I am not sure if my life is a critique of death, or my death will be a critique of life. I have constructed an elaborate web of identities and tales, some overlapping of course, yet each person I met will witness one of them. It allows me immortality. Like all immoralities this comes at a price: Relationships have a lifespan, a cut off point, a severing when things seem to unravel. Of course there has to be separation as well, as two conflicting tales cannot come to collision with others meeting. Yet I will not disappear. Death clouds the memory and soon all will be forgotten; but a mystery, one that is enhanced over decades, one that riddles the very life of a person, that will be hard to forget.
A Quart to Keep from Caring
You showed me off to your friends like I was something worth being proud of. They had all heard of me from your kind words, words that I never believed. Still there was an overhanging worry for you. I had been around you many times when you were drinking. You always changed so suddenly, you stopped caring for everything, especially yourself. I couldn’t bear to see you destroy yourself and all those who cared for you.
I watched you stumble drunkenly through the cobbled streets, trying to pick a fight with anyone in your path. You were making a fool of yourself but I was still happy to be there because when you looked at me through your drooping reddened eyes I thought I saw an affection I had never seen before.When your friend went to go make drinks you pressed against me roughly and kissed me as if you had been waiting all night to do so. You whispered to me that you wish he hadn’t come back here.
You threw yourself down onto the sofa besides me and put your hands between my thighs. I kissed you in response but rolled away from under you, pointing towards your friend as I did so. He had focused his attention to playing video games in a hazy unawareness though. I didn’t want you away from me and I felt special for you to display your feelings public finally.
You told him “we” were going to bed but you’d join him again in an hour or so. I was too amazed you were choosing me over him that I didn’t notice you were choosing both as always. When we got into your bedroom you turned the light off as I started to undress. I wanted to take it slowly this time, so after we had both undressed we lay under the covers kissing each other’s necks and running our hands against one another. As we started to get hastier you pushed me on top of you and without thinking told me that you loved me. I too said it immediately back. I knew there was an element of sadness to this and I tried to rid that thought from my head. Over the last eight months we had done this. I would go to your house and watch you play video games while I would sit patiently smoking cigarettes until you finally would kiss me then quickly we would go to your room, undress and do everything we could to please one another. You always would tell me how much you loved me and how beautiful I was during the heat of the moment and I would say the same back to you and kiss you even harder. Whenever we were in bed we’d always speak of how much we cared for one another or talk of our future. Yet I knew all this ended once I left your bedroom.
Once again I woke up before you and kissed you as much as I could before this ended again. I never wanted to leave that bed because I knew it would be over until the next time.
I sat on the kitchen floor smoking and reading Dorian Gray while you slept, after a couple of hours you came into room groggy and needing to hit the bong. You sat beside me, not too close though as I learnt to keep my distance. After a few bong hits you walked into the living room and put on a game, playing it while maintaining minimal conversation. I asked you if you wanted me to leave as I always asked, but your response was always the same; that I should stay if I wasn’t busy. I didn’t know what to do during these times, the times when you wouldn’t touch me or speak to me. I wondered why you always told your friends and family how intelligent I am or beautiful I am or interesting because when it was just me and you sat together I never felt those things and I doubted you even knew me. After a few hours of this we walked to the park in town just before it would start to get cold. We walked as if there were another person between us and you were incapable of making a conversation. We sat down on the grass in the sun, slightly away from everyone else and you lit up a joint while I lit a cigarette. I pulled the petals off daisies while you lay opposite me. I knew our time together today was coming to an end and that we’d probably meet up in a week or two. Once we finished we walked back towards your house and stopped at the end of your street. I was hoping maybe you’d kiss me now, even a hug would have put me at ease, but instead you said you felt sick from being hungover and we said goodbye with no contact and no smile from you. As I went to turn away you shouted to me to not look back as you were going to be sick. I walked away from you and within a minute or two felt an overwhelming loneliness then I began to cry as the warm summer winds brushed against me. This was the normal walk home by then, numerous times I had cried walking home and then often for the next hour. I would cry because I believed you loved me yet I knew you were incapable of loving me. I knew as always that I would see you again and feel this way all over. Yet I always felt it was worth it. You were so fucked up from years of unhappy relationships that I justified why you treated me the way you did. But I never thought you didn’t love me, not even once, I couldn’t think that. Instead I just thought of you as an unobtainable being, I didn’t want to possess you, I just wanted you to want me.
Untitled
She sat on the windowsill of her fourth floor apartment smoking menthol cigarettes one after another, flicking the still burning ends down onto the street. The second and third fingers of her right hand had burns near the nails where she had carelessly let the cigarettes burn down too far. Her eyes stayed fixed on the street down below where the occasional passer-by would tread on the butts.
‘Are you ready to go?’ I enquired as softly as I could.
She tossed the seventh cigarette and it danced downwards nearly landing on the neighbour’s tabby. It hissed at the cigarette as if it were reading for a confrontation. Once it realised it was in no danger the cat sulked off down the side of the house.
‘We’ll have to leave soon.’
I didn’t expect a response from her and I didn’t receive one. Instead she picked up another cigarette, placed it between those scorched fingers, lifted it to her mouth and tried to light it. However the wind had picked up and the flame struggled to form. I was half contemplating whether to prompt her again but I thought it best to say nothing. Finally she got a light after sheltering the flame from the breeze and resumed her position. Her back was against the wall, one leg was stretched out across the windowsill and one dangled out. I had told her before that it didn’t look safe but she never listened. The wind picked up again and a few strands of her auburn hair touched the lit end and were burnt instantly. She didn’t try to push her hair away, instead she let the strands break and become stuck to the end of the cigarette. I could smell the hairs burning and it smelt like toast that had been left too long in the toaster.
‘I hate that cat’, she finally said to me. I knew she hated that cat, for years I have heard her talk about it. How it always tried to get into the apartment to rummage for food, how it would maim the blackbirds in the garden and how it would wail in the night. I always took pity on the thing, it looked so dishevelled and frail that on occasion I would let it in and feed it slices of ham.
I saw the taxi pull up to the front door and then my phone bleat out. ‘We need to go’. She crushed the cigarette against the brick and turned to me. Her face looked unlike hers; the features seemed contorted making it almost unrecognisable. Swinging her leg over she sat for a moment. Then her burnt fingers stroked her softly rounded stomach. I think that was her way of saying goodbye and that she was sorry.
Getting Into Publishing: Internships
I recently had a meeting with the Editorial Assistant of Aesthetica Magazine in York to discuss an internship at their magazine and I was luckily offered an eight week internship. As a university student I have enough free time to do an internship therefore I felt now is the perfect time to apply. The whole process was fairly straightforward as I simply emailed them asking if they did internships at their publication and then sent them an academic CV that included information relevant to publishing and the arts in general. As this is an art and culture publication I felt that having an interest in taxidermy, writing and photography would make me an ideal candidate as I am interested in a few different art forms. I will be posting weekly reviews of the internship so you can find out what kind of activities you may be doing on a publication internship.
Academic Curriculum Vitae
I recently decided to create an academic CV as I have been planning to apply for magazine internships however I had no idea where to start. Firstly I had to decide what information would be relevant for the type of internships I was applying for. As I was wanting to intern at a literary/arts publication so I decided to only include my achievements that would fall into this field. I included my personal details (such as name, email address and phone number) then bullet pointed my achievements from York St John University and King George V College as these are my two most recent places of education. In the bullet points I mentioned my scholarships, events I’ve hosted, conferences I’ve spoken at, society involvement and awards I’ve been given.
Additionally to these education achievements I also included a section for my personal achievements, as this shows that I have the initiative to made opportunities for myself in literary and artistic fields. In this personal section I mentioned my published work with website links to the work, my involvement in non-university poetry societies and this blog with a website link. Finally I had my references which are my current Creative Writing lecturer Fraser Mann and the Head Of Programme for Creative Writing Abi Curtis. I decided on these two as they told me I could use them as references and they are the two lecturers who know me best on a personal and academic level.
Creative and Critical Writing: Professor Nicholas Royle Reading Event
Last Friday (27th March) I attended the Creative and Critical Writing event at York St John. I have always admired Nicholas Royle’s fiction and academic work and this talk was a great insight into his creative process relating to his semi-autobiographical novel Quilt. This novel is so experimental in narration and filled with obscure ray references that I was dying to hear how it came into creation. The rays themselves came from Royle’s own interest in the creatures as he enthused greatly about his own fascination with them, stating that the novel is an experiment in how one can “describe their movements, their reality” and the narrators grappling with language is reflective of the “grabbling with the question of representation”.
However it is the Afterword in Quilt that perhaps explores the idea of reality fiction in a clearer manner than the novel itself. It is Royle’s brief mention of Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author that is enough to convince me that he is using Quilt as an example of how the text is inevitably an extension of the self and somewhat acts an internal discourse within the writer. Therefore the undecipherable nature of this novel comes from the fact that writing about oneself cannot come in an decipherable way. Even the title of novel itself is built up of layers that the reader may initially not see, as the term Quilt has three meanings, that of a bed cover, “to swallow” and as a “synonym in the Eighteenth Century for a manta ray”. This novel is so patched together with parts of Royle that it makes for a unique read, not only because he himself is an intriguing individual but also because he does not (like many other authors do) try to remove himself from the work.
In Flight
The sound of Mam putting together brekkie wakes me up. The frying pan clunks down upon the hob and I hear four eggs being cracked against the metal rim; then a gentle sizzle. My back aches like I slept on it funny. I pull the covers over my head and pretend I’m inside a cloud, like where Mam said Thumper lives. She said he will be eating dandelions and carrots all day long. If I lived in a cloud I would eat Wagon Wheels and Tunnock’s Teacakes for brekkie, lunch and tea. ‘Duck you’ll be late for school!’ I hear Mam shout up to me. ‘O’rate Mam I’ll be down in a sec’, I reply while pushing myself out of the cloud.
From my window I can see the marsh. Mam said I cannot play there as I’d sink into the mud and not be able to get out. Sometimes Tommy sneaks out the backdoor and goes out onto the marsh with his mates. I watch them from my window, tapping the glass to get their attention.
‘Down now!’ I put on my freshly washed uniform and put my books in the satchel Dad got me. Mam says I’m going to miss the bus so I have to scoff down my scrambled eggs, which makes me feel sick. I hate getting the school bus. Jim Doherty always teases me and kicks the back of my seat. Today when Jim kicks my seat my back stings. I put my hand under my shirt to feel where it hurts and I feel a graze near the top of my back that spreads right across. I don’t know how I got it but Mam says I’m clumsy, always full of cuts and bruises. When I pull my hand out from under my shirt I notice a little blood under my fingernails. I suck on each finger trying to clean the blood away, it tastes like the lead in pencils.
Tommy once had an accident while on the marsh. He fell off a tire swing and cut his forehead on a rock. He came running to Mam and she had to take him to hospital. She said the bus driver wasn’t happy about Tommy bleedin’ all over the place. I had to wait at home though. Mam said I wouldn’t like hospitals because they’re full of hurt people.
Pillow
Geraldine was found in bed with her eyes open and mouth parted. Her hair billowed against the mattress. The pillow was on the floor. Charlie was found in bed with her eyes closed and mouth gnashed into a grimace. Her hair spilled out of a bun. The pillow was on the floor. Josie was put into confinement with her eyes drowsy and mouth chewed up. Her hair shaved short. No pillow.
Helium
The balloons had started to gravitate towards the threadbare red carpet and we were all crowded around the dining room table. The lights were flicked off and my mother came through the door baring a large chocolate cake in the shape of a caterpillar. Its segmented body was dotted with Smarties and its facial features were made of icing. Then my dozen or so friends began to sing, I could not tell who started; it was as if they all began in the same second. After three ‘hip hips’ I blew the sixteen candles out in one full puff and a chorus of hoorahs ensued. I saw my mother carefully calculating how to cut the cake into equal slices. After a few moments her face uncrumpled and she began dissecting my caterpillar. ‘Who wants the face?’ She said bouncily. ‘Me’ I shouted eagerly. I always liked the slices with the most icing and I liked the thought of eating that caterpillar’s foolish grinning face.
After ten or twenty minutes of small talk and scoffing cake the cars started to arrive. One by one my friends hugged me, wished me happy birthday and thanked my mother. It was just after 11 p.m. when the last girl, Catherine kissed me on the cheek and darted off to her father’s car. Then after grabbing a handful of chocolate raisins and eagerly cramming them into my mouth I sat cross-legged on the floor and inspected my haul of presents more thoroughly. It included the usual things, bath bombs, in trend jewellery and nail polishes in reds, purples and blues.
Lunch with Rebecca
Sitting in the college canteen, with its off white speckled walls and scuffed linoleum I watch Rebecca suck up Ribena from the carton. Watching the sweet purple liquid being drawn up the straw then fall away when she stops drinking. She pulls out the glued down flaps and I imagine it could take off in flight. Fluttering helplessly around the room, knocking its body against the windows in a vain attempt to be free. Every day she has a carton of Ribena and two tuna mayo sandwiches cut into triangles for lunch. She starts with the Ribena then moves onto the sandwiches when she’s drank half.
‘Quit staring’, Rebecca whispers with a hint of annoyance but still in good nature. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’ My voice fails me but I’m glad. I wouldn’t know how to finish that sentence anyway. ‘I know’, she reassures me with a gleam in her eyes and a tiny smile that lasts only seconds; so brief that I’m not even sure if I saw anything. She starts tearing the crusts off her sandwiches. She’ll throw them away once she’s satisfied they have been thoroughly removed and no crust remains. ‘You know it makes me uncomfortable when you do that’, Rebecca says in a much less reassuring manner now. I turn away from her moving my hair so it partially covers my face as I do so. I force my eyes to fix upon the clock furthest from Rebecca. She must think I’m foolish; I probably look like that sulking little girl I saw in the supermarket earlier today. I hear the last sip of Ribena splutter out, she’s probably hopelessly probing the corners of the empty carton with her straw.
‘So what class do you have next?’ She must feel guilty about being so blunt. ‘Philosophy’, I say while still staring intensely at the clock. This clock is permanently the wrong time, but in different ways. Sometimes it’s too fast and other times too slow. But never the right time. After a pause and the sound of her rummaging through her bag looking, for what I presume to be cigarettes and a lighter I ask, ‘Yourself?’ Realising I made a mistake by not asking her. ‘Classics’. I know she enjoys that class.
Recently we’ve only had these brief conversations. I turn back to her and she crumples up the carton with both hands. I don’t like Ribena. In hospital I drank a carton too quickly and was sick, I had to wait another day to get discharged. I’m staring again I think.