dotlit: 'Words I Have to Say: My Season in Hell' by Morgan Jones These revelations precipitated my departure from home, my arrival here, today. #1 Long ago, life was a rhythm of speech. Back then when the bile had me, I would sop it up and blaze on yes. And sit waiting for hours and years, dissolving thick wads of pulp — pile after pile — into little of note but a puddle of slop and phrase I wrote. I fled to my bunker on the peninsula and shivered over a crisp stack of copy paper while the drizzle bore down from beyond to poison the reservoirs and micturate on countless thirsty citizens of North County Dublin. What better contagion in all Ireland than the relentless pissing-down rain, you tell me? Seeps through your stout flushed thin skin, scorns your pathetic phylactery, lunges down the filthy twisted streets of Cuffsgrange and Clifden till you're up to your bollox in frigid bog water, or admiring your private menace in the ice-blink of a kitchen blade. That grim grey downpour stalked another fateful day. I saw the people of Ireland crumpled prostrate on stricken lawns and ruptured tarmac, tip-heads where they lay. Lips crushed to the dirt in supplication. The Nation sucked the canker from the Earth. I drew the drape. All I wanted, all I ever wanted, my life to be empty, spare to create. Yes, I lay up in my bed most days and I listened to life in the world outside. Such grief poured in through the mail and clogged up the hall, I made it foul washed up on the tide. I ate some fruit in the mornings, maybe half a kiwi with a seedless grape, and I took my meal at four (if you're not getting any exercise it's difficult to lose weight). Sometimes voices called and sometimes we parlayed, but mostly I left them talk to the machines. Then the machines spoke with me (they never want but to tell). I put my complete faith in the web and in my monthly subscription, to International Pipe Magazine. The great thing about reclusion is your must needs: * You never wash, change or hang anything up. * Your bed is strewn with cork, cds and tufts of pelt. * You sleep in your uniform with a ghetto blaster and a slew of Maltesers by your head. * You crank the heat even though it's not cold. * You pick your nose until it bleeds. * The blaster sprays static and then the teasers melt. #2 The mouser went in under the front wheels of the Hi-Ace. In short, I had decided to wade out into the smut and maybe risk a couple of laps of the Ben. Perhaps a brisk walk along the East Pier, or some other thing the shell-casings might call normal. I knew if I smothered up — duffler, hat, throw, mittens, muffs, twills, wellies, brolly — I should never be spotted. It's just, I saw my quest had succeeded beyond all expectation. By dint of good fortune I had purged myself of the myriad petty anxieties of the great herd so that I hovered far above convention, that focus of the world's psychosis. Still I needed to mingle to observe. And I wanted to help people. I made for the van, choked her, ignited and gunned the motor. Then I crept out onto Censure Road and ran the first circuit immediately and swiftly, with no significant dramas: * On the tombolo a school kid flashed me, I kept both hands on the wheel. * I purchased cask wine at the offy. * A hubcap became unhinged near the Stella Maris Convent and belted over the cliff, I let it. On loop two as I crested Windgate Road by the Muck Rock Track, a phantom slid out before me, down along the bitumen like a tidal slick. I braked, skidded and swerved, but t-boned the poxy thing, though I felt no impact. I did feel the wall however. Some of its ancient masonry ended up on my kneecaps, along with the better part of an engine. I emerged from the wreckage nursing my noggin, which had been lavished with brilliant splinters, and I limped back a way to check on the spectre. Transpired it was a Maine Coon. The creature twirled its tail weakly and meowed some, but was unable to stand up because its midriff was pasted to the highway and scored with deep cherry tread-marks. I knew the right thing was to finish her, so I fished a jack from the van to stove in her wretched little feline head, but when I returned she lay still. I wound up and cracked her once over the skull for pity's sake. And so it was, I studied my account: * sloth, * cant, * and butchery. Indeed it was an utter botch. O how I yearned to be back in my bunker — drawing blanks — instead of ranging about in the mist stifling creation, pet by pet. I peeled the mog off the road and fired her into the Hi-Ace. I tore an arm from my shirt and wrapped the proceeds tight around my temples to keep the brains in. My vehicle was useless to me now so I started down Windgate Road towards the village, on foot. #3 I had not travelled half a mile when I heard a voice trumpeting behind me. I turned and saw a figure in the gloom, dressed in a long hooded robe tied at the waist and swinging a severed head by the locks that left a trail of drippings. As the wraith drew near, I swooned and fell in a dead faint at its feet, but it touched me with its right hand and said "Do not be afraid Mouth, it is I." And I saw it was He-Is-And-He-Was (his true name was known only to himself). He had always called me Mouth (though he knew my forename). I started to gasp my sorry tale but he pressed a finger firmly to my cake hole. "I have passed the scene and retrieved your effects." He produced the wine cask, which had been perforated in the smash. Claret sloshed in its bilges and wept from dark gouges. "We should drink it up now or it's wasted," I rasped. He-Is-And-He-Was squatted over me, depressed the nozzle and spilled a long dose into my gullet. I opened my throat and let it all drain down. Then he fed himself generously and tossed the husk over his shoulder into the thick roadside gorse. "Come on Mouth, let's go, we must get indoors." "Of course." He-Is-And-He-Was hoisted me on his broad shoulders and we passed through the village of Howth unmolested. We continued by the harbour and shortly, under the train station, we entered the Bloody Stream. #4 The snug was empty. We took it and secured the door, it was better that way. In the past in kips where we used to get pissed we would sob when we noticed the mob around us, the shipwrecked sheep of humanity. He-Is-And-He-Was slid the hatch and ordered a round. A dry sherry for me and for him a Purple Nasty: Pernod and black with a cider head. We settled and awaited our drinks in peace. He-Is-And-He-Was studied my lacerated face intently with pursed lips and corrugated brow. He drummed his talons on the table. "Leave that bandana on won't you Mouth?" he suggested finally. "I'll have none of your fornix in my tipple." "I was born with an eggshell skull and an appetite for biff," I responded, "don't pity me, it will heal." The hatch snapped open and a plump trotter nudged the booze through to us. We lashed out and gulped it down — tart to the tongue, soured my stomach, entrails combusted — I twisted and pressed my gob to the slot. "Same again Philadelphia, quick as you can." Philadelphia double-chinned it from the taps. "So far I have failed to notice anything in your modus that could possibly be called perfect," He-Is-And-He-Was said for openers, "you are slacker than two sperm whales." "My life is unreal, there is nothing left for me to kill," I responded. "Whose hearts shall I crush? What lie shall I tell? I would rather write nothing." "You are neither cold nor hot," my companion continued, "I wish you were one or the other, but since you are neither, but only tepid, I will spit you out of my mouth." He spat. "I no longer worship apathy," I assured him, dabbing with my cuff at the crotch of my twills, "my years of idleness are done. I am leaving Europe." The sauce landed. We guzzled it. "Philadelphia, again! come join us!" Later she did, and we riffed on Withnail, Rimbaud and Saint John together. And so it continued long into the night and I realised, without being scared of him, that He-Is-And-He-Was could be a catalyst. It would be necessary to discuss his secrets in depth. #5 When we emerged from the Bloody Stream at midnight, Philadelphia had a lifeboat donation-box thrust under one arm. "Your need is surely greater," she said, "than any half drowned sailor." "That's just exactly what he is though," He-Is-And-He-Was sniffed. We wobbled uphill to the Abbey ruins and pierced the dinky lifeboat mould on craggy headstones. Charity littered the tombs, and we crashed out on our family plots and stuffed notes in our pockets and coins in our eye sockets. "I suppose, Mouth, this is the last we'll ever see of you, and your kind?" He-Is-And-He-Was whispered. "It's the last we'll ever see of anything," I replied, "and not a single human rhythm left behind..." #6 Then I heard a chord sounding in the sky like the sting of the ocean or the ache of thunder, And I heard all the living wonders of creation, everything that flies and strides and burrows and swims and breathes, crying, And I saw my own two angels flounder in the waves far out on Balscadden Bay, And I saw all the dreams I would surrender, for all the words I had to say. Sources and Further Reading Art Ensemble of Chicago (1970) Les Stances A Sophie, Theme de Yoyo, London: Soul Jazz Records. Baker, C. (1989) The Best of Chet Baker Sings, The Thrill Is Gone, Los Angeles: Pacific Jazz. Cash, J. (2002) American IV: The Man Comes Around, Tennessee, Def American. "He-Is-And-He-Was" (August-November 2003) In Conversation with the Author, Dublin/Brisbane. Jones, A., Editor (1966) The Jerusalem Bible, Book of Revelation, London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Megalithomania.com (2002) Ben of Howth: Cairn, retrieved on November 11, 2003, from http://www.megalithomania.com/show_site.php?site_id=172 "Philadelphia" (September-November 2003) In Conversation with the Author, Dublin/Brisbane. Rimbaud, A. (1986) Collected Poems, Introduced and Edited by Oliver Bernard, London: Penguin. Rimbaud, A. (1998) A Season in Hell, New Translation by Mark Treharne, London: J.M. Dent. Robinson, B., Writer/Director (1986) Withnail and I, United Kingdom: Handmade Films. Royal National Lifeboat Institution. http://www.rnli.org.uk/donate.asp Your donation helps them save lives. Thomas, D. (1985) Under Milk Wood, London and Melbourne: Everyman's Library. Waits, T. (2002) Blood Money, Misery Is the River of the World (Everybody Row), Los Angeles: Anti-. Wilson, C. (1992) The Outsider, London: Gollancz Paperback. Yeats, W.B. (1989) Yeats's Poems, The Municipal Gallery Revisited, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.