Atmospheric Fantasy

Surpassing Love January 1 st : A new year is a time to make new beginnings and form new habits. So I am going to try and keep a diary of my thoughts and feelings. I feel like the years are starting to blur together too much. It would be good in twenty years time to look back at this and be able to remember each day distinctly. I found a quote online that I think is appropriate: “Last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” - T.S. Eliot January 3 rd : Missed a day. Nothing much has happened though, back to work tomorrow, and then I suppose the year will begin properly. January 9 th : I'm really not sure what I should be writing about! Fear of the blank page, I suppose. Perhaps I should try writing exercises? I'll do them in another book or I'll waste this one. May 30 th : So much for resolutions! But for once I know what to write. In fact I simply have to write something, because something incredible hap

Last Orgy of the 13th Reich       The muzzle of Commander Schmidt's pistol tasted of gun oil and burned powder, undercut with metallic blood and salt urine from when he had discharged it not twenty minutes before inside the subhuman woman, his favourite from among the joy division. She lay now, brown eyes staring glassily at the ceiling upon his silken sheets, midnight black hair fanned out beneath her, once lustrous skin already the colour of muddy ash. He removed the gun from his mouth with a sob, ashamed at his own cowardice as he took another swig from the bottle of cognac he held in his other hand before staggering to his feet, heading across his quarters to his desk and pushing the corpse of his radio operator from the chair. He wiped the bloody foam and the glinting remains of the last cyanide ampoule off of the polished teak with the sleeve of his uniform shirt, and read the decoded orders again. LIQUIDATE RESEARCH CAMP 9. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. ALL HAIL THE 13TH

 The Cliff Walker          I often wonder what it is that 'makes' a suicide spot. Is it just a semi-random accumulation of infamy around some place, each act of self-annihilation leading inexorably to another, or is there something more inherent, some genius loci that draws people to certain landmarks, something beyond the simple availability of means? There are surely many woods where hanging corpses are almost never found, many high places from which people rarely hurl themselves. Perhaps there is something in the air, or the arrangement of scenery that calls to the despairing. Certainly, it seems that some locations offer a grander aesthetic experience that appeals to a certain sort of suicide. Hundreds more die annually on the London Underground than ever plummet off of Beachy Head, but where is the romance of being smeared under the 19:09 to Upminster?            Yet practicality is important even in these grim matters, and the sandy cliffs that range from about a

Happier Times I cannot possibly recall how many times I have done my little Ritual. I don’t know if I discovered it, or if it was taught to me, or whether it is simply something I have always held within me from whenever it was that I was born. My past becomes more and more confused the further back I go, a patchwork of dreams and nightmares, shifting uncertainly, and always coming apart at the edges; the mismatched threads of a tapestry constantly unravelling even as I strive to patch and expand it with fresh experience. Only my special Ritual remains constant, a golden seam that anchors whatever it is that is really me into my body. There are few other certain memories before a couple of years ago, when I took up my current occupation. In some ways, hospice work has been good for me. There is something to the routine, the regularity, the consistency of it. I am eating better and more regularly, I sleep well, I look fine, as I’ve always looked. But there is also, quite naturall