Two Hundred & Thirty-Three Questions
An Uncertainty Quilt
Questions from my journal. Feel free to answer.
(For the purposes of this exercise, any sentence containing a question mark counts as a question.)
Amn’t I a magician?
An Icelandic jumper(?)
We’re at the point where temporarily renouncing tech use makes you some kind of ultra-male?
One thinks— if that were me— how would my messages & proclivities track?
This morning I heard a bird— was it a bird above or a rat below?
Neighbourcat?
Imagine giving every time, without discernment?
Campbell? Callum? Hamish, I think?
Earrings with a needle, for piercing your own (baby’s?) ears
Like when did I paint myself into the corner?
I’m going to the hunting show bleeding— what if they smell the blood?
Or is it money? Or are they the same thing?
‘I’d wake up in 20 years thinking, I was doing something, what was it?’
The outside voice, ya know?
She said nothing can take that away, though?
How would it feel to be them?
The monolith of Western civilisation sinking like a ship & can we stop making room & excuses for dudes now?1
is the 20th century guitar solo of
nietzsche & warhol’s heroes over?2can we all please invent a continuity?3
perhaps i can offer some suggestion
hidden in the icelander’s relationship with
nature . . . would that interest you?4Amy: “Super thanks for asking how are you?”5
It’s been months, maybe six?
Is it like mine, drawing?
Where do you stand, what do you stand on?
According to NZ Birds Online, it’s coming up to courting season, July? August? for some four months: & when they’re finished they moult their tail feathers
Why should they allow you to flip them over & peck their underbelly, their soft self?
What are the methods by which we test information?
What are the methods by which we assess the effectiveness of those methods?6
How do we see others?
Why are they that way?
Do you really think everyone on the other side is stupid?
Do you really think that if they knew more they would flip to your point of view in all particulars?
If what you’re trying to share is a leftist collectivism, why are you up on that high horse?
Then again, why should we love those who hate us?
Christianity provides a framework of universal love?
(Why are all the pagan environmentalists turning to Jesus?)
Materiality, maybe?
Carrington event 18(5/6)9?
Is age fortune or misfortune?
“Any fights?” I said. “You know, witch fights?”
She shook my hand & told me her name was Alice, & she wasn’t that sloshed, she came to these things to rub shoulders because she already had most of her bibliography, is that what you call it?
What is the photo for?
Does it happen because I evolve into new forms or just because I’m a lazy friend?
I wanted to get back to my stuff, my stall, but I was barefoot & the ground was covered in broken glass now, tiny needles of it that stuck in my fingers when I touched the cobbles with my hand— why the fuck didn’t I wear my boots?
What was I thinking coming out without any footwear at all?
It’s been such a long time— how long?
“What sort of car was it?” I asked.
AS I ROVED OUT (B?)
Kev was on his phone and I asked what he was doing, he said he was texting all the men he knew, why all the men?7
Maybe it would be alright?
Had it fallen on its head?
Poor to terrible sleeps for three nights, four?
“How are you doing?”
He told me his name was Omega, & he had been switching off TVs with his electromagnetic(?) torch(?)
You’ll recut them & put them in water?
The vividness of this dream— the warm wilting stems in my hand— & the scent, subtle & sweet— who knew dreams were scented?
Ah it wasn’t that bad— she just asked “Is this your bitch?”
Not that trouble— the other thing— what other thing?
Like what?
About me?
Who?
Me: “The vibe?”
Imagine if he was still on the other island, with the state of the ferries?
On the other hand, do I want to live in this hillbilly town?
“Can I give you a hug?”
His little crest was up, his chips louder than one would expect to issue from such a small being— “Who are you showing off for?”
Halfway through the previous sentence a woman on the bus spoke to me— “Excuse me— are you journalling?”
Does a poor person have a right to relationship with place?
Yet who decides how much a place costs?
“Primordial sludge?” I suggest.
Money is blood? Money is thicker than… love?
Is me team a-ploughing, as I was used to drive?8
WHOSE CITY IS IT, ANYWAY?
In the early hours I was woken by the sound of wings, what sounded like a large insect (I thought a moth likelier than a beetle) fluttering against something, a wall or window? the wall?
[Yokel accent] “Arlright Gearge?” [makes milking motions]
You come from these people?9
In the future what?10
I said Did they backpay you?
Then for some reason he heard us talking about Substack— his eyes lit up & he started grilling me, “You have Substack?”
I said what Kev said about long grey hair being a hippie signifier, & he said “What’s beyond hippie?”
WHAT IF AN ESSAY & A POEM HAD A BABY?
$200?
So much of society’s structure of mutual oppression derives from people’s personal oppression: I can’t, so why should you be allowed to?
Maybe a spoodle & a labradoodle?
What a phrase that is, is it homo lupus hominem?11
Looking at NZ Geo photos moves me, listening to songs on Radio Garden moves me, under the skin of numb, a swamp of feeling— grief, is it?
Classic Anarchist problem: how to deal with rogue agents?
When power is decentralised, where does it cohere?
It’s… a win?
How long does it take to learn the map— to learn all the street names— to swallow the map?
I remember this is how most people live most of the time, the poor fools, & do they like it?
Who’d do it, who’d willingly do this hundreds, thousands of times?
Did I blow on the karanga manu in my dream?
Then seeing that orange desert sun rising, later thinking what are the odds?
Are you from Australia?
I went to talk to them, but they couldn’t understand me— their music was loud, but also possibly my accent?
He said “But you probably like the words, right?”
(Rapscallion?)
All the houses are the same, the whole street built at once (after the Blitz?)
Good morning Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?
Is the river male or female?
Me, waxing lyrical about Kent: “How could you ever leave here?”
What is Trad?
What is Trad singing?
I said we could just both stay, can she get the money back?
The city like a Wellington rock, one of those ones that fractures into triangles & squares, the hollowed out rock cities, & why do some people have so much, & some so little?
Up in the sky I saw strange things flying, fast, dark— drones? Missiles?
I’m so small & the world’s so big, what I thought was the world, my world, was a tiny corner, I knew this, I knew I didn’t know, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know, the texture & vitality of it, how could I possibly?
It was better for me not to know, you know?
You want to eat on the bed?
Watch TV?
Langabeer in costume so that only one eye is visible, playing a fossil bone like a flute— that mammoth bone?
I come to a snake-variant, a green snake in the pose of my coat-snake but more slender, against cream, a real young snake?
“After all, why shouldn’t I?” (à la Bilbo)
She wouldn’t, would she?
But what good does it do, thinking about such things?
A boy posed seated at a table with a pen in his hand as if writing— stiff card & elaborate script, & a red seal— how much?
Oh: three nuns(?)
A heavy silver bracelet with bells— (or an anklet?)
A tin train with its funnel(?) missing
He said that he should take me to the ‘White Well at Glastonbury’(?) & dip me in it
Afterwards he took me downstairs & showed me Pamela Colman Smith’s fireplace, which they had bought during lockdown & transplanted into the undercroft— it was made of maybe heavily varnished granite?
Thought of soon as done, was it a good idea?
Was that an offer?
Do you want to come back in May?
Me: “Jealous?“
Three fallow deer(?) standing by the train tracks
In the Weald now?
SKY-GAZING (was that what Amber said?)
See?
Why do Londoners move to NZ?
How do I feel here?
I woke up this morning feeling like Ugh, why do I feel bad?
Is it because of the concentration of co-dreamers, their foreignness, the plane a container of dream, a concentrator, distiller of it?
What makes a city a hole— what makes it world-renowned?
Is it possible for a city to descend the snake as well as ascend the ladder?
Utility(?)
Access(?)
I can only speak to the that phase of the ending of expansive possibility, the suspicion that the abundant days have been spent &… wasted?
What has the frivolous grasshopper got to show for her spent Summer, as the nights draw in?
What is a curlew?
How does a fox smell?
Is ‘the seaside’ anything like our beaches?
Who?
Where is my coffee pot?
A kind of dragonfly-creature it was, was it meant to signify an alien, with its blue bug-eyes?
Was it even meant to be burnt?
It was an ash, planted by the young Thomas Hardy, who wasn’t yet a poet but an [architect’s apprentice?]
More: almost two?
When people asked me the question big people ask little people (What do you want to be?)
Why on earth would I switch back to dumbphone?
What is that thing you do to pears?
SOLITUDE— IN THIS ECONOMY?!
I guess the question I’m thinking on is, who does it serve, this shutting up?
Also, I guess, is there a pathway— a non-indigenous pathway— that ends up at authority to speak?
Oh yes, I remember— who or what does your skill serve?
So say I can do convincing rhetoric, which I can, what do I deploy that in the service of?
What if I convince people of something I then change my mind about?
(Isn’t that every scenario?)
There’s some strong hesitation there, around unpacking and reordering, how do I fit that into this?
Who lived there?
I’m anxious today, because?
Most of the time when I’m writing there is a cautionary angel on my shoulder checking what I write through a lens of future fame— how would I feel if this was widely read?
By thousands of strangers?
That filtering, like what happens at the airport: in this case the people handpicked by Hamish?
Oro se do Bhaithe…??12
“Does anyone have any weed?”
Have I ever succeeded in my life, has there ever been a time when I did something & was widely acclaimed for it?
What?!
How to cope with criticism?
How to not entirely absorb what other people say?
He said he was listening to some music & was like ‘Why don’t I like this?’13
She’s an only child, so socialisation is important, do you keep her from tech?
How had I never seen it before?
“You mean… Moxham?”
(But isn’t it gone?)
Me: “Wasps?”
One thing I do notice is that the recycling of old content feels like cheating, but again, that’s just one way of looking at it: why should it languish on the Platform of the Damned?
Is that not part of why I did it?
Didn’t I want an audience?
“Did you switch it off?”
“No, how could I?”
“Oh, you reckon Jesus?!”
What was the name of the pub?
The Punchbowl & Parrot?
The boy said to me “How many times have you been to this festival?”14
“Do you know
?”Which way is West? says Jeff
“Oh man— have you seen that movie where the guy has X-ray glasses & he can see right through people— he can see who’s zombie Nazis?”
Then the sulphur-crested cockatoos, which came— when? A decade?
The effect of him on me— my effect on others(?)
How much more must it matter how you spend your time, who with?
The jewel, a sapphire (the one left over from Rosamond?)
What care these roarers for the name of King?15
“What, faster than the rest of us, you mean?”
I think?
Like what shall I make today?
“Where’d you die?”
(& maybe it’s just that, the feeling of exclusion?)
I began digging with my hand, chains, heavy gold chains— & a boy was there, have you found anything?
If the tide comes in, where will I go?
Is the platform this house?
Where do ideas live, anyway, where do they sleep at night, what pubs do they frequent, who are their friends?
Did I go mudlarking, did I find anything amazing?
What if I need to photograph something?
Wooing with words, gently, leaving space— for why?
Up here on the mountain, & when was I last here?
When was I last up so high?
Me to Sylv: “ ‘Metal heart?’ [all the way]”16
I feel like I’ve lived a year in a week, what was it Marx said?
(Was it Marx?)17
What happens when the monster is just.. gone, & the entire map of the world has been redrawn?
“A minor curse laid by an enemy?” I said.
This friend needed a drill, & Arlo said “Why don’t you buy / sell this thing?”
So Arlo bought & sold the thing & 3 hours later handed his friend the drill, “How did you do that?”18
Writing is just practising being brave, you go (I go) out beyond the borders of the known world, yet I become more fully myself, I do what feels easiest, how can it be so easy?
How can it be that the thorny path, the hard path, was a missed turning all along?
Richard was the catalyst for that— “Why haven’t you taught her to shoot?”
Richard saying his trifecta is lung, prostate, bowel(?) then saying he’s going to swap in skin, & what should he swap out, & I said prostate, right then, lung, skin, & bowel (or was it liver?)
I can’t believe I fell for that stupid story again, how many times til I learn not to side with the oppressor, til I stop believing it’s all the crazy woman’s fault?
How could I have been so dumb & blind?
In the night I dreamed / hallucinated a cup-bowl in the bedclothes, tipping; I was holding it in my hand trying to keep it from spilling— was it holding liquid or flame, or both?
“Have you seen her little zapper thingy?”
How am I?
Can we accept that truth is important? Can we truly seek it?
Which is interesting, isn’t it?
Autumn morning, last night in bed I was cold, so that I couldn’t get to sleep, first time this year (is it?)
Which came first— the chicken or the egg?
(Because meds?)
‘Is this Wizardly?’
Lately I’ve been feeling uncomfortable about the declarative tone of my recent writing. (That tone is emergent from the essay form— it only works if you say it like you believe it. Ideally the essay should be a medicine bundle large enough to hold diverse, contradictory, or evolving ideas side by side, but one does need to make statements.) I got to thinking about a counterpoint to all that certainty— how about a piece made entirely of questions? When I read Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, I liked the way that decontextualising sentences changed their meaning. Consider this, then, an uncertainty quilt.
Sharing straight journal content feels weird & naked, I think because journalling is a bit like magic: occult work, private.19 Deciding what to show & not show is a fine line (cats / bags etc). Personally, though, I find other people’s journals fascinating. David Shields’s book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto hit me like permission to take journals (& other behind-the-scenes thinking and writing) seriously.
I only have access to my last two & a bit journal volumes, so that’s where I’ve drawn these questions from. It would be interesting to repeat this exercise with my journals of a decade ago. Two decades ago, I can pretty much guarantee the questions would be far more boring— likely a lot of agonising over why stupid boys do stupid things. (Answer: who cares?)
Summarising Maggie Nelson in her interview with Björk
Björk
Also Björk
Also Björk
Update: I have always taken this as an Amyism, but Amy informs me it’s actually a quote from South Park
Because that is a kind of meta-problem
A dream
A. E. Housman
Also Ross Gay
Homo homini lupus est: Man is wolf to man
Óró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile: Hooray, you’re welcome home
“Then I realised they had no blues.”
(Shayne only likes music when people sing their blues.)
“Like… Thirty. You?”
“It’s my first time. I mean— my first festival ever!”
William Shakespeare
Sylv: “ ‘Pedal hard!’ ”
Nope, it was Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
“I sold that thing I told you to sell.”
Talking to James just now I said I was mining my journals. James felt that the metaphor of mining wasn’t quite correct— he suggested that maybe it was more like panning for gold; which would make my journals water rather than earth.
The boxes containing my journal archive are buried deep under box mountain
#73 struck my fancy, for some reason.
i think we're both in agreement that the city belongs to no one but the city. could the question be better phrased as "who belongs to the city?" no, not quite right either: do all the little cuneiform bones in my feet "belong" to me? "who is part of the city," then. we have such impoverished language in English for "feeding and being fed" by something. the baby "belongs" to the mother, in a slantwise legalistic sense, except that doesn't begin to describe the symbiotic relationship of co-nourishing. coming at it a bit high for the relationship between a person and a city, anyway, since we're less like children of our cities and more like microfauna in the gut: we're performing a function, creating our own little sub-habitat within the larger organism, and even though things would quickly grind to a halt without our microscopic striving, you'd have to squint to notice us most days—at least until things start getting rowdy. luckily, unlike our own little microscopic friends, thanks to the metaphysical lensing of Mind, we do have opportunities to make ourselves known to our city/host, in more productive ways than abject distress and burn-it-down displeasure. so we can ask the city how we are a part of it, how we can deepen our relationship, and expect to get a response. maybe. those who can expect the clearest response are probably the natives who know the city well already—both because they'll be the most likely to recognize the subtle nods of the city's auguries, the ornithomancy of park pigeons, the scrying of sidewalk puddles, etc., and because they're the most likely to be recognized. i'm sure most cities appreciate respectful visitors but any language barrier can be hard to overcome, and really, what is there to say beyond a brief exchange of pleasantries during a short stay? no need to burden a traveller with real wants and needs, a true relationship, if they're not planning to stay.
so i guess the answer is that we and the city decide together, where and how we belong, what part we fit in, once we've demonstrated a certain degree of commitment. just like any healthy romantic relationship.
this was fun! thank you for the inspiration.