Used to Own a Rowing Boat

2009-09-21T12:44:00.000+01:00

Hi! I left London, then I got married and came back to London, and then I went to:

drhooke.tumblr.com

2008-03-22T22:51:00.002Z

I look like I've been punched in both eyes.
Someone might as well have punched me in both eyes.
Chest infection, I continue smoking.
"I don't want you," I continue asking.
Someone might as well have punched me in both eyes.

Put-on accents and my put-on friendliness.
I'm choking. I mean I'm leaning over the edge of the bed
clutching my throat with tears running down my face.
The window is open and my bed unmade.

It's the foreign strains of flu
and unexpected, latent symptoms of heartbreak.
Drinking tapwater, spoonfuls of honey.

I said I came here to stare down history
I look like I've been punched in both eyes

Sometimes the fragile
the splintered, or about to splinter.
You have no idea the tirades I'm capable of.
You have no idea the breakages I can cause.

2008-01-23T01:05:00.000Z

Holy HELL, the new Radiohead album is good. And I have been waiting a very long time to be able to say that again.

2008-01-18T00:57:00.000Z

when all the walls fall;
when we, without thinking of the consequences,
have poured so much caustic liquid
on the bricks and on the mortar,
and are standing in the rubble of,
admittedly, only a week's worth of
unacknowledgment and
"there was a letter for you on the floor"
and "it was from the Jahova's Witnesses"
and "fair play to them,"
have become prisoners of recognition.

I recognize the scent of your hair
from somewhere,
and the distracted way you
hold a pen in your left hand.

but I promise I never thought the things
that would cheapen this.
I never thought - come back to me,
irregardless of the things you really have
to go back to. That I can promise you.

It was a moment, in a life where I have done nothing
but pray for moments of such blinding desctruction
and so-violent-they-are-silent juxtopositions.

And it will be funny in a few weeks.
but self-pity is my milieu, and you
were so beyond foreign that I thought
I was at home. Fair play

From the front step at 1:39am

2008-01-17T01:40:00.000Z

What I don't want is to believe in you
What I don't want is faith in the fact that
you once existed

I'm sorry, but what I want is to claim you
like I once claimed shards of glass
and other small proofs of purity's bleeding edges.
What I want is to talk to you
the way I once talked to trees

I am in the city, the city of cities
and as I light a cigarette between the 7th and 8th lines,
a fox pauses on the opposite sidewalk.
We are terrified of each other for
many seconds and I am the one
to glance away first

Which is, in a way, but not quite,
how I lost you --
Some other wild thing,
ventured in to this rough collection of bricks and stories
for such a short time
just enough time.

God bless you
as I exorcise you
my first recorded sin
the first loneliness I couldn't take pride in

I know I can't trust myself under the dead trees of a damp January
____________________________________________________________________
It's all loss from here
I mean here where I stand on Wednesday
at the front of a crowded house

If you weren't the writing laborer
the dirty fingernails of fidelity
the so-far-left-wing
Highland-bred, betting on a draw
complexion of smoke

I write of you as an abstraction
I record your facts like they're from a text-book

I read the Mail on Sunday
You called it reactionary

Let's say you left blood on the walls here
Let's say I funneled it in to this pen
We'll say it's almost empty now
I say, God I can't be so alone again.

2008-01-16T23:51:00.000Z

I was off work today and woke up at 11am. I sat around for a long time because I just absolutely could not get off my ass. I had a lot of coffee and read outside for a while. Wrote strange letters mostly to myself but addressed to someone else which I don't intend, nor have (thank God) the ability, to send. Sat on the computer. Took a shower, with the new showerhead. Finally left the house around 3pm and got to Hampstead Heath at sunset because the sun really sets that early here. You can see the whole city. I got mud on my shoes and took exactly 3 pictures. I felt like I was sleeping or like I was in Southern Illinois or both. Got on a random bus, got off at a random stop and went to Foyles, "The Most Famous Bookshop in the World." Feeling silly and stupid and sighing a lot, but who gives a crap. I'm a 22 year old girl in a foreign country who was heartbroken at birth for some goddamned reason, and I'm going to sigh as much as I damn well please. For one week. That's all. Because that's what you do. Sort of. Even when you're not allowed to. I bought a couple of books - Eavan Boland and Rilke. For example:

Not that, when (suddenly) we are grown-up
and suddenly share the immemorial
guilt of the grown-up; conniving, suddenly,
in everyone's conscience --, not that then a bailiff suspects us
and by force drags us over and back
to the past prison cell, where there's nothing of time
but its effluents, a future poured down the drain
from which the prisoner with a hand that's almost escaped him
scoops a wavelet from time to time, letting it run
over his shaven head like something that's happening,
not that [is our worst]; but the cells from an early age
that form out of our breathing, out of a
hope too soon understood, out of our very
destinies. Out of the only a moment ago
still purely penetrable open air, out of everything looked at.

So might a girl all at once through the bars of her
childhood not yet outgrown catch sight of a
lovable one, more separate than in legends.
Facing him, look up, to slide off him sadly
into pre-womanhood.
O there are more so separate. Decade, millennium
between face and face. And between those who know each
other
still in the cell of childhood they could be lying,
their more, their endlessly justified hearts.

[Man, be like an angel
when the encounter occurs and the girl walks about
still mirrored in her childhood's metaphor.
[Not a desiring one out to win.]
Be like an angel. Don't leave her behind you. Continue
to give her that freedom. Beyond
mere loving give her the mercy of love. Give her
awareness of rivers. Around her heap the
boldness of skies. Through the heart-space perceived
throw her the birds]
[Cells unspeakable, unexpected cells]

blah blah blah. i'm very tired and have watched the life aquatic. to smoke! and wake up tomorrow at a decent time, and as not SUCH an asshole.

2008-01-16T02:36:00.000Z

Give me a Marquez insomnia
-the tender yellow ponies of insomnia-

I could feel the change
for a second I could feel the steel in my veins

That morning I woke up
to a wide-open front door
because with your key dropped in the kitchen safe
you had no way to close it

That morning I had no immediate laughter
no wide-eyed interest in every story I heard
no willingness to please or be spoken to

It was sin and it was love and how are the two ever separated

You clung to me.
Stooped, black hair flecked with gray
close against my chin
and I pressed my lips to the top of your head.
You were clinging to me.

You were a boy and you were a man and how are the two ever separated

You were on the edge of something,
I could see.
On the edge of the obvious
the giant beauty of home
that leaves you a myth to me

If you were my own
If I could claim you

I watched you burn yourself on a spoon
and toss it across the kitchen
I said "What's the tallest mountain in Great Britain"
You said "Ben Nevis"
I said "Are you terrified or excited"
You said "Both"
I said "is it a boy or a girl"
you said "it's hiding"

I said I'm sorry
You said I'm so sorry

For years before I met you,
I studied the patterns of your speech

The fact that I so clearly understood your words
has killed the power of language for me

Somehow I realize we never become adults.
You remain a boy walking next to me down the street
in navy blue work pants
with thick rough fingers
speaking of very immense things
which there are no answers to

brogue, lilt, slur, lie, flattery
I register no difference now

And when you get home, you say,
you pay for the Sky, but she's watching
tellanovellas in Portuguese, with your brother-in-law
and they speak quickly to each other
in a language you can only understand
if it's being spoken directly to you

I said I'm sorry
You said I'm so sorry

And Monday morning I stepped in to January
Locking the door behind me

I have a bed to sleep in and stuff

2007-12-22T15:08:00.001Z

I have an address now. Which means I really live here. The address I speak of is:
38 Osborne Road
London
NW2 5DP
United Kingdom

It might possibly be:
38 Osborne Road
Willesden Green
London
NW2 5DP
United Kingdom
but I've gotten stuff already just at the first one, so when someone sends me something - and if no one does I will send the army of pigeons I am currently recruiting to harrass you - you could probably forget the "Willesden Green" part. Or whatever. Do whatever you want. But send me some mail. I like it.

Everyone who is going to read this will already know that I'm working in the bookshop at Westminster Abbey. But just to reiterate - it is a blast. It's just a retail job and most of the customers are tourists who speak no English and want every postcard they purchase bagged separately, but it is a blast. Everyone I work with is hilarious and the day, usually, goes by very quickly.

I worked at the stall in the museum the other day and everyone who comes in there has some very complicated question about the history of the English monarchy. I don't know a damn thing about the English monarchy. I have purchased a book called Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards. It may or may not help, but it's something to read.

Starting today, I have 6 days off in a row. I don't work again until Friday the 28th. That is also the day I get my first paycheck, which is sort of inconvenient. Luckily I have the aforementioned book to read, and I think I at least have a basic understanding of the way the buses work. So I will read and smoke and drink instant coffee and ride around on a bus. This is NOT irritating. Not sure what I'll do for Christmas. My plan so far is to ride around on a bus. Until I find a place to have a beer and some dinner. Or whatever. I really don't know.

I miss everybody. I'm not just saying that because it seems like something you should say when you're far away. I miss everyone a lot. Being away for Christmas will be strange. But the girl I moved in here with (who is from Ohio and on the same program as me) has only been here a few weeks, too, and she went home yesterday for Christmas, which just seems MORE strange.

If you suddenly come into a lot of money, you can call me! my phone number here is 07971928151. You have to put a country code in front of it and drop the first zero and all that jazz, but if you're bored and win the lottery, you could call me.

Anyhow! That wasn't extremely interesting, but I wanted to put something on here. I love and miss everybody and I hope everyone's Christmas is as sexy as possible.

Ch-ch-check this space

2007-11-27T22:54:00.001Z

Oh I'm moving to London. On Saturday. Today is Tuesday. There ain't many days between Tuesday and Saturday. Anyway, I'm going to use this blog for documentation purposes. The 4 and a half people (two and a half men?!) who are interested in knowing what I'm up to can check here! I will try try try to keep it up. I actually made this a few months ago but never used it, so that's why the title and picture might not directly relate.

The above paragraph is terrible and sounds very cold, but I am so overwhelmed that I haven't even been able to make a pot of coffee. Okay then! I get into London at 7:30 Sunday morning. That is 1:30am CST. So pray for my poor moron soul!