Their prettye lippes with blackberries
Were all besmear’d and dyed;
And when they sawe the darksome night,
They sat them downe and cryed.

Here's a fresh opening paragraph to summarise my profile because so few so far have grasped the crucial points. Firstly, it’s not your desire that interests me, it’s mine, and your job is to inflame that instead of telling me how much I’ve inflamed yours. This does nothing for me. However, such a response is quintessentially different from naked regard, which I am more than happy to hear about, and even more delighted to express, were I ever to get the chance. Give me that chance. It would fill me with joy. Secondly, if you’re not interested in what I have to say and don’t feel as if you’re so boiling with agreement you wish you’d said it yourself, or perhaps already have, then move on now because you’re only going to hear more and more of it. This is likely to annoy you, and I don’t want to annoy you; nor do I want to be annoyed. Thirdly, unless you have a very fine mind or are incredibly beautiful or gifted or original, or are some sort of saint or incapable of telling lies or very interesting indeed or incredibly sweet-natured, or just wonderful one way or another – and there actually are a lot of people like this - despite the millions on this dateline who unfortunately seem to think that stressing how ordinary and typical and ruinously similar to everyone else they are will accomplish anything, least of all impressing me - I am only going to be angry, bored, disappointed, FEEL BETRAYED and be, eventually, mercilessly frank about how much I hate you. This is because I have too much work to do to waste time on anything less than profound and unique idealism in some shape or form. If none of the above works for you, go away immediately. Neither you nor I have time to waste on people we are abjectly indisposed towards.

Just in case you passed all of that but are either a crashing bore who identifies with me purely out of vanity or delusion or some defeatist troglodyte who wants to break my spirit, there are torture chambers in the green valleys hungry for your pain. And I will feed them your pain with no regret or pause. Ignore all this at your peril.

My self-summary

I think the curse of my life has been a level of sensitivity that normally belongs to excessively restrained, quiet, modest people but in my case is coupled with extreme animation and a vibrant personality, somewhat like a watching TV show. This makes me difficult to read, as people like that are so towering with confidence you never believe for a moment they have a stricken soul in any way at all, so I never get my needs met. Then there's language. I am absolutely fearsome about that and listen to every word people say, which means I hardly ever understand anything because I believe in words and other people don't, and I can get really upset listening to people who aren't saying what they mean or being contradictory or banal or something, can't inflect properly, leaving me to deduce, although I let the language thing go by - up to a point - with someone whose heart is in the right place.

I wear rather beautiful clothes and have a real understanding of colour, detail and texture. I do quite a bit of hand-stitching as most clothes are too big for me which is why I only go out in the summer when you can wear tiny little things made of delicate cloth. I read rather a lot, or at least used to; this is because I am something of a fantasist and find reality (the prosaic) quite desperate, and that is why I don't drive; in fact there are a number of things I don't do or have difficulties with because they're just too practical and I can do nothing unless my imagination is harnessed. All that sort of thing makes me the feminine type but on the other hand I tend to engage with the male mind rather than ignore it and this can lead to difficulties as men are often rather evasive about things like emotion which is all I want to talk about the entire time. In fact so good am I at communicating that people reveal all sorts of things about themselves and then find their lives - their other life or the rest of their life - in ruins, so I have to be dispatched. And after such intensity. All this can make me feel desolate so it's a good thing I can draw like Albrecht Durer otherwise I'd have no outlet and no mystical centre to draw on for spiritual succour.

I also watch a lot of television (no longer in fact being busy here, but the point remains, and books resonate as a perpetual example) because the characters are reliable which they are not in real life and I like unchanging systems I can embroider my wildness over. In fact I am rather a curious combination of things like vulnerability and dramatic flair, blitheness and sorrow, punctiliousness and abandon, and I like people who are equally laid out in strange combinations which can cause them personal unease. Doing this test was very hard because of the combinations; a certain strangeness adheres to my days also. There is a slightly fairy story quality around me, but this can deepen into tragedy or leap into farce at any given time. I suspect I am largely a romantic but it's not obvious because of my lack of timidity and overwhelming sex appeal. That, too, has caused a great deal of problems because it militates against the romantic aspect and has drowned my life in misogyny and malaise, even though I remain sympathetic to a misogynistic response because where would we be without it. (This is very complex point and I am prepared to go into a lot of detail over it.) My capacity for sympathy is unending but my tolerance of stupidity and poor expression, of ugliness and boringness and falsity is minimal. It is rather hard to generalise about these things because if I like someone or even something I have infinite patience and can be quite selfless; otherwise I can be extremely withering, especially when people are arrogant for no reason.

I am oddly modern though my sense of aesthetics drives from a bygone age. I like Keats and Coleridge but then I also like violent horror movies too, so it's quite hard to find a good match, though both those things are theatrical and make your heart beat faster. I think that I have a psychotic effect on a lot of men. It used to be women too but I've controlled that side of things by being empathetic, something I find a lot harder with men because I have higher expectations of them and am more attracted to them in the first place, though I don't like masculine things like cars, football and minimalism. I sometimes stand in those big empty office type rooms and feel fragmented and forlorn, and the concussion of being without any delightful little objects and no books, in short a desert of no sensuality, can make me feel sex is the only answer and has got me into some pretty weird situations.

I have a deep feeling for nature but it's too damn cold in this country so I have to go abroad to walk through fields and look at trees, though as you're beginning to suspect I have a lot of trouble booking flights and getting to the airport because of all the hideous architecture and trains I have to coast through to get there. Ideal man would be someone with a Romany caravan who likes the sea, or a french aristocrat with a water lily pond (only because we wouldn't have to worry about money, and also because I quite enjoy people being snooty towards me, gives me a thrill, the condescension, but I think Lawrence has a lot to say about natural aristocrats in The Virgin and the Gipsy, something you should perhaps read right away); a poverty-stricken artist with an orchard might do, maybe someone with an understanding of the lyricism of violence. But my taste in men is pretty bad, I'd probably do better with a generous-spirited character who works for the council and wants me to cook him dinner but then I'd only write frightening novels of emotional jeopardy behind his back. I am on my fourteenth novel at the moment but don't dare get anything published, so far; also something odd always happens around chapter six. I have very nice underwear and draw beautiful obsessive pictures, some of which get into books or even the royal academy, but I'm not very good at doing the washing up and I don't even own an iron. I think I'm after some sort of soul mate.

A brilliant lover who can co-ordinate me would do though, as long as he could cope with my need for perpetual expression in whatever form. He'd not only have to be able to handle the fact I'd treat him as sexual prey and then be incredibly submissive, and then vacillate between the two, but be equally oppositional himself: hypnotised by my avid pursuit to the point of helpless surrender and then turning into Count Dracula, or even some kind of tree god, these transfiguring, transformative occasions of being, anything fixed or static will never work. A retreat into nominal male/female positions or a regular 'relationship' is just another day at the office; the narrative is trapped in arctic space, erotic kryptonite; what I call 'the magical' ousted and banished. This person, who now I am beginning to think could be female and it might indeed work better if she were (I'll compromise on blitheringly obvious heterosexuality) has to shape-shift from (roughly speaking) feminine surrender to masculine vehemence, passive to active, looked at to looking, adored to adoring and so on, and possess peculiar adjuncts to all this such as tenderness - I really am running out of room (and time. Time, always taking bites out of things) - not just because these are the precise conflicts or qualities of my nature and I require an exact match but also because this makes for an erotic dynamic of staggering psychosexual power that's bang up to date and could even knock the Renaissance for six; it's high time something did.

It is not the mundanity of sexual love but the beatitude of it I am after; the magical and fantastical not the formal and reductive, and not traditionally structured; an interior dynamic with a spiritual awakening would do the trick. Most importantly is the meaning and occasion of all encounters, whatever form they take and whenever they occur: everything must be in thrall, not to me or them, but to the mysterious world of enchantment.

writing, drawing, chatting people up, buying bikinis, getting my legs waxed, tormenting myself, doing ballet exercises, crawling around the bathroom floor being photographed by someone far too good and beautiful to end up drowned in horror love but she like everyone who gets a little too close to me cannot resist the lure, indeed it's the condition of entry; breaking nails, lying in bed, creating a policy of desire, crying sometimes - I think people should do this once a week, like going to church. But I haven't cried over a bloke for ages so maybe one of you could sort that out. I'm kind of in the mood to have my heart broken. (This is rather an old profile. I'm reading it through for errors and I am afraid to say, there are many, but it's difficult and perhaps wrong to change the course of the narrative.) Someone could at least try instead of pulling out just when it starts to hurt. OR actually, never pulling out at all - how about that.

Actually someone DID make me cry quite recently which I would say showed brilliance but unfortunately I think it was down to incompetence, not the deliberate attempt to destroy my will and traduce my soul that I daily hope for. Still, not bad going for a Valentine's Day weekend in the kingdom under the sea. However, working me up for no reason and standing me up is not allowed. I don't bother with recriminations in situations of this nature, just crash into dream territory so they start having nightmares and getting more and more unhappy without knowing why, or how; bad things start to happen that look a bit like what they did to me, twisted reflections, echoes; the effect is far-reaching, can last for twenty years or more, a lifetime, beyond the grave. I think it's a form of psychic transference, but that's to put it mildly. It's a bad idea to get on the wrong side of me. Partly because I don't like having to work, not at revenge anyway, or punishment; it bores me, so we get my resentment in the picture also. Fortunately I am incredibly forgiving and munificent, but sometimes - well, try as I might, I just find it really hard to control this side of things, it is - anarchic, demonic. But that's what happens if you chuck someone like me down a well and leave them to drown and starve to death. How cold, how dark, how hungry, how lonely, how frightening, how full of hate and pain it is down here. How very betrayed and abandoned I feel. How bloodstained my nails are from scrabbling and clawing at the moss-slimed bricks. In vain. In vain was my bitter blood shed, and my tears. You left me here to die, etc. With no fucking ladder. In metaphysical or religious terms this is a state of perdition: being consumed by loss, loss of God I think. It may have something to do with the female body (which IS the female mind), if terrorised sufficiently: an eternal swallowing into the abyss and by the abyss, bit like a black hole really, except it's constant, not concluded. You don't just get digested and it's over. It's also a psychological, or even a romantic condition, and I can put you in it.

the above; sexual and emotional saturation and all avenues that follow that; understanding flowers; understanding death (although the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death); imparting a universal meaning to incidents that otherwise would be quite trivial (this takes effort); gratitude, obsession and, weirdly enough, an ability to step right into the heart of light; inspiring people to say what they really think, luring men into sexual transfixion and tolerating their subsequent denial of my existence (I am immensely tolerant and this happens a great deal, not because I'm crap in bed or boring but because I am a GOD), writing sick, erotic stories (though I would prefer to live them out as I keep fucking saying) and also getting really into these botanical orgasms, there are more on these later but I've even got close to a butterfly once - very close, I saw the wings and the colours, and any second now I will in fact meet a unicorn, I am that type.
Art.

The landscape of dream, boundless potential or Nemesis - how many of us truly see the soul and the star: 'the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit,' the act here being one of seeing, and individual capacity will set the margins on that one. Not all of us are artists.

I suppose this tends to translate as some sort of sex thing probably, or maybe death - apparently I 'stink of death' according to someone who I didn't have sex with which says it all - still. Sex seems to be the thing most people want to do with me and pretty much right away, not that I blame them, it's urge and potency and inspiration, and that has value. Sometimes men (and indeed women) apologise for this but not very often - they are apologising really for feeling nothing but sex, which to them is some kind of diminuition of eternal spheres of understanding, and an attack on Love; not of course to me, hence my infinite gratitude and total confusion. People with limits and limitations confuse me, and I confuse them.

Hamlet
Pandora's Box, Souvenir, The New Stone Age, Enola Gay: OMD
Hard to say I'm sorry, Hard habit to break: Chicago
Muse: Uno
Carrie: book, film
Rebecca: book, film
The Road: Cormac McCarthy
The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos: John Wyndham
La Belle Dame Sans Merci, various odes, J. Keats
Picnic at Hanging Rock (film and to a lesser extent, book)
The Deer Hunter (film not book)
Asylum (book not film): Patrick McGrath
some horrible, unpleasant tune that wrecks hope; I rarely eat
Piano music by Chopin (Waltz. No. 7 in C Sharp Minor Op. 64; Prelude for piano No. 4 in E Minor) and weird Halloween type music, in fact the Halloween music itself
Avalanche by Leonard Cohen (the only Cohen song I like)
strawberries; Wild Strawberries, Winter Light, Silence, all Bergman really, especially Persona
The Piano Teacher, Funny Games: Haneke
Garbage (You Look so Fine, Milk)
Freeway
Let's All Chant: The Michael Zager Band, The Year of the Cat: Al Stewart (nothing else by either of them)
I Want You, Massive Attack
Should've Known Better, Jim Diamond (I like crap music: Last Christmas, Club Tropicana, Careless Whisper: Wham; Slave 4 U, Hit Me Baby One More Time, Britney Spears; Let's Get Physical: Olivia Newton-John (she means vertically not horizontally, verse one: odd mistake to make, but blonde girls are like that), Morning Train, Sheena Easton (you can imagine those trains terrify me: this could be family heritage. My grandfather designed trains. I think he ran British Rail at some stage, certainly has an OBE or an MBE for all his 'help'); I'm In The Mood For Dancing: Nolan Sisters; Angel Eyes, Abba, etc - the way I interpret these things isn't easy listening; Against the Odds, In the Air Tonight: Phil Collins, The Pet Shop Boys, Barry Manilow, The Cranberries, Bonnie Tyler, Orchard Road: Leo Sayer)
Bouquet of Barbed Wire (book and TV series; Andrea Newman, incest and sado-masochism NOT the remake which was dreadful and I am writing to Andrea about that)
Ladybird, Ladybird
First Love, Last Rites: (Butterflies, Last Day of Summer); The Cement Garden (incest and sado-masochism [emotional] and stunning writing, just stunning, when he starts counting her teeth with the blue lights flashing) (terrible film), The Comfort of Strangers, In Between the Sheets (Ian McEwan); (later on he disappointed me, and anyone who got through Saturday without feeling as if they're having their nails pulled isn't paying attention, Enduring Love was unendurable; he has in fact compromised beyond redemption)
The End of Alice (paedophilia and murder)
The Bad Seed, William March (child murderer)
The Children 2008 (I loved this)
When A Stranger Calls (original)
Maniac (I cannot tell you how MUCH I love Joe Spinell, I even collect dolls, and people just like him, but there is no one like him)
Merci La Vie (nostalgia, swans, supermarket carts, beaches)
Happy Birthday Wanda June, Kurt Vonnegut
Marigold Garden: Kate Greenaway
The Human League: Mirror Man, Love Action, Don't You Want Me Baby, Louise
Christopher Lydon: The Dresden Dolls
The Fan
Misery, The Shining: Stephen King
The Collector, John Fowles (John Fowles died after I wrote him a letter; it was my second letter to him, he replied to the first one)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, version one (Tobe Hooper)
The Company of Wolves
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, the bondage scene, the drugs, the birthday cake, the implements, Genevieve Bujold - it was my birthday once but you forgot to come to my party)
Coma
Badlands
Repulsion
The Wicker Man
Memento
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, I want to be these people and probably am)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining (book and film in both cases); I am quite similar to Jack Nicholson, except of course that unfortunately I am a woman otherwise I would have no problems whatsoever. As it is... thank God I don't look like him or I'd never get laid (I might actually, and come to think of it I do look a bit like him, you just can't tell that yet, because I have only offered up pretty photos) - but it's very annoying having to repress my urges to go round to people's houses and just smash my way through the door and eat everyone up, my oral hunger is beyond belief. People take advantage of this sometimes, though not nearly enough if you ask me
Schubert, not Vivaldi, not Mozart; Bach
Sonic Youth (esp. Diamond Sea and Superstar)
American Girl (Tom Petty)
John Martyn (Dealer, May You Never)
Portishead (esp. Life in Mono: this belongs to a genre of music that I call 'washing machine music' because it goes round and round like a washing machine and the beginning and the end are all the same. The Cardigans do this a lot and even 'Boys and Girls' sounds a bit like it. Mind you Damon is just so ratty, I would have mentioned him before but he dissed me publicly once, so rude, AND I was being charming and polite. I'm sure he's sorry now. I am sure his life is conditioned by sorrow, now); Leave me alone
Spenser's Faerie Queene and the Mutabilitie Cantos
Nirvana: Come As You Are
In The Fifth At Malory Towers: Enid Blyton
steak (very rare) and chips
Don't Look Now (Donald Sutherland ALSO fancies me, as does Terence Stamp, such a shame these people are just too bloody old)
Pears, avocado and otherwise, both uncooked
She Believes in Me: Kenny Rogers
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis but not The Information by Martin Amis
The Pursuit Of Love: Nancy Mitford
Septes Sermones ad Mortuous, Jung
Paul Celan
Baby Doll (movie; her crib, her hair and all that Tennessee Williams' 'desperate for sex' thing he infuses into women; there's a rocking horse scene I particularly like)
Psycho, any Hitchcock really
The Women who Knew Too Much (on Hitchcock), Tania Modleski
certain complicated sauces and dressings, vinaigrettes, mayonnaise etc; I enjoy difficult combinations; this 'less is more' idea is just plain and simple wrong. More is more and less is less
All Italian food
Slavoj Zizek
home-made lemonade
William Blake
Agatha Christie
Proust
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Asia Argento)
Suspiria (Dario Argento)
Secretary (apart from the ending; again I'm a bit like both of them; someone else who was a bit like both of them too would be pretty good; a little tame)
The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc: Peter Bogdanovich
Whatever Happened To Baby Jane (rats, ice-cream, sisters)
The Streets (ish)
fish pate (smoked); green beans
Eyes of Laura Mars (Carpenter, especially the scene in the autumn woods after the funeral, and the mirror stabbing split personality bit)
El Laberinto del Fauno (only slightly, and only because that girl looks like that other girl I am jealous of, very, and I know not jealousy)
Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
Blind Terror
The Evil Dead I and II
The Ice Storm
The Weight of Water
Dead Girl
tasty little cakes with decorations on them
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
It's Too Late Baby: Carole King
Antigone, Electra (Sophochles) (I am not sure of Homer)
Moon River, Audrey Hepburn (this is from that film Breakfast at Tiffany's which I didn't like for years but really do now; oddly enough the girl upstairs is called Tiffany so I could just nip up there of a morning and actually have, er, breakfast at Tiffany's. If I asked nicely, which I'm not going to. I am sure she dreads the day when and if I do. Actually she's moved out)
wine, water, ribena (no ice)
Glockenspiels, triangles, guitars, pianos
The Killing of Sister George

don't like chick lit or rom coms or action movies

Looking for Mr. Goodbar
Pricksongs and Descants (Robert Coover), The Babysitter and Spanking The Maid
Blood Wedding, Lorca (not Yerma, except for one line about a desert; deserts interest me, as does desertion)
Maybe something with prawns in it or chocolate ice cream; poached eggs on toast with spinach, smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce and sometimes parma ham instead of the smoked salmon, grindy pepper; calamari, caviare, champagne, salad nicoise, raspberry yoghurt, pineapples, mangos, lemon souffle, coconuts, coffee, fish pie, cold hearts, nectarines, grapes
Peter Oswald
Spenser's Faerie Queen
Blondie (Picture This, Fade Away And Radiate, Call Me)
Blondine in the Forest of Lilacs
Mars: Fritz Zorn, which I consider an anthem of pain and has its erotic corollary in The Fountainhead
The Ship of Death, Lawrence
The Dresden Dolls (Missed Me, Christopher Lydon, Glass Slipper)
Mosquito Song, Queens of the Stone Age (languor. It's derivative though. China Bird, Patti Smith; probably the only good song she ever made and I think the better of the two, but less beguiling)
The Yellow Book, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley
Pink Floyd
Where Do You Go To My Lovely
Spirit of the Beehive
Flowers in the Attic
The Night Porter
Jodie Foster movies, even Bugsy Malone, just for her (I've slept with a Jodie Foster lookalike, she was called Fleur; somehow now I feel I should be ashamed of that); The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane,
Drowning By Numbers, The Draftsman's Contract (visuals)
He Knows You're Alone (another one I've not yet seen)
Meshes of the Afternoon, 120 Days of Sodom, The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie (likewise)
H, The Diary Of a Heroin Addict (Christiane F.)
Everything But The Girl: Missing (but deserts do not miss rain, they are, after all, deserts, and love drought. She did another song where she managed to say 'punish me' no less than nine times in a row, Walking Wounded, though I could inform you even better on the subject should you wish; my life is built on wishes)
Northrop Frye: The Myth of Deliverance; Anatomy of Criticism
A Vindication of the Rights of Women: Mary Wollstonecraft
American Psycho (book, not film)
that woman who is a cardigan
Donald Barthelme
1980s Ska
Duran Duran
You Look So Good In Love: George Strait
you look so good bleeding crazy and delusional
Lemon Tree: Fool's Garden
that interesting but rather unpleasant movie with Theresa Russell (I love Theresa Russell even though I know she is trivial and vain, blonde and fat) and Art Garfunkel in it, Bad Timing
Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet: David Lynch
The Mothman Prophesies
Something I can never have: Nine inch Nails
Dante
Les Liaisons Dangereuses (we're in the re-write)
Death in Venice
Play Misty For Me
Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Fright, Black Christmas (original)
Story of O
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth and Me
The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile (Alice Oswald)
cowslip wine, oysters, nasturtiums, nettles
The Tale of Mrs Tiggy Winkle, Jemima Puddleduck
The Dark (James Herbert, badly written but I'll allow it)
your neck
Night Of The Living Dead (Romero)
The Mother's Recompense, The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton
House of Dolls: KA-TZETNIK 135633
Remember My Name
Sit Trag
I'm In Love With A German Film Star

paper and pen
cigarettes (that could change but I doubt it)
nature
creativity
conversation
my idea of you

sewing, sacrifice, geraniums, why I don't have a maid, people who broke my heart or are breaking it, people called Alice, instances of haunting sexual beauty that resonate in my mind with no other purpose but to blind me to reason, life is better that way; death (there's been a lot of death in my life), antique lace, 1920's silk chiffon tea dresses with beading that need repair work, swimming, flowers, sex, Shakespeare, the will to power, the intersection of the timeless with time, Giotto, the ineluctable, religious grace and mysticism; why stupidity is so popular and I mean that in many, many ways; Rodin, hypocrisy, poetry, tomato plants, moss, lichen, bark, violaceae, crussiferaceae, lavender bushes, serendipity, evolution, hallucinatory orgasms, God, buttercups, Honeysuckle Weeks, synesthesia, being strangled to death, sunshine, tea, apple trees, lemon cake, mill ponds, swans, Italy, innocence, degradation, Renaissance Revenge Tragedy

Why you don't love me or don't say so if you do

Photo sessions that don't happen; I will in fact be getting my next date to take some photos because I'm fed up with all these self-portraits and so are you I bet. Of course I have Sammy now, but she seems to have endless problems with nudity and understanding my new mobile. Also she can only focus when thoroughly shouted at or done over emotionally. We've had a row anyway, over her superficiality. In fact we've had many but I think this is The Last Time. Stupid people destroy me.

writing; no, waiting for you to come over and fuck me, oh sorry no,
writing: notes, lists, novels, emails, letters; correcting grammar,
structure, spelling; collecting my lists in a file for posterity
because Alice the poet likes them
stitching together the pieces of my broken faith
drinking
consulting the oracle, doing tarot cards
reading Patricia Highsmith
slamming down the phone on people who dare to ring me again and annoy me again
crying (less so these days)
rinsing clothes
letting things slip (a lie, I never let anything slip)
having interesting dreams, sometimes when I am not even asleep,
like a mediaeval visionary saint
thinking about submission, and sometimes writing essays on it if I
can be bothered
considering aquatint and egg tempera painting
making bad situations worse; making good situations better; having no real influence on either unless thought itself is influence
which it probably is
thinking about the stupid and evil behaviour of my ex-editor,
though I've come to a conclusion about that so he preoccupies me
less; it takes me ages to come to conclusions
painting bitumen resin on the back of my etching plates in
preparation for biting
feeling furiously optimistic
reading the bible, particularly Job
going to see people who think I have 'no sense of reality' to check
out what's in their bookcases or fridges, studying what they like
watching on TV; listening quite intently to their tales
sleeping on Deirdre's sofa
emailing Billy Drinkwater who I think left okcupid ages ago, better
check that, he might be cross at a personal mention but I do wonder how he is actually
phoning Honeysuckle who NEVER answers, sometimes I get her husband which isn't quite the same (getting there, though)
come to think of it no attempt I ever make to get hold of anyone
ever works, I just have to sit and wait (I spend most of my life
waiting) because all of a sudden I get about ten desperate calls
from Honeysuckle pledging undying love and wanting to see me right away, NOW, and have to drop everything and deal with her tout de suite when I've not heard from her for months, she's exactly like a man, well quite a few I know anyway, operates according to the same system. I think it's something to do with amnesia followed by total recall out of the blue and extreme; no real bridge between the two states. Still, she is an actress. I like the way she says, 'don't cook, don't wash up, don't do anything, I will do everything for you, just sit there and be wonderful.' Maybe I really should have married her
stroking my marabou feather stole; wearing it even
remembering
reading about the earthly paradise in Dante
trying to find my glasses
being put upon by yet another woman who pretends to be my friend but was secretly after sex all along, this happens a lot
wearing my elbows out making this even more clear
trotting down the pub
smoking (only fags)
wondering if I am the only obsessive on the planet who isn't
shuddering in a ward

I'm willing to admit everything, just don't know what I'm meant to say exactly. If it's the usual thing about the 8th circle of Dante's Inferno I think you all know that one already don't you

oh I know what you want to know: I used to be a telephone sex girl (briefly) and could do all that over again once I knew your individual needs that is, after all one does want to get these things right. I did it (by the way) to get proficient in the language of sex and the dialogue, even the very breath of arousal, not for money. They pay very badly. Something should perhaps be done about that though it was my satisfaction and education that was important. I trained girls in sadism - also how to deal with out-of-control sadists, which requires even more concentration (I'm not particularly sadistic in real life); they were terrible at that until I explained that the reverse is true of everything and it's all tergiversation, looking-glass stuff. I think Wittgenstein would understand. Shakespeare certainly would, in fact he'd have done phone sex himself; they did have men on it, but they weren't as good as the women, partly because there were so few of them and I don't think they enjoyed it as much. If only that could change. Men are responsible for the vast majority of art and literature including the erotic - who do you think taught me? And where are you now, why aren't you writing me sonnets instead of sitting about in offices pretending to do the accounts for heaven's sake. I was particularly good at girl on girl calls as I recall, but you'd expect that.

I've been nearly murdered a couple of times.

I'm actually quite anti-pornography, not because I think it's wrong but because I think it's bad, i.e. uninspiring and alienating instead of expressive, alluring and beautiful, and, indeed, dangerous. I'm quite keen to change that though, there's a real gap in the market. In fact I am going to change it.

Simon le Bon fancies me (I know this for a fact and find it highly gratifying) but Lucas R thinks this is terrible admission to make and I should delete it, as it makes me look like a wannabe star fucker (which I'm not really, as I just like people I encounter on the street who have nice hair, some of whom happen to be famous, like Damon, who by the way, has gone off and has nothing like the power he used to: so many people with time limits: 'I had not thought death had undone so many: ch'io non averei creduto che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta (Dante's Inferno Canto III [56-7], The Waste Land, Eliot; Canto I, I think). That bloke who wrote I, Lucifer thought it was a great line. Now I don't know what to do. Tell you who also fancies me, the ex poet laureate, even though he's not met me yet).

I fancy people young enough to be my children but not (so far) below the age of consent - oh no, that isn't true, but they came on to me not the other way round (on four occasions, one was so bad the mother had to intervene on my behalf. Two actually). Now, I actually just had a bit of trouble with someone when I admitted to the fourteen year old, so couldn't these characters read my profile properly before getting up to tricks with me and then getting upset later when they realise that I'm actually quite serious about teenagers (and so are they), though it's not the most important thing about me

My longings will never be satisfied. In fact nor will my basic needs, if I am forced to continue wallowing about in this pit of cowardice and lack of human fervour that passes for emotional reality these days. I would have said erotic, but one can live on memory for that sort of thing.

you want to after all that
tu veux apres tout ca
tu es francais; j'ai besoin de lecons privees
you're the one I want
you have mesmeric sexual power and want to hurl it all over me
you need amusement
you're entitled to
I like you
you have beautiful hands
you could drive me insane but decide not to at the last minute
you're the reflective type
you can put me straight on a thing or two
you want me to love you
you understand discontent and are tolerant about it
you have joie de vivre
you not only can put up with but actively enjoy eulogy after sex, maybe even do some of it yourself though that's asking for the moon, I know
you can talk to me about venn diagrams and maths formulas
you feel desire, and that desire overrides everything
you can import a transcendental quality to sex whether you feel it yourself or no (I've moved on from sado-masochism (which I have to say I never really got my full teeth into) in the course of being on this dateline) and endure my mentioning it at awestruck and rabid length
you're not going to bore me with autistic responses to sex and mediocre guff about love and relationships, just get the job done and do it properly, over and over
you love the unconscious
you have a soul
you want to sleep with someone who can have lotus blossom orgasms. Actually I can have waterfall orgasms, electric orgasms, hypnogogic and multiple orgasms and I'm keen to extend my range, maybe water lily ones or - well Mary Magdalen was a few further rungs up the ladder on sexual sublimity, and that's my aim (I realise she doctored the deal by her choice of partner but I'm sure... with a little effort and imagination)
you can be clear about whether I should include any notion of a future in my experience of you or the plants will suffer, though suffering is kind of inevitable really so maybe you can say what you like and indeed do what you like. I think what I really mean here is am I to see you a river or a jewel, a question you may find hard to answer. But the whole business of never getting a second date out of people I've had beautiful sex with is so important to me and so strange that I may have to write a journal post about it to which you can offer suggestions or make comments, because at present I am being forced into an eternity of promiscuity which wasn't my original plan, as should be fairly obvious; what I want is something my friend Rupert calls 'an eternal meeting,' and that's with one person not 500, not that I suppose it matters since I do the same thing with everyone, hence the bizarre sense of purity about me
Of course these days I have proved so fucking terrifying I am not even getting FIRST date out of people which is why I have to just sleep with taxi drivers as they get the immediate hit and have no time to think before being subsumed; when men try thinking it's the city of the damned as far as I'm concerned, and Dis for them
you get the idea of mutual worship
you have any understanding of the colossal level of my intensity and it doesn't scare you off; indeed have a corresponding intensity, in fact an intensity that is often painful; there's a lot about excessive vulnerability you should perhaps know - I should put that bit in capitals actually because I am quite sure that's what's cocking everything up; there is something about blandness I must eradicate you can forgive me my faults, by this stage I wouldn't care about yours
you feel that there's an level of intimacy that hasn't ever been experienced that yet seems to keep independent the characters involved, or at least gives them exorbitance
you'd actually like to fall in love
when I look at your face my bones melt
you want me chained up and at your mercy (I am vulgar)
you are intoxicated by my prose style and want to get into the heart of my fire
I've hit the right note somewhere, anywhere
you can download MSN for me, on my computer, right here, no cyber instructions, sit next to me and do it in flesh and blood; blood will have blood you know. (OK that is now out of date as someone has finally turned up and done that for me though they didn't shag me. I guess it's one or the other these days, though I'm still reeling from the rejection and may need a lot of comforting. Actually that is a plain and simple lie designed to make you feel sorry for me and say YOU'D never reject me etc, but there are yet more problems with my computer (not to mention webcam and mobile phone photos, video, freezer, oven, tiles, lamps, storage unit) that I am quite happy to get you to solve in exchange for sexual favours (this is a total lie), and any time, providing I fancy you. Otherwise you'll just have to enjoy the view and the atmosphere)
I ignite your heroism
you see eye to eye with me on the subject of fantasy with not a lash of doubt
you want to kill pretty girls with no brains, I mean actually kill them, and regularly fantasise about doing so, likewise take out arrogant male thugs (unless either are any good in bed, which I can virtually guarantee they are not); generally make both pay endlessly for their smug idiocy. In fact this would probably be a part of our mutual reverence and I agree it militates against compassion but some things are just unforgivable
and finally: if I always loved you and always will
if you want to be my muse (drawing, writing; you get to keep the pictures or some of them, and lounge about the flat, and have sex with me, all sorts of different kinds of sex as well, and get flattered constantly and smooched over and seriously sucked up to, and credited, as well, for being an inspiration, and have words like mnemosyne, Proserpine, incarnadine and excoriating sloshed around the whole time etc, and face constant joy and adventure; you have to be pretty attractive for that one or bone-crunchingly intelligent or just insanely adorable or sexually intoxicating; I have one muse already and she is at least one of the aboves but I need a man as well (I do have one but he's an unreliable psychopath and keeps making me cry or worry myself to shreds at the least, so I am really straining at the bit for a new one), and another woman, I need a lot)
you find the line: 'I'll tell you what people really want to do, they want to fuck and kill,' gratifying
you want to turn me into your personal whore/porn star/erotic slave, are qualified to do so, and dedicated enough to do it without making me want to slit my own throat, which all these demands followed by disappearance and disappointment I seem to be getting is making me wanting to do at the moment, not to mention go elsewhere for my thrills; I have many elsewheres
you have stared death in the face and survived
you can cure my shyness (this is a true request as well as a vain attempt to wrest some compassion from the sadists)
you are not only a poet but a sexual poet, too, and if you're not, get working
you have star quality: then you don't have to bother with all my trivial little needs and just be you
you are a tragic hero
you know something about etching and can come down the print workshop with me and remind me to polish the plate first and get the outline traced on the press or there's only trouble later, and help me clean up, even do a bit of printing yourself, let alone carrying all that dead weight home, copper plates are very heavy and I am very small and terribly weak. Then we can go for a drink in the pub and discuss the experience, which is always electric.
you've got these things in your car: crowbar, ski mask, rope, handcuffs, wire and an ice pick
you like Margot Fonteyn
you are really quite bright, and creative, and have an understanding of sex, particularly female sexuality. If you aren't those things and dare to bother me I will either pretend to really like you or tear your soul open depending on how repelled I am and how much energy I am prepared to waste
the final line of this quote suggests to you the mission of your life:

Below the surface stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say and feel — below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel, there flows
With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

Matthew Arnold

* * *

I've considered much, and have decided I am suffering from a broken heart, though I'm not sure who's caused it or whether it's related to any one person or specific event; perhaps it's just everything. I need to mention this at this stage because it's right at the end and just in case any of you were thinking, 'well, she's up for it, I can nip over and fuck her up the arse and be out of there in half an hour,' which, let's face it, despite the fact it's a pretty complete misinterpretation of my personality and you've had pages of evidence to suggest why it would be, is exactly what a lot of you do think, then, even though you might get some satisfaction and I doubt I'd put up a fight, I caution against it because it might just split my mind. Of course it's fairly unlikely that this would be noticeable as I'd be busy covering your faults fervently and praying later, because what else can one do when face to face with The Horror, which is why I am saying it now while I still can, and someone might actually be listening. In addition, I am pretty much at a loss to realise why anyone who has so powerfully expressed a human soul is still considered by so many to have none at all, and certainly a lot less of one than others who haven't gone to the effort of articulating theirs to anywhere near this extent. Is that because it's easier to be nicer to women who appear trivial, or just plain thick, and the intense ones have got to be thrashed about more, or is not to do with gender, that's just accidental, and the more visible a soul one has, the more this reminds people of their own vulnerabilities so they are forced to savage it to fucking death? I muse on such things, when despair grips me, as it does today. As it does many days, come to think of it. I despair of us all, and for us all.

You should avoid messaging me if you want to criticise me, for whatever reasons, or aren't capable of clear or sensitive communication, even if it's only to organise sex. The eradication of love and relationships isn't necessarily a bad idea, but lack of creativity or imagination, particularly in projected form, is. I'd go further and say that if you don't sense immediate rapport, if your linguistic range or capacity is limited, if you lack energy and are pedestrian in your needs, you should probably give it a miss as well. I'm just going to get bored, and hell, it's a lot of work keeping up with me if you just want a one-night stand, unless you joy in your work and want to screw me up by delivering the goods in all their magical awareness and poise and then walk out on me knowing I'll never get over you. It's a stupid and a cruel thing to do - an evasion essentially - most things are - but it will work, and since none of you seem capable of dealing with me for more than a day, well, there's your alternative.

Don't contact me without a photo. This indicates a terror of exposure, and exposure is the crucible of my quest. I've got ten, well eight now I've shoved in some art which will just get flagged, and they convey more than just the physical. They also evoke states of passion and present an erotic or psychological landscape; do the same, or at the very least consider why you haven't done that and what I will have to say about it. In fact you should consider very carefully whether you should be contacting me at all, unless you are a gifted communicator, or very beautiful in some strange way, or have, one way or another, something to offer that I want - so, the exact opposite of the way most men seem to be going about things, which is seeing that I have the goods they want and assuming I'll deliver them merely because they ask for them. NO. You have to be qualified to get what's on offer here; you have to be sundering up the same sort of thing, or its equivalent, and you have to know all that already without my spelling it out, like a fucking grammar school teacher. This will be very clear to some of you, but not to all, and it is to the overwhelming majority I dictate these final paragraphs, something that the rest of you will probably enjoy reading as you've been waiting quite long enough for an expression, for once, not of desire but of rank disgust.

I am fed up with talking to morons who think I'm not going to notice their inferior wares and fuck them or talk to them just anyway, do so automatically and eagerly, and for no reason other than that they expect it - the ego of the male race beggars belief; it is the male race that is largely at fault here, though not completely so (there are excruciating examples of female vanity and idiocy but they are largely exceptions: male vanity and idiocy is largely the rule) and not just for reasons of power and prurience. What steams home as at least part of the difficulty is that there's no overriding sense that unless you're intelligent and creative and sensitive and visually elegant and empathetic and emotionally industrious you stand a chance, not just not with me but with anyone. Women have known this for aeons – they have had second-class citizenship and slave status drummed into them over and over for a very long period of time, and that's exactly what a lot of men need to feel: that they're going to have to work to get what they want, and that not their opinion but mine (for one) matters; that they are the ones being judged and found wanting or otherwise. But the prevalent feeling, the constant word from men is this:

'it doesn't matter that I'm deficient in many ways, insensitive, inarticulate, unattractive and stupid, everyone wants me anyway. If this one doesn't, if she in fact dares to contradict this view, she's either a bitch, irreducibly vapid or insane. And I will make my opinion plain, and be hostile about it, with speed, alacrity, anger, and the bone-deep knowledge that everyone agrees with me or they are fools if they don't; I am objectively true on this matter and universally correct.'

I want that attitude eradicated. Why not try some of the grovelling I've been getting up to? Why not suffer and crawl and fail and crucify yourself for a while, instead of this constant assumption that it just doesn't matter how inept you are, the girl's going to be on her hands and knees anyway? Where she should be and where she wants to be and all the time. It's stunning, the almost fatal and practically ubiquitous lack of any sense of equality whatsoever, and I'm all for equality. I'm saying this now because I've been on this site for three years and my research findings are overwhelming, in terms not so much of male inadequacy, but the almost lunatic lack of recognition, persistent and enduring, that being inadequate is a fault and not something to be proud of (heavy italics). It's not just the stupidity and the crassness and the blundering lack of grace, both aesthetically and psychologically that rams itself under my nose every day, it's the concomitant lack of any shame. Shame's a good emotion. More people should feel it, especially men, because it's been denied them historically for so long, so I can kind of see why pigs go around thinking they're gods, but surely this delusion has got to stop somewhere. Here, for example. I don't have the natural, automatic deference most women feel for men, generally, as a gender; I defer to men who are either my superior in whatever area (and I do this willingly and gratefully because they're gifted, and admire that, so it's conscious deference, which is not the same thing at all) or if I'm in love with them. Not otherwise. Inspiring love is not an easy task (I am not holding my breath on superiority), though it is the task you have set out to accomplish, no? By being on here in the first place. In fact what I'm requesting isn't that difficult; it's to do with engagement. And a false sense of one's own abilities gets in the way of human connection, because what you get after that is prescription worship and to do with something quite other than the contemplation and frank veneration of the naked soul. It's that naked soul I'm interested in. So get going on discovering that naked soul, or I will do it for you and then where will you be? Utterly humiliated, for the most part.

What I'm finding is that if you strip off the layers of vaunting and prating, the naked soul is often scrumpled and small, if barely in existence at all, and many of you would agree with me, because even the word soul causes confusion: 'What does she mean? What's a soul? I don't understand, and I don't want to. Who is this overcomplicated irritating bitch? I just liked her underwear shots and now I'm getting a whole load of back-chat. She can fuck off. If she won't sit back and look pretty and give me a blow job, or say she will, I've got no time for her. Come over my cock or come not at all.' But. 'Why dost thou live?' I say to myself. 'To what end and with what purpose? What oils your days and ways - what shall these creatures do, crawling twixt earth and heaven - and why drag this morbid absence and groping death - this skeletal identity of emptiness and derision, this vagueness and this sorrow, this devouring lack of animation and hope - into my line of vision? I'm hardly going to thank you, now, am I.' Yet this is what I am expected to do, over, and over. There's a huge reliance on externals - externals do matter, but only if they illustrate the soul, not if they're just tacked onto it, excuses really; and it's that lack of scrupulousness I am noticing more and more. This doesn't so much upset me as make my jaw drop, that for so long so many have believed themselves worthy of forgiveness; that so many have relied on the comfort of strangers, even strangers in their own heart.

I will not forgive you, and I will not comfort you.

Errors of approach, mistakes in understanding, failure to connect or to attempt to, misreading, lack of recognition, lack of rigour, sloppiness, laziness, evasiveness, sliding away from the truth instead of staring it in the face, refusing to be exact, lack of courage - these are things I am distressed about, that I feel guilty about, that I want to put right, if I find myself shirking. Why should I extend a charity I do not offer myself to others for whom taking it easy comes as second nature? I am not going to, in fact far from shagging you, I am going to execute you. And I will joy in that execution, because my teeth are bloody with the need to rectify the wrong done in the name of love and in the name of humanity. And I reserve the right to publish my findings. That said, I'm not really here to trounce scoundrels. My profile lacks an emphasis on bliss, something that has been on my mind a lot, but I'd have to delete the entire thing and start over to convey it properly. Right. I'll do that but I have some flowers to draw first.

Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Iudicandus homo reus

THIS IS NOT THE END

I’ve got a list here of things I want to talk about today: rubbish dumps, acceptance, my window cleaner, Catherine Cookson, meter readings, bombs, stalkers, Mallorca, ‘a continued allegory or dark conceit,’ James Frey, and some of these things I didn’t even realise I was writing down until I read them afterwards. But I think we should kick off with The Good Life, because I like The Good Life, and they occasionally do repeats but not very often and instead I have to watch Midsomer Murders or Murder She Wrote, but they’ve got rid of both those so I can’t watch anything and just have to think about sitcoms I used to enjoy once upon a time. Why, you may be asking yourselves, this ebullient tone and undistempered, balmy attitude towards existence? Where’s all the pain and death, violence and torture gone? You can’t just suddenly do this to us, replace chthonic need and despairing pits of psychological torment with something pastoral, let loose the blood-dimmed tide and then hand over sweet meadows of reason and charm. Don’t waste our time. And I can understand that attitude and you’re quite right of course. The trouble seems to me that two quite distinct universes are directly at hand. One of them is getting bigger, and that’s the one with the birds and the trees and the daffodils and the sense of humour, and the other one, outraged, is sulking in a corner for not getting enough attention. I have tried, I have honestly tried. I’ve bought nearly all Cormac McCarthy’s works, I’ve even gone on his website to talk about The Road, except for me it’s a fable of divine enlightenment and not a nihilistic tract, my flat is not a flat at all, it’s just a dumping ground for whatever I see fit to put there, and then put more on top, my sheets are ripped and covered with fag ash, the bed’s full of Carrie and Play Misty For Me and as many Horror books I could get out of the library without my arms falling off, there are wine bottles everywhere, though I agree they’re mainly full of water, I have read House of Dolls, I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets and plenty of puerile conversations, I have done all I can to embrace pain, death, chaos and insanity, and I have failed. It doesn’t matter what I do, all I can see is rippling corn, daffodils, tenderness, mercy, grace and forget-me-nots. There are so many books on the floor I can’t count them let alone read them, and letters and candlesticks and jumpers and pencils that you can’t even see the carpet but it all looks like a field in Heaven. I wish you could see it. It is Elisium. A word I have apparently spelled wrong but who cares about spelling when you’re staring into the face of God, or whatever this is. So... any reason for this superb translation from woe and weal to a wilderness of Beauty and Everlasting Serendipity? Well, I should tell you, shouldn’t I, because I think to make the translation took something and wasn’t easy.

I was wandering around yesterday, blistered by agony, and reading like a maniac, suffering, and in fact suffering so badly that I started to write essays in my head on the matter which I was aware was psychotic, but never mind, because all human emotions are valid, even the bad ones, and undiluted Nirvana isn’t a day-to-day thing, or even interesting, but I was really very unhappy and I had a think about why, which took ages, though not as long as usual because I’ve been at this thinking lark for a long time so I can race through it all pretty swiftly now and this was my summary:

‘The particular level of emotional unease you’re up to right now isn’t tolerable to most people and when they do feel it, someone locks them up in a lunatic asylum so they can rave to the walls, which will look blood-soaked even if they’re not. What’s the difference between you and them aside from articulation, and an absorption in getting into words and tying the nightmare down so even though you’re obsessed the whole thing is cathartic down to recognition, not swallowed in a stupor of inchoate, irrational anguish with pale ghosts and tears just in case anyone thought pain couldn’t vary its flavour?’ ‘Well,’ I thought. ‘Well. What IS the difference, because it isn’t just literary style or verbal dexterity. It’s the fact that you have another world. Just around the corner, in fact in the next room. In a split second you can walk out of torture and into bliss. Over there, in your very bathroom, there is a stunning mass of pictures and flowers and work to be done - actually you really do have some work to do, you’ve got to get that Tiffany plate I the ferric chloride for a second bite, and you ought to have drawn that yellow poppy, it’ll have wilted and died and lost all its petals before you get round to it what with all this Thanatos nonsense’ - and bingo, I wasn’t in hell any more at all, no doubt due to the sympathy I was feeling for the poppy, though there is another bud if I continue to not draw it and write all this down instead. A different Tiffany from Tiffany Upstairs in case you were wondering. ‘Right then,’ I thought to myself, ‘what IS this Thanatos nonsense? Why all the misery.’ And of course the answer was this horrific deal with Romantic Love that I’m constantly getting wrong and getting it in the neck for. So I thought, ‘well give up on that since it jus destroys you and you’re so verdant elsewhere, it’s not for you. The choice is incontroversially clear: either exist inside some fantastic spiritual truth that has nothing to do with you but which you appear to have no trouble harnessing and making fecund, or throw yourself away on some troglodyte who will never understand, and continue to do so year upon year even if you’ve only met them once. Or twice. Or every night in your dreams. Or even if it’s not them, it’ll be someone, you’ve got a vast stock of men to crucify yourself with, you don’t in fact require any more, you’ve got more demons than Shakespeare and more variety, a veritable orchard of monsters - hmm. JUST LEAVE.’ Then I realised what the problem was. I had a quick think, and this is what I came up with. ‘The trouble lies not so much in men, but in the intersection of you with them. You are murdered by banality and any kind of spiritual absence or detraction from the main event. You throw everything into love and sex and communication even if you’ve just met the person and know nothing about them; in short you have no defences, and immersion and no boundaries and no barriers and total engulfment is your destiny and dream. Of COURSE you’re VULNERABLE! And you’re not fucking changing, that’s for sure. No wonder you have all these problems when normal people are just not like this. They are casual, capable of separation, detachment, days off, time out, in fact they HATE this level of immersion - precisely the quality you have in your writing and drawing - total and utter irradiant submersion into The Other - no one else is like that, not even women, even with their obsequent biology, because they’re always thinking about, well I dunno - hair straighteners and tea cloths or something (or so I hear) - they have hostages, props, evasions, idiosyncrasies, and that’s why they work well with men who mainly want to think about football or chemical compounds or politics or success – well, you are just not LIKE that. You’re a fucking visionary, and you want another one like you, who’s going to throw themselves into this business of sexual love with as much rabid fervour and intoxication and exaltation and risk, above all RISK – as you do. They have to be the sort of person who couldn’t possibly betray you, not because they’ve talked it over with themselves and educated their attitude so it passes muster, but because they’re blindly like this anyway, and don’t need any lessons, and go in for utter Fall, and the possibility of desolation and wrecked life and their hope shattered like a light-bulb, which is all you EVER get because there’s never been a man like you, so of COURSE there is nothing but shattered light-bulbs and no living eternal fire, which is what you want and are. So far at any rate.’

Then I thought, ‘yeah right, but that’s just invalid. You can’t ask for that, not on OKC of all places, surely just paste up another underwear shot and talk about daisies and you’ll coil in some hopeless character who’ll just destroy you all over again. Or quit completely. After all, what you want and what you let’s not forget are offering in unqualified abundance (heavy italics, if not Gothic lettering) is going to sound insane to most people, in fact even the very language you’re using to describe it is beyond most people’s emotional ken, this isn’t right’ - and then I thought bugger it. I’ve spent long enough on this earth finding no equivalence and just having my hand and heart broken over and over because this misconception is so fundamental. ‘You’ve explained everything else, explain THIS. Go on, give it a go. Talk about immediate and perpetual sacrifice and beautiful harmonies and interior space and telepathy and fields of daffodils and asphodel, self-creating and gestating universes, and say you’ve got all that and you want someone who has all that too, and will instinctively lay it at your feet, because that is exactly what you do and it gets you nowhere because these people don’t have anything TO lay at your feet or are mean about doing so – at least they are so immediately, and the immediate is what you want, no sitting about speculating and murmuring of other concerns like personal freedom and all that bollocks, it's all denial and distraction. Just get one with the same bewildering generosity of spirit who’s prepared to dare all, and drown in you, completely, with no edges, no room for breath or hesitation, and you’ll be happy. Nothing less will do. Other than that - and if you get one chink, one blink of cold dead nightmarish torture coming your way because their superabundance has ceased because they’re just not up to it or not into it and think there are other things to do in life even they’re not doing them, and you can feel all that, feel the rigor mortis seeping in, strangling your soul, locking you in a deep freeze, dampening your ardour and quashing your fire, then just go straight to your bathroom and draw the geraniums and never think of them again.’ And that’s it. So… any takers? I know it’s a long shot, but there has to be someone around who thinks the same way as I do, and is all for it. I refuse to believe they don’t exist, because after all I do, even though my reality has been in question for a long time with a large number of people. There you go, there’s your challenge: do that, be that, have all that to you, and give me the lot. I can take no more half measures, and I can take no more being less than I am, and giving less than I want to in order to satisfy other people’s lesser needs and capitulate with their mediocre, mindless struggles of identity and existence. I want someone with great, powerful, incredible, inexhaustible needs and vast hinterlands of passion and perplexity. I don’t much care if they’re particularly well-organised or haven’t managed to control themselves too well so far, are shivering with terror and devastation and coruscated by their own truth, just as long as they have equivalent intensity and a no holds barred approach, and obviously a profound sense of Beauty, because without that you just have a sink of pig-swill and not Paradise. Other than that I’m sticking with the geranium. If a miniscule little geranium can tolerate my love, well, why the hell can’t you.

But life is not only about geraniums. I can't tell you how exciting this next bit is. I was in my print workshop yesterday, talking about magnifying spectacles and under-bitten plates and boats, thinking about rain. It was lunch so I went out for a sandwich and passed the flower stall, which generally sells repulsive plants like petunias and American Marigolds, which look kind of artificial, but today had a truckload of tomato plants. I love tomato plants but haven't seen one in a while, they even had two different types, and miniature marrows, red peppers, some strawberry plants, and a Sweet Pea (delirium) 'and, if you come here on Wednesday, we’re getting some Venus Fly Traps in,' said the flower seller man proudly. 'But you must promise not to stroke a pencil on the bit with the hairs or it'll snap open and try to bite it, which wouldn’t be fair, even though it's tempting. Carnivorous flowers.' 'I'd better have one of them. Sounds just right for my window ledge.' The flower seller man had to go in and sell something and I had to buy my sandwich so we parted. Later on, after I'd picked out two tomato plants, 'no, I don't want two different varieties, I want that particular one twice over, because I like the way it looks, and I like doubles and twins, and all right I'll buy the strawberry plant as well,' he took me in the shop at the back to give me my change and show me the newts. There were a lot of newts, and maggots and crickets and frogs hopping about. 'You're getting nervous aren't you,' he said. 'Not really enjoying yourself at all.' 'Well, yes, I think one of those little frogs is going to jump out in my face, they're very... riotous.' He showed me the salamanders as well. They looked artificial too. There were an awful lot of aquariums in the shop, I began to realise, stacked high to the ceiling, containing God knows what, and he was opening cage doors all over the place so I left rapidly. I was pleased about the tomato plants, as I got obsessed with a tomato plant once, so much so that I had to keep it in my bedroom, but I never got round to drawing it because it died. I did, however, put it in my novel. Hours I used to spend, just staring at it, so often did I do this that I felt it was only fair to get a mention in my favourite chapter, the one called The Daisy Chain; indeed I could not contain the urge, despite the fact it had nothing to do with the general plot line. I could put the quote in here if you like, it's rousing, and I read it to myself sometimes when I want descriptions of magical warmth and victorious beauty. In fact there is more than one quote but this profile is long enough already. Perhaps I'll put a few of them on a journal post, or just email you every single reference because they're all great, maybe even the greatest part of the novel, certainly quite distracting and surreal, and, considering the rest of the book, irrepressibly and irreducibly joyful (iridescent italics).

But back to the present day.

I am hugely inspired by these tomato plants. Even though they're quite small, they do have flowers and it's time I drew one really, now I have the chance all over again. The geranium can wait. Geraniums really can wait, this one's waited for years, but geraniums are hardy and tomato plants are not, not in my flat anyway. The geraniums last for ages, not as long as a weeping fig I have which is at least twenty-five years old, but long enough, and way longer than tomato plants, though it's my own fault for not having a garden, I know. These ones are called 'Gardener's Delight' but I don't much care if they produce any fruit or not, as long as I do apropos of them. I think tomato plants have a fertile effect, as long as they don’t die, and maybe even if they do. The tomato plant dies in the novel as well, and my heroine is pretty upset about that. She keeps its corpse in an under-sink cupboard for ages, out of guilt, because she over-pruned it. Well, she did. She probably overwatered it as well. 'Killed with kindness,' someone said once, of the entire affair. So, it’s a kind of resurrection myth, but I’d better get on with it or the central heating or the restrictive pot size or whatever will take these two as they took the last one and I’ll have to content myself with the Venus Fly Trap, or the Sweet Pea (delirium), which I stupidly forgot to buy, but there's always Wednesday.

- Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot.

OK, I'm moving over to writing in journals not that I'll fare any better there, but at least I don't have to capitulate to an audience of my ideal other or someone mentally retarded.