I
“If you are not able to imagine you will not be able to thrive.” Girija Kaimal
But it’s [deep] midnight, and the waters are lapping at the shore. There’s moonlight. Possibly a boat, but no rescue. Calm, but not serene. Infinite, doomful wisdom.
Torrential rain and howling wind, I crouch in my hut. I feel threat from the all-encompassing elements, but only towards the structure. Not myself, because the violent air has already taken my breath. I am already riding the gusts of eternity.
Robot building clad with steel. A hundred windows as eyes. Composite vision like an insect. 20mph sign in the doorway. The speed of thought. Don’t think too fast or you’ll crash. Don’t think too fast or you’ll interfere with the robot building signal. Crossed wires.
Shrivelled woman on the red route. Chairs stacking before dream graffiti on a cross.
The ring, an unending circle.
The streets are poetry.
What’s your tag?
Grinning face, painted all blue / Spray, sniff, get out / Territorial species / Thoughts left behind as annotations
Early photographs of the moon.
Many different creatures dancing together.
Medieval dancing manias leading to something darker.
Is the spiritual dark or light?
Anonymous illustrations of the heart.
Enlightenment through control of physical sensations.
Powerful medicine on the tip of a nail.
Snuff boxes and pipes of peace.
Special jars to show who looks after a specific body part.
Transparent woman.
Blood objects.
One cell of heaven.
Sitting in a forest, scrolling through images of discarded plastic bags.
An image you can walk right into.
Patch up the missing pieces.
Step into several images at once.
Slightly off.
Become the fly.
II
Emotion, a private affair
Yesterday’s emotion
Held in the tissue
You see your tribe from afar, only they don’t recognise you because you’re wearing the mask of another.
Peddling poetry.
Spiralling.
Broken friendship knocks me for six
Seven pigeons bring bad luck
Muck on the streets reminds me of the past
Last time things went sour
Our connection ended for good
Musical flow aids
Purge and wallow
Swallow
Every pill you throw at me
Sense is a subset.
Songs hold hostage distinct flavours of heartache.
My favourite thing is seeing from multiple perspectives simultaneously. The dreamer plays all the characters. Feels like home. [Holm].
A cave in the middle of the city.
Being frozen to the spot by people’s stares
Perhaps the answer lies in all the details I didn’t think to share.
Maps are made from whatever we think is important for understanding, but we are not infallible. We choose sometimes based on emotion and not thought at all.
III
People with metal limbs and external tools among the ordinary. They move weirdly. Backwards-forwards. Almost-human. Post-human. They see the world differently. They emit dark, scrambled tones. They are the shadow in the corner. They hold secrets.
With the webbed feet of a comorant, he sits on my shoulder. Black that is so black, he misses the point of being black at all. Folds that take it darker. Wet with ink and the dew of a faraway city. He speaks in soft tongues in my ear. Tells me about the design of the world. The ink that clings best to the threads reality.
Dripping wings. Words made permanent on the flesh of reality. As they are written, so they will be.
The journal is blackened.
The tattooist, turning words on the periphery into reality. Subconscious wanderings [wonderings]. He writes my life from behind the scenes. Birdlike scrawl.
Intricate mandalas in black ink. Runes, symbols like spells. Tearing openings in the ether.
Pills containing magic ink. Burst open in the stomach. Splatter. Mechs march out.
I am trying something out here. A spin-off from my journal series, Travelogue is a collection of writings made while on the go. I fill notebooks on trips away, particularly while using public transport or exploring exhibitions. Things I see meet snippets of conversation meet thoughts and emotions and flash vignettes triggered. Where my journal project explores the (possibly non-existent) borderline between fiction and non-fiction, Travelogue explores that between the internal and external, while still contemplating the breakdown of communication from one subjectivity to the next.
The photograph in the header is my own, taken from the window of an Uber somewhere between Kings Cross and Bethnal Green.
C.R. Dudley 