I could not find the correct order.
my cellphone took these pictures of a cloud.
Get a Free Book of Hungarian Poetry if You’re Flying Lufthansa Today Thursday, Jan 22 2009
Diary and Door Handles and General and Poetry and The Small Prince and Travel and Youtube and innocence cute, Music, Psychedelic, silly, surrealism 5:30 pm
get a book,
there’s nothing cleaner, freer or cheaper
than a perfect-bound book,
and you with your little ipod,
flicking through the pages,
as a squirrel wearing a tie
might read hungarian poetry,
as i think he might.
there’s goulash in your future,
by which i mean
many delights,
and what a shame i’m not hungarian,
what a shame you’re not on this flight.
Music: Ülök egy rózsaszínû kádban by Metro
Peter Visits The Salvador Dalí Museum in Figueres, Spain Saturday, Jan 10 2009
Art and Diary and Door Handles and General and Travel 6:50 pm
whispering “grat-zi” under my voice Thursday, Jun 12 2008
Diary and General and Travel 7:16 pm
Another Day in Diary Form, which one I could not say.
George Bush is in town, which means that in certain areas of Rome you canàt walk more the 10 centimetres without chancing upon a roadblock, like an invisible wall in a bad videogame. Tom Hanks is here too. Say hello, Tom Hanks. So the traffic is insane and the romans like the sound of horns.
Took the bus to nowhere today, its very hot espiecially if you are on a bus. Got lost “in the sticks”, as it were. Sorry, im not sending a postcard, what is it you want to hear in 11 mins worth of spontanious net cafe prose.
trying to find some feeling in my sea legs land legs, whetever legs. like tenticles of emotion. i am too tired to entertain you. there is little confot in the hare sometimes. these italians with their small dogs they let into supermarkets, The Hare wont let me stroke him. I think its considered wrong in his culture or something.
“Many things are considered wrong” I say.
It would be nice aFTER A DAY OF GETTING LOST
OKAY, CAPSLOCK TIME, IS IT. BRING IT ON, “WHERES THE BUTTON” i OFTEN ASK MYSELF, IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE A BUTTON FOR EVERYTHING.
SAID A PROTAGONIST IN A mICHELANGELO aNTONIONI PICTURE.
sIGH, SHE ALSO SAID.
Guided Visits of Faith and Art – A Swift Memo from Rome Wednesday, Jun 11 2008
Diary and General and Music and Travel 4:45 pm
Yes, another thing to go in the “Travel” category without being all abstract and metapèhorical about it.
Peace, children I,m on a strange italian keyboard. Anyway a brief account of my time, which I am still spending.
Now, Upon seeing a piece of mediocre art, say you and a compèanion are viewing a competant but workmanlike film by Ron Howard, one of you might remark “It,s okay, but its not The Sistene Chapel.”
Well, I,ve seen The Sistene Chapel, and thing about that is that it is The Sistene Chapel.
By which I mean, it can ligimately claim to be what it is.
Ron Howard and The Pope
I have seen both of these people – the latter from a distance, the formers baseball cap and beard, which is required uniform for a succesful film director.
Also, the thing about beggars ranting and giving you stern looks in another language, is that they can impart any wisdom you wish to hear. I decided he took offence at my priveleged, sickeningly modern, 21st century postmodern ways, so I gave him my mp3 player. I didnt of course.
TheMouldyPeachesSteakForChicken.mp3
TheShangriLas-Sophisticated.mp3
TMG-HereticPride.mp3
AprilMarchChickHabit.mp3
DeadorAlive-You_Spin_Me.mp3
Soundtrack – Oh Brother- DowntotheRiver.mp3
Ain’t Misremembered: A Patch of Life, In Colour Thursday, May 8 2008
Bio-giraffe-icult. and Diary and Dreams and General and Travel 10:42 pm
Today I met a gingerbread person, who foretold the end of the world. My uncle is a baker, and a realist, so while some of his gingerbreads smile, others seem very sad. The Curse of The Gingerbread People, as it is well known, is that unlike humans they are doomed to wear the same face forever. I am glad to be human.
Today, I purchased a set of second-hand toothbrushes and a book of children’s stories. I spent a lot of time on facebook, with the result that a lot of people now know too much about me. The colour of the wind is blue. I’m sure there are still jewels hanging in the sky, along with the jewellery stores that sell them.
I am still afraid of change, so there is no change there. Perhaps I miss some things and people. The echoes of laughs reverberate from the top or the bottom of a well.
I have yet to watch my favourite movie. I’m documenting the things I’m scared to lose. Except, to do this I have rehearsed a story of likely-to-be-lost things. Who knows what things I have already lost in the process? There are gaps here that might want to be filled. That is your homework. This story is useless. I hope that you like it.
1. Religion
I remember my school teacher in a fit of teacherly rage, rapping her ruler against the table…
“YOU WILL LEARN MATHMATICS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT”
I commenced crying instantly whenever things seemed to be happening louder; a habit I did not shake off for a while and one that, perhaps, did not win me many friends. Mother says of her once-fragile-little-cupcake, that I missed out on numbers because I spent a lot of time abroad, seeing – not “Doctors” exactly, but I’m making this easy for you.
Since this is not exactly my life – my life being something that has existed essentially out-of-time, conducting itself in the manner of an unruly shopping trolley – I need not bestow on you the many confusing, vague details. They were “Conductors”, not doctors. They wore white – they wore clogs. White clogs of course. The clogs offset anything intimidating.
There was the bust of an intelligent person displayed in the lobby, an old fashioned kind of elevator, and one of the other parents – who was not my mother – had green hair. I bathe in sage, as my mother is advised.
I sent my mother searching this new terrain for the exact kind of cocoa – or tea – we all drank at the Institute. The children needed a break from being pressed against wooden things. This was new and revolutionary and my mother trusted it.
Soldiers marched in the square apparently, and it was colourful.
The kind women gave me a storybook about Ferdinand the Bull, who refuses to fight and would rather smell the flowers. These are the women I remember the least, but I remember the story.
The Institute’s rigorous regime, which apparently worked a few miracles of evolution, did not afford us much spare time. I spent a lot of it at the puppet theatre, and my mother buys me toys from the Popeye Shop which has a neon sign animating the smoke of Popeye’s pipe. At home, I once jammed a big red candle into the VCR, fully expecting to see a glorious lit church candle ablaze on screen. I have always been interested in animation, and still find watching cartoons to be a semi-religious experience. I was a spoilt child.
At home, a giant wooden ladder occupied an entire wall of our living room.
I had brought a lot of sights and sounds back with me, as well as ludicrous exercises, and “splints” like drainpipes to strap to ensure my feet were positioned right, and not experimentally. We went back and forth many times. At home, my brother had freckles and “bum-bags” were in fashion.
To be good at different words. Was I ever? I wish I could be. I had the songs given to me on counterfeit cassettes from a shop near the market, where they also sold bread – excellent bread, and cakes, better than you have ever tasted. I am now a great believer in bread.
If time must progress let it move slowly, through thick layers of chocolate.
In the evenings, I would put new labels on the covers of books, with my own titles. I had a wooden xylophone.
I dreamt about a little girl at the Institute who had perfect blonde hair and a perfect, palsy-ed smile of innocence, who fell and I could not stop her from falling, and the wooden things falling on top of her.
This is not a dream for your text books.
I was convinced that Ennio Morricone’s theme to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was sung, in part, by swans. I described it as “the song with the swans in”. Nevermind.
My mum made friends with another mother who was not my mother. This one was welsh and a thick, unmistakable accent of perfume followed her. She wore furs and was differently soft. So there were three soft and pleasant people together; the third was her daughter who again was very Welsh and liked dolls. So my mum bought her lots of dolls – sorry, babies – complicated babies that rode bicycles. I was jealous. Her daughter grinded her teeth a lot. Eventually it became a sweet sound, coming from a sweet person. Nevertheless, my mother urged me to not to imitate her. There were a lot of mothers here.
I need someone to get me out of hilarious and unlikely scrapes. Fortunately, I have been blessed with a loving family, and they are constantly blessing me. We need a brick-built semi to contain all this light. Straw would not do, and neither would a mansion. I am okay here, thank you, although a mansion would be nice. Can I have a mansion, without clouds and all this light? There are very few curtains in this house.
In my little school in England we are learning about the Victorians; specifically Victorian children and all the dreadful things that happened to them. The cruelty of history is novel and comforting. I’m threatened with the mines if I say the slightest thing. I am a Victorian boy – I have a stick and a hoop and with this I am satisfied. But of course I’m not and my pretend games now have a serious aim – I must escape history, if it ever comes my way.
I share a bedroom with my brother, and as time goes on my yearning for a space of my own intensifies. In one of my nicest dreams I find myself in a prison cell which is flooded by yellow light, and through the bars of a single window I can catch a piece of moon.
Ain’t Misremembered: A Patch of Life, In Colour is available in some shops but not the kind you frequent. It doesn’t really even exist here, if you look closely enough. The ISBN number begins with 4. That, I believe, is what they call “The Rule of Four”. If you want a copy, use a photocopier, consult The Nurse, or do me curious sexual favours atop an apple cart.
aus Berlin Wednesday, Nov 21 2007
Diary and General and Travel 8:06 pm
“There are no Walls between this World and the Next”, said The Hare.
“Regrettably, there may be barbed wire…”
Sympathy for the Holiday-Maker Saturday, Nov 17 2007
General and Poetry and Travel aeroplane, airplane, environment 3:59 pm
Tokens of past holidays
by my bedside.
I am on the aeroplanes
that shake the roof tiles loose.
I’ve been cruel to all my worry dolls,
and the cryptographer of my diaries.
so here’s the only plan I have:
I’ll leave my breakfast
on the bookshelf.
I’ll pack my dreams,
and the remains of my parents.
I’ll fill up on everyone else’s fresh air
this morning.
I’ll flee the scene of the crime
until there is none
and become a flea:
I’ll make the earth sick.
“Flanked by Angels and Peacocks” – Peter and The Hare’s Swift Memo From Ireland. Sunday, Jun 17 2007
Diary and General and Travel and Writing 2:55 pm
Hello. When I woke up on the first day I all i knew was my name is Peter and I like Coffee. I took a leaflet from a protester soon to be escorted off the premises by airport po-lice. The world is getting worse and I wasn’t helping it. I’m used to having serveral crimes under my belt, thanks to the Hare. Hugging a piller in an an airport louynge i began to feel better about myself. Airports are oddly purifing – they have no right to be of course, all that dirty air. But planes are so beautiful.
I’m reading phillip pullman’s Northern Lights. I’m not using capitals where I should. Ireland is nice, the Book of Kells is psychedellic, the Hare is still fond of his handywork, and walked around Trinity College with a Wildean Smugness. In the long room, which is a huge library with ancient books piled high to the ceiling, The Hare proudly updated me on which texts he wrote and/supervised. The main library is closed today, I shall return tomorrow to study.
I trust you know youyr way around Wikipedia, you may have to find some bones to flesh this out.
The Bee and Bee, with whom were were to stay, had exactly the same names as another pair of Bees, offering beds for lodging several miles yonder- that-a-way.
A kindly stranger pittied us and drove us there, and there were many cars, horses and jams and the road so it was very late and silly when we turned up at the Bee’s door.
Nothing mucjh has happened yet, and might not…that might be the only peep you hear from me here. I hope it shall sate you, like a thimble of honey.
“Huzzah” to you all, to-be-sure-to-be-sure, Leprechauns and their henchmen, to you all.
Farewell.
Peaceable Hare Thursday, Jun 14 2007
Diary and General and Overheard Conversations and Travel and Writing 1:20 pm
A vaguely transcribed telephone conversation, taking place as we all speak and/or listen or neither or both, translated back and forth across several languages and dimensions
PETER: Hello? Hare? Where art thou, my Brother?
HARE: Hey, I’m kicking back with Maggie, we’re in a field watching a pastel-coloured sunrise of our own design, there’s an autumnal leaf in mid-air that doesn’t intend to fall, a spider is embroidering patterns on it.
PETER: Oh right…could you get back here? because you are kinda my imaginary friend
HARE: You bore me sometimes!
PETER: You bore me sometimes! Sometimes you’re just a pretty cool name for a blog
HARE: Your one-horse town, your one horse mind. You never update! what am i supposed to do?
PETER: I dunno, anticipation is underrated. I have a selection of magazines in the waiting room. You can catch a disease while your at it.
HARE: You think me a fool, just like the world is a fool. Say an honest thing.
PETER: I am not myself today.
HARE: …
PETER: You see it is all honest.
HARE: Hmph…In any case I don’t think the deconstruction should start yet.
PETER: Before we build anything, you mean?
HARE: Ach, conniving sod, you have me over a barrel, tipping a cow!
PETER: You’ll come back, then?
HARE: Lordy, no. Not on your whiskers. Why don’t you come here?
PETER: Oh Hare, you are always the dominant one. You have a deal, of sorts.
HARE: I have to go, boy. Maggie is gouging out a large melon with Rita, it’s hot now we have the sun in our room, there’s cherry bakewells, baskets atop our heads, and we’re going to set the controls for the Heart of Something!
PETER: That *does* sound fun. I’ll be there in 5.
