BROWN NOTEBOOK
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23.04 it's been a long day. you've been in dental emergency all day. you've been at King's, in the pediatric dental walk-in, you've been with S. you've seen everybody: all the dentists. all the doctors. all the receptionists. you didn't see the consultant: mina or mirna or sima - she never showed up, at bedside. S was lying on the chair but she never came. she ordered an extra extraction - who was she trying to impress? you don't know. S's sleeping now. he'll wake up in the night with pain in his tooth. you'll give him painkillers. at breakfast he'll have another antibiotic tablet - the same antibiotics P had in Kenya when was 18. now she's __. a tried and tested drug. a cheap antibiotic. they thought about what needed doing. they couldn't do any of it. not in time. what use is that? all day you have been looking after them both: the children and the doctors. now you're tired. bodies of water you're going one way - everyone's going the other way. you're on the 10.08 south from london bridge. you're going home. your home is temporary. in 9 days you'll be leaving. the building behind the house is being demolished. as you sit here, two men are on the roof removing the slates. it's spring. the fronds of the goat willow wave in the wind. the motor has started. a man hobbles by with a plastic bag. another train arrives in this victoria station. the passengers head listlessly for the exit - in the time between work shifts - it's too late to be arriving late for the morning. it's way too early for the afternoon. there's something going on. with each of us. we've been to the dentist. we are not in work. our work of listening to the steady unobtrusive clang of metal on metal, watching the mechanical clock - has become too unusual - too long, and uneventful, the train is announced - it's almost empty, the motor increases its tempo, briefly - people are spread out sparsely, in the carriages. they yearn for solitude, for peace. they yearn for contact. like these trains, beginning to glide south, their bodies, their chassis are electrified - their clothes, seemingly so provocative, can barely point to the provocations they contemplate, as they glide together. south bermondsey. you pass millwall foutball club and new cross social club. you're slowing into queens road peckham. this train goes to smitham, wherever that is. the mountain of timber stacked at Surebuild - waiting to be built into a building - how many times have you drawn that building? how many time have you been woken, by that unbuilt building - this is peckham rye you're there. you're on the 14.59 back to london bridge - you've been scraping walls. the sun came out - it's hot now it's hot - eat drink get fat - we all got fat, after that, that exotic dancer was saying, after my father left, after my father was forcibly ejected from the house, thanks to my engaging the legal process, she said, my mother and sisters we all got hugely fat - we went out of control - it's ok, I'm in control now - a person is on the verge of getting fat - hugely fat - all the time, in this situation - as is well known - it's common knowledge a person of so-called average weight, is in constant danger of exploding into obesity - or starving themselves to death - only a fool could maintain an even average weight, not to speak of a healthy diet, in this situation - it's a common reaction, of course, to any healthy person - any fit or healthy person, average weight, to think: what a fool - you're there you're where you don't want to be. you're not on your own. you wanted to be on your own, somewhere else - now you're here. parakeets are making their famous cries. the waning sun, streaming through breaks in the clouds, falls on your crumpled fingers - closing your eyelids you hear a man saying throw it, throw it, in french. a passenger plane goes over. children and their parents are fighting in the playground. the constant sound of skateboard wheels is underpinned by a constant sound of motor traffic, heading south out of London. the children and their parents impose themselves maximally one on the other. pushed together in this oppressive space, they disappoint each other, they disappoint themselves, they are disappointed and dismayed by the sounds of other children and parents locked in their feuds, backed by wheel traffic, punctuated by the sound of somebody trying over and over to do a trick they cannot do. by the end of the summer they will have it down. this afternoon it hailed. the sun, which at this time of year is to be coming into its own, its pomp - looking at the sun obscured by clouds now, as another aircraft carves its way -the sun is quenched, it's obliterated - each pocket of warm air is torn up by that wind, which plays restlessly just over the ground - tired angry infants and their carers linger, in its tepid rays. 7:58 it's time.
1. look at that bird!
repeat
en la noche you're sitting in a bird hide: the open land - marsh and lakes - of the aiguamolls spread out with the white tower blocks and houses of Roses in front of the mountains of Creus - a few ducks and gulls cross the broad landscape, rising and falling between the reedbeds and the sky - the wind blows constantly from the sea - a serin climbs and drops, climbs and drops, obsessively punctuating until it drops exhausted in to the reeds - it's not a serin I don't know wha it is - it beats and pauses, beats and pauses, letting out single piercing peets [it is a serin] - nobody can get in to this hide - they keep pushing and pulling and going away. of ocurse it's a sliding door - now one man has entered - you nod - you begin to stare out over the marshes again - there is nothing there but a couple of mallards - the man leaves, sliding the door behind him - you see him walking away, limping slightly, in a yellow sports shirt, with his wife - perhaps they are the same people who came in before - the goldfinch is singing fram a stalk blowing back and forth - the harrier is not here. the flamingos have gone, you are going.
buscamos a álguien que se interessaría..
we're driving down through france and we're, we're overwhelmed - by the size - the size of the forest, which goes on forever, the fields, the prairies, as they are, the prairies and the fields and the rivers - it's the Loire; it's the Rhone - you go along, then suddenly cross such and such a river: it's a massive body of water - a body, far from the sea, of water flowing - it overwhelms you - you seem to hear - if not in your ears - an orchestral suite - presumably unwritten - like Ma Vlast - like the Moldau, this river: these vast prairies, enormous rives and endless forests are accompanied by a silent, presumably unwritten symphony, or ochestral suite, which flows silently, endlessly unfolding: irresistibly swelling and flowing: in a language unwritten - whether it awaits writing or is held, unwriteable, in the semi nausea of these vast traverses, bordering on madness, where you drive through the night - you don't know - I can't carry a tune - the others are sleeping: 3 in the back, one, like a giant, by your side as you drive the highway, through day and night and back in to day, passing thse vast landscapes - you pass the signs of the highway - for fuel stops etc, plus the brown signs of the localities - you are travelling along the Via Domitia - on oyur right the vineyards of Champagne - the Volcanic Region of the Auvergne - you hesitate to begin, accepting mutely, here in the house of semiotics - your reading instincts retract from these signs, rather than going out to meet them - if anything you are even more hemmed in, on the highway, in the darkness, in your silent flight from London to the south, in the solitude of close bodily presence with the others - to where, should you wander, you and all will be mangled and wiped out - you pass an overturned car and a pile up behind a truck in a ditch - at these speeds there isn't much of a chance lie down, put your arm under your head, attach the baby to the breast, you will not go back to sleep P is on the phone to M - our children are grown up - S is 5 - you cannot re capture and could not tolerate that intensity, something else is going on - what is going on here? you alternate between detachment and passionate activity - confidence and debilitating fear - is it normal? is it ok? up and down the mountain masses of france - the central massive - the chaos of Aurillac, or somewhere - the poor person's flight over the millau gorge - abandonned airfields everywhere on those plateaux - blasted with sheep and stones - you're always stopping at a service station, drinking lukewarm coffee from a machine - your stomach turns at the memory of those insipid liquids - this is the worst coffee anywhere - worse that the Mug & Muffin in Cambridge, Mass. or anywhere - here in heart of france, in a service station manned by a man, say at _____ on a sunday morning, in the middle of the plateau - dozens of miles from anywhere - or right next to some town - some extinguishing town - who knows what his expressions convey
bramble Mark Wallinger's video of the Royal Family, endlessly waving, the Camberwell Gardens Guild and the silent ______
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