Κατηγορία: Fiction

Jonathan Pinnock, Room 31

24/07/2013


August 12th

• Dispose of nameplate on door.
• Prepare and fit new nameplate. DOUBLECHECK SPELLING.

August 14th

• Hang pictures. Choose from selection provided by next of kin. IF IN DOUBT, CHECK WHETHER PORTRAIT OR LANDSCAPE FIRST.
• Install and tune television.
• Configure television to client’s specification.

August 21st

• Replace two stained carpet tiles next to window.
• Relocate bolts on exterior of door.

August 24th

• Establish whether or not television can be repaired.
• Replace three stained carpet tiles under television.

August 26th

• Remove shards of glass from carpet.
• Dispose of broken picture.
• Take down remaining pictures and put in safekeeping.

August 27th

• Fill hole in wall.
• Repaint over filler.
• Replace carpet with linoleum.
• Secure chair to floor.

August 28th

• Secure bed to floor.
• Remove all other furniture.

August 29th

• Replace broken pane of glass in window.
• Replace bent security bars.

August 30th

• Clean bloodstains off wall.
• Repaint.

September 2nd

• Paint over slogans daubed on wall.
• Replace bent security bars.
• Replace gouged section of linoleum.
• Re-secure chair to floor.
• Fill hole in ceiling.
• Repaint over filler.
• Clean excrement from window.

September 3rd

• Dispose of burnt mattress.
• Repaint throughout.
• Dispose of nameplate on door.

*
©Jonathan Pinnock
Photo Alden Jewell -Creative Commons

Bio

Jonathan Pinnock has had over a hundred stories and poems published in places both illustrious and downright insalubrious. He has also won a few prizes and has had work broadcast on the BBC. His debut novel «Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens» was published by Proxima Books in September 2011, and his Scott Prize-winning debut collection of short stories, «Dot Dash», was published by Salt in November 2012. He blogs at www.jonathanpinnock.com and he tweets as @jonpinnock

Antonia-Belica Kubareli, I used to have a name

26/06/2013
[English Wednesdays]
 
5.62 […] The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (*)
Have you not known? Emanaevahotdesui.Have you not heard? Emanaevahotdesui. Have you not been told? Emanaevahotdesui.Who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, who holds the foundations of the earth, who sits above the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, who opens the chambers of the Sun? Nobody. Not one missing. No one present. Souls on sale.
    Fill the void with indescribability. Voidable void. Unavoidable void. Void. Hug me voidly. Hug me unavoidably. Hug. Me. Emanaevahotdesui. Me. I. Need a hugeous hug. Huge. I. Used. To. Have. A. Name.
    Pull the plug on psyche, unscrew all screws: Emanaevahotdesui. Must go on, must persist, must change. Must. How? Somehow. Now. Emanaevahotdesui. Fragmented syllables carried by the Aegean winds, wisps of ‘s’agapao’, ‘psyche mou’, colourful laughter. Go on. Persist. Change. Always. All ways. All the way. A way. No way. Now way. Own way. Long way. Away. In a way: Emanaevahotdesui. Since I miss you so much, why don’t I dream of you? A mind full of ghosts. You. My beloveds. My lost. My loss. At a loss.
    Family of psychidae. Psyche casta. Taleporia tubulosa. Taleporia means ordeal. Cast the die Emanaevahotdesui. A caterpillar caters for pillars? Emanaevahotdesui: Call my name. Call me names. Call in dreams. Call in any time. Any time. No time. On time. Timelessly. Call. In. Out. Names. Of. Missing. Missed. No name. No use. No more. No. On. Yes. On and on. New lease on life. Re-lease. Lifeless. Speechless. Emotionless. Regardless. Go on. And on. No. Yes.
1-This is not the end – Your words are not my words.
2-This is not the end – My words are not your words.
3-This is not the end – Your words are your world.
4-This is not the end – My words are my world.
5-This is not the end – Your world is not mine.
6-This is not the end – My world is not yours.
7-This is not the end – “I am a word in a foreign language.” Too.

 

   This cannot be the end. Which end? Definitely not. No end. Of-No-Word-Of-No World-Of-No END …
Your life is being diverted. Please, don’t Give Up unless you hear the busy tone. Don’t. Up and upper and uppermost – Give. Up to no end now get a name to own to put on.
Iusedtohaveaname: Emanaevahotdesui…

(*) Job 9:9 “[…] who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades[…]”
Isaiah 40:21-31 “[…]who holds the foundations of the earth, who sits above the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, who opens the chambers of[…]” 
“I am a word in a foreign language”: A line from Margaret Atwood’s poem: Disembarking at Quebec.

*
©Antonia-Belica Kubareli
Photo: John Kay, Twelve advocates who plead with wigs on (Late 18th – early 19th century)

Sean Brijbasi, My Collection of Large Nurses

26/06/2013
[English Wednesdays]


A pre-publication of Sean Brijbasi’s book “ the dictionary of coincidences volume I (hi)s{e}an?”

***
An elephant is large but not compared to the universe. So when I say I have a collection of large nurses I mean large compared to a stick of dynamite. A small nurse is good but a nurse larger than a stick of dynamite is also good.
     Harald, my first large nurse, specialized in nutrition. He tried to cure me of eating food with my hands. While this had societal benefits I didn’t feel that it benefited me in any way. I still continued to eat food with my hands when it suited me. Harald really wasn’t of any use to me but I found that I couldn’t part with him.
It wasn’t that I had become emotionally attached to him; it was just that the thought of letting him go overwhelmed me with the feeling that to let him go would trigger some existential crisis that presaged the start of my ontological unraveling. So I kept him.
     The second nurse I collected (Philomena) was larger than Harald but she was very light on her feet. I could hardly hear her around the house, which pleased me. She prescribed dill weed to me for my bouts of breath-shortness. We also watched films together while Harald studied his music. Philomena’s favorite film was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, although we watched the occasional sports film from time to time. She didn’t mind crying and sometimes bawled effusively at the slightest perceived sadness. But she never laughed even when I used my greatest jokes on her.
     I continued collecting large nurses—sometimes two at a time—whenever and wherever I could find them. I had a large nurse in my collection who was an expert gardener (fresher dill weed). I had another large nurse who could spackle like a born handyman (useful but ultimately uninspiring).
    It wasn’t until I found Maria that my craving for large nurses ended. Maria was the 23rd large nurse I had collected—the large nurse that was the pinnacle of large nurses. The sui generis, the Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, the Queen Regent…

My collection of large nurses can walk single file between the spaces of parked cars. 

    Maria was a pediatric nurse—meaning she nursed small children. She wasn’t sure what to do about me as I wasn’t a small child so instead of nursing me she read to me before I fell asleep. After the second night of her reading to me I realized that what I had really been looking for while I was collecting large nurses was a dictionary. I asked Maria if she had a dictionary that she could read to me (she didn’t). Or if she knew someone who had a dictionary that she could read to me (again she didn’t). She listed the alphabet out for me randomly instead and advised me to doodle words that correlated to each letter. That was her prescription? I asked for a diagnosis (things had started to proceed quickly) and she diagnosed inertia.

 

    Should I doodle inertia? Was that her way of dialectically medicating me? But I didn’t doodle inertia.  Instead I doodled industrial-machinery. I asked her if this was her doing but she said that I alone was responsible for my response to inertia and for the first time in months I didn’t think about watching sports films and/or Philomena.

    I went on a doodle frenzy. I doodled ableberry. Zebra-horse. Chromosome. Hide-you-place. I was ebullient (whatever that means). Burble. Jespertine. I was all powerful (I was overcome by a feeling of power). I foreheard the country foghorn before the deep muuuuuur came and emptied all thought from my brain.

    When the foghorn waned my thoughts came back to me and I asked Maria to record my words exactly as I said them to her in some manner that she was good at. She was good at italics.
    “I’m a jingle writer…”

*
© Sean Brijbasi
Photo: 19th cent. royalty free – Rectified by Staxtes.com

bio
graphy

Discarded moments. Unfinished gestures. Lived [not lived] in London. Resident of Sweden [no more]. Lives in Washington DC [near]. In East Berlin before the wall fell. In Russia before glasnost. Jazz in Copenhagen. Switchblade in Paris. Lost in Helsinki. Bar fight in Auckland. Awake for 3 straight days in Reykjavik. Bored in Brussels. Green light in Amsterdam. Red light in Hamburg. And more…