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There are too many tomorrows, and sometimes I can feel the world turning. It turns too fast, ‘til the coloured lights merge like mad in my head, spin-cycling in to the infinity that isn’t. And never was. And never will be…
I went drinking with my Da. He kept telling me something about blood and water, making us a study in relative viscosities, but it ain’t like that… I was a river and Mammy was a saint, back in the old days, when words were their meanings, when nothing was hiding… Went drinking with my Da…
Time’s too vague, that’s the problem. Up on the site at Deep Wood you can still see where the Anarchist’s painted SMASH THE STATE BY 98… Time’s too vague… Tiocfaidh ár lá. But it never did… or if it did, we blinked and missed it. You could wish your life away. 69. 73. 81. 98… it’s all so fucking arbitrary… only in prison does time become concrete. You count the days. Blood and water, bricks and mortar. Blood and water, bricks and mortar… I ain’t held still since. Sometimes I forget what year it is. Sometimes I forget how old I am. Shall I tell you what history is, Joe? History’s the illusion that anything ever ends…
You got that? Remember that. We’re all about as immortal as each other...
‘Bout eleven I started hurting, that mean-time menstrual drag in them load-bearing long bones, that same old scraping, slow-waltz pain. Then there are too many tomorrows, and I find all this diligent endlessness fatiguing… I am so tired… I have been alive for fucking ever… Tell me about your family, Da… What’s the other half of me? Were they made of blood and gristle too? Did they all die so we might be free? More fool them then, and more fool us…
Heroism’s uselessness on an epic scale. It’s the opposite of necessary… There’s a difference between what’s necessary and what’s needed… in case you were wondering…
We’re put out, under the scaffolding. Last night I was in the womb. It’s nice there, that pre-natal state called sleep. We can never go back there. I’m sick on the pavement… When you were me, Da, was it any different? Did you feel like this? Did you read books? Did you have hands? Shanahan. Shanahan, I’m worried about you…
It isn’t that I’m falling to pieces. It’s the coalescence that marks the making of my invisibility… I’m whole and nowhere. Whole and nowhere, Joe…
Da says when you step outside, when you leave the daily accountability of common time, then when you come back there’s nobody to welcome you… Da says you don’t belong, because your time, your hours, your days are too personal, your eternity is too near the knuckle, people know this and they don’t thank you for it, for bringing it back, all raw… ‘Cause you show them there’s no past tenses. Shall I tell you what it is, Son? Everything is now…
You got that? Remember that. There is no then. Everything is now. Everything’s forever Shanahan, nothing ever happens, everything is now…
Sometimes I think I might be demented… It’s a theory, I guess. Too much traffic. I have to pick my way between cars. They are blurred continuums of colour… People on the pavement have animals for eyes... Blind in their drives, in the private tortures of their instincts, groping… chucking out time, ain’t kissing so much as being sick in each other’s mouths… ha-ha-ha the ceremony of innocence, something, something, something…
Saturated… crawl upstairs, fall down backwards. It’s gravity that’s defeated me… On Jupiter a day would last a year, but at least the force would hold me to the floor… It’s okay… Numb… dumb… dead-centre… sleeping…
Nowhere
Now here
An old joke…
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The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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Ryan’s knot
