Prepare To Burn

There is a twisted duality to our prep for this massive thing we are doing. One of our clan has been denied a visa to the USA. And has been separated from his girl who now lives in NYC. How unjust are the bureaucratic trappings of this world? This is a tragedy. A modern tragedy. Today loves are lost not in childbirth or infection but in promotions and visa refusal, bound and gagged in red tape.

So I am covering Burning Man festival. It's true. And I am being accompanied by the best photographer I know. It seems too sweet to bear.

I intend to document the exploits of our high flying hearts. Capture and send home the reality and the idealism, the intricacies, the minutiae as our little community is absorbed and mixes with the gigantic international community of Black Rock City.

Oh my God.

Pre-Compression

So, summer swims on. Now that the Secret Garden Party has been and gone, in vivid colour, the only thing left to do is fly to San Francisco for the voyage to Burning Man.

I catch my breath to think I saw my future traced in sand.

In Love Again

Just officially arrived back from Glastonbury

Got back in body on Tuesday at 4am. My mind stayed there far longer...

Idiot Wind

'I woke up on the roadside, daydreaming about the way things sometimes are' Bob Dylan

Instant Street

Snorting silently at each other over IM is how we communicate our fondness for co-workers these days.

Eye contact is no longer essential for meaningful working relations. It's all about screen contact.

Type something lewd and inane, hit enter, watch your target notice they have a message, open it, then react.

Silent mirth, shoulders shaking, the odd snort.

The hours just fly by.

The Unemployment Files

My employment history is pretty much a disgrace. The common thread running between the brief stints of loathing and plotting of revolt I have been paid to contribute to various establishments over the years is that most of them cottoned on pretty quickly to what a distinctly awful choice had been made - or I could take it no more - and the whole sorry agreement was kicked to the curb (cue drinking and reassertion of my euphoric unemployment status).

The speediest example of this process was my regrettable employment by Spar. Now I don't even know if Spar are still going or have been engulfed by the advancing rash of Tesco Express', but back in 1996 I needed fast cash to buy awful, tyre-laden hash and the foolhardy manager at Spar believed me when I said I'd make 'an excellent addition to her team'. Pity the fool.

One Sunday I was idly plotting revolt and scribbling away the hours as I 'manned' the till, writing a letter to my best friend Ruth about a boy who had just been in to visit. The letter was peppered with casual insults about my bitter and decrepit co-workers and denigrated the company in general, contrasting its impotence with my greatness and absolute zero potential to give a fuck about what happened to it or any of its contents.

My shift grindingly finished and real time commenced as I skipped out the door to spend my wages on terrible hash and strongbow. A few days later, my boss called me in for 'a chat'. I experienced a smidgen of the sense of foreboding felt by a shoplifter who is just about to be caught or the sinking feeling you get when you realise the person you've been shouting about is actually behind you.

As I walked into the office I saw the dried up old she-demon was holding what looked like a photocopy of my letter. 'Is this your writing?' Not waiting for an answer she pushed on: 'I had to read this to the area manager THREE TIMES'. Steam was rising, I could smell sulpher. 'He just couldn't believe it was written by an employee of ours' she spat as I hovered by the door.

Turns out I'd penned my letter whilst leaning on the credit card notes, forever immortalizing it about 500 times onto the waiting sheets below... Everything happens for a reason.

I wish I'd had the courage to tell her to get fucked after she'd thoroughly digested the contents of my wittily scribed note but I said nothing. 'GET OUT.' She screamed 'And NEVER come back'.

Easier said than done when your town has one shop. 12 years on and she still recognizes me as I skulkingly pop in each Christmas to pick up my gran's Daily Mail, my parent's Observer. She still knows who I am. And when I'm there I'm a guilty 16 year old all over again.

Yesterday

My mum called me and told me my father had had a stroke. I'd been up cavorting all weekend. I wrote this poem about it.

The way it went this weekend was predictable.
I've done it all before.

A hurried, pre-party meal,
An inappropriate feel,
Some wine, a line
A stolen rhyme,
Spinning around on the wheel.

A fist fight or two?
Nintendo for cash?

And everything disappeared.

All that occurred on Friday,
Can never be contained here.
Friday is a promiscuous thing, cares little,
Spreads herself around.
Gets high, fucks anyone.
The way that was Friday stretched,
Roughed up, raped, pumped full of narcotics,
Misshapen, malnourished, abandoned, abused,
It's a regrettable thing.
Her young and excitable voice morphed suddenly and deeply into Sunday,
His languid desperation,
His throaty growl outplaying her young cries.

Old Friday became too real, too visceral,
Evading my gaze.
I didn't see her leave, no backward glance.
Or lingering trail.

(My eyelashes nearly touched the sun,
As I suddenly saw I was unprepared,
With one brief phone call,
On this new and unwelcome Sunday,
For what will inevitably occur.)

Faintly comforting myself with the sympathetic touches,
I stem the endless flow of unshed tears.
Swimming away from the edge, paddling hard upstream, back-peddling
To shallower, sunnier waters, to smiles and lines, I drink a beer
And write a memo:
Do It Tomorrow.