I felt like Mrs Dalloway, or Clarissa Vaughn echoing fictionally around on her way to a dying poet with fistfuls of flowers. I went to steal them from gardens but street after street bore nothing but concrete and the bare bulb-ended green things that play flowers in the hot parts of the year. I think its OK to pay for flowers when the poet isn't dying faster than anyone else so I counted out ten gold coins while the cashier held out half an impatient hand.
Five days ago my father bellowed out words like, strident, abusive, arrogant and smirked while my aged aunt thrust both arms back into memory for the right word. 'Bohemian', she said. They called me bohemian, all those relatives in formal dress. I told Spencer and we scoffed over coffee. I'm the least bohemian person I know, here, in the new town, where I have burrowed out a cave room and set a fire in the corner. There are proper curtains and thread counts and cupboard complete with cups.
Some of the others here still drink whiskey out of jars and play the same crackling old records Joe Lynch might have listened to, if he had the money. Now of course there are crates of them on corners every Saturday morning.
I didn't come here to study them, to take down hasty notes in dark corners while they rollick across perfectly stationary floors. I came here unwillingly, rudder locked eastward, anchor gone screaming into the night. I came here in cardboard boxes and settled heavily into daily clockwork risings, for money, only for the money. The notes started small and scrawling, mystifying untranslated rubbings across self-erected tombs of the wildly living. But they have grown.
Walking across a whole morning with the single purpose of flowers information came to me. Neighbours appeared at my gate on the telephone to Marianne Faithfull, lay down chapters of books for my magazine, the radio spoke with the voice of real friends, in song and story. Two people left for Spain with guitars and tour dates, Spencer and I spoke about which shirt he should wear in Paris. I said purple, he said he'd wear whatever he liked but the point was he's leaving for another overseas tour. The point is I'm sitting in my window looking out where the snow would fall if the world ever flipped and we had a chance at crisp and even.
Five days ago my father bellowed out words like, strident, abusive, arrogant and smirked while my aged aunt thrust both arms back into memory for the right word. 'Bohemian', she said. They called me bohemian, all those relatives in formal dress. I told Spencer and we scoffed over coffee. I'm the least bohemian person I know, here, in the new town, where I have burrowed out a cave room and set a fire in the corner. There are proper curtains and thread counts and cupboard complete with cups.
Some of the others here still drink whiskey out of jars and play the same crackling old records Joe Lynch might have listened to, if he had the money. Now of course there are crates of them on corners every Saturday morning.
I didn't come here to study them, to take down hasty notes in dark corners while they rollick across perfectly stationary floors. I came here unwillingly, rudder locked eastward, anchor gone screaming into the night. I came here in cardboard boxes and settled heavily into daily clockwork risings, for money, only for the money. The notes started small and scrawling, mystifying untranslated rubbings across self-erected tombs of the wildly living. But they have grown.
Walking across a whole morning with the single purpose of flowers information came to me. Neighbours appeared at my gate on the telephone to Marianne Faithfull, lay down chapters of books for my magazine, the radio spoke with the voice of real friends, in song and story. Two people left for Spain with guitars and tour dates, Spencer and I spoke about which shirt he should wear in Paris. I said purple, he said he'd wear whatever he liked but the point was he's leaving for another overseas tour. The point is I'm sitting in my window looking out where the snow would fall if the world ever flipped and we had a chance at crisp and even.
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