h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Journal

This is funny

A87732057



I am missing making Guide Entries, , addicted to the blue number, heheh, don't know what to write about, as I am in a creative writing direction change, so had to make a Guide Entry that is a Blank Page, till I know where I am heading. It's an experiment. T'would be very peaceful if all my Guide Entries were blank pages. hahah. hmm. That's not a bad idea in fact.

6th Feb

Dear journal,

My radical experiment in the Blank Page had to be put on hold. Quite a lot has happened on the blank page of my life, though.

My mother died three weeks ago today.

Last January my father died.

Strange to have no parents.

I know at my age one has to be prepared for having no parents, but there's kind of like a space, maybe a bruise, an echo, in my soul, the place where they once were.

I was with both of them for the last few days of their life, which was intense, like reeeeeely intense, but I am oddly glad of the experience, even though right now I am really tired, as if I just composed a thousand symphonies, and I have been living on brandy, cheese crackers and grapes, and my cheekbones are sticking out.

Its not my intention to speak too personally, here, of these matters, but writing has been my medicine, as always, during this strange time, and I intend to jot down slightly oblique images ...

I am seeing a lot of railway stations, in my mind's eye, and I see the shadowed figures of my mother and my father on the platform ....

All those ways we go .... we pull away from our parents, we return, we pull away again ...

A pathway through a bluebell wood ..


I also have to think about inspiration, re Dmitri's essay in the Post.

So much to do! . I have to go eat cheese crackers and grapes.

Notes on Inspiration

From the Latin, inspirare, to breathe in. Inspiration, the breath of life.

A curious force, this breath of life. A gift, a danger, a temptation, a whisper. A scream, a flutter, a frenzy. A dance, a masterpiece, a hallowed affliction, a contradiction.

1962. I'm seven. My mother wears a dress with a floral design. The design becomes my world, all folds and secrets and sighs.

The carpet pattern is a map, with pathways, and lakes, and tangly woods.

The Christmas tree decorations are light shine, bright shine, they must be God, I know they are.

My father shows me how to draw beetles with a biro, and funny scary upside down faces that grin at me whichever way I turn the paper.

A curious breath, this breath of life, this inspiration, haunting my senses.......

tbc

Hi Cactuscafé! I can sympathise. I lost my mother almost exactly a year ago, and my father about a year before that. My father also drew lots of things for me. But I figured out how to draw faces that work both-sided-up myself!

You geniuses.

Breathing in this inspiration...

Hey , its my brothers-in-art!



Wow, we've all been dealing with the parent thing, then, these last few years.

Funny how biographies intertwine, like threads in a tapestry. Be great to write a joint biography with you two, with any of these interesting people on this site, see how the threads intertwine.

Start with 1965. Then people say to me, erm s'cuse me lady, I wasn't born in 1965. Oh, OK then, how about 2012. .Like yesterday.

Or 1939. Strange year. I wasn't around then, but I felt the scars in the atmosphere with my first in-breath, born that day in April in 1955. Perhaps the human senses are designed to pick up atmospheres, the whole story, all the scars, all the glory. Its all there, in the atmosphere, the history of the world. Is it??

Dealing with dying, you know, these last few weeks, I have started to think about what do I leave behind? Like, artistically.

You two are very adept at channelling your inspirations, but also being able to craft them into completed artforms, put them out there in the world, communicate through them, and inspire. I would like to be you, please. .

Notes. I think I leave behind Notes. I love my Notes more than my attempts at completed work. That's just the way it is. Not looking good for my Blank Page Guide Entry. heheh. Unless I cover it with Notes.

So many inspiring jewels on this website. I want to return to commenting more on the work of others, when I am less tired. Trading inspiration jewels. Trading sensory inspiration.

******************

Notes on Inspiration

1983-86. The breakdown years. Drawing all night, with red ink and charcoal. Crows and crucifixes, eyes and the seven of diamonds. Listening to Beethoven and Leonard Cohen and the Incredible String Band. Some strange Holy Spirit left its signature in the charcoal dust.

Leonard Cohen is inspiring. He's 77, still creating. Just brought out a new album, its amazing. His voice is really growly, real deep.

************************

Thanks for the inspiration, brothers in art. What were you both doing in ... in ... let's say ....1977? (its OK, I know you are busy ... you don't have to respond to hyper-sister here. ..

tbc (to be continued) .....

Golly. 1977 wasn't a good year. I was living in a flat (built in 1903) where, every evening, the same mouse came out of the same hole in the bedroom wall, dashed across the living room, and disappeared through a hole beside the fireplace.

One night, just to be mean, we placed a box in his path. He got confused, stopped, and hid under the bed, waited. When we moved the box, he continued his routine.

In 1977:

I was 5 that year, my sister 3. We were living in our first house with a garden in Queenswood, Pretoria. We had fruit trees in the back yard, and a tall cypress-like tree in the front yard, that I climbed a few times.

I was in the Queenswood Kindergarten. There were rabbits and birds in a very big cage there.

I was beginning to seriously draw and paint. My grandfather was the supervisor in an apartment building and brought me lots and lots of computer printouts on the other side of which I could draw and paint. I painted and drew at school and at home. I used oil pastels most of the time.

I composed my first poem, about a tiger and a cat. We didn't actually have a cat yet, though. I think we kept a chameleon for a while but I'm not sure if it was that year. We also had a pet budgie and I had a white mouse, again I'm not sure if it was that year or the next.

I think that's the year my asthma problems started. First I had tonsillitis, then my tonsils were taken out. My first operation! I was told it would hurt a bit, but it didn't really hurt. Afterwards however I started getting asthma. It was worst when one day we had a trip to a farm, a sort of show farm close to Pretoria. I'm not sure if I remember correctly. I sorta remember getting real sick during the outing, but I also remember a fun farm outing, so maybe there were two separate occasions. Anyways I ended up in hospital and was in an oxygen tent for a few days.

wow, amazing, incredible, and thankyou bros s for the 1977 story windows .. story windows? yes! I just saw them like that, magical windows created from words, fired by the energy of words, and open the window, like an advent calendar, and there are the stories of two remarkable fellow humans, with all the sensory textures and the emotional textures ...the threads .... more! more!

talk about inspiration! and what an honour ...

1977. I'm 22. I'm working for BBC Scotland, schools radio, in Edinburgh. My boss wears a kilt. I love my work, but there's an energy within me that forever pulls at me, as if I have someone to meet at some borderline of the mind, and it haunts me. One day I'll find that borderline.

Punk is in the airwaves. The Sex Pistols, The Clash. I am immersed in the work of the Scottish poets, George Mackay Brown, Norman MacCaig.

In the evenings I go along to a local folk club with the BBC girls. There are two brothers from the Highlands who play there regularly, and the girls rave about them. I'm not so sure myself.

One of them has a hairdo like a ginger Hendrix. His teeth are crumbling, and he sleeps by day, and sings for cash. There's something in his voice, though, an otherworldly resonance, that haunts me.

Twenty years later I was to marry him, but I didn't that then. .

***************

I am getting addicted here, , to sort of squeezing the essence of things into a short paragraph. Maybe that's why I love Notes. It's interesting to see what comes out, if I write spontaneously, as if the Essence is the Editor. The stranger on the borderline. The what??? . . I guess The Essence is the Inspiration.

tbc

I like process, myself, so I'm appreciating this.

. heheh. Last night I had a hazy mouse in house memory, well, mouse in dodgy 70s flat memory, your story must have awakened it, for better or for worse. Thankyou writer. .

Now I have to contact an ex flatmate, and find out who was the guy in pyjamas who chased the mouse???? , and if the kitchen was how I remember it, and if I am to write Notes on it, then I shall have to find 393 words for Mould, and 402 words for Alien Things in Fridges. .

I feel very joyful today. .

*************************

Notes on Inspiration

Essence. Back to the essence. My blank page just turned beautiful, like a beach of white sand at sunrise, before the footprints appear. .

Trance-Dancers Encountering Blue Spirals.

erm.... OK .... what?? Well, that's the title of my next inspirational thought. .

I love titles, book titles, film titles, song titles, picture titles. Sometimes they can be like cryptic gateways to a secret world, a new universe. Run a few together, they can become a poem. Sort of.

However, at the moment, being back to essence, all I have is my thoughts ....

.....so the title of my next thought is Today I Shall Have Beetroot for Lunch. Hmm. .

And, on a thoroughly naughty note, I remark that someone eating beetroots reminds me of the film 'Turks Fruits'...

What???? . I just read the synopsis of Turks Fruit, not having ever experienced this steamy cinematic experience...

Well, I'm glad I didn't mention Turkish Delight then, heheh, like s'cuse me mister writer you're just hoping I might remember 1978, , I'm glad I can't remember 1978, , and has this got anything to do with the mysterious guy in pyjamas?? .

Maybe Rutger Hauer?

who???? wait a minute ....

ah Eros, Eros, who are you?, ah Rutger Hauer, who are you????

(few minutes later, after finding out)

.

Now I am wiser, yet strangely more uncertain, more delicate, prone to shedding brokenhearted tears into glasses of red wine

(hah! don't mention glasses, Bel is on about Lady Chatterley's glasses on another thread) ... what is happening around here??

Rutger Hauer watches me from the shadowlands of my youthful yearning)

order in the journal!

*********************************

Notes on Erotic Inspiration

Late 70s ah, its weekend, and everyone is in-love and wild and young and free, and I am in the winebar in South London with my friend, and we don't feel in-love and wild, or free, and we are making sculptures out of wax, from the candle that burns in the Mateus Rose bottle ...

(in the 70s, a winebar wasn't a winebar, unless there was a Mateus Rose bottle on the table, with a candle in it, and the wax had to run all down the side of the bottle to look arty.)

****************

(I knew that the suffering was worth it, had to find my own way, would walk through London on Valentine's night, alone, wearing my difference like a torn silken lily in the collar of my black frock coat)

(That's an incredibly pretentious paragraph. . Unfortunately true . If I was editor of this journal I would send me a letter, which said goodbye in various cryptic languages. . )

********************

He was always there though, in the wine bar, the one I thought I loved. We never got beyond the shy smiles, a thin, so thin! starving artist. He would walk us home, and feel so bad about himself he would sneak into peoples' front yards and climb into their dustbins.

One day he disappeared, never knew where he went.

*********************

Influence of erotic art, late 70s ....

Mainly Leonard Cohen lyrics. Take This Longing ...s'cuse me while I faint ... this wounded, yet hopeful lover in a frock coat could never live up to that, but Cohen understood the suffering .. ah yes yes

And other song lyrics, other bands. All those vinyl albums ....Thankyou Gods of Art for music!

Can't remember the films. ....(should have known Dmitri and Elektra at this time, bet you they knew all the films heheh hmm)

exit pursued by a mouse

Well, as you know, we look at pictures of skunk races on Valentine's Day.

Here's my best Valentine's Day memory:

It was 1964. We kids had been torn from our warm, friendly childhood home to live in a 'townhouse apartment' in cold, unfriendly Chicago. We had only the neighbour kids (also from Memphis) to play with, and nowhere to go, because our apartments were situated, barrackslike, next to a major highway. The whole thing was bleak.

The only place we could actually walk to was a little strip mall next to the apartments. So the day before Valentine's Day, my mom let me (11) take my sister (9) there to buy the boxes of valentines for school.

We had two dollars, I remember, besides the money my mom gave us for the school stuff. We spend every cent of it. We bought our dad, our mom, and our baby sister some Valentine's candy with that...

And we had a great time being together. Somehow, the memory is magical.

That's a lovely story to read tonight ....

So special, and thanks, and blessed be the storytellers... in fact, I guess that's one thing that unites us all ....the one thing that we all have in common ... one of the miracles of being human ... we all have a story! ..

We always drive around and listen to Joe Ely on Valentines Day, on the car CD player ..... grrr wish I had written those lyrics, about St Valentine eating pizza every Monday night.....

Now I'm seeing a -shaped pizza...with pepperoni...

Happy Valentine's Day!

that's lovely, a heart shaped pizza. heheh. this could take off. now you're in business pal.

Dear Journal,

A reliable source in my life today described me as an Anorak. This, in Britspeek at least, means a geek or nerd who is somewhat obsessive about certain things, say trainspotting or reading indexes backwards. I certainly qualify. .

hmm

I just took delivery of my double CD of the BBC Radiophonics Workshop restrospective. The Radiophonic Workshop is of course famous for the Dr Who theme tune, but ah there are treasures indeed on this CD.

OK, so its an Anorak CD, especially if you try to write to it, like I do, heheh. I love it.

I wish I could write for the Edited Guide, I really do, but have to accept my limitations. I would write about Daphne Oram. She's my hero right now. She was one of the founders of the Radiophonics Workshop, an amazing woman in her own right, composing electronic music in the 1950s.

She left the BBC, and became the first woman to have her own recording studio, developing her own musical technique called Oramics, in 1957, which involved drawing shapes onto a tape, then turning it into music. Like, drawing music. I think. Sorta like that.

Ah Daphne, I love you.

The Anorak

I dunno why you couldn't write up this Daphne person for the Edited Guide. After all, this is my latest in PR: A87742777

Now, I *think* William Billings might have worn an anorak, if he hadn't lived in the 18th Century. Of course, he probably wouldn't have been able to afford one. But then, maybe somebody would have helped him get on at the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

I think, if William Billings had lived in our day, he wouldn't have written for the BBC. I don't know what he would have thought about techno music (although he encouraged people to use cellos in church...) But I can imagine him teaming up with Tebelek and Schwartz to work on 'Godspell'.

What we need to do is to to make up imaginary conversations between people from different periods in history...