launch pre-collections, which often affect the business' bottom line in a major and positive way.

The third benefit is, in my opinion, the most significant. It seems that competitions also provide brands with some reputability in terms of finding funding. At the moment, the sea of young brands which is terribly vast. Like law school graduates, there are a lot of design school graduates. With this in mind, these competitions are, for the most part, serving as a selection mechanism. Sure, the inevitable industry politics and alternate agendas exist (without which the finalists lists may look a bit different), but great talent is being scouted, nonetheless. Not only is it important to showcase the most promising young talent and provide them with mentoring and grant money, as a way of maintaining an industry, but these competitions also do a monumental service to young brands in terms of securing additional funding. One of the most challenging aspects of the business for young/emerging brands is producing and growing absent outside investors' funds, and often, the only way for brands' to have access to such funds is by showing a proven sales track record, something that is difficult to establish when you've already put all of your money into your business and it is just not enough. This is a frustrating cycle for young designers.

However, this is where design competitions are a saving grace. If we look to recent Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund winners and runners-up, for instance, it is not uncommon to see funding (distinct from the grants associated with winning) come on the heels of successful participation. Chrome Hearts, the cult L.A.-based accessories label, acquired a minority stake in The Elder Statesman, the brand established by Greg Chait, the 2012 winner, this past March. A minority stake in 2011 winner Joseph Altuzarra's eponymous label was purchased by luxury conglomerate Kering in September 2013. Creatures of the Wind, the NYC-based brand founded by Shane Gabier and Chris Peters, which took home a runner-up prize in the 2011 competition, welcomed an investment from The Dock Group, a Los Angeles-based fashion investment firm, last year, as well.

Across the pond, the British Fashion Council/Vogue Fashion Fund has awarded prizes to a handful of designers who have gone on to land noteworthy investments. In January 2013, Christopher Kane (pictured below), the 2011 winner, sold a majority stake in his brand to Kering. Footwear designer Nicholas Kirkwood was named the winner 2013 in May and by September, a majority stake in his company had been acquired by LVMH.

Thus, while the exposure that fashion design competition participants gain, and the mentoring and monetary grants that the winners enjoy, are certainly not to be discounted, the takeaway is much larger than that. These competitions are becoming the new way for investors and luxury conglomerates to source new talent, and for young brands to land the outside investments that they so desperately need to produce their collections, expand their studio space, build upon their existing collections, and even open brick and mortar stores.

While no one has scooped up inaugural LVMH winner Thomas Tait’s brand yet or fellow winner, Marques'Almeida, it is likely just be a matter of time.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-sydney

you want me to put out a cigarette out
inside your eye?
   let's face it: tears don't come cheap...
sometimes you need more
than a rom-com to turn your eye into a
niagara falls... which way's the
              hmm hum umm?
this sort of time-frame
is really confiscating my
anti-claustrophobic philia
worth of shaking
hands or knee-jerking
really quick;
get my drift? no? no matter...
i can do with a "thought"
basis for summary...
   ah **** me...
can you imagine feeling
magnetism when shaking
your hand really ******?
      apart from watching
paint dry,
   i suggest the "movie"
of watching ice freeze,
or mercury freeze...
   the latter?
  gone with the wind standard
of 3 hours +...
               nice though...
to imagine, better still:
imitate...
    what a sin to bed driving
a car, and listening to
classical music,
citing john brunning after five
p.m., who the **** listens to
classical music when driving
a car?
             leprechauns?!
         he-be-he-be-hoom-ha?!
modesty just ****** off,
all we're left with is
a welcome "bargain" of profanity;
i always enjoyed the idea
of running 100m while dribbling
a football, like the time
when marc overmars could outrun
most sprinters dribbling a football
while playing the left-wing for arsenal...
every time i see these men of sprint
getting all cocky... i tend to ask
them: hold an egg on a tbl. spoon...
and run the same time of the worth
of distance...
marc overmars would still
     out-run you...
mind the fact that he was also dribbling
a football...
            evidently humanity will not
remember a marc overmars: simply because
he wasn't in a ****** advert...
      too bad... that dutch "prince" could
out-run that jamaican rod while
juggling three oranges with his hands,
   balancing a watermelon on his head,
                and dribbling a football;
basic!

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

On your Marc, Get Set,  GO!!

3 Marks, in 2 days
A sign...
Obvious in fact.

First there was the Mark of the Cathedral
Perfect in It"s Reverence,
Baptism of Creativity.

Then, there was the Racehorse.
Faster than a speeding Bullet,
able to leap tall buildings with a single ping

And then finally,
the one whose name means Beautiful...
Artist, Creativity, Perfection..
the only one who matters...

Three Marks, one Anointing.
A confirmation of Love
An Ordination of Willingness

God's pen upon the paper.
the true Mark of Humanity
Blessing.

In all circumstances
Blessing.
Peace, Holy Spirit.

And So It Is.

Fashion designers love foraging through the antique markets of Clignancourt in Paris and Portobello Road and Alfie’s Antiques markets in London snuffling out vintage pieces for inspiration. The flurry of romantic Victoriana on the catwalks for autumn can clearly be blamed on this obsession.

There has been an undercurrent of reserved, covered-up fashion ever since Pierpaolo Piccioli and his former co-designer Maria Grazia Chiuri introduced a more demure aesthetic to Valentino five years ago. Longer skirts, prim higher necklines and covered arms have become the slow trend of recent seasons creating a hyper-feminine look.

Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy and Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen have long been beguiled by the Gothic romanticism of Victorian fashion with their use of corsetry and dark dramatic lace and velvet for eveningwear.

In fact, London-based vintage fashion dealer Virginia Bates admits she doesn’t remember there ever being a time when Gothic Victoriana didn’t feature in at least one designer’s collection. “The fascination with the romantics, poets, artists and even horror [classics and films] give designers a great source of inspiration,” she says. “It’s an irresistible era.”

Certainly a lot of it has appeared on the catwalks this season at McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Burberry (shown only a month ago in the see-now, buy-now collection), Simone Rocha, Preen, Bora Aksu and Temperley London, as well as at smaller brands such as Alessandra Rich, Three Floor created by Yvonne Hoang and A.W.A.K.E.

There were dark distressed Linton tweeds, unravelling knits and black tulle in Simone Rocha’s autumn collection. Rocha was pregnant when she started designing it and was inspired by Victorian dress and motherhood, in particular the nightgowns and matrons.

“All the wrapping and swaddling of babies,” she says, before elaborating on how “the Victorian ideals of properness were made perverse with the conservative and covered-up pieces contrasted by the sheer and embroidered fabrics.”These gauzy vaporous fabrics succeeded in making her eerily romantic silhouette look rather contemporary and daring.

Subversion is key to making such a prim and proper period in fashion history modern and relevant for women today. Marc Jacobs, for instance mixed long Victorian coats, ballooning crinolines and crochet doily collars with sweatshirt tops and laser-cut leather for skirts and jackets together with some scary Goth horror make-up. Nothing is, or should be literal.

As Justin Thornton of Preen says “we love the Victorians, the laces and the white shirts, but it is the vintage pieces rather than the era that inspire us”. His partner Thea Bregazzi has collected aristocratic laces and ruffly vintage shirts from Portobello Road market for as long as he has known her and these frequently find their way into their collections, “but linings would be ripped, garments will have holes in them – it is a deconstructed look”.Virginia Bates once owned a famous vintage fashion emporium in Holland Park with a client list including the biggest names in fashion from John Galliano to Donna Karan and Naomi Campbell. Now she only works with private clients and designers and they, especially, she says were looking for genuine Victorian pieces when planning their autumn collections.

“A black fitted jacket with inserts of handmade lace [that is] embellished with crystal and jet beads, ***** and silk lined ... How exciting and inspiring is that? Silk and fine lawn shirts, soft and flowing with ruffles. Don’t we all want to wear one and live the dream?”

Thankfully a few designers do right now, and there were lots of heavenly creatures in fragile asymmetric lace dresses toughened up with leather corsetry at Alexander McQueen, and richly coloured swishy dresses at Bora Aksu. While Christopher Bailey cherry-picked the centuries in his Burberry collection, lighting upon frilled white cotton shirts, nipped in jackets and military capes from the Victorian era. Given that Victoria reigned for more than 60 years there is a lot of history for designers to plunder, so this will not be the last we will see it.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

Cheers!

We praise our lined faces.  We forgive time.
We raise our cups of double-pressed wine.
We know brute forests from our seed-time
We know heaven will cleave those we entwine
The season of heat is slow to erupt.
April is late. March is still covered with snow,
Its shabby sheet weak shoots barely interrupt.,
Succession and succession is what we know.

In the thronged marketplace  we know we’ll find
Lines of who came before and  who came after
All seem in be arranged by some infinite mind
Knowing where our line goes will not stop our laughter.

We dance. All dances are in our repertoire.
We know we’re headed to that sacred abattoir.


Marc Tretin

< So how far back can you go then ?
How far down the Rope of Songs can you go ?
You were a Rocker weren't you, you liked Rock n' Roll
In the 80's you had a Walkman, you'd be listening to tapes and songs on the radio
You also wanted to be a drummer once, you loved the power and energy there
But what about the early days though, I'm interested particularly in the early days
How far back can you go I wonder
Yea! How far back and what memories do they bring up ? >

Back in the 70's watching Top of the Pops every Thursday evening on the BBC, essential viewing
With its exciting Whole Lotta Love intro
It was something exciting, thrilling
Waiting to see your favourite Band
And to see the Charts, how they were doing
In the Seventies there was Glam Rock, my eldest brother and me we were always arguing and fighting with one another, sibling rivalry I suppose
If he supported United then I'd have to support City...silly stuff
He liked the band Slade whereas I liked...I supported Marc Bolan and T-Rex
Solid Gold East Action I really liked that song
It was very fast, he rarely did fast songs Marc
Telegram Sam..."you're my main man"
Metal Guru..."is it true"
Twentieth Century Boy..."I wanna be your toy"
The hair on your neck would stand up when he'd come on...
Slade were good though, secretly I liked Slade too, they had great songs
*** on feel the Noise/ Girls grab the boys..
Coz I luv you...Mama we'er all crazy now...
Skweeze me Pleeze me "You know how to squeeze me..."
But there were lots of other good bands and so many great songs
We used to play cards for small money...pennies, a series of different card games, and we'd put on records while we played
We even learned to play Chess and we started a Chess League between us,
We'd always listen to the music as we played.

The Sweet's "Blockbuster" with its intro of police sirens, it spent about 5 weeks at No.1 in the UK Charts...
It reminds me of...of Fish that song...Fish on Fridays, we used to have fish every Friday, I didn't like fish there was bones in it
I wouldn't eat it then Mam would get angry
One time she took a mouthful of my fish trying to prove there were no bones in it
Then suddenly she started to cough and splutter and choke
A Bone had actually got caught in her throat
I thought it was my fault, I thought I'd killed her
She had to go to hospital to get it out
I was going to tell her "I told you the fish was dangerous"
That memory just came back to me when I thought of that song and that time

Yea! I liked Marc Bolan and T-Rex, songs like Metal Guru, Twentieth Century Boy
I remember I didn't like the lyric "Twentieth Century Boy/ I wanna be your toy"
It sounded silly to me that lyric, I suppose I wanted things to make sense
And when he did that song "New York City" with the lyric
"Did you ever see a woman coming out of New York City with a frog in her hand"
I thought then he was maybe losing it a bit
< You...you were a very serious child then weren't you ? >
I suppose I was...like a lot of children are...maybe I just wanted things to make sense.

< I'm interested in the early days, even the very early days and the memories you have
How far back can you go ? What about the funny novelty songs ? >
Chuck Berry had a No. 1 with "My Ding a Ling" playing with his Ding a Ling, we all thought it was very funny
Stayed at No. 1 for several weeks
"Gimme that thing, gimme gimme that thing (or Ding)" was another funny song
"Mouldy Old Dough" by Lieutenant Pigeon a keyboard song with the constant refrain of just "Mouldy Old Dough"
Cat Stevens had a song "I can't keep it in/ I gotta let it out/ gotta show the world..."
Novelty songs were important, they'd interest even your parents
They'd pass a comment "Ha! Ha! That's a funny song"
< And there were sad songs too, weren't there, really sad songs ? >
"Billy don't be a hero don't be a fool with your life" by Paper Lace about a young bride trying to talk her young fiancee out of going off to war, he doesn't listen and never comes back, he gets killed
The Government sends her a letter, she throws it away...
"Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks, 'Goodbye Michelle my little one/
We've known each other since we were nine or ten/ We climbed hills and trees skinned our knees...ABC's / O! Michelle it's hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky..."
You'd nearly be in tears listening to it.
We used to buy Top of the Pops compilation records with lots of hits on them
Sometimes Mom would like a song, 'Stay with me' by the band Blue Mink
"Stay with me, lay with me/ Love me for longer..."
Always reminds me of my Mom that song
'Killing me softly with your song' Roberta Flack was another
'Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree..."
At school every Friday the teacher would have a spelling test, I used win it a lot, I was good at spelling
The teacher used to give some sweets as a prize, I used bring them home to my Mum.

The Eurovision Song contest (all the European countries would put forward a song), I remember being let stay up to watch Abba win in 1972 with 'Waterloo'
In their fabulous outfits...they looked like Stars, Giants to us, Norse legends from Sweden.  They were amazing!
And what about our own Dana, the young Irish girl from Derry who won the Eurovision for Ireland for the first time with 'All kinds of everything...remind me of you"
I was too young to be allowed to stay up to watch that one
But you could probably hear the adults shouting for Joy from the room below
Happy Nay amazed to see one of our own having done so well, being recognised, flying the flag for Ireland
And then there was seeing Thin Lizzy playing 'Whiskey in the Jar' on Top of the Pops, the first Irish Rock band ever to appear on the show
It was so exciting watching them on our old Black and white TV...an Irish Band one of your very own up there on the World stage
And what about Gilbert O'Sullivan from Waterford I think reaching No. 1 in the Charts with his lovely song 'Clair'
We thought it was a love song but at the end it was revealed it was in fact about a little girl he used babysit for...so sweet.
We used to get comics and magazines secondhand, bought at jumble sales (remember jumble sales)
There was a music magazine for young kids, mainly for girls I think
It was called 'Jackie', there'd be a few in our bundle
They'd have big pictures of all the current hearthrobs
Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, the Bay City Rollers
The young fans would go crazy for their idols
I remember Donny Osmond singing Puppy Love and his version of The Twelfth of Never...
"I'll love you till the bluebells forget to bloom
I'll love you till the clover has lost its perfume
I'll love you till the poets run out of rhyme
Until the Twelfth of Never/ And that's a long long time"...
They were beautiful words about loving, a forever love
And Baby I love you by The Ronettes "Baby I love you/ I love everything about you...
All singing about this wonderful mysterious thing called...called Love.

<Can you go back further than that?>
When we'd go up the village where the amusement arcade was
There'd be songs playing, there were dreamy songs
Albatross by Fleetwood Mac, A whiter shade of Pale by Procol Harum
There was an instrumental I remember called "Sylvia" by the Dutch band Focus
There was a lovely leggy blonde girl named Sylvia in my class at school
And yes! I think she was actually from Holland
(We had a few foreign girls in our class)
Y'know I think she fancied me...did Sylvia
She used to smile at me a lot.
I have a memory of being at the fairground in the Summer with its swing boats and bumper cars
It's roundabouts with the horses and swings, the shooting gallery, the stall for throwing rings over things and taking a prize home
I remember candy floss and ice cream cones
I remember playing the penny slot machines in the amusement arcade, all the different machines
I remember a song "California Man" by The Move... wonderful Summer days.

In the Sixties an Elvis or a Beatles film was a big deal
I remember A Hard Days Night in brilliant black and white
And then "Help" in wonderful colour
Trying to get a fabulous Ring off Ringo the drummer's finger... great songs
Watching The Banana Splits "One Banana Two Banana Three Banana Four/All Bananas going right through the door...
Remember The Monkees"Hey!Hey! We're The Monkees/You never know where we'll be found... We're the young generation and we got something to say"
Last Train to Clarksville, I'm a Believer... great songs too
Remember The Age of Aquarius "This is the age of Aquarius..."
The Sixties yeah!

<Did your Mom and Dad have a Singles collection, the old 45's. Do you remember?>
On our old Dansette record player Roy Orbison singing In Dreams and its B side Sharadoba a magical Egyptian sounding song
And also It's Over about a love affair breaking up
And its wonderful B side Indian Wedding, that was my favorite song among the 45's
It told the story of Yellow Hand and White Feather two Indians getting married
But then going off into the swirling snow never to return
Gone to the Land of the Rising Sun...
You'd listen to them over and over again those songs and that wonderful haunting voice.
<And what were you thinking about, what would be running through your mind when you'd be listening to those songs?>
I remember I wanted to be special that I'd have some special powers and be able to do great things
Something that would make me stand out and that people would be amazed
Maybe some of the girls too, would be very impressed.
My Dad he liked Jim Reeves, he had a lovely velvety smooth voice
He sang Billy Bayou 'Billy Billy Bayou watch where you go/ You're walking on quicksand/ Walk slow/ Billy Billy Bayou watch what you say/ A pretty girl is gonna get you one of these days...
He sang a lot of slow love songs "Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone and let believe that we're together all alone...
Anna Marie... Anna Marie
Four Walls to know me...

<Tell me about Christmas, the Christmas songs?>
Christmas was a magical time in our house, we'd have the Christmas tree with all the decorations and coloured lights on it
We'd have long concertina like decorations going from wall to wall, so colourful
And lots of glittery things
The songs... Slade singing 'Happy Christmas Everybody', Wizard singing 'I wish it could be Christmas everyday', Mud singing 'It'll be lonely this Christmas (without you to hold)' sounded like Elvis
Johnny Mathis singing 'When a child is born',
'Little Drummer Boy'...
In those days because of school and family you had a strong sense of belonging, having friends, attending birthdays and sports and community events and church
I remember the Christmas party in Primary school (Kindergarten), you had to bring your own treats
I'd only have some biscuits and diluted orange juice
Most people were relatively poor in those days
I was a bit embarrassed having so little
There was one boy and all he had was a bottle of milk to bring
Some used make fun of him, kids could be cruel sometimes.

I remember the teacher brought in a tape recorder once and taped every boy and girl's voice and then he'd play them back
I used dread when my voice would come up
'Cos suddenly the whole class would erupt in laughter
For some reason my voice sounded funny when taped
Even the teacher used smile
I felt so humiliated nay destroyed with them all laughing at me...
I remember... I remember singing the Christmas Carol 'Angels we have heard on high' with its chorus
"Glo..ooria, Gloria in Excelsis Deo"
It was Latin I think but I didn't know this
I thought we were singing "Gloria in a Chelsea stable"
I thought to myself "Jesus must be a supporter of Chelsea football/soccer club" heh!
We had Perry Como's Christmas album with the story of 'Frosty the Snowman' and 'The Christmas Song' ...
"chestnuts roasting on an open fire/ Jack Frost nipping at your nose/ Yuletide carols being sung by a choir/ And folks dressed up like Eskimos..."
And Bing Crosby of course, singing White Christmas
I think we all dreamed of a White Christmas
At school we'd sing 'Away in a Manger' and 'The First Nowell'
Y'know if I sing those songs even now to myself, I can... I can almost remember...

<What about the other songs you learned at school, funny songs, sad songs and the memories they bring up? >
There was a song 'Those were the days (my friend we thought they'd never end)' it was in the Charts
I think the teacher taught us it
The people in the song would be having a great time laughing and drinking and dancing in the taverns
But as they'd grow older their lives would change and they'd get lonelier and sadder...
'Puff the Magic Dragon' I remember there was a very sad bit in this song
Puff and his childhood friend would have so many great adventures together
But then one day, his friend he came no more (he'd found other toys to play with)
Poor Puff was left bereft, he slowly slunk back into his cave... this used to make me sad...
We did patriotic songs 'Roddy McCorley' (goes to die on the Bridge of Toom today)
We had a songbook at school, I still have it
It had lots of old folk songs
Oh! Susanna, Skip to my Lou, The Camptown Races
"Michael Finnegan beginagin/ He had hairs on his chinagin/ Poor old Michael Finnegan"
We used laugh at that song
"What are we going to do with the drunken sailor... early in the morning "
'Marching through Georgia' "Hurra! Hurra! We bring the Jubilee/ Hurra! Hurra! The flag that sets us free...a rousing song
The teacher would play a musical instrument, a melodica I think it was called
She'd blow into it and it had keys on top that'd she'd finger to create the notes
She divided the class into those who could sing and the others, the Crows she called us who couldn't
I was among the Crows
It made me feel bad being called a Crow.
In Primary school we used to play soccer during the breaks
It was usually the Boys from the Housing Estate versus the rest of us from the Village
There was never any tactics, the whole team en masse would just run after the ball LoL
I remember I used to get angry sometimes probably because of something someone had said to me
When I was angry I'd become like The Incredible Hulk
I'd go through the whole lot of them, beat them all
I was Unstoppable
I was the first boy in my class to ever score a goal using my head
The school would also have soccer leagues and we'd get put onto teams
But we were so small compared to the bigger older boys we'd hardly ever get a touch of the ball
But I... I managed to get a goal once which was unheard of from someone in our year
I was so happy.... delighted! My teacher even announced it to the whole class
That I'd scored... I was so chuffed
When I went home and told my parents though they didn't seem to think it was anything special....
My Dad he liked accordion music, he liked The Alexander Brothers from Scotland
They had a song 'Nobody's Child'
"I'm Nobody's Child, no one to love me/ No mother's kisses no mother's smiles/ I'm like a flower just growing wild..."

I used to sleep alone in my room
You'd be afraid there in the Dark on your own
There'd be a nightlight on the wall all lit up
A religious picture, the ****** Mary holding the child Jesus
I'd get Mom to leave the door open so I could faintly hear the voices downstairs
Sometimes I couldn't hear anything and I'd be afraid everybody had gone and left me
So I'd get up and sit on the landing listening
There was a few times when I'd actually go down the stairs
I'd be so relieved to see them all still there
I used sing songs in the dark to keep the fear away, songs we learned at school
"We're going to the Zoo Zoo Zoo/ How about You You You/ You can come too too too..."
Old MacDonald had a farm E-I-E-I O! and on that farm he had some...
"10 green bottles standing on a wall/ And if one green bottle should accidentally fall/ There'd be nine green bottles standing on the wall...
Sometimes I used recite poems we'd learned
"Two little blackbirds singing in the sun/ One flew away and then there was one... One little brick wall lonely in the sun/ Waiting for the blackbirds to come and sing again "
I also remember trying to recite to myself the multiplication tables...

<There were funny rhymes and nursery rhymes wasn't there? >
Christmas is coming/ The Goose is getting fat/ Please put a penny in the old Man's hat/ If you haven't got a penny a halfpenny will do/ If you haven't got a halfpenny God bless you...
Hickory Dickery dock/ The mouse ran up the clock...
They could be strangely violent sounding
Jack and Jill went up the hill/To fetch a pail of water/ Jack fell down and broke his crown/ And Jill came tumbling after...
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...
Three blind mice/ See how they run/ They all run after the farmer's wife/ She cuts off their tails with a carving knife...
Girls are made of all things nice... sugar and spice/What are little boys made of/ Frogs and snails and puppy dogs tails...
Adam and Eve went up my sleeve and never came down till Christmas Eve...
I remember the early games we played, Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, Tiddlywinks trying to flick little plastic counters into a tiny plastic bucket, also playing draughts and marbles...

<Can you go back any further ? >
My Mom singing in the kitchen doing her daily chores singing some song off the radio
Dickie Rock an Irish showband singer singing
"Come back to stay/ And promise me you'll never stray/ I promise that I'll be true...
Sean Dunphy another Irish singer singing "If I could choose" (came second in the Eurovision Song contest)
Tom Jones 'The Green green grass of Home '
There was a lot of easy listening type songs on the radio Burt Bacharach type songs
Andy Williams, Englebert Huberdinck (Please release me let me go/ I don't love you anymore), Doris Day maybe
There's a lot I can't remember now
Val Doonican another Irish singer who'd made it big in the UK
(Had his own TV program for many years on the BBC)
He had a big hit with the song "Walk Tall"
"Walk tall and look the world right in the eye/That's what my mother told me when I was about knee high...
I remember one magical Christmas we got a present of a plastic projector
It came with several slides, they had wonderfully colourful cartoony pictures on them that told a story
We'd turn off all the lights and project it onto the wall
I remember it was like magic, the colours they were so vivid, they were like the colors off stained Glass windows...
The colour of things was very important when you were a kid, they'd almost create feelings inside of you
Colours came first... before words ever did
We often didn't understand the grown ups with their big words...
I remember getting collections of different kinds of toy soldiers and then staging battles
I remember collecting little toy Dinky cars they were called, that was their brand
And Matchbox cars (another brand) ... even today when I see certain colours of cars I am reminded of those old toy cars I used to play with... strange

<What are your earliest memories then? >
There was a question I always wanted to ask the adults but I never did, I thought it kind of funny and didn't want them to laugh at me
The question was "Why does Life always show me ?" An existentialist question even then.

We lived by the sea so you'd be lulled to sleep every night by the flowing up and flowing back of the sea... the tide... its gentle swaying back and forth motion
We had a black cloth picture/painting on the wall, a night scene with swans on a lake and an exotic house in the background with the Moon shining
It was so quiet and peaceful to look at...
My bedroom wallpaper had lovely red or pinkish roses
There was a colourful flower design sewn onto my pillowcase
It used to be lovely getting into bed with fresh linen...
I remember I used to get funny dreams even then, sometimes scary dreams
But I remember you were always safe 'cos in the dream you had a special ring you could put on and then the scary dream would go away (I've often wondered after was that maybe where Tolkien got his inspiration for The Lord of the Rings and Wagner the music composer for his music opera "The Ring")

<Can you go back...any further ? >
Going back further, you're almost falling off the edge of the world there
To a time... to a time when there were no words
When a child comes into the world they have no words
There's only... only The Silence... The Great Silence,
Silence is a strange thing, you can hear Silence
The fact that you can hear it means it must be changing from moment to moment
It too is just like a music, it's probably the first music
Without it there could be no other
The Music of the Spheres someone once called it
It just stays there in the background... glistening... your constant companion
Probably the first sound you ever heard, and probably the last you'll ever hear
It can grow very loud
It wasn't threatening, there were no monsters in it
Not until you went to school and learned words and heard scary stories
Did the monsters come
Words they can cast shadows... sometimes very long shadows...
There was a cot with wooden bars, I remember having a blanket with lovely warm colors on it, soft light blues and yellows, wooly sheep, Bo Peep or Bears or something
We had a golden coloured curtain with lots of designs on it in the bedroom
I remember if you looked hard enough you'd start to see faces in the curtain
Sometimes they would frighten me, they'd look very sharp and angry looking or maybe very sad unhappy looking...
I suppose today I still see faces, in my mind, in the great curtain of all my memories, all those I ever met and knew...

I remember looking at my Mom's face and not knowing what she was
Babies their a complete clean slate, have no words, they know nothing of this world
Gradually they warm to their Mom's affections and come to trust her and bond with her.
Because you had no words when very young there'd be huge gaps in your consciousness
When your consciousness would be completely clear and still
The silence and stillness would envelop you
... and there was something else... something else there... something deep in the silence
Out of it would come something very strange and quite wonderful
It'd come upon you suddenly...it was like your consciousness was changing, opening up
It was like you were descending into some great... some great complex
Your eyes would be closed but still you could see it and feel it... you were part of it
And it was so natural and so familiar...it was where you came from...it was Home
There was a first part that would lead into another part... and then another, all different
Yea, it had several stages and you'd pass through each stage from the outside going inward right to the very last stage... the very Source of Life itself
And you'd be completely at ease with yourself, you'd be completely at Home there
It'd come every night... that Special thing.,. that Special Place
Y'know sometimes when I see a little baby asleep in its pram, I know... I know where they are
Their away now, away in that Special Place
Far faraway from this world of care, so peaceful and so quiet there
Guarded by unknowingness and the Great Silence
With no fear or confusion there to bedevil it
Knowing only a relaxation so deep and a great Stillness within...

But me! I was the youngest in my house, I was always fighting with my brothers
And I was a terrible worrier just like my Mother
I'd be worried about school and the teachers, and trying to understand my (school) lessons
And there'd always be problems, arguments, confusions... humiliations and cruel harsh words spoken
At night I remember I used shake my head vigorously as if trying to rid my mind
Of words that had been spoken, words that hurt or stung...or confused me
I used bump my head gently against the wall
But no! I couldn't escape them... my peace it was broken now...it was gone
And that Special Place just like in the song Puff the Magic Dragon
It came no more...it was lost to me.

I suppose this is all I can remember, all I can recall
I guess this is where I must have come in
I suppose I must have reached the end... the End of my Rope here.

Better to be Pyramus and Thisbe
than god Apollo and Daphne?
As love oft triumphed by envy.
Oh to be Abelard and Heloise
or Juliet you and Romeo me!
Cleopatra, Marc Antony,
Orpheus, and Eurydice!
Martyrs to Cupid, were you wary
of the price to pay? Did you find peace
from Plato’s coined mental disease
in Pluto’s long halls of Hades
or the self induced daily shade of trees?
What of love dooming kin to Achilles?
When Dido and Aeneas meet
is her suicide guaranteed?
Pray tell us, can true love ever be free!

Remini also reveals in the book that Nicole Kidman’s adopted children Bella and Connor only spoke to their Australian mother when forced to.

The New York Daily Newsobtained a copy of Remini’s exposé, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. In the book, Remini claims that Suri, who was then seven months old, could be heard crying throughout the pre-wedding dinner.

Remini writes she went to see what was going on, only to find Cruise’s sister and an assistant staring at the child as she screamed on the floor.

Remini says the women were staring at the child as if she was [Scientology founder] “L. Ron Hubbard incarnate”.

Remini also writes about Bella and Connor Cruise’s strained relationship with Nicole Kidman. Sharing a ride to the airport with the then-teenagers after Cruise and Holmes’ wedding, Remini asked the two if they’d seen Kidman.

“Not if I have a choice,” said Bella, according to the book. “Our mom is a f*ing SP.”

(Within Scientology, SP is reportedly a Suppressed Person and designated enemy.)

Remini says that Cruise and Holmes’ lavish nuptials at Odescalchi Castle in Italy was the beginning of the end of her involvement in Scientology. Prior to the 2006 ceremony, Remini — whose mother and stepfather were Scientologists — spent 30 years in the controversial religion and donated US$2.5 million ($3.5 million).

But Cruise and Holmes’ wedding reportedly pushed the actor over the edge.

In the book, Remini recounts how she finally convinced the women in the bathroom to pick up Suri and give her a bottle of warm milk.

Remini reckons her actions infuriated Cruise, and she was then treated like an outcast for speaking up. Tensions reportedly flared as church workers tried to separate Remini from close friend, Jennifer Lopez. Lopez was the daughter of a Scientologist, and the church hoped to use the Cruise wedding to recruit her to the cause. According to the book, Cruise reportedly even pressured Remini to invite longtime friend Lopez and husband Marc Anthony.

When Remini failed to co-operate, she writes that she was very publicly snubbed in the reception line by the famous couple as punishment.

The actor also describes in the book how Cruise was left at the altar for 20 minutes, waiting for Homes to show up.

As the 150 guests grew increasingly uncomfortable, Lopez whispered to Remini, “Do you think Katie is coming?”

Remini recalled the reception as being like a high school dance filled with amorous teenagers.

She writes that Norman Starkey, the Scientologist who performed the wedding ceremony, was “******* Brooke Shields on the dance floor”.

Remini was also outraged to see Scientology’s married Chairman David Miscavige treating his assistant as if they were on a date.

And she reported the high-level Scientologists attached to Cruise and Holmes, Tommy Davis and Jessica Feshbach, “were all over each other” at the festivities.

The two later divorced their spouses and married.

Remini also revealed that Cruise had seemingly replaced Hubbard as the church’s new figurehead. “Tom Cruise seems to be running our church,” she said.

After the event, Remini was summoned to appear at Scientology headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, to explain her wedding behaviour, with the most damning accusation made by Holmes herself.

In a report so punctuated with exclamation marks that it looked liked it was “written by a seventh grader,” Holmes contended that Remini’s wedding behaviour “disturbed me greatly. [She] made the party all about herself.”

Holmes recently apologised to Remini in a statement saying: “I regret having upset Leah in the past and wish her only the best in the future.”

After months of interrogation and a US$300,000 ($420,000) bill for the “auditing,” Remini was forced to launch an apology campaign.

She sent expensive gifts to all the important guests, including director JJ Abrams, who were reportedly upset by her attitude.

Remini also apologised to Kevin Huvane, Cruise’s powerful agent who also represents the likes of Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep and Jennifer Aniston.

She called to personally apologise after hearing that he was telling others how “disgusting” her behaviour was.

Remini considered leaving Scientology at the time, but didn’t as it would have meant cutting ties with her mother, stepfather and the many friends central to her life since joining the church as a teenager. Ultimately, Remini’s family would also leave the church alongside her.

After Holmes left Cruise in 2012, Remini aggressively ended her relationship with Scientology a year later by filing a missing persons report on Scientology boss David Miscavige’s wife.

In Going Clear, Lawrence Wright’s damning HBO documentary on Scientology, he dates Shelley Miscavige’s disappearance from public view to 2006.

Los Angeles police closed the case with a statement that Remini’s report was “unfounded”.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses

Jambo did turn towards the camp site rooms when
in the distance could be heard be music from
Halloween but its only july said he, then a mask
and blade he saw too late to run but said you can’t
**** me as a voice heard said I disagree as a knife
plunged through his chest and straight through
the tree, the killer smiled through the mask now
try to disagree…

Lolly looked around after her portion from Charlie
as he rode off, Lolly thought where have the rest
of the camp gone, have they have left me. As
she walked around horror music could be heard
and blood soaked areas all around lolly did
scream.

She ran to the lake it was blood red
with bits of people floating around she could see,
in the woods she found more murdered people
in parts people stuck to trees. Then as she turned
around, you look tasty I'll eat your liver with
some fava beans and a nice Chianti, as
she awoke screaming as he cut open her skull,
as she died he said mmm.. Jellied brains anyone...


At that moment driving his moped called Clarabelle,
a late arrival Marc was going 32 in the 30 what
the hell, breaking the law echoing through the
woods he did yell. Little did he know what was in
store, for he looked around and saw a face smiling
back at him?


He picked up the pace; little did he
know his life was to coming to an end, as a wire
took off his head clearly off. The wire snapped
as his head did roll, Charlie Hunnam drove past
and saw a headless rider drive past, he screamed
like a girl and felt a bump in the road. Little did he
know he had just ran over Marc’s decapitated
head. Poor Marc’s didn’t even get to the camp,
he became the legend of the headless rider that’s
know to haunts camp forwards woods on his moped
Clarabelle still looking for his head no less.  

  
So the story does come to an end but the final
question remains what ever happened to Poetic T
was he the killer of all or could people write his end..

so there on the window sill
i sat perpetrating my crime,
one had outside the window denoting the mentally ill
and the other inside the compartment of
a room denoting terrorists,
then i switched hands and opinions...
and then two bright objects of fire appeared
on the skyline... then another two... a perfect rhombus that
traversed the night sky.

i mingled *r.d. laing with the saint benaiah ben yehoiada today...
what a miracle of the slow approach,
i was so desperate for paper i even wrote on a sunday times news review page,
god help me, i feel the need to speak over people in writing.
testament to modern *******: the modern trans-gender phenomenon
is primarily found in st. thomas’ gospel
as entrée of r.d. laing’s **** of paradise artistic spontaneity
away from rigid theory so numerous in the exampled situation
of the lisp acquired on the psychoanalytic couch...
it speaks of turning left to right... up to down... man to woman...
a bit like a sat nav giving directions... you end up in a kingdom
that’s a ditch and the king is adorned not in crimson cardinal
or purple bishop... but pain... this is 1967... no wonder the hippies
died off after people started to dot dot dot post-1967
with the excavatio in translatio to remould western, christian, societies.
that text, says it all! david bowie and alice cooper and marc bolan
with the lipstick and 8 o’clock eye-socket shadows...
but things are picking up / getting serious...
the young ones are on it... post-colonial details i might have you add...
it was bound to happen... vietnam and the daddy longlegs starving man of africa...
built in processor 5.6GB of memory and an iphone...
what?! i’m translating my slavic soul... we fed the mongrels and mongolians
with crusader ***** in the baltic... we disappeared for a few centuries
and came back... blackmailing the airlines for an unsafe crash landing
somewhere in belarus, with the state banquet officiated, of course.
you see.. i’m the silent eager satyr from such paintings by matejko
like hołd pruski and stańczyk... expression beaming with: yes... go on...
spur me on... i’ll gallop to status of stallion with laughter!
all the catholic canonical saints are for people who prefer images
to words.
so there’s laing in 1967 allowed the ancient deciphering of
quasi-egyptian text... and then all hell breaks loose in the now, present...
i’ve got two left hands and two right feet... i think i’ll transverse
in walking like a crab... sidewise... out of here...
you go along with your daily “historical” bullying...
i like my place... outside the post-colonial continuum...
so much so that i even have a theory for the experience:
HE WASN’T THINKING IN HIS MOTHER TONGUE,
THE NATIVITY OF THE SOUL TOOK FORM FROM THE POLLEN
OF THE BODY, MANY IRANIANS AND EGYPTIANS...
HE THOUGHT COLONIAL, HE ACTED COLONIAL...
PREVIOUSLY HE MENTIONED POLAND LENDING AEROPLANES
TO EGYPT... HE ACTED LIKE AN ENGLISHMAN TO A ******...
NOW I SEE HIM LIKE A PENGUIN WITH CHEETAH FUR...
A WORD OF LISP I GATHER...
I WAS THINKING STUPID TRUST... WHILE
A SINGLE WORD OF THE MOTHERTONGUE RESONATED
TO PURSUE CREATIVITY THUS EXPRESSED
UNABLE TO FIND THE 0,0 COORDINATE IN THE
NORTHERN TRANS-EUROPEAN MILITARY COMPLEX.
this is how integration happens in europe: acquire the native tongue
acquire native psychology... don’t acquire the latter
define the former with exactness of body...
conclusion? i did stupid via trust... he did stupid via a blood-thirst
and a michael jackson trick of bleaching the soul
but leaving the body oddly mongrel-like... not so complete
like africans from the caribbean losing the tongue
due to jamaica’s great weather, then moving to england
and starting reggae rap... god knows how those two fitted for a size 12
perfect matching: quick-slow, quick-slow...
slow-quick rat ah rat ah regina duck in dumplings... bewildering
that i didn’t turn grey but turned ginger over the years.
you see this theory? it makes the mongol horse pale in comparison;
dad said: a jew did it! a jew did it! a ******* mid-******* just said: you
(double emphasis, the colon and italics... well i was there,
and this poem is proof that i was there, with her).
then this poem in the background with added photogenic approach...
titled: on ******* who create art.
ahem... napkin for the torero and rare steak to suite:
there they are the geniuses and the mediocre,
sitting in abodes of aspirational peace of the living -
half-dead many of them almost to the core of rotten apples,
with arsenic in apple seeds the last remaining life -
a poisonous mechanisation of activity on the breeding continuum
curtailed (is that implying cut-short?),
horrible ******* to live with,
they sitting knitting words together that make no cardigan fit,
or they’re making 2d rooms with the odd splash of colour
that will never obey the cube but the rectangular canvas,
no use of a poet’s pen in the solace of a quiet pension spaced,
the usurpers of peace among the living among the twins of sabbath,
these ronin of the fountain of solace found in t.v. and slippers...
who let them in?! can you hear poetry with a hammer?
can you hear it on a construction site, or an art gallery or a library?
so there they are, the *******, choosing the most importune of places
to do their craft... in the living spaces of plumbers and electricians...
hardly the place to craft their art when there’s no pulpit to
exercise their crafty practice with the end remark.
why then the plumber the safeguard and incubator nest of home,
and why the cold chill of aqueduct syringe at home for poet?
does no friendliness reside in stressing or not stressing certain words anymore?
perhaps the coalminers will tell me?
they say i am in a coal-mine by the sheer whiteness of disposable white
of canvas... and only among them in solidarity of a brotherhood
by excavating with them the coal that’s their amber burnt at home
and my solitary ink expressed in the library of their darkness of having
bulged forearm forceps of the bicep and no patience for reading... but digging,
i’ll know my orientation in those mines once more...
where the safe and understood route has has not yet been written...
and all that is seen... is the whitened darkness of the blank canvas of
what i peer into stumbling with the inverse... the flashlight of words
against the darkness of the canvas... me and my blind horse.
god i hate live editing... but then again... it keeps me
drunk and soberly paranoid to scrabble in revisions before i doze till morn.

High on the O2:
Red Rossopomodoro, Wagamama,
and on the bus shelter, Marc Jacobs,
and again higher,
Habitat,
then Metroline moves past.
It's the 113
to Oxford Circus,
and the 13 to Victoria:
Thrilla Lives On,
shouts the slogan,
while National Express has
All Set For Take-Off.

They're gone...
It calms
empties,
nothing much
just the red lidless eyes
of cars
two, three, four dozen pairs
hover
over the asphalt road.

Where...
where am I?
Ahhh, yeah,
in the Oriental Star,
the road seen from a table and stool,
waiting
for food.
Where have I hailed from?
My lover's womb.  
No, no
NOT THAT!
The North Star, yes:
A pub on the Finchley Road,
Where Tottenham beat Liverpool 4-1
A pyrrhic victory!
Over a couple of beers.

Warm years, and tears.
A sense of place,
a home, a nest,
Receding in the traffic
Of a busy road,
Waiting on noodles.

The crew of ****** all hide their own secret loneliness. At every port the deserted dance halls beckon, and there they dance with familiar ghosts. At twelve midnight sharp the spirits disappear along with the tuxedoed band and the music dies leaving red white and blue tinsel, miniature plastic flags, and balloons that glide and bounce to a solitary, prolonged note.
The sailors cease spinning and their arms drop to their sides. They drown in bottles of *** in search of solace. They rarely find barely a taste. And so, in frustration they fight and draw first and last bloods. Now, in scuffed shoes and torn clothes, with damaged pride, they stagger arm in arm back to ship.
The water laps and licks it’s tongue like a cat at cream and the crew whisper breath rings in the chilly air.
Master Chief Petty matron mother waits on deck, rolling pin in hand, kicking backsides into cabins.
The ship bobs and dips in rhythm to sailors heaving snoring chests, and there they sleep, fly catching open mouthed, hugging their pillows in desert island dreams.

Copyright Marc Hawkins 2009

I hadn't been there in ages, hadn't visited, I had no reason to
But then the Covid virus struck and Dublin where I was working was put into quarantine
I wasn't allowed to go up there anymore to work,
And I had no computer at home and no broadband/ WiFi at the time
So they sent me down to the Old Town
It was nice driving down the motorway, it was Autumn and the leaves they were all changing colour
The different shades of red, brown green and yellow
With the sun shining on the mountains and on the bay
It felt almost like I was going on my holidays,
The Old Town it had changed so much, there were all these new buildings,
Retail parks on the outskirts, hotels, new schools, civic buildings... coffee shops
It was lovely and clean and tidy
Like those living there were really proud of it,
The old town I'd known it was there also, in the background, a bit dusty now
There was the big old gothic church my Dad used take us to, to Mass some Sundays
There was the Port and the big ships along the Quay
There was the secondary school I was meant to go to... had we stayed...it looked old, a bit dilapidated now
I wondered was it still being used as a school,
In the Main Street there were still old names of shops that I recognized
The shoe shop where my Mom used buy us shoes
The chemist where my brother got his glasses... the Bakery
The cinema where we seen our first movie "The Magnificent Seven", it was all done up now... all different...
In the office things were... well...weird! ghostly!
A big modern office and some days I was the only one there, just me all on my own
Was like something out of a Sci-fi movie
Other days maybe two or three might come in to join me
All the others of course, they were all working from home,
Often I'd find my mind just filling with old memories and nostalgia...
I could hear the old ghosts calling, calling me to go back
I knew... I knew I had to go back there
Back to where it had all begun for me
The little seaside village where I was born.

So going home I took the coastal road not the motorway
Just the sight of the headland and the blue mountains sloping down to the sea
With the lighthouse there at the end
Just seeing them again gave me an old feeling of my father, my Dad
And then the village itself, the seafront... all the colourfully painted shops,
Sweet shops & novelty shops, the amusement arcade, pubs and hotels and B&B's  (Bed and Breakfasts)
After being away for nearly fifty years, it still looked...it still looked pretty much the same, was hard to believe
I stopped my car and went into a little supermarket shop to get a sandwich for the next day
As I looked around, I seen these two mature ladies there, they were around my own age
I thought to myself 'I might have gone to school with you once many years ago, one of you might even have been my wife had we stayed here and not moved away
I might have lived a more normal, a different life'
But then I thought 'Life is never that simple, is it'.
Outside I decided to go for a walk, to look around and reminisce.

There was the path, the pavement I used go to school on with my brothers
It was like returning to the scene of a crime
How I used to dread going to school sometimes
There was a teacher, a lady teacher that used scare me a lot, she terrified me so
I remember I got sick in class on several occasions
She put me outside once sitting on an upturned bin
I can still remember sitting there on that bin in the sun, feeling so lost and that I was a really bad boy, wishing I was home
I remember I used to get hives, itches on my skin
My Mom used keep me at home
She was afraid, she thought I'd give them to the other kids
I missed the addition and subtraction tables at school because of this
To this day I still don't know what 7 + 5 is, instead I bring it to 10, I know 5 is 3 + 2, so I say 7 + 3 is 10 and 2 is 12
And I know all the doubles, 7 + 6 is 6 + 6 is 12 and 1 is 13, funny that
How I used to dread going to school
Until that was... until one day I did well at something and I received some praise
Then things seemed to change after that, I wasn't as bothered anymore, I think then I realized I was doing better than some of the others in my class and that seemed to make a difference
I remembered sitting beside pretty little girls who used have lovely pink pencil cases with lots of fancy colourful things
Whereas me I barely had a pencil, a rubber (eraser) and a ruler
They were strange lovely creatures, the Girls with their lovely long hair and their cute little faces...
I remembered walking home on my own, with my little schoolbag on my back with all my books in it
It was such a beautiful place, the view with the beach and the sea and the faraway blue mountains
And yet, I used to worry about so many things
It's like even then it was all about...all about survival...
There was the big Chapel on the hill
Once before the Summer holidays they were looking for altar boys and someone put my name forward
Then on the first morning back to school after the Summer holidays
The teacher said you better get down to the church right away, like fast!! you're on the altar this morning !!!
I was terrified, I didn't know what I had to do, no one told me anything
So there I was on my own kneeling on this cold hard marble altar and it was hurting my knees something terrible
And the priest he's talking about God and the Devil and Evil or Hell or whatever
And all these people, the whole congregation their all staring up at us
And I'm petrified, and I started to get faint and nauseas
The priest had to stop the Mass
I can't remember if I got sick or passed out
I was so embarrassed and thought afterwards I was such a terrible bad person, I knew it'd be all around the school the story.

I walked on...our house was gone, knocked down, where there used to be three houses together attached, now there was only the end house
Our house used to be the middle house
It didn't look right now, the symmetry looked all wrong
It was like there was two missing teeth
Why did they have to knock it down ? I wondered. It saddened me a bit...

At another house I stopped, this used to have a shop, a small shop,  the shop was no longer there
This was my Best Friend's house, all the days we used to play football together in the back garden
Kicking the ball to each other
With our jumpers/ sweaters as goalposts
The first to score ten would win the game
I...I usually won
I always found you easy to read, it's like you only ran in straight lines,
I think you were a bit in awe of me for some reason
Maybe you wouldn't have been my friend if you'd beaten me
How did we become friends anyway, I wondered
I suppose coming home from school
We lived on the same road and were in the same class, we'd have met each other
I had two older brothers whereas you were the oldest
So our families would have had a different dynamic
I remember you had a delightfully silly younger brother
I remember your Mom, she was very pretty, she was a lot younger than my Mom
You used bring me in and give me a meal sometimes, we'd all sit and watch TV
There was a different feeling when I was in your house...a different atmosphere
But when your Dad would come home, he was a bit scary
And I knew it was then time for me to go home
You'd wonder afterwards what the lovely Mom saw in the scary Dad, adults they were a bit peculiar.

We were inseparable in those days, many mornings you'd hear the knock on the door
And the familiar greeting
"Hello Mrs B---, Is G---- in, is he coming out to play?"
We were always playing soccer up the garden
Or down on the beach, going out for miles to meet the tide, catching *****, looking under  stones to see what we might find
I remember we were very entrepreneurial
In the Summer we used collect returnable glass mineral bottles, Orange and Lemonade and Coca Cola
And we'd bring them back to the shop and get money back for them
And then we'd have a royal feast, we'd buy bottles of Orange and bags of crisps and ice cream pops and chocolate bars,
Remember all the different Ice pops there used to be, Choc Ices and Brunches and Orange splits, 99's... Ice cream cones
Chocolate bars, Smarties and Malteasers, Milky Bars and Milky Ways, Dairy Milk chocolate bars, fruit gums and Love hearts with little love messages written on them
We used hang around the amusement arcade, play the slot machines, maybe help some old lady collect her winnings, she might give us a tip
There was the bumper cars and the swingboats and music playing all the time on the jukeboxes
It was the seventies (the 70's) and glam rock was all the rage
Marc Bolan and T-Rex, and Slade and The Sweet and a million others
So many great songs, we couldn't wait to grow up and become one of those amazing creatures we saw on the telly
I'd never lived since as intensely as I did back then,
We'd stay out till late
We were like young hustlers going around,
It seemed the days they were never long enough, all the things we got up to,
We'd Caddy in the local golf course
And retrieve lost ***** from the ditches...
Heh! Remember... remember that time... the Brennan sisters, we were up one day near the school
There was building work going on
And there was this big high mound of clay
So we climbed to the top to take in the view
And then the two Brennan sisters came over
They lived nearby
They were in our class at school, we knew them only to see
They were smiling and laughing and giggling
They beckoned for us to come and follow them
We went wondering what was going on here
They led us back to their house, I think their parents must have been out
One of them came up to us and smiled
And then she pulled down her pants and showed it to us in all its wonderful glorious splendour
It was amazing... incredible... such a sight
Her beautiful...her splendid... her lovely... bare Bottom!
I remember thinking it was like a lovely ripe pear
One of Life's great mysteries had just been unveiled
And her there with this huge impish grin,
When we were going home we promised each other we'd not tell anyone, our parents, not even the priest in confession
About that great vision we'd just witnessed
It was the height of naughtiness
Yea! Those were the days...

I wondered, 'Whatever became of you Old Friend ?
I looked you up online but couldn't find your name anywhere, couldn't find anything about you
Were you even still alive ?
50 years was a long time, I'd barely made it this far myself, and I had a lot of scars to show for it
I thought rather amusingly that I should knock on your door
Maybe you were still living there,
But what was I hoping to find ? I wondered...
"Whose at the door ?", a woman's Voice inside might say,
"Just... just some crazy guy talking about 50 years ago" her dutiful husband would reply
That's probably how it would go
I felt like I was Rip Van Winkle awakening after being asleep for 100 years or in my case 50 years
What did I hope to find
What did I hope to see, an old man now just like myself
And I bet you'd tell me your opinions on the government and the economy
And how the village had changed over the years and how other old schoolmates of ours had got on in life
But No! that's not what I wanted to hear or see
I wanted to see you there again just like you were as a little kid
Your lovely youthful face smiling back at me
And you'd say, "I'll get the ball and we'll have a game, the first to ten wins"
This was what I was looking for, this was what I wanted to hear.

We were very close, were going to grow up together, go to the same schools...college
We'd always be friends
We'd meet all the trials of life together....
I hope Life worked out well for you, my friend
In a way...in a way I almost didn't want to know
If I learned you did well in Life I'd probably only get jealous
I'd start to think I was better than you and that I should have had those things you had
Life, this world it makes enemies of us all... eventually
It divides, is all about competing and comparing... and beating (I suppose).

I still remember that last night before I left forever
We were down on the beach, it was twilight, the tide was coming in... the waves slowly advancing
Just like in life I had no power to stop it, to change things,
I had no say, I didn't want to go and leave you Old Friend
No! I didn't want to go....

Thank you...thank you for being my friend, for being there
For all the time you gave me, I hope I didn't hurt you in any way.

I have a photograph, one solitary old black and white photo of the two of us
We're sitting on a barrel in our back garden on either side of my Dad whose in the middle
You look a bit uncertain, unsure of yourself, probably lost in the dynamic of my family,
I look at you and I think
"Whatever happened to you.... Beautiful Friend, whatever became of you"
And then I look at myself as well, and I think, I whisper
"Whatever became of me as well".

The dread set in upon opening my eyes, as i swing my legs to the right side of the bed and stand. Slightly stumbling i make my way to the bathroom while adjusting to a waking state. I flip on the light, wincing my eyes in a sharp electric freeze from the back of my head, and while recovering, i pull the shower curtain away from the showers pull ***. Pulling the *** out slowly twisting it to ninety degrees as the water turns on, i am reminded to feed my plants before leaving the condo for the day. I step into the shower dipping my head under the warm stream of steaming water while resting my hands against the wall, as images of all the women i had saw the night prior begin shuffling through my head and a partial ******* forms. I imagine their eyes filled with tears, as i shove them down to my ****, and finally the Rolodex of faces stops on a Starbucks girl with piercings all over her pouty face that i had encountered on a lunch break a few days ago, and i begin stroking my **** with my right hand whispering "you ***** ****" over and over, as her eyes look up at me innocently, Mascara running down her face, until suddenly i hear my phone vibrate atop a pile of pocket change in the bedroom which promptly kills the moment in my wonder of the importance of a 5:00 AM jingle, which slowly fades, while i proceed to apply Ax shower gel to my Ax body scrubber that i had received as a gift in a Holiday work raffle three months prior.  Vidal Sassoon extra volume shampoo plus conditioner, "All in one," proudly printed on the label, as i apply a handful to my shaved head in a smooth dripping lather, that i do not rinse until after applying a pink ****** scrub that's label has worn off, and i am unsure, and not concerned with its origin, as I squeeze a blob of Colgate paste onto my toothbrush from the rack overhead, and scrub in a slow circular motion, while i rinse off the shampoo, shower gel, and ****** scrub, and then reach for my Listerine mouth wash, and swish for 30 seconds before spitting the burning mixture into the drain, while putting the brush away. I tilt my head up, and open my mouth wide under the water, taking in a mouth full, which i gargle for 10 seconds then spit, and turn off the shower reaching for a tattered towel left over from a breakup four years prior.  I dry off while still standing in the shower, and gently lay the towel on the floor before stepping out onto it, and grabbing a stick of Degree antiperspirant from the counter.  I apply 3 long strokes to each armpit before capping it, and putting it down. Two sprays of coolwater cologne i apply from a 1 foot distance, misting my chest and lower neck, before i put it down beside the deodorant, and walk back into the bedroom, grabbing a pair of boxer shorts from a drawer not caring which pair i grab. I slip them on, and walk over to the mirrored closet where i flex a few times, point aggressively, and in an authoritative tone repeat "I don't give a ****.", three times before sliding the closet door open and grabbing a pair of Marc Echo blue jeans that i had purchased online two years prior with a gift card from a local pub that i may have frequented too much to have received.  Reaching for an Infliction black tee shirt with ghostly gray swirls cascading to its base, i become completely still, left arm clutching the shirt still on its hanger, i am paralyzed for two seconds before looking away, and saying  "I don't have any plants" inquisitively to myself, yanking the shirt from the closet, and walking over to my phone atop the dresser.

Picking up the phone almost eagerly, i click the screen on in a light squeeze, and swipe my finger from left to right across the display to unlock the device, to a missed call from an unknown number, a voicemail, and 3 missed text messages. I tap the voice mail icon, and enter my pass code upon the automated prompt, "1234." The voice mail immediately clicks a few times before hanging up which assures me of its automation, and i assume its the power companies robots attempting to collect the monthly charge again. I tap on the missed text message icon, disconnecting from voice mail, and see that all three are from a girl named Haedies i met through a roommate long ago that i have recently found over facebook. A "How are you!", "I MISS YOU!!!", and a picture message of her with a wax figure of a trollish cartoon character i cannot quite place, both looking very serious, and i look at her **** pressing out from her white tanktop, ******* clearly hard, and her neck, long and attractive, its definition, thins my blood, and her dark black medium length hair loosely dangles just above her shoulder, causing me to partially smile, as i close the message paying it no further thoughts, and slip on my tee shirt, as i head for the kitchen. I open the refrigerator and grab a plastic bottle of 5 Hour Energy, and twist it open, tip my head back, and take the whole drink down in one swallow, throwing the empty plastic shell back into the fridge, and swing the door shut with my bare left foot, before i head back to the room to put my socks and boots on. Once my black combat boots are fully laced up, i put my wallet, change, and keys into the appropriate jean pockets, and head for my jacket hung on a hook beside the door. A black leather windbreaker. My mini trench that allows for a high level of concealment, and pocket space made possible by Wilson Leather. I run my hand over my face satisfied with my slight stubble from not shaving today, and reach into my left inner pocket of my jacket and pull out Sony earbuds, and plug them into my phone. I select a Pandora station based on the black metal band "Burzum", and walk out the door, locking only the dead bolt behind me.  5:25AM

When I was chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne Inc., I spent a good amount of time on the road hosting fashion shows highlighting our brands. Our team made a point of retaining models of various sizes, shapes and ages, because one of the missions of the shows was to educate audiences about how they could look their best. At a Q&A; after one event in Nashville in 2010, a woman stood up, took off her jacket and said, with touching candour: “Tim, look at me. I’m a box on top, a big, square box. How can I dress this shape and not look like a fullback?” It was a question I’d heard over and over during the tour: Women who were larger than a size 12 always wanted to know, How can I look good, and why do designers ignore me?

At New York Fashion Week, which began Thursday, the majority of American women are unlikely to receive much attention, either. Designers keep their collections tightly under wraps before sending them down the runway, but if past years are any indication of what’s to come, plus-size looks will be in short supply. Sure, at New York Fashion Week in 2015, Marc Jacobs and Sophie Theallet each featured a plus-size model and Ashley Graham debuted her plus-size lingerie line. But these moves were very much the exception, not the rule.

I love the American fashion industry, but it has a lot of problems and one of them is the baffling way it has turned its back on plus-size women. It’s a puzzling conundrum. The average American woman now wears between a size 16 and a size 18, according to new research from Washington State University. There are 100 million plus-size women in America, and, for the past three years, they have increased their spending on clothes faster than their straight-size counterparts. There is money to be made here ($20.4 billion (U.S.), up 17 per cent from 2013). But many designers — dripping with disdain, lacking imagination or simply too cowardly to take a risk — still refuse to make clothes for them.

In addition to the fact that most designers max out at size 12, the selection of plus-size items on offer at many retailers is paltry compared with what’s available for a size 2 woman. According to a Bloomberg analysis, only 8.5 per cent of dresses on Nordstrom.com in May were plus-size. At J.C. Penney’s website, it was 16 per cent; Nike.com had a mere five items — total.

I’ve spoken to many designers and merchandisers about this. The overwhelming response is, “I’m not interested in her.” Why? “I don’t want her wearing my clothes.” Why? “She won’t look the way that I want her to look.” They say the plus-size woman is complicated, different and difficult, that no two size 16s are alike. Some haven’t bothered to hide their contempt. “No one wants to see curvy women” on the runway, Karl Lagerfeld, head designer of Chanel, said in 2009. Plenty of mass retailers are no more enlightened: under the tenure of chief executive Mike Jeffries, Abercrombie & Fitch sold nothing larger than a size 10, with Jeffries explaining that “we go after the attractive, all-American kid.”

This a design failure and not a customer issue. There is no reason larger women can’t look just as fabulous as all other women. The key is the harmonious balance of silhouette, proportion and fit, regardless of size or shape. Designs need to be reconceived, not just sized up; it’s a matter of adjusting proportions. The textile changes, every seam changes. Done right, our clothing can create an optical illusion that helps us look taller and slimmer. Done wrong, and we look worse than if we were naked.

Have you shopped retail for size 14-plus clothing? Based on my experience shopping with plus-size women, it’s a horribly insulting and demoralizing experience. Half the items make the body look larger, with features like ruching, box pleats and shoulder pads. Pastels and large-scale prints and crazy pattern-mixing abound, all guaranteed to make you look infantile or like a float in a parade. Adding to this travesty is a major department-store chain that makes you walk under a marquee that reads “WOMAN.” What does that even imply? That a “woman” is anyone larger than a 12 and everyone else is a girl? It’s mind-boggling.

Project Runway, the design competition show on which I’m a mentor, has not been a leader on this issue. Every season we have the “real women” challenge (a title I hate), in which the designers create looks for non-models. The designers audibly groan, though I’m not sure why; in the real world, they won’t be dressing a seven-foot-tall glamazon.

This season, something different happened: Ashley Nell Tipton won the contest with the show’s first plus-size collection. But even this achievement managed to come off as condescending. I’ve never seen such hideous clothes in my life: bare midriffs; skirts over crinoline, which give the clothes, and the wearer, more volume; see-through skirts that reveal *******; pastels, which tend to make the wearer look juvenile; and large-scale floral embellishments that shout “prom.” Her victory reeked of tokenism. One judge told me that she was “voting for the symbol” and that these were clothes for a “certain population.” I said they should be clothes all women want to wear. I wouldn’t dream of letting any woman, whether she’s a size 6 or a 16, wear them. Simply making a nod toward inclusiveness is not enough.

This problem is difficult to change. The industry, from the runway to magazines to advertising, likes subscribing to the mythology it has created of glamour and thinness. Look at Vogue’s “Shape Issue,” which is ostensibly a celebration of different body types but does no more than nod to anyone above a size 12. For decades, designers have trotted models with bodies completely unattainable for most women down the runway. First it was women so thin that they surely had eating disorders. After an outcry, the industry responded by putting young teens on the runway, girls who had yet to exit puberty. More outrage.

But change is not impossible. There are aesthetically worthy retail successes in this market. When helping women who are size 14 and up, my go-to retailer is Lane Bryant. While the items aren’t fashion with a capital F, they are stylish (but please avoid the cropped pants — always a no-no for any woman). And designer Christian Siriano scored a design and public relations victory after producing a look for Leslie Jones to wear to the “Ghostbusters” red-carpet premiere. Jones, who is not a diminutive woman, had tweeted in despair that she couldn’t find anyone to dress her; Siriano stepped in with a lovely full-length red gown.

Several retailers that have stepped up their plus-size offerings have been rewarded. In one year, ModCloth doubled its plus-size lineup. To mark the anniversary, the company paid for a survey of 1,500 American women ages 18 to 44 and released its findings: Seventy-four per cent of plus-size women described shopping in stores as “frustrating”; 65 per cent said they were “excluded.” (Interestingly, 65 per cent of women of all sizes agreed that plus-size women were ignored by the fashion industry.) But the plus-size women surveyed also indicated that they wanted to shop more. More than 80 per cent said they’d spend more on clothing if they had more choices in their size and nearly 90 per cent said they would buy more if they had trendier options. According to the company, its plus-size shoppers place 20 per cent more orders than its straight-size customers.

Online start-up Eloquii, initially conceived and then killed by The Limited, was reborn in 2014. The trendy plus-size retailer, whose top seller is an over-the-knee boot with four-inch heels and extended calf sizes, grew its sales volume by more than 165 per cent in 2015.

Despite the huge financial potential of this market, many designers don’t want to address it. It’s not in their vocabulary. Today’s designers operate within paradigms that were established decades ago, including anachronistic sizing. (Consider the fashion show: It hasn’t changed in more than a century.) But this is now the shape of women in this nation, and designers need to wrap their minds around it. I profoundly believe that women of every size can look good. But they must be given choices. Separates — tops, bottoms — rather than single items like dresses or jumpsuits always work best for the purpose of fit. Larger women look great in clothes skimming the body, rather than hugging or cascading. There’s an art to doing this. Designers, make it work.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses

My heart feels like an uncut diamond
Though it is still the same, it is not the same
Someone speaks of a bridge to be built from Tangier
to Algeciras or is it Gibraltar?
"Yes & then a highway to the stars or more likely
an elevator to the Underworld," says Yellow Turban
To White Jellaba as the exhaust fumes from the bus
engulf them, leaving behind not even a single
shadow.
Is that Mel Clay in a white jacket turning the corner?
No, it is a figment of my imagination escaped from the
asylum.
Is that Ian Sommerville walking backwards up the street
as if pulled by a giant magnet?
No, that is Wm. Burroughs making electricity
from dead cats.
Is that Tatiana glistening on Maxiton?
No, that is the sun dancing in the sugar bowl.
Is that Marc Schelfer wavering on the cliffedge?
No, it is a promontory in the wind of time
about to fall in the sea.
Is that Beethoven's 9th Symphony being played
up the street?
No, it is the sound of the breadwagons
rumbling over cobblestones
Is that George Andrews with two girls in hand
looking for bread?
No, it is an unidentified flying object about to land.
Is that One-eyed Mose hanging by his heels?
No, that is the hanged man inventing the Taro.
Are the dead really so fascinated by *******?
Yes, that is how they travel.
Is that Irving in short pants looking for trouble?
No, that's me unable to stop thinking.
Is that Kenneth Halliwell looking for Joe Orton?
Is that Jane Bowles looking for Sherifa, Rosalind looking
for her baby, Alfred searching for his lost hair?
Is that the wig of it all, the patched robe of my brain,
the wind talking to itself?
Brion is dead and Yacoubi is dead, and I am a not unhappy
ghost remembering everything, the warp & woof of memories,
her yellow slip, her shaved ****, her idiot child.
Dream shuttle makes me exist everywhere at once.
The blind beggars led by children keep coming.
"They all have many houses in the Casbah,"
chant the unbelievers ******* on sugar.
Words keep coming back like Bezezel for ****, Lictcheen
for oranges, like Mina, like Fatima, like Driss Berrada
dropping his trousers for an injection in the middle
of his shop.
The trunk is full of old sepia postcards,
barebreasted girls smoking hookahs etcetera.
We speak of the cataplana, the mist which obscures
even the cielo you cannot even see the hand in front
of your face.
We embrace, he says he thought of me only yesterday,
he says there are always nine such men who look like us
in the world and that we are the tenth.
We speak of the gold filets in the sky over Moulay Absalom.
The garbage men in rubber boots go thru the Socco pushing
wheeled drums of collected garbage.
An unveiled woman wobbles out of a taxi and heads home
before sunrise.
Paul couldn’t believe that was a Karma Street,
but I will never forget it.
And Billy Batman, who made the best hash in the world,
he dropped a loaded pistol in Kabul, shot himself in the *****,
took some ****** and lay down to die.
Now I must get up from my table in the allnight Café Central.
No more Dr. Nadal, no more window with red crosses & red
crescents.
The water thrown from buckets runs across the café floors
& over the sidewalks & I drop a dirham into the hand
of a blind beggar singing in the dark on the American stairs


From Anais Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love—"The women wear fireflies in their hair, but the fireflies stop shining when they go to sleep so now and then the women had to rub the fire- flies to keep them awake."

Sometimes half asleep, scribbling words
or waiting for the morning sky to deliver birds
I fall off the edge, leave this tiny bed
float on rainy streets, there is no one that I meet
only a corner vacant house, where precious paintings hang
I am staring in the window, at flowers yellow, blue
this must be the room of Vincent Van Gogh, this starry night
with lily ponds so beautiful, fields of flowers
purple iris, Monet meadows
brown skin woman, hibiscus flowered
island scenes of Paul Gauguin, so brightly colored
there are pastel Degas dancing ballerinas
Marc Chagall, blue indigo people
without legs, they smile surreal
this museum of the mind
minutes like hours
turned sublime

I fell into a dream
waking up into a
cookie-scented utopia
of apostrophes that indicated
   ownership
because it was Marc's cookie
and participles grasped and
   secured
like a balloon tied to a toddler's hand

I fell into a dream
where nothing was kool or
   rite
and everything had been
twice read, reviewed, evaluated, and
   deemed worthy
like the cupcakes that get placed
on the plate in a
Cupcake War

I fell into a dream
of silence during silent work time
not invaded by a slithering serpent
fork-tongued and effulgent with ideas
   expressing expressions
idioms cliches redundancies falsehoods
   lies
and the silence hung like
an anticipated snow
cold cloaking with excitement
and a feeling of being completely

awake.

Everybody knows today's figures.
Lincoln Park. Kanye West. Beyonce.
Musicians. Artists. They are all praised in today’s society.
But nobody knows the names of people who actually matter.

Willis Carrier. Invented the air conditioner.
Nobody knows his name.

Robert E. Kahn. Made the internet.
Nobody knows his name.

The problem with today’s society
Is that the minds of young people are being poisoned.
By the schools who leave things out of textbooks.
By the people on the street, screaming their views.
The riots, the protests, the hell of today.
Poisoning the minds of young people.

Reed Hastings. Marc Randolph. Nobody knows them
Yet millions of people use Netflix.

SalvinoD'Armate. Nobody knows his name.
Yet over 4 BILLION people wear eyeglasses.

Young people today hate history.
They think, “Why do we need to learn about dead people?”
George Santayana once said:
“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”
We learn these things, not to be bored in history class.
Not to just **** time in the day.
But to inspire. To help young people to become creative, more innovative.

Imagine a world, where Alexander Bell never made the telephone.
Imagine a world, where the internet, just wasn’t a thing.
Imagine a world, where nobody invented new things.

William Higginbotham. I Guarantee that nobody in this room knows his name.
He created the very first video game, Tennis for Two, in 1958.
Without him, we would not have the games we have today.
Assassin’s Creed. Grand Theft Auto. Call of Duty.
People play these games, and use the other things I’ve listed every single day,
And they use them without any thought, or appreciation for where they came from.
Or how far we have progressed as humans.

So I ask you this. Who invented the desk you are sitting on?
Who invented the jacket you’re wearing?
Who invented that pen in your pocket?
You don’t know, do you?

In this age of global uncertainty, clothes have become a kind of panacea for a growing number of consumers. Designers are responding to the political upheavals of the past year by injecting some much-needed humour into women’s wardrobes. Browns CEO Holli Rogers is already predicting that spring’s sartorial hit will be Rosie Assoulin’s smiley-face T-shirt. This cheery number, which reads "Thank you! Have a Nice Day!’" neatly sums up the jubilant mood of the coming season.

The logic goes that turning up the dial on the fun, the colourful and the crazy is the sartorial equivalent of Michelle Obama’s "when they go low, we go high" mantra. We may not be able to control the chaos of world events, but we still rule our own style.

It’s no coincidence that a cartoonish aesthetic, of the sort you’d find if you rifled through an eccentric child’s dressing-up box, was in plentiful supply on the spring/summer 2017 runways. Alessandro Michele’s army of Gucci geeks displayed growing swagger in garish get-ups that ran from fuzzy crayon-coloured furs featuring zebras to tiered, tinsel-y coats that rivalled Grandma’s Christmas tree.

It was a similar story at Dolce & Gabbana, where sumptuous eveningwear was loaded with pasta and pizza motifs, and drums became bags, while Marc Jacobs tore a page from a psychedelic colouring book, covering clothes with the childlike scrawl of the London illustrator Julie Verhoeven. Even ardent minimalists would have to admit that these playful looks have potent pick-me-up power.

For Anya Hindmarch – whose empire is built on feel-good fashion – all this frivolity is nothing new. "An ironic, lighter and more irreverent approach has always been my thing. People love beautiful objects and increasingly, they want to show their character – that’s the point of fashion," she says. "Customers today are more confident with their style. There aren’t so many rules. It’s about putting a sticker on a beautiful handbag and not being too precious about it."

What’s surprising is who is consuming this cartoonish style. Though there’s no real rhyme or reason, says Hindmarch, often it’s older clients who are investing in the maddest pieces – like her cuddly, googly-eyed Ghost backpack that has also been spotted on Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner.

The same is true of the customer for the Lebanese designer Mira Mikati’s emoji-embellished styles. Though her fans run from twenty to fiftysomethings, at a recent London pop-up one of Mikati’s most ardent buyers was an 87-year-old. "She tells me that whenever she wears my clothes people stop her on the street. They smile. They start conversations. She literally makes friends through what she wears."

Mikati began her career as a buyer, co-founding the upscale Beirut boutique Plum, before launching her own line some four seasons ago – largely out of frustration at the sameness of the mainstream collections. "I wanted to create something fun and colourful but easy to wear – that you can add to jeans and a white T-shirt, but that’s also a conversation point."

Her clothes, worn by Beyoncé and Rihanna, are certainly that: pink parrot-appliquéd trench coats, scribble-print hooded tops and dresses clad with a family of monsters who spell out her Peter Pan ethos in scrawled speech bubbles that read "Never Grow Up’" The antithesis of normcore, these designs take their cue from her children’s toy trunk and the Japanese pop art of Takashi Murakami – who returned the compliment by donning one of her patched bombers.

Mikati is clearly onto something. According to Roberta Benteler, who founded online fashion emporium Avenue 32 in 2011, it’s the cartoon aesthetic that’s really piquing women’s desire right now.

"Anything that looks like a child’s drawing or a toy sells incredibly well," she says. "Brands like Mira Mikati, Vivetta and Les Petits Joueurs inspire the impulse to buy because they’re so eye-catching. You have to have it now because there’s a sense you won’t find it anywhere else."

The exponential rise of street-style stars and the social-media machine that now propels the fashion industry also plays a part in the popularity of these playful looks.

"Designers are creating for the online world and customer," continues Benteler, who cites the Middle Eastern consumer as a big investor in these niche eccentric designs. "People find escapism in fashion and more than ever they need something to cheer them up. These are clothes that stand out on Instagram, and for designers that translates into sales."

In practical terms, in an effort to beat the warp speed of high-street copying, designers are differentiating themselves with increasingly intricate and artisanal styles that are harder to mimic. Just because these pieces have a childlike sensibility doesn’t mean they’re not beautifully crafted.

"My aim is create a handbag that you can keep as a design piece," explains the accessories designer Paula Cademartori. One of her most successful designs – the Petite Faye bag, which comes in a whole rainbow of configurations – takes more than 32 hours to create at her Italian studio. "Even if the styles are colourful and speak loudly, they’re still sophisticated," says Cademartori, whose brand was recently snapped up by the luxury goods group OTB. It can pay to be playful.

One man with a unique insight into the feel-good phenomenon is Marco de Vincenzo, who combines his longstanding role as leather goods head designer at Fendi with creating his own collection. "When we first created the Fendi monster accessories for bags we were simply playing around," he says of the charms that still loom large some three years on. "The most successful designs are created without pressure, through play."

His own-line debut bag features an animalistic paw. ‘It’s about creating something new and different for women to discover,’ he explains. "You buy something because you love it, not because you need it. Fashion is like a game – it has to excite."

When it comes to distilling this childlike abandon into your wardrobe, take cues from super style blogger Leandra Medine, who balances madcap pieces, such as her first collection of colourful footwear under her MR By Man Repeller label, with plainer, simpler ones. "It’s all about wearing your clothes with joy, and having fun, but not looking ridiculous," says Cademartori. "You don’t want to look like an actual cartoon."

It’s advice that chimes with that of Anya Hindmarch. "I love the idea of wearing a super-simple Comme des Garçons jacket and a white shirt with a really fun bag to mess it all up a bit." It’s a failsafe formula for dressing your way to happiness.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

We rarely go drunk, or perhaps that is I, when I told Marc that all people are nearly up on exits
   and barely exists now is feeling – he started swinging a running joke between the two of us

facing the planetesimal – lights their strobes of secret I am on my 7th beer and still nothing
    when being listened to by frantic fret of fear because indulgence is key to demise

when it is said to pull apart but didn’t, I halved the 7th beer and felt my gut cloy itself with
  the muck of fat from pork rind and stale chicken

I deem myself incompetent in the slug, gild of attendance: freckled wall with dotted red,
    linoleum plastered, defaced somewhat, Marc moves to Hannah and I further

the dark with my groping hands – I do not smoke inside my car.
         Ortigas is unusually dull, minutes trickle slow like *** or un-***,

whichever it may, I quickly said as I stole the mic from his hand the words I imagine
    to become filled with the purpose of frayed upon exactitudes.

He always brings his knife with him and I always ask him even if I knew
  that it’s somewhere in his acid-washed jeans – I have always been fascinated

by the lives made better or worse by knives. I remember Gabriel and I talking
   about Holden Caufield when all we ever wanted was to fall

immensely in love with girls we  chase around   in sophomore year, Gabriel
I do not know where you are and listening to Radiohead now reminds me of

something   strange   with   unwilling potential; perennial silence permeates
        Ortigas and somewhere a couple is hot and *******

whereas I, asleep on my 9th beer, probably my last,
         willing to give   up  for  a   laugh or   some     sense  of place

  while I hear them all
    laughing   in front of my parked   car,  poking fun   at   something

I   can   barely identify.

Each night we strut upon the stage
in plumage not our own.
You are Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.
I am Marc Anthony of Rome.
I die by sword, you die by Asp
our seperate fates well known.
Octavius had triumphed at Actium
and moved to seize your throne.
Each night, our tragedy complete
we bow to crowds' applause.
We act out Master Shakespeare's words
in climes and tongues unknown
to that Queen of Eqypt
and the Triumvir, late of Rome.
After curtain,some young dancer
gets you drunk and takes you home
Octavius does lines of Coke
Marc Anthony drinks alone.

Signs point in different directions
Art>
<Science
History^
Oddities¿

Art:
Every memory of every sunrise
Every beautiful melody
Here.
And so many images of her.
Some sweet
Some candid
Some sad.
How can we revel in the joyful
Without knowing it's opposite?
Every delicate poem
Every lyric yelled
Every painting
Every sculpture
And in all of them,
Her.

Science:
Models of molecules
Diagrams of data
Sketches
(Where are the equations?)
Math is forbidden in this museum.
Lectures
Theories
All gathering dust.

History:
Names.
The greatest of men and women
Julius Caesar
Constantine
Marc Anthony
Cleopatra
Rosa Parks
Elinor Roosevelt
Patton
Churchill
Kennedy
MLK

Maps and charts
Famous cities of old
Sparta
Alexandria
The halls of Montezuma
Constantinople
Babylon

Oddities:
Phantom Kangaroos
Homemade Bazooka
"That made the news?"
And Bubblegum the Baluga

The Raven Empress
Flaming mattress
Sharks with lasers
Pandas with Tasers