Wild Sovereign Development Site

Author: moseara

  • manhood: let’s rejoice

    manhood: let’s rejoice

    Six beautiful teenage men were doing parkour across the roof of the sunken restrooms by the harbour. Ropes gently knocking against masts, land-passengers drowsing at cafe tables in the sun, and this buoyant half-dozen pruning their dedication, lightness, skill. It was wonderful to watch. They do it in total silence, wearing soft shoes and baggy trackpants. You see a guy size something up. He makes an internal decision: ok I’m going to take a run up from back here, leapfrog that bollard, then run up that wall and stand upright without using my hands. He goes and does it, successfully. Or, he falls back into a relinquishing roll and laughs softly to himself. God, they were beautiful to watch. I loved how they tried again and again; how they lept across danger and scaled things without a word; how they never paused to congratulate themselves nor erupt in applause, nothing aggrandizing, nothing loud, it was for the skill and the joy of it and utterly silent apart from the brown-haired boy who always said to himself, in English, as he made the last effort: “God, someone’s after me, Oh no! someone’s after me.” Manhood is not extinct, let’s rejoice. Manhood is instinct.

    h20 HoL manhood, let's rejoice

  • his three favourite things

    his three favourite things

    Hired a bike and visited my only friend in Denmark, who runs a beautiful second-hand store that sells his three favourite things: books, and records, and coffee. He has two splendid crimson armchairs and windows onto a cobbled street. How we met was, I was in Berlin over the summer and dropped in on the bookstore that had agreed to trial one of my books in their English-language section. The pile was sitting untouched but I saw this tall man hovering and said to him, unexpectedly, “You should buy this one! I wrote it.” So he did and we have been friends ever since. God love good bookshops, the friendship agency of the civilized world. Today he had on Nick Cave’s new album and was listening to it “over and over.” I said, “He’s Australian! Like, the coolest Australian since… 1975.” In the riverside cafe where I ate dinner afterwards they were playing Olivia Newton-John, who has no use for cool and was singing “Hopelessly Devoted to You” as though her heart would crumble. What a song. I and the elderly waiter were both singing it. Two tough-minded Danish women in their fifties walked in to order beers, wearing what seemed to me very insufficient clothing. Outside, the water darkly rippled and a skin of ice extended itself infinitesimally.

  • you want a peace of me

    you want a peace of me

    Tonight I intervened in somebody’s love mess and may well have made things worse. I had cycled through the lit tunnel under the bridge four times for the sheer joy and came out blinking into the stormy-seeming piled sky, alongside the frozen-over river. I heard a shout. A tall man was dragging his much smaller girlfriend by the collar of her coat, shaking her like a puppy, while she cowered and pled. It took a second with her face hidden and in the dark to ascertain this wasn’t mutual horseplay. Hey, I shouted, then really bellowed HEY! Leave her alone!

    She was shrinking inside her clothes and he was a shrunken king, big in the body but small in the soul. Hey! I cried again, and he paused in his torment to shake a big fist at me. I don’t know what “You wanna piece of me?” sounds like in Danish, but then again, I think now I do. I was yelling to her, trying to speak slow and clear, praying all Danes understand English: Walk away! You, girl, please! Just walk away. Two other women huddled in the bus stop asked, what was going on. By now the fraught couple had retreated (first rule of evading attack: do not go where he leads you) behind a big tree and she was crouching on the ground like a servant, in her fur-lined parka, her supplicant head bent as he yelled down at her and she took it. After a while seeing he was being watched the coward started gentling and soothing, he crouched opposite and the young woman in the bus stop said, naively, It’s alright now.

    We daren’t go any closer. Their stronger-minded friend walked past, I didn’t catch her name but the other two girls called out to her and she said, Well, we don’t know what kind of guy he is. I said, I think I know exactly what kind of guy he is. Well, she said, but if he has a gun – or a knife –

    They must have called the police because the three of them climbed on their bus when it arrived and moments later a police officer with a piercing flashlight lept out of a car. He talked to the ‘man’ and his female colleague talked to the woman, who had her back turned from shame, and the upshot was the couple climbed into his big black SUV and roared away. We can do nothing, the policeman said, if she stays. People are grown-ups. Yes, I said; she has to want to walk away. Exchanged cards with the lovely-faced Persian guy who had climbed off his bicycle and he said, Next time you come to Copenhagen, you don’t have to stay in a hotel. Nonetheless… I think I will. I think of that girl, home with him now, cowering and pleading. May she find the strength that’s inside us all. May he. And stop your bullying.

  • I can escape! if you’ll only believe in me

    I can escape! if you’ll only believe in me

    I was standing on the Underground platform just now gazing at a poster for a guy who calls himself the New Houdini. His hair was frosted & his hands outstretched imploringly: I can escape! If you’ll only believe in me! A voice came at my elbow, from a very small, very elderly man: “Might I offer you something to read?” He spoke so humbly I could hardly hear him.

    Now, ordinarily this would be an ideal question from a stranger. But the highly-coloured brochure he held out looked so familiar. I laid my hand on his upper arm as gently, as affectionately as I could. “Geht’s um Gott? (Is it about God?)” Yes, he said, nodding soberly. I had the feeling of reaching round in the back of my brain for any extra shards of kindness that might be lying about unclaimed. “You know… I think perhaps I might have read that one before.” He nodded again and turned away, back to his tiny wife who was wearing a soft pink beret, hand-knitted, and was also carrying brochures. With a pang in my heart I watched them conferring, about, perhaps, who they might approach next. He had offered me his treasure, and I loved him for that.

  • that moon

    that moon

    Tonight I saw the moon for the first time in ages and my heart caught fire from its coldness. Only a more-or-less moon, more than a morsel and less than a round, most of its pearl face unhidden by us. Severely it rode the dark blackwater sky. All about me everything was frozen.

    H2O HoL lock on stumppost

     

     

  • I’ve been playing this music for many years

    I’ve been playing this music for many years

    Today I was walking by the river when a man accosted me for directions. His tone was accusing and he didn’t say excuse me or thank you. He was carrying a crumpled green flyer, and pointed. “Do you know This Street?”

    I turned to show him the sign. “That’s this street right here.” He frowned. “But I need the church on the corner of That Street.” I pointed. “Could it be…. this church right here?” We were standing right next to it. A leafless, skeletal tree waved its shadow over us, helpfully: or would have, had there been any sun.

    “You don’t understand,” he said, “this is very important to me. I’ve been playing this music for many years.” That’s right, he had a guitar over his shoulder. “Well,” I said, beginning to suppress a smile, “I’m pretty sure this is the place. What other church is there, on the corner of This Street and That Street, by the river?”

    Why does one pity selfish people? I guess it’s because they are innocent, and seem helpless. He pushed the flyer at me. “You should come to the concert. On Saturday.” I said, “Sorry, I can’t on Saturday. But good luck!” But my last words, possibly all my words, were wasted. He had turned away, sighing, “Yeah… well…” and was blundering into the churchyard, trailing his self-absorption like a long, dragging skirt made from stockings filled with bunched-up wet newspapers.

    H2O HoL I've been playing this music

  • the dreaming

    the dreaming

    You see, I am still living in the dreamtime, where my ancestors are my brothers & sisters and trees my playmates. Sometimes I’m wiser and sometimes they’re wiser. We hold hands on the street. There are streets everywhere and everything is streets. Sometimes the world overwhelms me. I cannot move & I cannot speak, cannot use the keypad & the online booking form & can do nothing to understand anything at all. Would follow a guttering candle flame for miles along the quiet river in the dark. Stare in through the golden windows, row after row after row after row, longing for a way into the wilderness. That is the only world that tames my heart. I’m so lonely, I’m only longing, and I cannot settle. Underneath it all there is a roaring like fire or water.

     

  • bunnyhutch

    bunnyhutch

    I was in the petshop section of a department store, because pets were next to pens, as if alphabetical, and it is remarkably difficult to find decent, practical biros in Deutschland that are not too fat to hold. Those I brought with me are all written dry. Standing gazing at the rabbits, whose noses whickered as they twitched and munched, I felt someone come up alongside me. This was an employee of the store, a brand-new rabbit clutched in her hands. She stood there regarding them. “So,” she said at last. “Ihre neue Kollegin.” (Your new colleague). “Be courteous to one another.” Then abruptly stooping she stowed the fuzzy bunny, a ginger-coloured flop-eared morsel, in the straw.

    Berlin has a higher population of dogs than any other city in Germany: a nerve-wracking place for a bunny rabbit. I watched. The other bunnies snuffled round slowly but no wars over straw started. After a moment the girl turned and went backstage again, to the ranks (I imagined) of yet-unlabelled white mice, Siamese fighting fish, ferrets, maybe camels. Her formality, her use of the polite form of “you”, the girl form of “colleague”, and the word “courtesy” – the use of the word “colleague” altogether, for bunnies – struck me as inexpressibly wise and drily loving.

    h2o HoL bunnyhutch

  • tom-tom cruise

    tom-tom cruise

    Why such strong reactions to this week’s cruise ship melodrama? Could be because as spoilt Western people with our five-planet lifestyle we resent other spoilt Western people exposing the scam? I am tasting an element of that in my own responses. I feel like: these Americans have finally experienced a thin glimpse of what it feels like for the majority of folk alive right now, who have no running water, no ‘staff’ to remove their bags of poo, etc. But I am aware I am not super keen to give up the luxurious amenities of space, privacy, and a home in order that the rest of the world can share more equally in the goodies we’ve colonized, stolen, enslaved and mined. Far easier to blame those richer or more obviously pampered than ourselves.

    H2O inside a golden boat, slant h2o lit square askew

  • the man with bare fingers

    The man with bare fingers playing guitar at the riverside markets, in the snow. He is playing a languid, spooling version of “I’ve Done All the Dumb Things” by Paul Kelly. In his hands it sounds musing rather than regretful. The two Australians drifting in front of me hatless, talking about parties. The boy who writes in the same cafe as me and who gives a shy smile as he passes on the street. The candlelit cafe playing Echo and the Bunnymen: “The Killing Moon.” The shivering persons who have to go outside for cigarettes. The lovely guitarfurl at the end of the song. The manuscript with biro marks all over it.