I
The ceremony of loving things. Sat down and wrote a list with the title Friends I Have in London. Helped to ward-off loneliness two nights in a row.
II
Jasmina in a white dress saying, “Everyone has such strange things happening in their little inner worlds, and so much love is lost in that silence.” When we were fifteen, I sent her periodic texts for six months with no reply.
III
I wrote him dozens of letters, scared to write, lonely not to
[Helen Garner, Monkey Grip].
IV
Almost got hit by a car with the license plate Hi Omen.
V
I will not let dread into this song I am whistling
On the balcony over grasses
The neon I see, so removed now from your hands on the harp
I will choose to remember harp-song
And reach in the night until scalded
You really needn’t cry over some shepherd’s coat
There is worse yet to come, so whistle with the birds a while
VI
Riding my bike down a thin lane, I thought of the country. The air was very quiet, and the lane ran between two football fields. Tall flowers grew on either side, and foxes stopped and watched me as I flew by. The sound of footballs kicked and people running; the smell of grass which comes with spring. The sun hadn’t yet set, and everything seemed to buzz, quietly, as if charged.
I wanted to keep riding, to ride an hour north, or to somehow have him materialise, and to say Look! This is how gorgeous things can be! And we should be seeing it together. I wondered where he was, what he was thinking, if he thought about me at all. I was getting restless from his quiet. My spring holiday was two weeks away, and the idea had been floated that we spend a few days out of the city, in some field somewhere, a makeshift tent above us. He said he had a car sitting around at his parents’ place in Wales, and we could take it for a while, and see somewhere wild together.
VII
When I feel sad about myself I need to remember this – it always makes me feel better to go to the park and take pictures of the plants on my phone, in sunlight if possible. I have ridden my bike to the park, getting sun on my arms, watching a bumble bee. Trying to come up with a list of things I’d like about myself if I were my own friend. This park is written about in Alexander Gilchrist’s 1863 book the Life of William Blake.
A mile or two further through the large and pleasant village of Camberwell with its grove
And famed prospect, arose the sweet hill and vale and sylvan wilds of rural Dulwich
Beyond, stretched, to allure the young pedestrian om, yet fairer amenities
By lane and footpath
On Peckham Rye
While quite a child
He has his first vision
The boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars
Another time, one summer morn, he sees the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures walking
The grown man believed as unaffectedly as ever had the boy of ten
Hearers were already disposed to shake the head and pronounce the speaker crazed: a speech natural enough.
VIII
Friday Morning. Looking for Fire.
Hearse driving past me with the bouquets spelling “friend”.
I spent hours yesterday in the woods, harmonising with my two best friends, and five minutes this morning tearing the fabric he gave me to rags.
I wanted to burn it but couldn’t find a fire.
Up high in an oak tree I asked my friends how they would feel if I fell and died (We were really very high up the tree. I pissed from the height, and we laughed).
I told them which songs to sing at my funeral.
(The water is wide, I cannot cross o’er), and realised how silly I sounded, and knew that I would never die.
Besides it is my Mother’s birthday,
so I should not talk of anything dark
IX
Should have bought that accordion when I had the chance.
Saw an incredibly large poppy
(Geryon dying at the end of Stesichorus’ poem)
His neck dropped like a poppy who shames its soft body all at once.
X
Up through the wooden pole (which looks like a part of an old ship) grow seven daisies.
I am staring at grasses like long hair over a guitar
Thinking about
1. Camping in a field with two friends, and
2. what it might feel like to learn someone new, wandering at the fact I haven’t met the Next One yet
I can see a hillock of grass from this roof, and almost feel the touch of his hand (coming through from somewhere else).
XI
I am sorry for fighting with you after the Bishop’s Ordination. It was meant to be a beautiful day.
XII
On the Summer Solstice I watched the scarecrow in the community garden - a faded, graven image - saw it watching the fire. Scarecrows, like me, have an affinity for piles of rubbish. They are half-detritus themselves, shabby. I have never seen a scarecrow read a letter. They while away their time in corn or wheat or barley. (I think of my lover saying I smell like hay). They witness and do not cry. A scarecrow has no father or mother, and has no one to lose, I suppose, although I wonder if he mourns that no bird ever lights upon his shoulder to guide his gaze.
XIII
Did a manifestation in the mirror I am a good man I am so handsome I try my best there are people who love me. Rode my bike past the only person in London I have been avoiding.
XIV
Herd of deer frolicking across the field at Bayham Abbey Ruins (I dreamt, last night, about deer).
We walked across the field, saw the ruins through the trees. An old man named Clive told us about the Premonstratensian Canons who lived there, of the closure under Wolsey, the wild riot party which ensued wherein the canons and villagers stormed the abbey, wearing costumes and face paint, with wild music and abandon.
At the altar, felt the layers of my self leave and was left with only my most basic self, and knew God, and knew everyone who had ever been in the abbey or walked through that patch of field and woodland before it.
XV
Head of friends bobbing above the shingle. Steep ditches where the stones remember the shape of the waves. Played my guitar. Piran played their banjo. Campsite was loud in the evening but dead quiet at 5 when I woke and went for a wander, saw two horses, many sheep, one little rabbit.
When we first approached the shingle, I ran out of the car towards it, and fell to my knees like a sailor touching land for the first time in months.