There is a rose, a single pink rose, on the table in a white vase, a dull yellow tablecloth, salt and pepper pots and a small white bowl stacked with those narrow paper containers of brown sugar. At three tables lone men sit with their laptops. The coffee is cooling. There is no sign of a grand crime of passion about to erupt. We will quietly get on with what we have come here to do. In my case writing these words which will, after a certain amount of thought, reflection and amending, hopefully within twenty four hours, be posted on the blog.
In the forthcoming shift from one blog which we called walkingtalkingwriting to a new one, the title of which will reflect the final word of that trilogy - that minor miracle of sound and scratched marks. On the scale of things it is probably more amazing that we have existence but limping along just behind THAT is this group of squiggles that refer to a sound: a sound to which traditions of meaning, processes of meaning, have accrued. An archeology of culture. Meanings rich in ambiguity and endlessly subject to change. You would have thought that writing would pin meaning down, fix it forever. But no, far from it! Do you think it might be because madness hovers around the periphery of our vision; at the edges madness is given freedom to range unrestricted by the good sense of pragmatism. The work of imagination filling in the gaps, restructuring, assigning random and highly questionable connections. By the way, have you come across Tom Phillips' Humument - ticklingly, wonderfully, out of nowhere - a Victorian novel given a treatment. It's available in print or as an App. Yesterday I downloaded the App version which works beautifully and gives a daily oracular Delphic random prediction to be enjoyed and pondered upon. Mr Phillips bought the book for three pence in 1966 in Peckham Rye (apparently where William Blake first saw angels) - well, you've got to start somewhere and maybe Peckham Rye and angels or a threepenny Victorian novel might, just might, be better (I think I'm getting a bit envious, a bit of greener grass over there) than a bog in the middle of Dartmoor.
Or was it the bog of Freud's unconscious which I've been traipsing through for the last forty years whilst Mr Phillips has been reworking his treatment of Mr W H Mallock's A Human Document, a title which he turned into Humument. It's true that we do have to find some bog or other to work in and it also remains true that Dr Freud's unconscious remains a fertile bog and there has been plenty of treatment following the publication and dissemination of his written works. Perhaps it's a pity that Mr Phillips didn't grasp a tatty volume of the famous doctor's collected works – The Interpretation of Dreams would have been a good choice. It would have been worth paying a shilling for it or would it have only been a penny, thrown out by some recently incarcerated psychiatrist, whose mind had suddenly fled its moorings one July morning in 1966. Here, mate, you can have this for a penny - no one wants it, I can't get rid of it.
Mind you, in those days, a penny was worth something. You could go up the West End, go to a show and have a supper at the Savoy and still have enough for the cab back home.
Maybe.
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