Apparently "Rickety Rocket" is a 70s/80s cartoon series about four teenagers and their rickety rocket. Does anybody remember it? I don't. Because at that time I was pooing my pants, a day was a month, a month was a lifetime and the universe was the wide open park adjacent to the place where I grew up...

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Crossroads

It’s not that love is not around
In her nightgown she stands as Jeanne of Arc
Over the rubble of the city she had build deep inside
Life had torn through metal, glass and wood
Tearing it up like an angry storm chasing lost hair
And at the end
I collect scattered hopes, wishes and dreams
In company of her and the wildlife

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Love in the Days of the Blunt Pencil

Wilbur had just finished going through the weekly classified and since the kettle was boiling, he got up to make tea. There were still gaps in his tour for tomorrow and he was hoping to make amends by choosing a route through the middle class suburb of Rosemount to possibly pick up leftovers from the odd removal. He had rented the scrap metal truck about a year ago and although things could have been better he was his own boss and getting by modestly.
When he sat down at the kitchen table he noticed the slim figure quietly standing in the doorway. Wilbur was puzzled, for the person must have stood there for some time without him noticing. Looking at her he remembered seeing her passing by in the park a couple of days ago. Or could she possibly have stood next to him in the second hand bookstore downtown? Yes, he remembered briefly remembering her, like an echo of something significant that had happened long before. And then he had found this book that he might as well send his nice Emily for her birthday.
She smiled and as if she was walking right through him, a soft blanket or veil slowly flowed neck-down around his shoulders, just inside his skin.

~

The party had been going on for several hours and the speakers were spilling a mid-90s trip-hop classic over the midsummer night of North Donside Beach. Wilbur was comfortably tucked into his blanket, his face gleaming in the heat of the fire. The mood significantly lifted by various passing bottles of red wine, old friends and new acquaintances were chatting and laughing.
“What is this about mustard-vinegar dressing that makes me cringe?” Sitting next to him and pulling a face Beth Gibbons would have killed for, Alice was playfully tossing around her spinach salad in a plastic vessel. “It’s the vinegar – there’s just too much of it,” Wilbur answered, while Alice shrugged off sour times – “brrrrrh, you can feed that to the seagulls!” - “Crooooaak, croak, crrroooooak,” Wilbur replied flapping his arms up and down and prompting Alice to wittingly shove a spoonful of spinach right into his mouth – “yikes, very sweet of you, but too sour even for a gull on a beach party,” he laughed. “Just like real life,” said Alice and kissed him, “this food is something special.”

That had been the beginning of an extraordinary summer. With the last exam finished, they went on a long trip hitching and hiking across central Europe. In Switzerland, they had found shelter in a farmhouse after a long hike and torrential rains. The old lady of the house was a brilliant story teller and when the rain finally stopped early morning, they had gotten to know the full extend and drama of love, death and horror in the villages’ local history.
In Leipzig, they had made love on the rooftop of an old disused factory building – their ‘castle’, and they would look down on the tiny match-sized subjects below and invent royal decisions to be taken: “That’s Margaret. Her husband had been a former employee of the postal service, but after the reunification he had lost his job. Margaret is frustrated with him, because his mood is nauseating ever since he has been working with the employment agency – what should we do, my Queen?” “We chop his head off, my King.”
And they had found Alfred – a hungry little stray kitten crying for help in a public park in Amsterdam and after organising water, cat-food and a cardboard-box with breathing holes, they were now smuggling him back into Britain.
“I want a baby, Wilbur…” The National Express was hurrying across the pastoral scene of late summer rural England and inside sat Wilbur, painfully trying to imagine what his baby might actually look like and despite his luck at loss at the overall meaning of it all.

They had been madly in love in summer, but by winter their lives were moving at individual paces. What Alice could not stand was his stubborn self-deception. He was like this or like that, he would say, implying a hurtful “you still don’t know me, maybe I’m not good enough for you”. She knew that wasn’t true. She could see beyond individual character traits and had struggled through both the death of her baby brother Marco and her parents’ subsequent break-up: If there was one thing she knew for certain it was real love when she looked at it. It was not something she could ignore and with Wilbur it had been with her all the time – mustard-vinegar dressing and all.
“When freedom was practised in a closed circle, it faded into a dream,” Wilbur then wrote in fridge poetry. At first she took it as decorative whimsy, but the sentence had struck and stuck: Of course, he was the person he was and she loved him for it, but the hidden cruelty with which he would maim her efforts to devise a common future for the two of them hurt her. It was also rather childish, in her opinion.

Wilbur was at odds with himself. Not only was his job with a local accountancy firm meaningless and boring, but he was also struggling not to loose it. Yet, the more stress his boss would unload onto him, the less he would get done. With each apology the strings on the inside of his soul would tie into a tighter knot, impossible to untie. What was needed was a sword, to break the spell just like Alexander had done with the Gordian Knot. Wilbur wanted to quit and look for something else, but when he got home, his mind was oblivious. On top of it all, his father kept calling – “we’re going to Venice on invitation of your sister Francine and her husband Barry. You know he is a solicitor in Hampstead, don’t you? He is such a man of means and connections. Anyway, when will you get a proper job, Wilbur?” What a prison cell his life was! How could Alice honestly expect him to simply break out of this mess without any collateral damage?

One night he had a dream. Alice and he were walking up Gallowgate through stormy weather. Gusts of wind tore through their conversation, distorting phrases out of context and into absurdity. Both of them felt misunderstood and hurt by the other, yet they were trying to drive their respective point home: “You are ---- invincible ---- shit” – “When you --- falter --- each time your father calls.” They were bitterly angry with each other when Wilbur spotted what looked like a Rubik’s Cube just next to the sidewalk. It looked muddy and had obviously been thrown away by some bored kid. Yet, it looked precious, as if it could provide answers to all his questions. “Wait, I need to pick up that thing,” he shouted, but Alice startled at the monstrosity the wind had turned this phrase into and with tears in her eyes darted off into the wind. Wilbur picked up the Cube and tried to follow, but the wind got stronger and stronger, until he could hardly move forward. Having lost sight of Alice, his only hope was the cube: He instantly realised that each of its sides provided the answer to one of his personal struggles. “My life is such a mess,” he thought, “I won’t make sense of any of the other sides, but at least one of them is an image of Alice.” He knew that if he would solve at least that one side, she would come back and maybe they would be able to sort out the rest together. Frantically, he started to turn the bricks, but with each turn less and less bricks actually reminded him of Alice. Then he realised that he didn’t even know what she looked like – and woke up.

A month later, Alice moved down south. She called him from Westmoreland Service Station: “You know, Wilbur, I cannot forget you stopped loving me. Love is a precious living thing and a terrible thing to loose. It is like a plant that needs watering and sunlight, so it can grow. I have taken Alfred with me. Take care of yourself, please do. I really hope that you take care of yourself…” Soon after, Wilbur quit his job.

~

The figure was now sitting across from him. She looked neither young nor old. Her face had friendly and rather androgynous features. She wore a pastel-coloured dress gently flowing around her body and although she looked at him in a kind - yet nonchalant – way, her body generally seemed fragile enough to get bruised by everyday items such as wooden chairs, kitchen sinks or even a blunt pencil.
Wilbur searched around for dangerous objects. Indeed, this was not a place to receive a guest – he fetched a pillow and blanket and put out Turkish delight. His guest, in the meantime, smiled. Who was she? Just when he was about to ask, she spoke:
“I am Love and I’m moving in.”
Wilbur blushed. “There might not be enough room for you and I’m not sure if you can bear with me...”
“Don’t you worry about that – I’m here to stay. As long as you can remember…”
The veil gently settled over a vast expanse of land deep inside Wilbur - where he had expected crevasses and cliffs - and he smiled for the first time that day.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Treasure is everywhere

Record shops are full of treasure. Here is a great pasttime for a rainy afternoon: Find a friend with a sense of humor, go to a second hand record shop and spend ten minutes looking for the worst album cover you can find. You and your friend will most likely end up laughing your heads off. There was a time in the 60s, 70s and 80s when quirky layouters would come up with a vast range of breathtaking adsurdities...
Take a look at Slim Goodbody - can you imagine what his music may sound like? What may the "FREE full-color activity poster" look like and what on earth would it make you do? Discoveries like this can make your day, you can bottle them up for another rainy day, a shitty everyday moment of murkiness lightened up by their vivid memory.

The music video of "I Wanna Love You Tender" by Armi & Danny is another one of those peaches. Not only is the dancing choreography ridiculously awkward and the lyrics totally naft, but I think it is the grammar that adds a pinch of grandeur ("How can I be sure you're not pretender?") to a great artwork. I want Slim Goodbody and Armi & Danny to team up! I want a music industry that cherishes quirky detail and serendipidous crappiness! I want a museum for artists like Slim Goodbody and Armi & Danny!