No Vacancies

In work i sit across from someone the likes of whom i have never before encountered. Her prettiness is apparent to most, and i must say that those it is not apparent to, she makes sure that the image is burned into lobes aplenty. I do not profess to be of any great intellect, i have not made with an IQ test and i have not read the Chekov. I am not bursting with conversation pieces unless they are ham pieces ( i believe this may be a Scottish pun, apologies to the overseas readers, oh and anyone else not able to get it.)

The thing about her is that she is very beautiful. She smiles a lot and has glossier hair than black beauty. She even began to wear spectacles recently, which must have been a big stretch for her, but made her appeal to me even more. The mild geek factor creeping in.

When i look across the desk into her eyes i am amazed on many levels. They are crystalline, a pure and sparklingly clear pale blue, flecked with diamond and silver. The most amazing thing about them though is that you can see right through her eyes and into her skull. Here, one would expect to see a brain in its full flow, calculating, tinking and such, but this is not the case with her. I can see a merry-go-round, endlessly turning and if i strain, i can even hear the wheezy organ music that accompanies such a thing. Each of the horses is composed of the key factors of her life. There are four horses. The first horse is, Noodles for Lunch. The second, Fanny wax. The third, What is for tea? And finally, there occasionally crops up, a big shoe, not a horse at all.

I have been tempted on occasion to creep up and blow deeply into her ear to see if the fairground sound gets amplified through her trumpet mouth, but i fear a sexual harassment case.

the great floor experiment

Last week was a tumultuous rampage through the giddy heights of my living room floor. I decided to lay there for as long as i could just to check how quickly people would react were i dead. I do realise that I could have simply gone about my business and failed to answer the phone etc, but I just decided to take the simulation to its semi-fullest extent. I lasted a day and a half, getting up only to pee and i had a tunnocks teacake and cup of tea around 4oclock on the first day.

I failed to use this time in a productive, thoughtful way, not contemplating my place in the pecking order of the larger scale of things, nor contemplating the bounties that my future could hold were i to properly apply myself. I really just lay there and checked out the contours of my old lady carpet and nasally hoovered up the scents of several tenants, including, presumably an old lady. Tea, tea biscuit, smoke, faint tinge of alcohol. I am sure that at one point i had it bottled and a great marketing campaign all laid out, but extreme hunger and fatigue soon bludgeoned the plan into non-existence.

My place of work were non-plussed, but i had to explain that i had been unconscious for 2 days and managed to get a doctors line to back this up, despite it being a falsehood. I am now considering an alternative lifestyle as a swindling cheater type. However i don’t know if i have the intestinal fortitude for such an act.

To get rid of the in-house malaise that had been liberally spread all over my prone body i took a walk to the local mall. When i say mall i mean shopping centre, but i am suffering from a bout of American style laziness and have shortened the words to fit into my high octane lifestyle. The weekday at the shopping centre does not provide the claustrophobic hell of the weekend, but it serves to display the wastrels of our time. I saw so many slack jawed people walking towards me that I was convinced that i was about to happen upon something that would stun me into awe. I was disappointed.

To take a break from it all i headed for the nearest public toilets. I sat on the seat, safely locked into the disinfected shite smelling cubicle and felt a little safer. I noticed that the toilet roll dispenser was manufactured by TORK. I wondered if this was Peter Tork the ex-monkey. I like the idea of him being forced to make jaunty pop music, making millions and then putting his time and effort into sanitation while davy jones ploughed on trying to accelerate his acting career with stints on Boy Meets World and My 2 Dads.

I left, disgruntled and wishing that I could lay on my floor once again.

Striving for perfection

1486. Not so bad. Probably something important and historical happened that year. but also my bus didnt come for a while.

i spent a long time peering at the wall. discerning the differing shapes held within the rather rough looking plaster job that had been slapped on years before. This had been combined with layer upon layer of hastily papped on paint to combine a virtual vertical plain, where spiders and little flys can play at africa.

bored with this eventually i went back onto the age old problem of trying to create the perfect ham sandwich. it not only has to be fulfilling and tasty but also has to fit into a certain budgetary constiction to make it worth the while. i have recently been opting for the doubled slices round the edges of the bread with a solo slice in the middle (i am of course talking about wafer thin here) then filling the minor depression in the middle with salads to give the impression of wholesomeness. last night i opted for slap dashery an mounded handfulls on, without care, skewing the slimy pink disks willy nilly and roughly grabbing salad and throwing it at the half constructed piece. did it taste better?

did it fuck.

dark bookshops of dank and dingyness

Friday night the count was 3748. I kid you not. I was nearly numb with boredom. I managed to locate the bookshop, making sure that i focussed purely on the task at hand and did not deviate in any way shape of function. It was where i had looked before, of course. Such is the way of things for me, the straight path is generally the right one, but i am busy picking berries from bushes over the way. The bookshop was a dark, dank affair, full of weevily smelling tomes. There was a trust issue from the owner, as their invariably is in these places, and to be fair I was not completely sure of whether or not i trusted him or not. There is always the chance that he was one of them. It would hardly be a surprise in a place like this.

I quizzed him on the book and he said he knew of it and it would be expensive but he knew where to get a hold of a copy and that i should watch myself with it and did i know what i was doing and did i have experience in the field and on and on and i just said yes because i want the bloody book and i don’t trust the man and i don’t know what to think of all of this rubbish.

The door tinkled open and a man came in wearing a long black coat. I quickly told the attendant to do his best and I would pop in next weekend with the money and quickly made my exit. I don’t want them to know what i am up to just yet.

post modern architecture

512 last night. Icy fingered and wide eyed. I stood and looked at window within windows. Sixteen in one, which to me seems like a waste of lead to separate the window. Is it for art? Is there art in architecture? I suppose there is but that means that the parts that aren’t art are just chiecture. I keep spotting people on the buildings. The top floor of the bus is like a mobile viewing platform into the intricacies of Glaswegian chiecture. Yesterday i saw 2 cherubs reading a book, lazing about. Of course, it was valentines day, so i really expected them to be doing a little more than dicking around. Surely this was their busiest day of the year. That was like seeing santa in a Jacuzzi on xmas night.

The valentine pile did not amass for me this year. It is not something that i have come to expect anyway, but even with all the sticky mank surrounding this day, i still quite fancied the idea of getting a mystery card. Did i send any. Well i sent her one. Had to. Compelled. She will never know, but i just wanted her to know that there was someone. A whispy admirer, all smoke and mirror, but no magic.

The weekend looms upon me. I am going to get back to my booksearch. I have reinforced my knowledge and with glad heart i shall triumph. Accumulated bus numbers drowned in wine. Such is the joy of Friday night

mountain jesus

Yesterday, in light of all that is going on behind the scenes, I decided to take a day off from the workplace and the world of the bus. I headed up to wander in the hills of Glen Shee. There, i decided, was somewhere that i could let all of the mental badness seep from my head. I sat on a big boulder and watched the hills burn around me and i looked at the palm of my hand and thought of stigmata and thought about jesus for a bit. That crucifix must have hurt like fuck. I only dropped a clock on my hand to get the stigmata effect.

It is a corny thing, but i started to think about whether people that have been blind from birth could dream. I managed to pass a couple of hours thinking about this in a sort of goose in the bottle, type meditative way. It seems that trance states are this week’s must have survival tool.

I stood up later and decided that my mental clearout had been a success and that it was a worthwhile trip. I wandered down, looking around and appreciating my place in the world. One misstep and i am on my back, slipped on a wet rock and i swear, a big massive crow landed in front of me and laughed. It didn’t land in front of me and caw. It laughed. A deep throaty human laugh.

I mean. Just one day would be nice. My head was like a cabbage before i even got off the mountain.

Dane Pong

The bus was an amazing cacophony of love/hate/want/desire/power/shoppers last night. Not only were there opposing forces of telephone based music, battling it out for supremacy but also a group of Danish table tennis players on their way back from a day out in the big smoke. It was all a bit much for my delicate senses, especially with all that has been going on recently.

The two telephones popped out their varied blends of youth music, which incidentally i find to be sub-standard despite not being a fan of the eagles or led zep. It was like a giant game of musical ping pong with the danes, ironically, as the net. As tensions in the match rose to fever pitch, the bus stopped and one competitor got off. It was anticlimatic, but proportionately so.

The danes whittered whooped and chirped in their strange alien language. They slapped each others shoulders and drew Danish penises on the condensated bus windows. They had that which can only be felt by a teenager on a trip away from parental fingers and the prying eye of power. To escape both them and the music i had to enter a trance which can only be obtained when one truly understands the zen of the bus. I say zen, but could alternatively use the word, pork, for such a thing. I watch the condensation group and form into droplets, then rivulets and then fall into the pool of Amonto, just by my resting elbow. It is amazing just how quickly i am home after entering this state.

numbers

are numbers important? are all numbers important or is it just some? Last night I pondered this while waiting for the bus. I decided that if i added up all the numbers of the busses that came while i waited for the one to take me away, that eventually the numbers would, over time, spell out some meaning for me. last night was 124. my bus came after two number 62s. if it is possible to find meaning in a code written through the bible or in some nonsense to do with paintings, then i feel that my lifes meaning might be found in this way. what treasures will tonights journey hold?

i walked past the dark forrest that runs wild, up the hill on my way home from the busstop. i never lived here in my youth. i never ran through this forrest or did the speeder bike run through it on my bmx. therefore i dont trust it. it is always dark and foreboding. obviously there are birds exiting and entering it and that fills me with mild dread too. it means that there is something happening in there. something alive.

dance monkey dance

The weekend flowed through me like a river of angular time, jaunty and occasionally fun, but with a lingering aftertaste of frustration. Friday i managed to eke myself into the crowd of post work revellers, and went for a solitary pint of lager with them to make them aware that there is a human element to me, that i am not purely made of shadow. She was there as well, but not near me, and to be fair I am unaware of whether she even noticed me there. Perhaps i am more made of shadow than i realise. A floating pint in a wispy hand.

The bus provided clammy breathing space and time to wander into my inner mind to ponder situations that may have arisen should i have stayed in the pub. The group listening to one of my tales and cachinnating to a standstill. Her brushing past me with a smile. The walk from dark busstop to home includes a walk through a dark alley. That night i trotted along and the solitary lamp that lights my way blinked out of existence. It was a split second decision, but i quickly started to dance. I scuffed my feet against the shallow puddles as if running on the spot and pumped my arms like rowing an awkward boat. When the light blinked back on, I ceased to do this. Feeling like i had cheated the world i carried on, only to see a middle boy sitting on a swing watching me. Was he one? Probably. The rest of my journey was staring at the pavement

I tried to find the bookshop twice at the weekend. Both times i got distracted by birds. I used to find them amazing before i understood how they work. Now i find them fascinating. I realise the shop does not yet want to be found. I don’t know who the birds work for, perhaps for the shop.

Small World

i was on the bus last night, making the pilgramige from the place of work to the place where i lay my head. the cold nights combined with the heaving mass inside the bus frequently causes the windows to condensate. as i sat near the back of the top floor, something which is traditionally the spot for bad types, but to where the forces that control me always lead me, i stared in a haze at the two front windows. the condensation formed and as it did it left the greasy finger markings of the bus' previous travellers. usually this would spell out someones name, or a 'fuck the ruggy polis' type message, but last night it said 'puerco gordo' i have only visited spain in a dream, but for some reason i am more than aware that this means 'Gordon is a pig'



strange that on a bus travelling through the outer reaches of the scruffy suburbs of glasgow that this should appear scrawled in finger cheese across a bus window.



the world is getting smaller. the world is a box. one that previously contained shoes. probably trainers.



i shall ponder this further on todays adventure to the book shop