Green Dragon.

Tal sent vivid dreams of cutting about Southern USA racing stock cars, a green Studebaker that snarled like a dragon and kicked dust when it pawed the ground.
Oh, and there was a team, and a girl, about 5' and slim built, better with an engine than anyone on the team and with a vicious sense of humour, and she was literally a partner in crime - spying, lookout as we robbed another team to keep racing. So much colour, so real, right down to getting caught, and swaggering bravado until one young fan handed over the play worn model of the dragon when the police caught up.



Then the tears. Then watching the girl pushed into a different car, and the mind your head sir, and the cops forgetting to take the toy - or maybe knowing that that moment cut more than losing any race - sat in the back with it held in cuffed hands. Seeing the dragon as just a beat-up Golden Hawk long past competitive days, hauled ass-first onto a towtruck, in the rear view mirror before those eyes, that face, came into focus and looked not like a knight who tamed a dragon, but an old man, tired, who never grew up. Dropping the toy dragon from oil-caked hands, and looking across to the car with the girl - no, the woman - and wondering how the fuck to cope with 4-7 years, resolving to confess all, and keep her out of it.



Note: That black absinthe. That's a good one.

Gaz

You'll have to imagine the animation - this is buzzing around my head too much but I'm writing a different story so have to let it out before it corrupts things.

"Gaz"

London's skyline struck a harsh silhouette against another waterloo sunset, as the golden light struck the walls of the Balfron Tower. Sounding like some final challenge in a mythical quest, the only real challenge had been the stairs. And keeping rats out of the trash. Nevertheless, Gary was proud to call it home, from childhood chasing around the estate to those first bold ventures out alone.

His friends - gang had the wrong connotations, though he knew they were seen as such - had wandered Tower Hamlets, testing their boundaries, testing their loyalties, for years. Even as they got older, cars and mopeds replaced BMXs and Grifters, Alex's stolen, brush painted BMX looking astoundingly similar to Uzodimma's stolen one from a couple of years ago. They called him Um Bongo, blissfully unaware of the casual racism and geographical inaccuracy, and he took it with good grace. Alex would always deny the bike's origins, swearing his dad had bought it at the boozer two weeks before Christmas when Uzo's had been stolen AFTER Christmas. It didn't matter, it was just a bike.

Time passed, though, and like stones turned by the tide, his friends disappeared from view. Alex went to Portsmouth Uni, and was never heard from again. Uzodimma apprenticed at a marketing firm, and worked in The City now. The City proper. Not Tower Hamlets. He'd see him on the tube sometimes, and catch his eye, but they never really spoke.

Dean was the sad one. Dean had gone from being the leader, really, always with money, always with the best ideas. He'd spent years showing them his latest program on the old Commodore, and they'd not and demand to play Green Beret again, waiting for the tape to load, transfixed and detached watching the lines flicker. For those few minutes, they'd be silent, praying to be the first to get the joystick. Thrustmaster II. Heh. All those days flicking through dog-eared copies of "Hustler" or "Escort" had lent a gravity to the word "Thrust" far beyond a mere battle between forces, young lust and unsophistication. "Any hole's a goal" they'd laugh.

They'd laugh less. Differently. When Dean came out to them. That was intense. They wanted to see him the same, but the "backs to the wall, lads" echoed too heavily in his ears, and he withdrew.

Gary tapped his iPhone. The game, Krazy Kangaroos, held his attention again, another 30 minutes not looking around the flat, even out of the window. The screen called out In-App Purchase: Bigger Pouch. He tapped. Dean made another 30p. 30p across millions of devices.

Backs to the wall indeed. Dean wouldn't have touched them in a million years, and now he could afford a million whores, if he so wanted. Last Gary heard, Dean was living in Surrey and adopting.

Gary thought, briefly, about the letters from the CSA, an unfortunate night in the pub, and Chelsea. Not the place, the girl. He had tried, but failed, and returned home.
The sun had almost vanished now. He relit the cigarette, finished, and flicked the butt off the balcony; it twirled and twisted, no control, no way to influence its destiny as it plummeted to the concrete below. Pulling the slide door shut, he looked across to the worn chair in the corner. "Yes mum. I'm coming. Do you need help mum, or can you do it yourself this time?"
------
Gary stood on the balcony, smoking a cigarette. The city had been his once, youthful escapades. Chilling with his mates. Dean, Alex, Umbongo. Umbongo was really called Uzodimma, and preferred Uzo, 'cause it was like the machine gun a bit, but they called him Umbongo. Because, Congo, like. Darkies all came from there, didn't they? Anyway, they were mates. Didn't matter what you called each other.
Of course, Dean had turned out to be a fag. Posh fucker, moved out of Tower Hamlets as fast as he could. Like we're not good enough for him. He'd always argued that Alex had stolen Umbongo's bike and repainted it, but Alex said his dad had bought it from a man in the pub. Yeah, the same dad that leathered him. At least he'd had a dad.
Still. All that stuff, Gary didn't care. He knew his place, and it was here, king of Balfron Tower, in the absurdly named Tower Hamlets. Nothing to do with Kings talking to skulls here, though there were plenty of crap cheap cigars in the gutters. Like the ones his dad smoked, when he was there.
Now? Now Gary had a bastard son and an invalid mother. He heard the screech from the living room again. Flicked the cigarette off the balcony, and went inside. "Coming, mum" he signed. The balcony looked tempting.
----
Gary lives in Balfron Tower. He lives with his mum, who is disabled and old. He grew up there, and when it was time to finish school, he stayed. She couldn't support them on her own. He hated her for this, but he loved her, so spent ages wrestling with his brain.
It was easier when his friends were there. Uzo was cool, he was black and had a wicked sense of humour. Alex was a bit dodgy, Dean was always lovely to them, though, like.. like a father, almost. It got a bit weird when they were teenagers though, Dean wasn't as interested in the mags they found.
He wondered if all women looked like that. Of course he'd been with some. Well, one. He was still paying the child support.
"Gary!" came the yell. He rolled up his sleeves.He loved his mum. And tried hard not to look.
----
Under the bridge of Dalston Junction, I caught a flash in the mess of graffiti, highlighted by the setting sun. It seemed, somehow, important.
It simply read:
"Gaz was here".

( Read more... )

Okay, so, as either no-one saw this, or no-one has any reaction, I'll explain. The process of story writing, for me, begins with a cube. That cube has a core idea - a start point, an end point, and the 3D element is time & depth.

Each additional element chips bits off the cube, shaping it. So if you read this in reverse, you'll see the gist of the animation. Each retelling de-rezzes the original landscape, backdrop and colour until all you're left with is the graffiti.

And the 'moral' of this is that everyone has a story, everyone wants to leave their mark, no matter how crudely expressed or seemingly insubstantial. "Gaz" with the graffiti is the same one as the one where we have the full pictures, after all.

Face

November 2015

матрёшка

Funny how perspective shifts. Each layer, each generation, seems bigger and closer than that which came before. The here and now, the youth and the established, that is all there is. Yet in the vanishing point there we see where we come from, the acorn at the start of the family tree. In Syria, Israel, America, Africa, Britain, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Iraq... everywhere... we glance back at the tiniest one of all with decreasing frequency and scrutiny, fascinated by the detail on the largest, the first to be found, the easiest to dismantle and study.

Yet the littlest one is the one that defines the shape of all the layers above it. It is the one that takes the most effort to reach, and the most skill to retain all the clarity within the stories and the paths painted on that solid core, so small it can be clasped in a fist without changing the shape of the hand at all.

If you take the doll apart, layer by layer, when you see it again you don't just see the colourful surface. When you see it, you see all the faces at come before. Even at the vanishing point, that last little seed is as clear as day.

Maybe we don't want to. Maybe we're happy with the multicultural matriarch we find at the start, the illusion of home comforts and happiness, without going back to find the slave traders, racists and warmongers that came before. But without seeing them, we're too easily led into believing that our hate and fears are justified. And when we shift into the next layer, when that wooden shell clicks around us, hiding us from immediate scrutiny, who will be looking then?

It is, of course, all about the smallest one in the end. What impression are we letting the media and leaders of today place on future generations, as we hide from refugees, lash out and bite at shadows and lies, take comfort in the very things that have poisoned humanity for generations?