4 October 2023
13:48-14:26
Cold pressed juice. GINGER SHOT Ginger & Apple
Scandi Style Smoky Carrot & Eggless Tofu Mayo
Dark Chocolate Almonds (A LITTLE BAG OF GOOD STUFF)
Cost: exactly £10
I’ve still not received a free product at the discretion of a Pret employee but yesterday at Poke Island Great Eastern St I received a whole poke bowl for free – because I ‘always come here’.
I still feel jangly, and I’m trying to unclench my jaw. Putting the word jangle to use in a different context, Walter Benjamin asked, ‘Who could count the alarm signals with which the inner world of the true writer is equipped? And to “write” is nothing other than to set them jangling.’ Bernadette Mayer also uses the word, in Moving, 1971, a text which is also formally jangly as it has no left hand margin: ‘jonathan made a list of the words we use most often – jangling love clear bottled services tents centaurs endives corn hash potatoes separation result coming up over deaths shirt imprisonment hurt meaning every ancient silent stone people & word. ed added literature & chocolate.’ A couple of pages later in Moving there is a list of words for departure and disappearance:
i’m leaving. i’m departing, i’m taking my departure i’m going, i’m going away. i’m going off. i’m getting away i’m going my way. i’m getting along, i’m going on. i’m shoving on. i’m trotting along. i’m staggering along. i’m moseying along. i’m buzzing off. i’m moving off. i’m marching away, i’m pulling out. i’m leaving home. i’m going from home. i’m exiting. i’m breaking away. i’m o’, i’m setting forth i’m retiring, i’m going down to the sea. i’m removing. i’m making my exit, i’m ceasing to be. i’m disappearing. i’m vanishing from sight. i’m doing the vanishing act. i’m departing. i’m flying. i’m going, i’ll be gone. i’m passing away. i’m passing out of sight. i’m passing out of the picture. i’m going beyond the tree. i’m retiring from sight. i’m becoming lost to sight, i’m drowning. i’m losing sight of myself i’m perishing. i’m dying. i’m dying out. i’m fading. i’m doing a fade-out. i’m sinking away. i’m dissolving. i’m melting. i’m melting away. i’m evaporating. i’m evanescing. i’m vanishing into thin air. i’m going up in smoke. i’m dispersing i’m dispelling myself. i’m dissipating. i’m floating. i’m ceasing to be. i’m leaving no trace.
Teleportation necessitates momentary disappearance. Mayer does not provide a complementary list of terms for arrival and appearance, so here’s one of my own:
i’m arriving. i’m getting there, i’m on my way i’m coming, i’m coming over. i’m coming to you. i’m staying i’m here. i’m persisting, i’m entering, i’m sticking around. i’m appearing i’m visible i’m around i’m showing up. i’m putting on. i’m making my entrance. i’m emphasising i’m visiting, i’m coming into view, i’m activating, i’m being born, i’m materialising i’m bubbling up, i’m adding on, i’m emboldening, i’m reporting, i’m starting, i’m living, i’m coming out, i’m emerging, i’m cropping up, i’m turning out, i’m presenting, i’m turning up, i’m solidifying, i’m sustaining, i’m keeping up, i’m leaving my mark, i’m reflecting, i’m seeing myself, i’m reappearing, i’m showing, i’m manifesting. i’m Coming To Have A Public Life Is It Worth It.
My thoughts are racing. SLOW DOWN!
[...]
A guitar interlude plays in Pret.
[...]
Now there are drums, and the lyrics ‘we’re supposed to be in love’ and something about breaking someone’s heart. No one replied to my question ‘What’s Love Got To Do With Teleportation?’ I’m not all that surprised. Oh, now someone’s replied: ‘Love maybe has nothing to do with Teleportations. The song ‘What’s love got to do/ Got to do with it’ comes to mind. The bottom of Tina’s skirt tiny jewels that flick in the opposite direction to her hair.’
[...]
Lutz Bacher’s exhibition opens tonight at Raven Row. The photo above depicts the sand component of the installation on the ground floor, where marks of presence and absence take the form of shoe prints and negative space. Watch this video of a lecture performance Bacher gave in which she recalls a string of childhood memories, including the time she questioned what the algebraic x meant and was duly humiliated by the teacher who made her solve an equation on the blackboard, after which Bacher said she understood the meaning of x but in fact didn’t, she was simply keen to end the moment of being stood up in front of the whole class.
Memories. I have just ordered Memory by Bernadette Mayer and have been entertaining the idea of creating a separate instagram account, selecting a month, and posting thirty-six photos per day, then writing to them afterwards. But why thirty-six? For Mayer this number corresponded to the amount of exposures on a reel of 35mm photographic film.
A poster to my right says ‘Soft & Squidgy’ and attests to Pret’s practice of using ‘only the freshest mozzarella.’ I’m not sure I’ve had Pret mozzarella before but I have some doubts about the company’s claim.
Tension. On the one hand this, on the other hand that. Still jaw clenching. Another poem I found in my ‘poems in progress’ folder I composed according to CAConrad’s somatic ritual. I was shocked when I read it – it contained flashes of evidence of the real madness of falling in love with my current partner. Cycling down a hill and being exhilarated by the feel of that, passing a house that made me remember. I can’t find the poem now, or I might have excerpted from it. Oh yes, the folder is on my hard drive.
Space and time and the conditions of loving relations in the city, is what I said this teleportation project was about.