Dear All
I'm posting something I wrote about seven years ago here. I've been through spurts of writing before - none as long or prolific as RuKsaK has given me. Thank you RuKsaK - I don't know if I want to fuck you or kill you - I've a strong sneaking position it's both - in no particular order - whichever affords the most blissful degradation to be honest.
Anyway, my real-world professional clock is ticking again for the first time in a couple of years and I have to write job applications for about seven jobs from Caracas to Kathmandu - and I'm not using alliteration for fun here - I'm using it because it's true.
As I also said, if I don't get something else published soon and start work on the novel I have twelve billion ideas for then I'll be slanting towards the killing of RuKsaK more than the fucking - and this place doesn't work without the balance.
And, back to the applications - there's food and water in them there things - that's why I write them - clinical renditions of professional superhero qualities. Just for the bananas. Bananas for the babies.
So, expect more, sporadic one-offs and I'll let you all know whether it's Caracas, Kathmandu or elsewhere as soon as I've told my wife and kids.
The piece below, which I mentioned above, inspired the previous post in almost title alone - let me know what you think of RuKsaK's writing long before he was RuKsaK:
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Statisticatto (old version)
1.
One side of the block jetted sideways as though gravity itself was indulging in a jolly bit of trickery. The mother, from the 2nd floor, some 10 metres up struck a curved balance between the norm and this freak flight of bricks. In her armchair she descended and landed with a cosy tumble and sat up in a nanosecond – dirty eyes open and sitting in soiled underwear. She instinctively, unabashed, sharply looked to her two children standing like heroes glaring at her from where their left wall had been 15 seconds before. A long time passed with the mist of dust floating between them, only the hot stench of flesh and knackered iron denying the hope of a nightmare.
2.
When the bomb hit the sugar factory, the starved families rushed there as the news jumped and frolicked through the courtyards and shabby alleys. In the toffee desert families reclined and munched in chatty frenzies. Each hanging, rabid face had a jagged lump of shiny, brown dirt wobbling in front of their mouths, mouths which had grown over their faces in recent months. Back home clothes, encrusted with the sticky, grimy grub were sucked on by infants, and their faces wiped for extra. The few hidden fathers scraped between the soles of holey boots to collect enough for the coming next length of time. 100 tons of sugar had flamed into the dry, cold air becoming a humid, murky cloud as it fell to glue itself to the hardened muck of winter below. A week later the bomb had never fallen.
3.
Ludicrous in the extreme – Tom had walked home in the arm of his fiancé. It had been 10 days before their wedding. His shock of hair was an advert for his swift wit and noisy banter. Striding in a zig-zag, half-drunk and wailing out laughs and his future wife giggling or something, he went into an open hole in the darkness. When they pulled him out he was dead, so they left him, didn’t they. Only his girlfriend crunched up by his side, with all her entrails killing her, was left. As the plummet had begun, I suppose his head had thumped with precision sharpness against the invisible metal rim. All the laughter of whenever was ripped out of him in the minutest screech of a second. So much noise in his stillness that I can still hear it now. I’m not sure that silence will ever be calm.
4.
Light notes always follow the drama in any decent music. We must forget we will die after all. Forgive my apparent connection to the rest. It is a respect I afford that time and that friend, in order to know that I am a man as he was. Should that be forgotten, then it’s better it was me for the difference will be nought. How tragic it entirely is to lose someone in life and then to pretend to die for the rest of our own. So the music continues…
5.
He crouched in the dark, brick corner because it was just a little too far from home. It didn’t matter what had caused the outbreak of bad guts, it had become more or less commonplace. Anyway, the sight he hoped to be private was broken by a young viewer. Clothing swaddled and clumped around his feet with his bare rear angled out to eject the spluttering stream, he imagined the smoking boy would be shocked. However, the kid, nonchalant, seemed to watch it until something slightly less boring came along. Not moving the kid glared with his adultly curved face, it saying ‘so what’. Everyone does this. An blast of words sent the kid running, half afraid and in the main not bothered. Well, he padded home, thinking of his chance to retell this tale. The stuff of experience he thought to himself, ‘how good it is to leave the home.’ It took him 12 minutes precisely to get there.
6.
Of course, the third time and not the first, he stood up malingering slightly in fear of unbalance, to say a bye to his friend. A few ounces of his old food slipped out into his clothes. The friends shared the moment with acting eyes showing a concern of future tragedies. All this veiled the jollity they had just gained in knowing they were now more interesting. Even after the door had closed, he ambled as in films, in order to have it all in place for future attraction of any kind. Facing this some time later was much harder than the soiling of underwear. Ho hum..
7.
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