write on

Oh alright then, go on. I shouldn't. But, seeing as you suggested it...

Post that is. I should write in that birthday card for my Godson (but what to send a 7 year old? And do I want to stay on present giving terms to all 700 of my younger cousins? And anyway shouldn't I call?), should finish that wee dram of typing for work (he he almost wrote 'wee drab' - much more fitting). Should put away my washing. Should read one of the enticing second hand books I bought on sale at the weekend. Should brush my teeth and hop into bed and get some early zzz's. Should catch up on reading other people's blogs. Should once and for all decide on furniture for my studio and stop fart-arsing about. Should finish the zine I've started, ready to put on that friend's stall. Should write sensible lists, get a plan, get fit, get tidy, get a clue, get laid, get ready, get a life. Should have a beauty regime. Should have aspirations, preferably colour coded.

But despite all that, here I find myself again. Daydreaming out loud, making little words pressed on the screen. Singing to fruit. Shining light through the alphabet. Imagine that you can see the light shine out from the screen and that it makes paterns on your two wet eyes that mean things, and that through this black crawl we talk. Imagine that. Recollect and marvel with me that this is new and only something our ancestors have been doing for minutes, relatively speaking, in the life of humans. The writing bit I mean. The typing bit is a blink, hardly a blink. Imagine if we were all tooling around together outside, near small houses we had made, making things, collecting food, holding babies, watching clouds pass, painting wooden shields, threading beads on thread, with no strokes of dark brush to speak between us, we would have only throat and grunts, and sniff and lick and roar and bite and laugh and murmur. And smell, the silent jolt of fear or lust sent through scent. And the visual and tactile assessment of flesh, snap of leaves and wind direction and lustre of hair and the roughness of stones, to tell us things, to tell us stories full of meaning about how things work. Or maybe we would have words, some words, simple words, and songs to sing back from times before we were remembering. Sounds and rhymes, rhymes that sound like the things they were, rolling in patterns and echos, spooning through the air their like sound on like.

Now there is less texture in telling things, the writing is a smooth affair, fingers touch smooth keys and hear only the patter of fingers scuttling across imagined plains. So we squeeze places and thoughts into the cracks between words, let paradox slyly emerge, play with shades of grey as best we can with black on white.