Stop me if you've heard this ...
Friday, November 27, 2009
Just a couple of quick points before you go any further into this post ...
°1 I posted this once before, but in three parts. It was a very long time ago (relative to how long I have been blogging), but still, you may have read it.
°2 It's a long post. Some people don't like long posts (including me) so don't feel obliged to stick around and read it. If you are planning on zooming off somewhere else though, I suggest you check out the blog list over there on the right. It's full of great blogs, and that's before we get to the ones which are excellent.
°3 If you are flying anywhere these days, take your own booze because airlines seem to have forgotten that when you pay for a plane ticket you are instantly entitled to unlimited amounts of booze. And if you have a window seat takes lots of photos because they will look even better than you think. Drink your booze, take lots of photos and then try smoking while pretending to talk into your cell phone.
Ok, enough fucking around already. Here is a story I just can't stop going back to and tinkering with ...
At 20'000 Feet, Clouds Taste Just Like Vanilla Ice Cream.
I THINK it was March ‘04, but I can’t remember, dammit.
Dates are the worst thing now, they come and go like the wind. No, they go more
than they come. They go and that’s that. In fact I could be wrong because once
they have vanished they are gone for good, so long. What? Right! So this was
March, ‘04 like I said, and E was due to leave – we were at the airport
already, but I said to her, “Hey now, I have a better idea. I’m gonna come with
you. Let’s fly together.” In those days, yes, those good old days, it was still
possible to buy your ticket and jump onboard, which I did. Arm in arm we
crossed the tarmac to the waiting aircraft. E turned to me and said I was
slightly crazy and I had to agree, although I did point out that this craziness
had only come to me since she had entered my life. So she laughed, and then I
laughed and together we said things like “ah well” and “hah” and “yeah” and it
was in this frame of mind that we boarded the plane. I had never flown with her
before – if only I had known! She was some crazy cookie back then, some crazy
cookie! And still is now. Crazier probably. Crazy as a cat in a can – that’s a
phrase right? As crazy as a cat in a can? No doubt.
We sat. We rummaged through the pockets in front of us, and after studying the emergency exit plan on the laminated cards, E stood up and clutched at my arm. She grabbed our carry-on bags and yelled at me to hurry up. She was right. I hadn’t noticed as we arrived on board, but by God, there were still a couple of spaces next to one of the emergency-exit doors. As the other passengers removed their jackets and tried to stuff their expensive hand luggage into overhead compartments, we squeezed past, our eyes on those empty seats. I didn’t rush; I knew from past experience that there was little chance of anyone getting in E’s way when she was in this determined mode.
We sat down with thumps and looked at each other, considered a high-five then changed our minds. A high-five was out of the question and we both knew it. After takeoff and the removal of seatbelts had taken place I turned to her and said “I bought this,” as I pulled a bottle of 16-year-old Glenfiddich from my bag. E clapped her hands together in delight. “It’s going to be a long flight,” I said, “so we’ll need water to dilute it a little.”
“I have water,” she said, holding up a bottle of Evian, still sealed.
“Beakers! We’ll need plastic beakers” I went on.
“Or glasses”, she suggested. “Maybe they have real glasses on this flight.” When I looked doubtful she added, “It’s still only 2004.”
“I can’t remember when the switch to plastic beakers occurred,” I said, rubbing my chin. We gave each other exaggerated shrugs. I turned around just in time to hassle one of the stewardesses about our concerns over what material their drinking glasses were made of. She looked unimpressed, so I gave her a speech which suggested we were going to be drunk and annoying for most of the trip and if she wanted us to remain quiet she had better just help us out. She returned with two plastic beakers and a small pile of tiny square napkins which suited us just fine. “I wonder when the food will come,” I muttered.
I forget how much Glenfiddich we had tucked away, but it was already dark outside, the in-flight movie long finished and most of our fellow passengers fast asleep, when E suddenly elbowed me hard in the ribs and said, “Ooh, I have always wanted to try this.” In the blinking of an eye she leapt out of her chair and pounced upon the emergency exit door, cursing under her breath as she heaved at the opening apparatus. “Help me,” she hissed back at me. I grabbed the laminated emergency landing card from the chair pocket and knelt beside her.
“Ok, wait. Wait,” I whispered. We held the card between us and studied the instructions. “Ok, well hold this bit, point A,” I said, “and then we need to twist this bit I think.”
“No, that’s C,” she said.
“Damn. Where’s B then? It must be this,” I said, pointing at a red painted handle.
“Yeah, that’s B,” she agreed.
“Ok, well, you hold A and B and I’ll turn C.”
“It’s a good job this isn’t really an emergency,” she pointed out.
I nodded.
“Wait,” she said. “Let’s have more whisky first.”
“Yes!” I nodded enthusiastically. “It’ll warm us up.”
We snuck back into our seats and as she pulled the cork from the bottle with her teeth I reached up and switched off the overhead light. “Where’s the blanket?” I asked her. I took the bottle from her hand as she pulled a blanket, which was stored under her chair, from its plastic bag. I filled the sole plastic beaker that didn’t have a crack the length of it with whisky and then we pushed the arm rest up out of the way and huddled together under the blanket as we shared the drink. The water had run out an hour or so before.
“What made you decide to come with me?” she asked.
“I had to. I have had a lot of internal conflict, it’s been difficult. We met at such an inconvenient time.”
“For both of us” she added.
“Yes, and I realise, that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what route it takes, I will always be wondering how it would have been. I’ve been standing at a crossroads, do I do ‘X’, or ‘Y’? That’s may sound harsh, but do you understand? But I know I would spend my life thinking about how things would have worked between us. So here I am! On a plane! I think we both know that this is a dream though. I’m worried. I have lots of dreams with you in them. I’ve told you before; I call them ‘E dreams’.”
“Well, Mister,” she said, draining the beaker, “there’s only one way to find out!”
“The door!” I said, snapping my fingers.
“Yeah yeah, come on!”
I grabbed at C and looked at E. She was smiling like a thief and I had to fight the urge to lean over and give her a huge kiss on the cheek. “OK,” I said. “After three.”
Clearly, neither of us had thought through the consequences of this action particularly well.
The first thing I noticed after I turned the handle was E’s smiley
expression turn to one of shock and surprise as her long hair was blown up and
around her head, and I heard her squeal. I lost my grip on C and fell forward just
in time to grab E’s ankles as she was sucked from the plane. As the rushing air
pulled me out after her, my own feet, luckily, hooked onto the rail which the
emergency door normally clicked tightly against, and there we hung, like some
kind of drunken trapeze act at twenty-odd thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
I looked back up at the plane and hoped that my feet wouldn’t cramp as I fought
to remain attached to the rail. As I held tightly onto E’s ankles I was sure I could
hear her voice fighting against the roaring wind and the screaming engines, shouting
back up at me, shouting something about ice cream. Stretching and straining my
neck I finally made eye contact with her. She didn’t seem too concerned with
our current predicament.
“Ice cream,” she shouted again. She appeared to be smiling.
“What,” I yelled back, my voice almost torn away in the wind before it could even reach my ears.
She pointed down towards the clouds which skimmed past her
head and then, before my very eyes, she tilted her head back and stuck her
tongue out, lizard like, scooping up the clouds from below her like some
parched feline. Then she looked back up at me again and grinned.
“Hey,” I shouted, “what flavour is it?”
“It’s kinda, erm,” she licked her lips, “kinda vanilla-y,” she yelled. “Tastes good though,” she added, nodding and licking her lips some more. She tilted her head back and licked at the clouds again, and then she wiped her mouth with her hand and shouted, “Want some?”
“Damn right I do. Hang on a second,” I said, and we both laughed at this silly joke. I pulled her back up until our faces were together, kissed her briefly as we hung upside-down and agreed that yes, the clouds did taste vanilla-y. She hooked her feet onto the rail at the emergency exit and then I let go, reminding her to grab my ankles as they passed, which, thankfully, she did. Anyway, the point is, thanks to the surprising fact of the flavoured clouds we forgot to determine if this was a dream or not.
It took a while but eventually we were back in our seats, although we had had a bit of difficulty getting the emergency door closed behind us – there was a slight problem getting C back into its original position. We dumped our bags on the floor in front of it to help keep it shut.
“You would think,” I said as we curled up until the blanket once again, another Glenfiddich warming between us, “that someone would have mentioned that before.”
“Mentioned what?” she asked, sounding as though she was beginning to doze off.
“Mentioned that clouds taste like vanilla ice cream. I never heard that before, did you?”
“Maybe they just … I dunno, forgot to tell us or something,” she replied sleepily.
“Hmm. Vanilla though. Who would have thought?”
“Hmm.”
“What do you think they will taste like on your side of the pond?” I asked her, although I just can’t for the life of me remember if she answered or not. Ah well, like I said, my memory isn’t what it used to be.
That's it.
A reply to Jack Moon's message.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Jack,
Christ, I forgot about those sample chapters. They are
already irrelevant, the book has become an organic, slithering beast that I am
struggling to keep pointing in one true direction … well, fuck it. Ben didn’t
seem to keen anyway did he? Can’t you just forward the entire message? I find
it hard to believe that a man of his supposed stature would stoop so low as to
refer to me an ass in an email which by its very existence fuels the
possibility, however vague, of future professional relations between him and
us. But what do I know? On second thoughts, don’t forward it. I have enough
going on right now without deciphering the old man’s nonsense. Just tell him
what I keep telling you; it’s not a serialization of the book, and it isn’t the
downward spiral of a wannabe writer. If the book gets published, then the
blog will be the “extra stuff” that wasn’t in the book, mixed up with
occasional bursts of reality like some kind of word-soup. Or word-candy (I
stole this phrase from a reader, can you believe that?)
I’m going to be in the CITY over the festive period this year although at this point I have no idea if I will be alone, with E, or even with (and I know how you are going to react to this …) the guys. Not Norf though, just the other two. It’s girlfriend dependant as ever of course, but as soon as Hutch and Stepek heard I was heading in your direction their eyes began to shine – don’t take that as a compliment. They just want a legitimate excuse to leave home for a few days, toute seul.
Let’s leave it at that for now.
Jonas
A message from Jack Moon
Monday, November 23, 2009
Jonas,
I had planned on forwarding Ben's email to you this morning, but then I began to wonder about the morals of such an act so instead i will just steal words from it and type them here instead. That's not the same thing is it? I'll get to the point of his message in a minute or two, but first i must ask you if you still plan on coming back to the CITY in the next few months? I think it will help things move along a lot faster, assuming they even begin to move at all.
Ben's email asked more questions than it answered. In trying to simplify the enormous amounts of bullshit he tends to write, i have slimmed his message down to just a few of those questions and then erased some of them leaving just a couple. The first one was "Jack, what is the connection between the blog you directed me to at (I think Jack meant "and", not "at") the book the guy is supposed to be writing?" and another asked, "Which parts are fiction?" and then later he made some statements like, "If it is factual then you can forget it becuase (sic) he sounds like an ass," which means you of course. The things is, he had liked the sample chapters so maybe some clarification of what you are trying to achieve with the blog would be good because right now it seems to be putting him off you.
Jack.
Everyone around for the night ...
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Hutch was just being Hutch, while Norf lay in the corner, staring out from wherever he imagined he was with one red eye, E had popped out because K was supposed to be coming around and we had no Bombay Sapphire left over from the night before. Julie was flicking though E's magazines and looking at her watch in an attempt to pass a "can we go the fuck home now" message to Stepek who was lying on the floor with his head half hidden under the sofa, stroking the cat from downstairs and mumbling "it puts the lotion in the basket" while Rachel sat at the table and cried about ... whatever Rachel always cries about. Hutch probably. I wished I had gone with E.
To Edinburgh and back again. °4. Back to Paris at last ...
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
“You don’t look
so well,” I told Ken as we buckled ourselves into our seats, sore headed and
gunky eyed, desperately hoping for some sleep on this late-evening Geneva Paris
flight.
“I’ve
surely felt better,” he mumbled back at me, “I wish I had eaten some food, my
stomach feels like a fish tank. Don’t talk to me Jonas, I’m miserable.” He
closed his eyes and folded his hands pathetically upon his lap.
I shrugged
and looked out of the window at the view over the runways, over the fence and
into France
“Yeeello’!”
the man across the aisle from me suddenly shouts out. I snapped my head around
to stare at him. He was talking on a cell phone.
“What?” he
yelled into it. “Ah huh, yeah, yeah, sure ok, yeah. Yeah? Yeah! Sure, yeah,
yeah, ye – ha! Sure, sure, yeah sure,” nodding pause, “yeah, uh huh, yeah,”
another pause, tongue half out, then; “yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah …”
“Hey!” I
yelled at him, reaching over and shoving his shoulder.
“We haven’t
started moving yet buddy. I’ll switch it off when we do, ok? Mind your own business,”
he said, staring at me with wide, sweating eyeballs before returning his
attention to his phone again. “Yeah, yeah, uh huh …”
“No …” I
tugged his sleeve.
“What?!”
“What did
you say there? At the beginning, when you answered. Say it again.”
“What? I don’t
know. Hello maybe. Jesus …” back to the cell, “yeah? Sure!”
I turned
back to Ken, exhilarated, and yelled into his ear. “Yeeeeelllo’!” making him
jump where he sat and screech like a little girl.
“What the fuck
Jonas?”
“Yellow! It’s
how assholes like him,” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the cell phone
dickhead, “say hello!”
“Uh?”
“Dammit
Hutch,” I said, leaving him to his hangover as I planned my route from Charles
de Gaulle airport to Jusseiu Metro station …
and then ... and then ....
Friday, November 13, 2009
Yeah yeah, I'll get back to the story of how Ken and I got
back here eventually ... but first, there was something I wanted to ask you
all.
What kind of books does everyone read?
Isn't that just the worst question? Almost as bad as
"what do you do?", or "what music do you like?" etc etc ...
Personally, when I get asked what I read I generally lie and make up lots of
Russian sounding names, but that's because I can never actually remember what I
read, (which could be because the part of my mind that insists on lying leaps
into action first.)
Damn, I'm rambling here.
The point being ...
... whatever. That's gone too. Anyway, just wondered what
kind of stuff you read. Assuming you do read of course - I hardly do anymore, I
just ... yep ... look at the pictures.
Oh yeah, the point was that I was having a conversation with
someone stunning who mentioned a book blah blah blah and then blah blah and I
said "no, really?" and it went on and on from there ...
*
To Edinburgh and back again. °3 : Detour into Geneva.
Monday, November 9, 2009
To Edinburgh and back again. °2
Friday, November 6, 2009
Each time I come back here I want to leave almost instantly - what a sad statement to make about the place where you lived the largest part of your life. It's fine to feel that way about the town you were born and brought up in - hometowns are the pits - but Edinburgh was supposed to be different, an independent awakening.
Although awaken me it did, only to things I then realized I never wanted to be, people and lifestyles I never wanted to emulate. I could go on and on here, but instead I'll just point out here that I am not talking about the people and cultures of Edinburgh in general, I am talking specifically about the people I found myself surrounded by. The Scots, on the whole, are an astounding bunch.
"She wasn't home," Ken blurted out as he crash-landed into the chair opposite me. We were down in Henry's Cellar Bar. Initially alone, I had been drifting off into my fourth rum while a dark-haired girl with an acoustic guitar played on the stage at the back of the room. Smiling hugely as she sang, I had been happily detaching myself from reality and oozing into the spirit of her lyrics before Ken arrived, frantic and smash-handed as ever.
"Fuck me Hutch, we came all this way and she's not even in? Did you call her f... ah goddamit Hutch, you don't have her number do you?" He was already shaking his head. "Well, call someone who has her number and take it from there."
"Like who?"
"Hutch, she's your sister. Surely you know someone who has her number. Your parents perhaps?"
"I seriously doubt they know she is here ... they don't even know I live in Paris. They can't see past Delaware Jonas, I don't even think they believe in Europe, never mind cope with the thought of their offspring living on it."
"Well ... in that case we will need more rum Kenneth." I threw a ten pound note at him and told him to take his time at the bar, then clapped loudly as the girl finished another epic. I clapped doubly loudly as I was annoyed at having missed most of the song because of Hutch's family dramatics.
Suddenly it occurred to me how we could find his sister's cell number, get Hutch's gear and then get out of town.
Suddenly it occurred to me how we could find his sister's cell number, get Hutch's gear and then get out of town.
"Stepek will surely still have her number," I said when he sat back down again. "Sorry," I added as his face darkened and his frown intensified. Being reminded that Stepek used to nail your sister must sting mightily. "Um ... also, could you just move your head a little to the left Ken, I can't see the girl over there." I pointed past him towards the stage and gave him a wobbly smile.
"I'm going outside to phone him," he said, standing, still looking dark. The last thing I heard him say as he stomped his way towards the doorway was something along the lines of "he better not have it ..." At least, I think thats what he was saying.
"And ask him about the yellow thing," I shouted, sliding back into my rum and returning my attention to the stage once more.
To Edinburgh and back again. °1
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
During the hour or so of the short, greasyjet flight, Ken
and I must have consumed as much rum as we would on the nine hour trek across
the pond, so desperate were we to escape the scene. Doesn’t it seems to be the
goal of some companies to take everything that used to be enjoyable about air
travel and chuck it out the emergency exit? Damn them.
Hutch had begun some murmuring immediately after take-off while I buried
my nose into my zoom-book. I soon discovered though that I was already too far
gone to write anything of worth, way past the point of critical assessment. I had
slammed that zoom-book closed and rammed it into the mesh pocket before me.
“Yellow,” I said to Hutch as I tapped my pen furiously against my knuckles. He replied with a lazy,
pale, “Huh?”
“Yellow. The word Yellow Hutch. Tell me the first thing that
crosses your mind when I say … no, forget it. Give me that.” I snatched from
his hand the emergency escape plan and wrote the word Yellow, followed by an
exclamation mark, across the top, digging in hard with my ball-point to leave
an impression on the laminated fear-sheet.
“Yellow!” he shouted, holding the card before him. “That’s
the color of cowardice.”
“Cowardice, of course!” I replied. It gave me cause to
think. “Ken, do you think I am a coward perhaps?"
“No.” He shook his head viscously. “No I can’t think of any
situation I have witnessed in which I would have said, or after the event,
either assumed or even thought that you are a coward. Were a coward.” He looked
at me, wide eyed. “Christ. Did that even make sense? I feel quite drunk already.”
I looked away. “Yellow belly,” I said slowly, drawing out each syllable and
exaggerating the movement of my mouth. Then I said; “old yeller,” the same way.
I shook my head a little and then turned once more to Ken. “What was 'Old Yeller' again?”
“Uh, a film wasn’t it? About a tree or something? J, what’s
all this yellow talk? I don’t like it. It’s sobering me up.”
I shared out some more rum and told him the story of the magazine in the Metro. A week or more had passed since that night.
“Yellow?” he said. “A yellow what? You should have asked
Stepek, J. He would know, or at least come up with a good idea.”
“Stepek! Of course! Ken have you switched your cell off?”
“Ha! Are you serious? What if we are going to crash and I need to call Rachel? I may not even have the three minutes it takes the damn thing to boot up.”
“I thought as much. Give it to me!”
depths of confusion
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A routine of mine each time I sat here was to read through the latest copy of A Nous Paris, the Metro-rag (assuming there was one lying around to read) testing my ability to read French whilst thoroughly wrecked (assuming I was, but of course I was only ever in the Jussieu station after meeting up with Hutch, dum da da dum) and then I would leave the magazine to my left, laying it down on the two metal bars which support the row of plastic chairs. I would stare hard at the magazine and then, with the right side of my brain making all of the necessary calculations, ensure that it was lined-up with those bars exactly, to the nearest millimeter - or less, depending on my state.
Approximately one minute shy of midnight I happened to notice that there was already a copy of A Nous Paris lying where I always leave one. When was I last in here? Two nights before. It was of course impossible that the magazine had lain untouched for two whole days. How many thousands of people pass through here every day? Many many.
I picked up the magazine and stared at it.
Yellow! it said across the top of the cover in thick black handwriting
"Yellow," I said out loud, holding the magazine at arms length as my grandfather would do as he focussed on his morning newspaper's headlines. "Yellow!" I said even louder, this time including the exclamation mark. I placed it back down on the parallel bars to my left, the right side of my brain instructing my hands to straighten it up so.
"Yellow?" I said once more, standing and walking to the platform edge, the sound of my voice lost under the noise of screeching brakes which announced the arrival of the train.
*
