JOURNAL - 1979 - APRIL

14 April Easter Saturday

I would we were on the dry side of the sea waiting for crackling and the silences between the rushing thunder of clouds and waves. Prisoner of the shanty town, bedroom oysters, looking to discover pearls in the hazy oblivion of sex. Out tapestried rooms fall brighteningly underdeveloped between out catchphrases. How can we talk so much nonsense. Claustrophobic digression. I seem to write in a way that excludes most people from my life. Who would dream of Graeme playing a part in all this, shuttered up in his wood-panelled room pandering to the jealousies of his lover, Philip, who wants to watch television with him. Watch television! - when we create pornographic passages for him. He walks into the room clutches me between the legs waiting for my tension to turn to laughter, and then giggles before throwing an arm around my sweetness. He relaxes into the pampers of our life, crawling into bed with the less busy of us (although he knows I will not consort with men), lavishing affection but cutting off his sex as the kettle whistles. He has no part to play in the writing, nothing essential is there. There is a ring at the door and he leaves with some cuteness. He doesn't affect our lives - my life. But what about Deva - does he affect us? He has adventures with dark strangers found and left in the night streets without names or words exchanged, just the breath of orgasm delivered spittingly. He comes to us with these tales, sometimes of Hampstead Heath, sometimes of Brighton, sometimes of violent passions, a sexual swordfight behind the bush. He comes too, like Graeme, and slips into H's bed, always desirious. As the brother of my lover, Manzi, he may affect me deeper. He weeps with her over endless predicaments, usually moulded by us and cast back in bitterness.

Crowley, the wretched fellow, takes up my time ordering ME (from the fourth and final order of death not Death) to type incessantly and fiddle interminably with the tippex. My story 'Borderlands' stumbles into view, rolling out of the debris into wasteland.

The torment of underdevelopment, overexistence, knowledge.

Is my garden covered in frost. Now come hyacinth (extravagant), crocus (temptation), daffodil (willing). I wait for the fresh mint. It will not be long now. The unpruned roses will strangle each other far too early. I love the burnt purple leaflets slowly unburning, fusing to green.

Where is this feeling? Quick, describe it before it goes. Is it hidden between the lungs, beneath the ribs, encaged, manipulated by the pumping arteries or enflared by the nervous blimps travelling hastily from retina upwards and then downwards.

Easter Monday 16 April

It is 14 days to ejection until we are finally ejected from this flat - help!!!!! World problems seemed very far away when we went to Brighton - the cheering crowds, the nannies, the uncles trundling along with polaroid cameras, contented children. I met an immensely wrinkled green woman. She was more alive than me. They said, she said, that she would either be sent to an insane asylum or locked up in an old people's home. Too many wrinkles on her face. And there were clowns who didn't paint up enough and had too little energy on their faces, and a student photographer called Phil who was able to catch an imaginary ball very well.

18 April

BETWEEN DAWN AND MORNING

It is early dawn, the light is slightly blue, the air yawning. I walk down narrow streets and see rats scamper to the sewers leaving yesterday's market mess bitten into and scattered. I see the sun roll over a wall at the horizon and come lumbering down the street towards me, demanding that I run or sing or glow. Fear strikes, for the ball, ever growing, ever more brilliant, is rolling straight for me. There is nowhere to hide. It flattens everything in its path, trees, fields, houses, churches. I am to be burnt asunder, with white and crimson fires. My head prepares for hell. But then, like a huge plane, it begins to lift and rise high into the sky proper. I lie gasping on the ground (the rats have left) touching my sores and screaming to the beginnings of day. I get up. I smooth down my clothes, run fingers through my hair, and look at the huge god now soaring into distant clouds; ; then I walk down the market street watching busy lives like mine recover.

25 April

Harold has taken a lease on a flat in Leyton. I do not want to go there. Other plans formulate. I will go to France on Monday or Tuesday. I will return when I feel like it and stay with a friend until 4 June. On 4 June, I will go to a house near Salisbury on a painting job with Jean-Christophe. That will last two weeks, and then I'll go ot the US for as long as I dare. Brave me. Then what? Back to the cot? Start all this tumultuous education business again? Find some niche for me? Find some importance somewhere?

Paul K Lyons

May 1979

 

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