Notes on a Restless Plain

I pick brown which is odd. It’s one of the stops on the gradient of brown which invokes i.e. shadows, or an exemplary characterisation of a bear. I don’t remember what the book is but they wear hats. Some wear coats. My sister is to the right of me which feels prescient. I am situated left of her braces, which are burgeoning thought-forms I throw colours at: forest green, auburn. It’s a classical illustration with visible pencil lines. The scene is classical: it’s light and heat from the sun, which in my memories of that garden is always hot. 

John Berryman, Dream Song 28: Snow Line: ‘I am hungry. / The sun is not hot. / It is not a good position I am in:’ therefore in memory, which is a dream (?), I’m in just the right position. I’m full, I’m sweaty, I’m comfortable. My sister is getting braces.

It was hot when I cracked my head on the auburn brick step. I think of the fissure through which the light gets in, or the dream/memory, a non-dualist approach. An imprint in blood, having dried against my skin, becomes solid. It will not flow. Has been stitched, can still see it. In the memory or dream I go into the house and my mother is crying because she’s been hit, though I know this isn’t the same day. Nor is it the day I sit to the left of a CD player watching the disc spin. Look what he did to me. It’s the spin, effectively, of my life: a carousel, a chewn, a circus. Like the memory, it’s surrounded by grey plastic. Like my sister, jukebox of my youth. She’d place her speaker on the bottom stair when mam and dad were in the kitchen and play Shut Up by the Black Eyed Peas when she was angry. Giggling.

If my sister were to get brown braces, that would be very odd. It defeats the purpose of having good teeth, or, at the very least, is restricted to an authoritarian and self-punishing mode of thinking: No Pain No Gain, etc. She’d rise from her brown metal smile with a perfect one and an a-ha! after I, her brother, had tortured her with my taste. Cos I’m all the possible smiles and know it, that’s the problem. I am affectionate control, a centrifuge.

I am also punished. For my invocations of the Devil 666, Aleister Crowley, in a game show or a corporate job. I’m disappointed but not surprised when they call me up on it and I go home to worship. Next, a checklist of my sexual performance is presented to me, along with a few messages from my boyfriend to an unknown contact which state that I am a) ‘good at thrusting,’ b) something weird and undesirable. I’m also disappointed, and I’m shocked by his verbiage.

The next day I’m backstage at a TV studio with my friends. The reveal of the set behind black curtains moves me further away from ‘life’ than the show does. I focus on my clammy hands and extend them to whoever feigns to greet me. When I’m about to have a panic attack, I play with my hair. In the recording I’m a toff, a smug academic with a disappointing quiff. For dreams I pull it out and just look at it, contented. I’m not reminded of getting old, just where I’ll fall when inevitably I do. 

Me who thrusts had heard good stompy tunes coming from the CD player on that ledge, which, eventually, would become central to my healing. By healing, I mean ‘getting over’ the fact that mam was hit and that she eventually died. And having good sex, completely clumsy and soundtracked. It’s funny, cos I can put any CD in there now and just watch it spin. Green. Van Morrison’s face blurs.

The sun sets. I still haven’t decided on a colour. Instead of going to bed, I sit against the front door in the pitch black and close my eyes, knowing that when I open them the monster will have come to teleport me. He always takes me to places that really aren’t scary, but I still can’t look down the stairs at the dark door when I walk across the landing late at night. I still can’t quite kick the story my brother told us about the ghost he saw at the foot of a staircase once, her gimmicky white lace dress. Earlier, I’d set my WWE ring on the grass and renamed all the famous superstars; one of them is now an evil doctor. I orchestrated serious violence and the event concluded with him being thrown off a plant pot and straight through a table. I’m so compromised and jittery when I sit still against a door. I can’t stop thinking about my wrongdoings.

When I write ‘where I’ll fall when inevitably I do,’ the suggestion is that I’ll fall into my own hands. I want the suggestion to be that I won’t know what to do with myself, spiritualised blob of multimedia soup. For you to know that you are always falling into your own hands and making fists: you hold them up to me laughing. I am the anti-hero of keep-yourself-together, all the dead yeast that sinks to the bottom and is stirred. My mother is light through a dense liquid and all of a sudden you see the sediment in me.

He’s here. Fuck. I close my eyes and open them and close my eyes and open them again. I’ve seen him but have completely forgotten whether or not he’s furry. I’m in my primary school before the new one got built. Totally brown, thinking about braces. On the wall, chalk listings of the people in my class and a small rectangular window at the top of the door I refuse to look through. Like something through which you pass a prisoner his food. I walk around. I can’t remember if it’s dark. I haven’t looked down yet so I don’t know I’ve forgotten my trousers. Empowering-tarot.com: ‘Not wearing pants in a dream can point to insecurity…Yet paradoxically, the same image also carries a message of liberation.’

In first year, I spill from a dream and into a life. A boy is one of the names from the wall, a stranger. I do it because I feel weirdly emboldened: my trousers are down and I’m such a good guy. He’s so stoned, he doesn’t know I’m an elsewhere happening. His kisses taste of flower. His tongue is dry. He is the product of the young me’s garden. He thanks me afterwards, and again, and again, and I’m telling him you don’t have to, meaning please stop. I have to go smoke a cigarette and wash that towel. In my embarrassment, I go sit against my front door and think about those colours. The colours of the scene: green, white, I don’t want to say brown. It’s taken too much on. Purple of Prince coming from my Marshall Stanmore II.

It’s so weird. If I keep writing into this situation I’ll always end up against the door. I have to turn around and open it, symbolising i.e. passageways, new life, but the image doesn’t render. On the left is my life, on the right are my dreams. In the centre, a mandorla, an egg shape or i.e. door. If I hadn’t shouted at Karen in the kitchen, who in the scene had a beard, perhaps mam would’ve come back through that door sooner. I wrote, ‘My mum is in a beanie, signifying illness. A sad melody playing. I ask Karen, Why did you bring her into my dreams? I’m agitated. I’m overwhelmed. She doesn’t properly respond so I scream it at her. I go to hug mam. I can’t remember actually feeling the hug. I say things like You’re here because I love you, I miss you so much.’ I’m very upset…

My sister never even got those braces. When she wailed in pain on the day mam was diagnosed, I couldn’t see her teeth. She was nothing like the archetypal à la Bacon gaping mouth. Probably for the best anyway, what with my colour palette. The beast was totally brown and furry, a bear. It looked a little like me. It was teleporting me from my home because I hated it there. I lived in far-off lands like guitar strings or something. I now live at [add my address] with three friends and I play songs on my speaker. I love my boyfriend. The final gimmick would be: but still, when I’m thinking too much, I go sit against the door and wait. But it doesn’t end like that. It ends when clarity, an angel, descends from the heavens and tries to come ‘save’ me. It ends with a sword fight. It ends with a line from the beginning like all stories do. I am the memory, the archetype, the moulding. I am brown braces that had nothing to do with my sister. I am, and always will be, the wrestler crashing through the table: formed, deformed, and reformed or whatever.