neverhappened

London as Venice

William S. Burrough's Junky’s Christmas

IT WAS Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.

This beat benny wouldn’t pawn for a deuce, he thought.

He was in the West Nineties. A long block of brownstone rooming houses. Here and there a holy wreath in a clean black window. Danny’s senses registered everything sharp and clear, with the painful intensity of junk sickness. The light hurt his dilated eyes.

He walked past a car, darting his pale blue eyes sideways in quick appraisal. There was a package on the seat and one of the ventilator windows was unlocked. Danny walked on ten feet. No one in sight. He snapped his fingers and went through a pantomime of remembering something, and wheeled around. No one.

A bad setup, he decided. The street being empty like this, I stand out conspicuous. Gotta make it fast.

He reached for the ventilator window. A door opened behind him. Danny whipped out a rag and began polishing the car windows. He could feel the man standing behind him.

"What’re yuh doin’?"

Danny turned as if surprised. "Just thought your car windows needed polishing, mister."

The man had a frog faceand a Deep South accent. He was wearing a camel’s-hair overcoat.

"My caah don’t need polishin’ or nothing stole out of it neither."

Danny slid sideways as the man grabbed for him. "I wasn’t lookin’ to steal nothing, mister. I’m from the South too. Florida – "

"Goddammed sneakin’ thief!"

Danny walked away fast and turned a corner.

Better get out of the neighborhood. That hick is likely to call the law.

He walked fifteen blocks. Sweat ran down his body. There was an ache in his lungs. His lips drew back off his yellow teeth in a snarl of desperation.

I gotta score somehow. If I had some decent clothes…

The Bear Came Over The Mountain - Alice Munro

Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish. Her mother was Icelandic—a powerful woman with a froth of white hair and indignant far-left politics. The father was an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital but happily subservient at home, where he would listen to his wife’s strange tirades with an absent-minded smile. Fiona had her own little car and a pile of cashmere sweaters, but she wasn’t in a sorority, and her mother’s political activity was probably the reason. Not that she cared. Sororities were a joke to her, and so was politics—though she liked to play “The Four Insurgent Generals” on the phonograph, and sometimes also the “Internationale,” very loud, if there was a guest she thought she could make nervous. A curly-haired gloomy-looking foreigner was courting her—she said he was a Visigoth—and so were two or three quite respectable and uneasy young interns. She made fun of them all and of Grant as well. She would drolly repeat some of his small-town phrases. He thought maybe she was joking when she proposed to him, on a cold bright day on the beach at Port Stanley. Sand was stinging their faces and the waves delivered crashing loads of gravel at their feet.
“Do you think it would be fun—” Fiona shouted. “Do you think it would be fun if we got married?”
He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.

Read the whole short story here

Illustration by Ilana Kohn Originally published in the New Yorker

Acid Head

Ive searched the world over- well in a way-  for someone who shares a taste for type,text and image.Turns out I didnt have to look very far, Australian Andrew Macrae has a fetish for typewriters and produces these ephemera typeology's.  Writes interesting little anecdotes as well alongside on his blog which can all be viewed here

TONY TAKITANI by HARUKI MURAKAMI 村上春樹

Just finished Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami's latest book while I was coming back from Shanghai on friday.  This one is a book of short stories - one of which has been made into a movie.  Follow the Continue Reading link to read the whole short story. 

Link to trailer

Link to official website

Link to Haruki Murakami at Random House

UPDATE:  DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.  IT IS A STEAMING PILE OF POO.

David Rule

...a child’s party in small uncluttered room. The photograph has a limited colour range, dominated by cream and grey. There are eleven figures in the room and they appear to be the main subject of the image. Eight appear to be children and three adults. The camera is positioned approximately 3 feet above the floor and is angled straight ahead, tilted 4 degrees to the left. The visible area of the floor is covered with a pale cream carpet. It has a tight shallow pile and is flecked with seven shades of brown and grey which seem to be in faint bands stretching away from the camera to the far wall. The far wall appears to be painted a shade of magnolia. A small point where it joins the pale cream carpet can be seen in the centre of the photograph. There is a white skirting board which is about 3 inches high. Two inches above this is the bottom of a large pressed steel radiator. It appears to be 5 feet long and two high. It is white and glossy. 4 inches above the top of the radiator is a window of the same width but the height cannot be judged as it extends beyond the top of the photograph. The window frame appears to be darkly stained wood. A bright pink balloon rests in the centre of the windowsill. The window is split into three vertical sections. The two outer sections are able to open and have metal handles and locks. They are closed. Through the left and central sections of the window two mounds of green foliage can be seen. The majority of the window appears to be filled with a bright blank sky. It is not possible to tell if it is overcast or sunny as the sky is overexposed. To the left and right of the window frame hang pale cream curtains with a pink and green floral pattern. They fall just short of the top of the radiator. They hang straight and still. 3 feet to the left of the window the magnolia wall meets another magnolia wall at a 90 degree corner. In the corner, largely obscured by foreground objects, stands a mid-sized houseplant. Two dark green leaves are visible along with the base of its container. In front of the houseplant against the second wall facing outwards sits a comfortable armchair. It has four short wooden legs of similar colour to the window frame. They have square feet and decorative turning. The front two legs extend upwards to form angled arm rests. It is upholstered in material of a similar colour to the curtains but the floral pattern is denser and finer. The seat cushion appears to be loose and rests on a square edged seat base which is also upholstered and trimmed with a deep yellow fringe. A figure can be seen sitting in the comfortable armchair. It appears to be an elderly man. His left leg is concealed. He wears thin grey trousers, a pale blue collared shirt and a cream woollen jumper. He wears a wristwatch with a black strap on his left wrist. The time appears to be twenty eight minutes past two and fifty seconds. The figure wears thin framed glasses. He is short sighted and without them cannot focus further than 11 inches away. He has heavily receded grey hair. He appears to be forcing a slight smile. His left hand rests on his left thigh, his right hand drapes over the angled chair arm. He is staring at the group of figures on the floor in the centre of the room. A pigeon darts past the window. Four figures sit with their backs to the figure in the armchair. The foreground figure appears to be a young girl with long brown hair. She wears a pale brown crocheted cardigan over a thin white t-shirt and a black skirt that is hitched above her knee. She sits cross legged with her back to the camera. She holds a red balloon. Behind her a second figure appears to be a young child of indeterminable sex. It wears a white sweatshirt and has medium length brown hair. Behind the second figure a third is barely visible. It appears to be a young child of indeterminable sex and wears a red white and black tartan shirt. The figure leans forwards and holds out an orange balloon which narrows in the middle. Partially obscured by the orange balloon the fourth child appears to be a young boy with medium length straight black hair. He looks across the floor towards two other young children who are kneeling on the floor on the right side of the image, facing him. The figure in the foreground appears to be a young boy with medium length straight dark brown hair. He wears dark brown trousers and a dark brown waistcoat over a red and white checked shirt. He holds a yellow balloon in his left hand behind his back. The balloon is printed with a black and red cat and bird illustration which is upside-down. The balloon reflects two points of light indicating two further windows behind the camera. Behind the boy in the dark brown waistcoat a slightly larger figure appears to be a young boy. He wears a red, white and black checked shirt and holds an elongated pale blue balloon in the crook of his left arm. His face is obscured. He appears to have attracted the attention of nine of the other figures. He holds a paper parcel in his right hand. It is his birthday today. Two pigeons fly across the window. In the centre of the image a figure kneels facing the camera. It appears to be a woman in her late twenties. She wears tight dark denim jeans, a white t-shirt and a red and black checked shirt, tucked in at the waist. She has shoulder length brown hair. A pigeon brushes against the window glass. The head of a young toddler can be seen behind the group of four seated children. The young toddler stares across the frame to wards two figures against the back wall to the right of the radiator. One figure appears to be an adult male who kneels facing the centre of the image. He wears denim jeans and a brown and blue checked shirt. He has black curled hair. Below him stands a second young toddler who wears denim jeans and a cream, red, black and green striped sweatshirt. He appears disturbed by the sound of the...

54 page hard cover book, 25 x 20.7cm

A photographic narrative in which the addition of an explicit text not only directs and heightens the potential reading of the image, but serves to question the reliability of photography. The text remains confidently authoritative (under the pretence of a simple inventory) as its relation to the photograph gradually breaks down to describe elements beyond the image in sense, space and time before beginning to refer to the next image, breaking abruptly and starting again with a basic, ‘truthful’ description of the new photograph. As the book progresses (there are 26 photographs - a mix of found, commercial and personal) the transitions between images, along with the descriptions, become increasingly absurd and start to suggest an overall narrative (introducing reoccurring figures, objects and a fictitious timeline). Text is traditionally present to support, clarify or tame the open image; to supply the answers. Here, that support is shown to be fallible and is replaced with a mysterious narrative thread that demands a patient and sustained reading of both image and text.

Link

Will Self

One of my absolutely favourite authors is Will Self - I'm loving reading The Book Of Dave at the moment.  Picked it up on my way to Bangkok - haven't put it down since (except for once when it slipped out of my hand when I was struck by a tuk-tuk).

Will has a blog, bless him, and there I was thrilled to find 71 pictures of his writing room.  I'm guessing they must have been taken while The Book Of Dave was in progress, judging from the maps of London with topographical tide marks in red felt tip pen on them. 

And I was fascinated to discover the secret behind his method is actually not heroin, but post it notes.

Link

Sebastiaan Schlicher

Eggcups

When I was a kid, my friend’s mother used to collect eggcups. Every wall in their house was fitted with lots of narrow shelves, and each and every shelf was stuffed with eggcups: hundreds upon hundreds –if not thousands and thousands- of eggcups.

Collectors really are the cleverest people.

Just like they know they will never boil thousands of eggs for their breakfast, they know they will never be able to collect all the eggcups in the world. They will never solve the eggcup puzzle.

Collectors have uncommon sense, but hoarders have even more uncommon sense.

There is a solution to everything but not enough time for anything.
So really we should be collecting time. But who can afford it?

Time really slows down when you are bumming around.
So instead of wasting time, you are actually elongating time.

Work harder. Kill for Satan. Have a nice day.
Live properly. Sweat blood. Become superior.

Eggcup. Eggcup. Eggcup.

Tick.
Tack.
Toe.

Man is a senseless thing.
I believe in everything.

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Malota's Moleskinerie on Flickr

The Moleskinerie Photo Group on Flickr has now broken the psychological 4,375 barrier.   I fully expect an imminent explosion in the number of people doodling and posting the results there.  The illustration above is by Malota (more Malota stuff here).

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Douglas Coupland - Chain Yanker

I'm about 75% through Jpod and I have to say that the first half really yanked my chain - in a bad way.  It seems that the more books Doug writes the more he likes to hold out on the payoff.  You know it's coming, but can you wait for it?  I was about sick of the pop culture/web culture references but I was on a flight to Seouless so thought what the fuck, I'm not going to sleep anyway, I forgot the Valium, so pushed on.  It's getting close to the gold now I can tell, but not close enough to tear myself away from free flow bad wine in the lobby between 6 and 8...

If only Doug's books were as good as his sculpture.  He should be famous for that instead... but who gets famous for sculpture?

P.S. Don't get me wrong, I love Douglas Coupland's writing, he's just got to that stage where he has created so many great works that the latest ain't necessarily the best...  And when I say that his sculpture is better than his writing, I'm complementing his sculpture, not knocking his writing.

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