Author: wjadmin

1. Going too far out
When his father went to buy icecreams, Ali picked up the airbed and headed for the water.

“Don’t go too far!” called out his mā.

“OK.”

Ali knew why she was nervous. So many people from their country had gone to sea in rubber boats and died. But this was the first time he’d been to the seaside and he wanted to experience it as much as he could.

The sand was warm and soft where they’d been sitting but then became hard and flat where the sea had run over it. He stepped in the water with more confidence than the first time an hour or so ago. The cold had surprised him then and covered his body with gooseflesh, but that had passed as he got deeper and submerged his whole body. The waves were small and it hadn’t been too difficult to swim amongst them. He’d learned to swim at the local pool at home and he could manage a passable breast stroke. Still, when the next wave hit his belly, the shock stopped him briefly.

As soon as he was about waist deep, Ali put the airbed on the water and lay face down on it. Then he started paddling with his hands till he was out beyond where the waves were breaking. This is what surfers did, who he’d watched on Internet videos. When he thought he was clear of the surf, he rolled carefully onto his back and looked up at the sky. It was a light blue screen with only wisps of clouds high up, that didn’t seem to be moving at all. The sea rose and fell gently and the sunlight was a warm blanket over his whole body. Ali closed his eyes and enjoyed these lovely feelings. He knew his father would be angry and he’d not get his icecream unless he went back soon but this was too good to miss.

Their family hadn’t come across the sea in a rubber boat but in an airplane. He’d been too young to remember it and this country was the only one Ali knew. But he also knew that there was a war now in the country where he’d been born and lots of people were trying to get away from it but many of them had drowned in the sea. That made him sad but not afraid of the water like his father was. His father was a scientist and had brought them all to England so he could work at the university. That was before the war and now they couldn’t go back. Ali knew that his parents worried a lot about other relations who were stuck there and whether they were some of those who had died trying to get away. That was why Ali had waited till his father had gone off for icecreams before taking the airbed on the water. He knew he’d get told off but this was worth it.

Ali’s eyes were closed, his skin was warm, the airbed rocked on the swell. Time seemed to disappear. He had no idea how long he’d been there, nor how far out he was now. He’d heard about tides but didn’t know it had been going out since he entered the water. Nor did he know that there was a strong current along that coast that was now taking him even further away from the beach, where his parents stood frantically scanning the sea for a sign of their son. They shouted his name but he was too far away to hear them.

Suddenly the airbed stopped rising and falling on the sea but rose even higher with a rush of water and bubbling air. Ali sat up with a start and looked around him. He nearly fell off the airbed with shock. The land was just a dark line in the distance, while he was now surrounded by a yellow disk of some kind, shining with the water draining off it. Ali’s mind raced. Was it an island? Was it some kind of whale? How could he get back to his mum and dad? He was shivering with fear when there was a loud clang behind him. His head span round in time to see a head appear out of a hole in the yellow circle. It was covered all over, it seemed, with reddish curly hair and the face looked as astonished as he felt.

“What are you doing on my boat?” the head demanded. The boy sat and said nothing. His mouth wouldn’t work. The head looked around and then back at him. After some seconds it came to a decision and the man the head was attached to climbed out of the hole and came over to where Ali sat frozen with fear and confusion.

“You’re a long way from home” said the man, “I suppose you’d better come in.”

He helped Ali to his feel and guided him to the hole in the yellow circle and onto the ladder leading down inside. Then he picked up the airbed, saying, “We don’t want people to get the wrong idea.”

Some people are physically unable,
sometimes the sound roots you to the spot,
for whatever reason, you put your cards down on the table
and recognise the music is too hot.

This doesn’t mean at all that you’ve stopped dancing,
it’s all just happening out of sight –
your mind is flying with the high notes
and crawling on the floor when basses bite.

It’s a wonderful sensation
to be able to travel through the stars
or wander on the bottom of the ocean
or burn rubber in the fastest cars, ..

.. to make love right there out in the open
with your lover or one you wished was yours,
to dance like a gymnast or a dope then
slide down walls and hammer on the doors.

There’s nothing in your imagination
music can’t release and energise –
it can unify each and every nation,
get the lame to walk and the dead to rise.

So don’t worry if you find yourself immobile
while others still are moving to the beat,
enjoy that engagement all the while
the rhythms are still coming through your feet.

Wishing a Merry Midwinter to all my readers!

Santa on the cross*

An image to horrify, amaze –
such a mixing up of concepts
we’ve grown up with for so long
but, after all, not necessarily so wrong.

Old stories, myths and fairy tales,
have been distorted every way,
taken from the memories
of former tribes and families.

For a century and more
they’ve served to sell another line,
to hang our dreams out on display
and, to satisfy our hunger, make us pay.

In the North in winter we need light
to get us through the darkness of that night
and so we celebrate, as best we may
with fire and food and drink, the shortest day.

But the pushers who control the world
use every kind of trick they know
to ensure that we consume their junk
and spend all of our dough.

So it is not that strange at all
that in one shopping mall
the management mistakenly
hung Santa on an Easter tree.

rs 19.12.17

[* It was outside a store in Japan and told by an Icelandic story-teller on BBC Radio 4]

(à Camus – Exile and the Kingdom)

We set off on our various roads,
some together, some apart.
We’ve little choice in where we start
our own long journey to the heart.

We never know before the time
whether decisions that we make,
or separate turnings that we take,
will lead us to a final break.

The separation hits you then –
you’re studying the ticket in your hand
and thinking how it wasn’t what you planned,
to be an exile in a foreign land.

You realise the truth in this:
you never see the same place twice.
You wish you’d listened to that advice
before you had to reckon up the price.

But now the barrier has come down,
now they’ve dug a trench across that road,
you remember what is owed
when all that you can do is write in code.

“They’ll miss me. More toothache than heartache!”
is how you joke it off at first
before you get that terrible thirst.
Each time you think that it’s the worst.

The news you do get only tells
what you are missing in the life
of lover, children, parents, wife
you left in friendship or in strife.

In case your paths should meet again,
you go through agony like this,
dreaming of a welcome kiss
you hope to get from ones you miss.

She has the kind of accent the English love to mock,
one of the generation whose words’d been forgot
but who remembered still where the strap had hung
that taught the children to renounce their mother tongue.
She grew up to be the blacksheep of the flock,
worried almost to distraction by her lot,
this proverbial innocent who wanted to be good
but defended her one lamb as fiercely as she could.
If there really was green land beyond the hill
where mild and humble souls could always eat their fill
and play harps to hearts’ content and harmoniums too
she’d get a first-class ticket there and never queue.
I love that singing voice with its Morriston lilt,
it quavers but with the rocksteady trust on which
churches are built.

I step out and am arrested by the sight –
like a china tea-set shattered on green baize,
like soft late snow, scattered on the grass,
the day’s eyes blaze at me with light.

By squinting I regain my vision and my poise,
the flowers recede, the city comes once more in view –
a warm spring day, the air feels fresh and new
despite its load of dirt and noise.

I turned to you the other night and lost my fear
in that smile, in the bright blue trumpets of your eyes
like Morning Glory taken by surprise;
I only wish that I could see you here.

Climbing alone now –
your partner’s out of sight –
slip!
Heartstop.
Slide, sweat, sick,
halt nearby,
trickledown fear.

You hang there falling
in
slow
motion,
like a kitten on a tilting
glass-topped table.

` On a rock face
on a roof pitch
you lie
spreadeagle,
trying to stretch your arms
around the whole earth,
nearly weeping,
squeezing down the shudder
which would shake you off.

Now
to try to get back up,
unstick a hand, a foot,
slither, scrabble,
unclamp a jaw,
tear loose a tongue,
drag your face out of the dust
on an aching neck.

Now come the harpies.

Fear, rage and despair
pluck your eyes,
stab your belly,
gnaw your liver
and shrink your sex.

Like a little boy
afraid in school,
your death seems as close as air,
clinging like wet trousers,
strangling like an overtightened tie –
birth-cord round your throat.

Now, to get out of this.

III. left-side

Self-portrait is a social game,
like trying to tell a joke;
the object is to trick the crowd
to see what you invoke.

With dabs and hints and other strokes
you build up the illusion,
while relying on the others’ egos
to join you in collusion.

However, to convince the marks
of your veracity,
you need more than just a mirror
or a lucid memory.

Something from inside must show
to prove your good intentions
and put the stamp of truth
upon your sneakiest inventions.

Which is where we hit the paradoxes
of honesty in artifice
and, if we’re souled in separate boxes,
who may say what does take place?

Enough! I’m sure you must object
to all this going round the houses.
Why hop about the subject
in Heisenberger’s cast-off trousers?

There’s not much time and space left over
to pin down the uncertainty
and arrange collisions, if I can,
between words and my reality.

vlad_the_impatient
An entrance

My difficulties began when Cousin Enver came back.

One night a year ago I was sitting at my desk in the small hours, idly trawling the Net, when there was a sudden hammering at the door. I sat up with a start. Cops?! Then relaxed. Two inches of good English oak with steel fittings – they weren’t going to get through that in a hurry without explosives. I left my pipe where it was and went to the intercom.

“What’s wrong with using the doorbell?”

“I don’t see no bells.” The accent was horribly familiar.

“Who is it?”

“Family.”

Oh shit, that’s all I needed.

“Stop banging before you wake the whole street. I’ll let you in.”

“Cousin Enver, how good to see you.” I lied as I swung open the door.

“Don’t use that name,” he brushed past me, “call me John.”

“Come in why don’t you.” I said breezily and to myself, ‘and why not Jonah?’, closing and rebolting the door before following him into my living room.

A few decades earlier Uncle Joe had arranged for his termination and incarceration in Siberia, figuring the permafrost would keep the old bastard out of circulation for a very long time. Unfortunately the Great Planner hadn’t reckoned on global warming. As Enver’s icy bed softened and he felt the vibrations of the fracking drills, he started to wake up …

Or so I learned later. For now Cousin Enver parked himself at my dining table and looked around.

“Where is everyone? Out hunting?”

“No, they’re all downstairs.” I had no idea what to say next. I hadn’t planned for this eventuality. Hadn’t been expecting any callers at all.

“Well, I’m here. Let’s go wake them up and have a party.”

With a sinking heart I took down the key and led the way to the cellar.

There they stood, the four sarcophagi holding my family: father, mother, brother and sister and the fifth, my own, lidless and empty. The other brother had fallen foul of the Roumanian Iron Guard and been handed over to the Germans, who burned him in Majdanek.

“Open them up then!” demanded Enver and I reluctantly went to slide over the stone covers and open the coffins inside. As I raised each coffin lid, Enver’s eyes widened as his gaze travelled from one to the other. I felt tense.

“Where are their heads?”

“I was hungry.” I replied irritably.

“You were hungry, so you ate your family’s heads?”

“No, I sold them to vampire museums.”

The problem

“What’s the next stage after Artificial Intelligence?”

Paskov looked round the room at the baffled young faces. Smithson raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“Artificial Stupidity.”

“Correct and why is that?”

“So that computers can do what we do and learn from their mistakes” Smithson replied somewhat wearily.

“But we’ve got machines that do that already,” objected Fratelli, “so they can navigate around obstacles for instance.”

“Not forgetting any of Gates’s software” muttered Evans to some general laughter. Paskov ignored this and continued. “True but to date the only heuristic available to them has been absurdly simple. They have to examine possible solutions in a straightline logical sequence. The fact that they can do those computations incredibly fast is an advantage but it’s not necessarily the best approach. So what might be?”

“Fuzzy logic.”

“We’ve had that for years.”

“But humans still have to set the parameters.”

“Do we want machines to set their own parameters?”

The class was beginning to wake up.

“What’s the one thing humans can do when a solution fails that, so far, machines can’t?” the teacher interjected. There was a pause, then Fratelli put her hand up again.

“Come up with a completely different approach.”

Paskov smiled. She was definitely showing promise.

“Yes. It’s generally called imagination. The question is then, how do we put that into machines? Any ideas?”