Friday 26 November 2010

Work

In the morning, there's futile work.

"Work isn't noble by default" my babka says.

She spits on the pan to see if it's hot, or hot enough. I watch her saliva as it splutters, cooks, vanishes.

"Most work is shit"

We move this pile of rocks from one place to another. Both places seem arbitrary.

"It's a rockery" says the probation worker.

Nobody responds.

" - For the children?" her voice rising, exasperated.

The children are dying. Would I want to die here? Does the presence, now, of a begrudgingly assembled rockery make this prospect seem more, or less appealing?

Yesterday we pulled stuff from the river, a section of the river earmarked as a future nature reserve. The boy next to me talks too much. He's worried about prison. (I don't remember his name) He's worried about prison because you can't update your Facebook page from there. Other people might take advantage of your absence.

"I don't really use it" I say, checking inside a decomposing leather glove for the remains of a hand. He pulls some face at me.

"Cunt" I say, quite loudly, stuffing the glove into the pocket of my waterproof trousers.

"Tourette's - sorry"

I smile at him, weakly.

9 comments:

  1. Lol. That one was, hm, different. Less dragging ennuie, almost jokular. Say, are you polish? Loved the fb/prison ref. Ever been? It actually is funny what some peeps worry about.
    Is the double distance before the last line intended? And what kids would appreciate a rockery (that is a fancy word for a rock garden, innit?), dying or not? (I'd ask what they were dying off, but then that's the sort of thing I have come to expect in your tales, so I'll rather let it stand on it's own. I begin to actually appreciate the sort of, hm, what is the word, is that frisson? these gaps of knowledge create through which dark thoughts slip like poisenous gasses from cracks in the side of a volcano.)

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  2. I kind of thought I wrote plenty of jokes - maybe they're just not funny?
    There was a sort of rock garden crammed into the dark corner of a tiny garden where I lived before I was 5. I used to piss on it, to kill the fairies someone said lived there.

    Where is yr writing huh? Oh - I literally tripped over one of yr cousins the other night. It was preoccupied eating something nameless, head under a stationary car x

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  3. I noticed that there were quite a lot of Polish folks in the Leeds area. (I love the idea of killing fairies by pissing on their garden. Can I steal that sth fictional? / I hope you didn't kick the fox; easting sth nameless under a car sounds kewl, been there, done that, lol / My writing will be back once I got this shitload of personal and job-related problems sorted out. Which may be 2morrow, or, like, never... / was there sth with your health or was that s.o. else on DC's? If so, how you?)

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  4. i lived next-ish to Leeds.yeh - piss on any fictional fairies u wanna - i've not got it trademarked. what? my health/DC's? eh?

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  5. Bradford, I know. That's why I associated your babka with the polish peeps I met in Leeds. I just picked up on the babka since I grew up only 100km from the Polish border.

    Sorry for my occasional incoherence... I'm using a keyboard that probably has been in several wars or something, and that was made in a time when ibm was still some computer standard. Most keys stick and skip, and so i'm often missing letters or whole words.

    I thought I read you saying on DC's that you'd been away bc of sth health related. But maybe that was SSP or someone else. If it was you, I just wanted to know if you are well.

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  6. thank you - I don't think so? i have some weird health shit but it didn't cause me to go anywhere, or even misinform dc to that effect. i'm ok, thank you

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  7. "We move this pile of rocks from one place to another. Both places seem arbitrary."

    I think this could be a very good metaphor about life...

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  8. at least you can get put away now without worrying about yr fb account huh? xx

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