Hot today. Dry hot, as I like it, so the sky is huge, dry, bright. Too hazy. I can't remember what I've been doing. A few minutes ago, I was lying on the cane couch on the back balcony reading Ulysses. Then I came inside and I found the sun too bright in the study, pulled the curtain on the light, though I love the light. Downstairs my sister humming. I don't know what I've been doing lately. I've been writing a lot, I've been burning time, it's always later thank I think (Devoto). Typed up Devoto last night for Marc. Miraed bought us lunch yesterday to thank us for housesitting. Honours. Honours. Dolce et Decorum Est Pro Academia Mori.

That whole idea of truth or, what is the other thing? Love.
The whole idea of beauty, truth or love.
Chemical-electrical. Physically, socially determined.
As much as a slogan written on the neurones, and agreed upon.
We are far too anthropomorphic.
We attribute ourselves to others.
Thus it is that a screaming hinge would be saying ‘Hreeeeeeeeek’ if it were really making any noise at all.
One day we will not be here.
Act 4…
The Screaming Hinge: (tentatively, to the empty room) Hreeeeeek!
The Girl in the Garden: (running in) Oh it’s that poltergeist again. When I grow up I want to be an actress in pornography. High class of course.
The Disembodied and Decentred and Thoroughly Relativised Voice of Universal Truth: (so-called) Well, why not? It isn’t immoral. It’s chemical-electrical.
Play-rite/Playwright/Playwrite: (interjecting from the margins of the stage-page) I’m only typing for the sake of it. God I hope that hooker gets first billing.
The Hinge, no longer screaming: (says, does nothing).
[We cut to a shot of a swing, swinging, in space, with a few trees, and a grassy park. Some day, we will no longer be here. The rest is silence. A man passes, walking his dog]

**

My heartbeat.

I saw you.

My heart beat me to death.

[no, at the moment, there is no you. in some ways, i think we prefer pain]

Act 5…
Paraceta-moll: Who you calling Moll?
Pana-doll: You made these names up in high school. I have this dim sense that at the heart of everything, there is a bad pun.

I'm not even waiting. I'm waiting to wait.

**

We live by flashlight - the strobing pulses of flash cameras - and we measure our days in kph. We run traffic lights and leave ourselves for dead until we slam into the wall of the universe and realise we were only ever crash test dummies after all.

**
I meant to post this yesterday but I didn't get around to it:

I'm coming to see the world as a kind of bizarre hallucination, beautiful and hurtful, far too vivid, in which all things are vibrant and inconsequential, falling like stars back into the moment as it passes, in which I need only submerge myself with absolute honesty in orderly survive with a smile as I myself pass by.

*

And I meant to post this:

My grandfather sits at the table, his sinus whirring, his hearing aid whining, it's an incredible inhuman noise like a dying eternal machine, it reverberates so I think the noise is in my head.

"Do you have any dogs or cats living around your place?" I ask him in the over-cheery vernacular tone I always use to speak to grandfathers.

"No. No not really," he says, musing. "We have an awful dog next door that's always barking, bloody awful." The topic does not interest him, he adds, "I'm going to get my mate Sid to come around and chuck a bit of syonide over the fence for him."

he says this without interest as if he had said nothing at all out of place, and the room fails to react, the TV still keeps purring with the 7.30 report, and he goes deeper into his beer glass, and I hear my mouth saying "Now now, don't be mean," or something like that, under-reacting, useless and inane.

He'd do it, too.

After I died, I followed the signs and went to the place called ‘Purgatory.’ They were all pretty nice and understanding there at the counter, but they made me sit down and watch my entire life over again. I mean, I actually had to sit there while my life was projected from day one in real time right before my eyes. And the thing is, when people say ‘my life passed before my eyes’ you sort of imagine it happening from their point of view. But the weird thing about this was that I had to watch my life like it was a film. Like I’d just been filmed - it didn’t tell me what I was thinking, what my motivations were. It was just like a camera was following me around while I did stuff. So OK, I sat there watching this, and the first thing that struck me was, God is this boring. The baby years, of course, were really nailbitingly boring but I mean even after I grew up. I just seemed to walk around and do all this pointless crap, and just hang around and stuff, thinking stuff – apparently – except I couldn’t for the life of me remember what any of my thoughts were at the time, I couldn’t even work out why I was doing anything I was doing. I just sat there watching like it was the most boring film in the world, thinking Jesus who is this lunatic? What is he doing that for? Or, Why doesn’t he do something? I couldn’t work out why this idiot on screen just kept hanging around in the house bursting into tears all the time for no apparent reason. I mean, it just seemed to happen out of the blue, I would just be standing there onscreen and suddenly I would have burst into tears or be having some laughing fit in my bedroom or something, for no apparent reason. And then stop it, get all cheered up again, for no apparent reason. It nearly drove me crazy watching it all. And watching myself dream, up there onscreen. While I was watching it I couldn’t remember a single dream I’d had, and I had to sit there watching myself moving about in my sleep for what seemed forever, going What the hell is he dreaming? Why is he kicking like that? Or, Why is he sleeping like a fucking corpse? Or, What is he sleeping for twelve fucking hours for? And then all the people I was with and all the inane conversations I had, and my god I just seemed to say some of the most inane things I ever heard anyone ever say in my life, and I just couldn’t fathom what the guy, me, there onscreen must be thinking to be saying all that boring loony shit. And I just kept thinking, God, why the hell does this guy have to live so LONG? And then when it was finally over and I had cancer and I’d gone all grey and shit and I was doing this convincing dying act and everyone was crying a bit but not much, and the reels finally reeled off into blackness, the woman came in carrying this form, and she said, “So, do you repent?” “Repent?!” says I, “What you think I could watch all that boring loony shit that idiot was doing there onscreen and feel good about having done it? Of course I fucking repent! Give me a fucking cigarette!” at which she said, “All right then Mr Jacobs, you can go on through to heaven.”