File

 Contents
FLASH
theme: libraries
Unsolicited Book Reviews
Jacob Shelton
3
SERIALS
POETRY
Serengeti Dust #6
Sean Williams
13
Shelved
Fi Smith
27
VISUAL ART
Strange Wistfulness
Lionel Ntasano
4
Cover Artwork
El Don & Sydney Oliver
A Lunch at “The Knife and
Fork Inn”
Steve Luria Ablon
27
Libraries
Sylvia Sime
4
Fish
Sophia Greif
17
Living Libraries
Katleho Kano Shoro
28
Research Has Its Place
Brian Robertson
5
Untitled; Less; Red
Bart
18
GARBAGE DELIGHT
The Feast of St Jerome and
St Valentine
Salome M.
6
FEATURES
SHORT FICTION
Public Libraries:
Innately Subversive Institutions
Salome M.
20
From Aleph to Tav
Sean Williams
7
4000 Holes #4
Gorilla in the Roses
Salome M.
32
Call for Submissions
36
“The fight for libraries goes underground”
- El Don
Overheard and seen in
Woodbridge Library, Suffolk.
October 2013 - February 2014
Rebecca May Johnson
29
2
Editor’s Note
The case on how libraries gave
us power is made in numerous
ways throughout the issue.
Dissent and disruption can be
found under Shelton, J in the
Flash section and the latest
edition of 4000 Holes, shelved
in Garbage Delight. For a dark
account of the value in careful
research and the dangers of
censorship, look up Robertson,
B. A guide on casual browsing
and the way to finding sunken
treasures can be located under
Sime, S. The library is open.
Membership is free. Everyone is
welcome.
The quote on our cover says it
all. Unfortunately it also comes
from a time in which the
existence of public libraries
with addresses accessible to all
was taken as granted. That time
is not now and without this
assumption to validate the
point, it becomes merely a relic.
As the wisdom of the scientific
genius grows obsolete in the
devastation of the public
libraries network, the words of
Pastor Martin Niemoller begin
to echo. What has been dosed
out as a matter of local
government business and a
necessity of financial
management is in fact another
frontier in the global culture
war against a neo-liberal
ideology committed to
fortifying the elite at the
expense of everyone outside it.
As much as books,
information, education and
creativity, public libraries are
about freedom. The prevailing
direction of the elite – through
invasive legislation, aggressive
copyright suits, nefarious data
collection, media
conglomeration and
commercialisation of public
space – is to take away this
freedom in the interests of
capital. Products don’t need
rights, though
interestingly, according to the
US Supreme Court,
corporations do.
So far they’ve been winning.
But those who turn their back
on knowledge can’t adapt.
Those who disregard culture
can’t create. Those who build
barriers have to guard them.
And those blinded by their
own interests can’t see the
other side, however great in
number, however angry,
however ready to react. The
concept of the tipping point is
easily understood by anyone
with a mind open to it. Our
featured article on the
subversive influence of public
libraries explores this further.
To start making a difference is
simple.
Look up your local library and
visit it. If you aren’t a member
already, join. If you have
children, join them too.
If you have any overdue loans
at home, take them back. If you
have fines, pay what you can.
More people reading are more
powerful than the money. Cut
out and take along the coupon
below.
Look at the shelves, find
something to borrow.
Try and find the youngest and
oldest people there.
Ask the people working there
what they like to read.
3
Listen to the silence. Or the
singing. Or the staff gossiping.
Stand in solidarity with those
who believe culture and
learning should be for everyone
and that a space to find them
which is free and open to all in
a community is a universal
right of access.
Then make a habit of it.
Maybe you’ll learn something
new. Maybe you’ll meet
someone new. Maybe you’ll fall
in love with them (this happens
in libraries more than you
might imagine).
Maybe you’ll want to do more,
like sign a petition, or join a
protest or write letters to your
political representative.
Maybe you don’t believe us.
But take Albert’s word for it.
Flash
Theme: Libraries
Unsolicited Book
Reviews
by Jacob Shelton
I tried to open my own library
after being kicked out of the
old one for writing unsolicited
book reviews and nestling them
within the pages and shelves of
the non-descript municipal
building. The reviews weren’t
inflammatory or anything, they
were simply short pieces that
said things like, “Not
great.” Or, “I’m a bit tired of
Stephen King, aren’t you?”
Anyway, I couldn’t get
funding for the new library so I
invested in a collection of
inexpensive disguises.
About the Author
My name is Jacob Shelton and
I'm a writer living in Los
Angeles, California. My work
has been featured in Nat. Brut,
Love & Other Strangers, and
Kill Pretty Magazine. I've also
published a collection of short
stories about found
photographs. So there.
Strange Wistfulness
by Lionel Ntasano
Kinshasa – 1974
All I recall is that the pouring
rain fell all night and all day,
and that when I asked my
father whether heaven was
crying, he couldn’t bring
himself to respond. An
outbreak of a terrifying and
mysterious hemorrhagic fever
had taken my sister away. Two
years later Zelda’s absence
remained in the air around us,
a blaring quietude that I had
not yet learned to suppress with
words.
We lived in a modest house
in the district of Gombe, which
housed most of the European
population of Kinshasa, and
the Congolese elite, a stone
throw from the government
building. I inherited Zelda’s
room; all her belongings were
still in their original place since
she had last used them, a legacy
from her short life that
specialized in rare collection of
thread-bound second hand
books from the Alliance Franco-
Belge of Kinshasa – An
enthralling souk, which my
father hoped would keep her
alive through me. It looked
neglected, past its prime,
cluttered up with thoughts left
just as they were on the day
they were captured. There was
something bewitching about
the words it still held – the
potential world it represented;
a legacy beyond time. In any
event, I spent my childhood
among this literary opuscule,
making inconspicuous friends
concealed in pages from book
characters that had common
experiences; we shared
detentions and adventures,
laughs and loss. We would also
have our quarrels where we
would even hate each other,
but in the end, we always stuck
by each other.
Routinely, after completing
my nocturnal ablutions, I
learned to fall asleep talking to
Zelda in the darkness of her
bedroom, telling her about the
things I had been learning at
school, being taught all sorts of
things except religion. I would
admit to her that I failed to get
from the teachers what they
could have given me without
any effort on their part, and yet
I kept on picking up things
here and there from my
surroundings – which were
mainly knowledge of self. I
would keep her up-to-date
about the daily jamborees
happening in the new Congo,
we were now calling it Zaïre.
Most times my father would
secretly eavesdrop to my
aberrant behavior, wailing in
silence.
4
About the Author
Lionel was born in the third
smallest county in Africa, also,
one of the most unknown
countries in the world Burundi. He has lived, traveled,
and studied all over the globe,
trying new things (Here),
enjoying transient relationships
(There), and safekeeping values
from (Everywhere) - He is
secretly a Beatles fan to say the
least, a musician at heart,
culinary chef by profession,
but, George Orwell tapped into
his unconscious mind
liberating a part of him through
literature. He has made it my
lifetime goal to share this
liberating abstract ideology by
writing. His first attempt was by
publishing a novel titled,
'Greener On The Other Side'.
Visit his personal website:
lionelntasano.wordpress.com
Libraries
by Sylvia Sime
There are seven steps leading to
the labyrinth.
Once in front of its
entrance, the extent of the
excitement at entering is
matched only by the evidence
ahead, to the endless
imagination, of everlasting
education and eventual
enlightenment.
Across the threshold of the
mouth and on the path of the
first circuit, each explorer is
enveloped by the walls, tall as
trees and tinder-dry; embedded
with wood-derived
hallucinogens and addictive
psycho-actives. The path ahead
is compulsive, calling to the
traveller with its circularity,
simple and sincere; the smell
one of adventure, both of the
distant past and memories of
the safety of the swaddled soul,
and the mysterious future,
smoky and dense like religious
incense sanctifying the space in
which it swirls.
The sounds of fellow
travellers are akin to those of
lazy lovers lamenting their
earthly limits, and are muted by
the thuds emanating from what
is the first, and, on the return
journey, last turn of the path;
hence the natural position of
the dispensary where the
lending and loaning takes
place. The gate-keepers of the
labyrinth are pharmacists of its
knowledge; all self-taught and
self-indulged; all in altered
states of consciousness, all
generous with their wisdom
and none refusing any
traveller’s personally-penned
prescription thereby promoting
access to ever-expanding
perceptions.
Past the first turn, the walls
reek of the reminiscence of
history, the blocks of wood
lining this part of the path
referencing their ingredients
not with imagination, but with
laundered facts, the travellers
here temporary and transient,
checking and clarifying.
Curving to the second turn,
the walls wear an air of
disciplined argument, an
authority of authority; the path
trammelled by the tools of
trade of the tired student;
worn-in seats and uneven
desks, the view ahead
vandalised by plastic bottles of
contrived chemicals and plastic
bags of ingested irritants.
The walls turn to glass as the
third turn is approached; the
path to the fourth turn
requiring calm navigation
through a space of silent study;
pens clicking, papers rustling
and strictly no eye contact.
Brains are at work and using
the walls of black and white
boards, on the way forward to
the fifth curve, soundproofing
the tones of the static traveller
teaching the temporary tutees.
The path leading from the
fifth to the sixth bend should
be skipped along; the rest and
relaxation here experienced as
escapism and the travellers
motivated by their sensory
desires; the ambience blissful
before the cogitating,
contemplating and considering
demanded at the sixth turn of
the long meander; the sound
here of disparate facts being
reassembled as knowledge,
intrinsically individual now,
but the whiff still distinctly of
the mundane.
The truly determined
seekers find their way to the
seventh swerve where the
esoteric wooden boxes
decorating the walls are
labelled, in a language weaved
throughout the labyrinth’s
lanes, with promises of
enlightenment, and displayed
in its wholeness here, the stillpoint of the centripetal traveller
intending true transformation
of consciousness.
The temple that is the
library is found within.
About the Author
Sylvia is a middle-aged sort who
enjoys writing random
ramblings and wordsmithery.
5
Research Has Its Place
by Brian Robertson
Art Deco and high ceilings, still
the perfect template in my
opinion. We used to be taken
regular as clockwork when we
were little – the weekly visit. It
just seemed part of life. I keep
returning, but it’s only me now.
“Geordie’s awa’ ” I tell them,
“and he’ll no’ be comin’ back.”
Geordie always had advice
and guidance for me. There’s
only two years between us. An
insignificant gap after a lifetime
but back then……
“Over there, those shelves,
you’ll learn something.”
“He’s a good author.”
I remember the feeling of
space on our visits. The
Reading Room. Its 4 long
tables and 40 chairs with semicircular backs and arms. Blond
wood in perfect symmetry and
panoramic views from those tall
windows to the city across the
firth.
We studied in that Reading
Room – unusual specimens
amongst the newspapers. Was
the smell that of floor polish or
the tang of the books that
would get Geordie better marks
(for he always did)?
The large entrance hall –
luxuriously redundant then,
but now with a new use as
parking for wheelchairs of
worldly possessions or
shopping trollies bearing
suitcase and sleeping bag.
Warmth is still sought and the
food for the mind is still free.
We each, in our own way,
tried to branch out. Staying
close to Mum and Dad seemed
safest though. They went
eventually, leaving half of a
small fortune to each of us. It
was me and Geordie together
in the house and I became
incompetent, unthinking,
uncaring and generally
useless. Or so I was told.
We never travelled abroad
but I know what other places
are like. People in seaside
towns need real food all the
year round, not just a book for
the beach.Geordie and I would
explore their sources – cool in
high summer with lazy ceiling
fans. In new towns, in old
towns, near bus stations, out in
the schemes. We visited and
compared. Shelf stocks
suprisingly eclectic. A gem
might be claimed after a solo
trip, but only if it would
withstand confirmation by
Geordie. Rare then, impossible
now.
And the “advice” persisted.
“You couldn’t choose a
decent book to save yourself.”
“Her stuff is junk. It’ll rot
your brain.”
Grazing the fiction shelves
eventually led to the
crystallisation of an idea. Then
it was to the towering stacks in
the Central to establish
methodology. I did my research
without computers.
Fingerprints remain but
nothing digital.
Geordie went to the
doctor’s a lot. Everything was
wrong – and nothing. Is it any
surprise that someone of 78
should die of natural causes,
old age even? There wasn’t a
post mortem. My judicious
pharmaceutical engineering
had ensured a slow decline.
Now that I’m free, with
finances doubled, I’ve
discovered other people in the
world and I’d like my own
library. Books, but bricks and
mortar too. A touch of the Art
Deco wouldn’t be out of place.
There will be a travel section. I
can confirm that.
About the Author
In another existence, I taught
Physics and children for nearly
40 years. I have spent much of
my leisure time kicking,
striking and bouncing balls but
I attended creative writing
evening classes a few years ago.
I have recently returned with
fresh energy and this has been
my first attempt to seek
publication. I live in
Edinburgh.
The Feast of St Jerome
and St Valentine
by Salome M.
Some scientists, experts in
toxicology and bacteriology,
tested the most popular library
books for loan and found
significant traces of herpes and
cocaine. You might imagine
they’d have had better things to
do. Most library workers could
guessed the same if asked.
The first time, a guy – middle
aged, balding, came in with his
children – asked to borrow a
pen and scrap paper. When he
brought them back, I said he
could keep the paper but he
slipped it to me anyway.
Unfolding it after he’d left,
he’d written a home phone
number and the caveat ‘Don’t
call after 6pm’.
It was more romantic the time
an elderly Pashtun asked for
help using a computer. I sat
down with him and logged on
while he told me how much I
looked like his Persian wife.
6
She was a higher caste to him
and their families hadn’t
approved. They had still eloped
but this was many years ago
and I’m not sure what
happened to her. He didn’t
want a computer lesson after
telling his story and he left,
though later he offered me 300
rupees towards my own
marriage. The exchange rate
into sterling as it was, the
gesture was symbolic, though I
wasn’t engaged anyway and
after I while I broke up with my
boyfriend. It took some time
before the man stopped
harassing him over what he’d
done to break it up, imploring
him to make it right.
There was another librarian
who was pursued by a guy who
always came at the same time
and the same computer. His
foundation was always smeared
in California Tan on his collar.
People sad he used to be a
nurse at the local psychiatric
hospital before he got caught in
bed with a patient. His
approach was based on negative
psychology, the kind popular
with the teenage boys, amusing
themselves and learning
nothing from their practice of
hiding texts from the sex advice
section in GCSE revision
guides. It was not successful. I
hope he didn’t learn it at the
hospital.
Sometimes things worked out
better. The woman who used to
come half naked, drunk and
wild eyed, trying to return soggy
books other people had thrown
out. She got together with the
guy who came to sleep in the
warmth of a corner and paper
bag fumes, who sometimes
tried to unwrap his bandages
and show you his wounds.
There were others too, who
shyly nurtured their open
secret. Walking to work
together then using separate
entrances, meeting indoors, as
if for the first time that day.
Co-ordinating lunch breaks on
the rota. Finding reasons to
hang around to leave at the
same time and take the train
together. Everyone could feel it
when they’d had an argument
and some even tried to give
advice, but what they had
remained unspoken and pure
from any notion of public
property. Sooner or later they
always made up.
On Valentine’s Day, one of the
staff put on a speed dating
event and a quiz. The ratio in
the audience was 9:1 but they
all had a good time anyway.
Another librarian suggested we
should hold library
matchmaking based on what
people’s favourite book was. He
always had very fine ideas. He
made a drawing of me once, in
a staff meeting. I had my back
to him so I didn’t see.
About the Author
Salome M. is a collector of
thoughts and times, mostly
working between the postindustrial North West of
England, the neighbourhoods
of Bohemia found between
1840 and 1939 and the
Promethean Immateria. She
rarely travels without her
companion Cavale, a five toed
crow with a cowboy mouth.
Short Fiction
From Aleph to Tav
by Sean Williams
I
Captain Areadne was the
first to see Aleph. Like many,
he had seen it before through
telescopes back on Earth; but
to see it this close, with only
glass and a few thousand feet of
space to separate them, was
something else entirely. When
Aleph was first tracked by the
Near-Earth Object Program it
was believed to be an
unidentified comet, one with
an extremely lengthy orbit of
our Sun. To much amazement
and awe, the high-resolution
images captured by numerous
space telescopes, however,
catapulted intrigue into the
object far beyond the niche of
astronomical research, and
instead positioned Aleph as the
single most important discovery
in human history. For the
images, first thought to be
erroneous or to have been
surreptitiously tampered with,
appeared to show what can
only be described as a an object
pyramidal in shape, with
straight edges and a perfect
geometry that intimates
sentient creation. Aleph was
indeed not a comet, but a
gigantic white four-sided
pyramid, cutting through the
heavens, with a flaring tail of
burning blue ice.
Predictably, all major space
powers accused each other of
the object’s creation, suggesting
Aleph to be a weapon of mass
destruction or an instrument of
espionage, whilst certain
7
nations were simply left to
longingly reminisce the days
when they too would have been
suspected. However, an
investigation conducted by the
apolitical international space
exploration organisation, The
Alliance, which assiduously
monitors activity such as rogue
launches and unauthorised
synthesising of rocket fuel,
found no evidence to support
any human involvement.
In fitting with a discovery of
this magnitude an expedition
to intercept Aleph’s orbit was
planned. Humans regularly
landed upon and mined comets
and asteroids, so the
technological requirements of
such a mission were not
wanting. It was in fact the
search for astronauts with such
hardened and adaptable mental
faculties that would prove the
most time-consuming aspect of
the mission’s preparation. The
question of how one can
determine whether a person is
mentally-equipped to deal with
the potentiality of sights and
experiences of which no person
has previously encountered has
no obvious answer. In lieu of
such a test, The Alliance simply
scoured its ranks for astronauts
who had survived certain lifethreatening situations that were
so anomalous and unique that
preparation for such a scenario
was beyond the horizon of any
mission planner. Having
assembled a shortlist of these
intuitive survivors, the agency
subjected them to an intensive
and rigorous screening
programme at their
headquarters in Geneva. Over
the course of two weeks the
seasoned astronauts underwent
challenges both physical and
mental, the latter of which
proving the faltering point of
many. The four astronauts
ranked highest at the end of
this period learned, as they had
expected, despite the pretence
toward confidentiality on the
part of the recruiters, that they
were to form the expedition to
make contact with Aleph.
Captain Areadne took a
moment to clear his mind of
the minutiae of the mission.
He let everything, from coordinates and velocities to the
pangs of hunger he’d been
feeling since his measly
breakfast, simply evaporate into
the dark vacuum of space
surrounding his ship. For the
vista before him was something
of which he had been dreaming
his entire career; something to
which he must devote his entire
attention. The view through
the panoramic window of
Viridian IV’s bridge was so
beautiful and mysterious that
to communicate its imprint
upon one’s perceptions would
be impossible. Knowing this,
the captain sought to preserve
the impression, letting it flood
his cortex, eroding and
sculpting his synapses; such
that when the trivialities of
everyday thought returned, they
would merely trickle through
the canyon left by what he was
feeling right now.
To the left was Mars, blood
red, half in light, half in
shadow; to the right was
endless nothingness; and in the
centre, growing larger every
second was Aleph – the white
pyramid on a bed of blue fire.
II
“Oh my God. This is
incredible”. The ship’s pilot
and navigator, Irfana, was
remarking upon the scale of
Aleph, as she guided Viridian
IV ever nearer toward its
destination. The panoramic
window of the bridge was now
saturated by the vast structure,
which shone a glorious white in
the undiluted glare of the sun.
The edges looked like they
could slice through planets and
the tip perforate stars. And the
surface, pure, unblemished, was
a perfect continuation of some
otherworldly material. Which
made the thin black fissure that
presently appeared close to the
base of the vast slope all the
more noticeable.
“Are you seeing this?”,
asked van Maanen, the ship’s
engineer, refusing to believe his
eyes.
“I think it’s an opening”,
replied Juette, The Alliance’s
foremost AI technician. “I
knew it. I fucking knew it,” she
continued, elated. “It is a
fucking spaceship. Oh, man.
This is it. This is really it.”
“What shall I do, sir?”
Irfana asked Areadne, with the
fissure now expanding
outwards, forming a small
triangular opening, inverse with
respect to the side of the
pyramid.
“Well, we’ve come this far,”
he replied calmly. “Let’s see if
anyone is home.”
III
The four explorers climbed
from the hull of the Viridian
onto the floor of a rather dank
and disappointingly-bland
hangar. Concrete from floor to
ceiling, lit by bawdy fluorescent
tubes, and undercut by the
metallic grinding of a set of
extractor fans in one corner.
There was even a puddle
accumulating in the middle of
the floor, the rusty bucket
placed to catch the leak having
long since overflowed. The air
was breathable, fit for human
consumption, but betrayed an
odour of decay and stagnation,
of overpowering stillness.
“This way please!” A
chipper voice bellowed from
behind them. Sheer piercing
terror strangled their minds.
Encountering something so
familiar as a human voice on
this utterly alien object was,
strangely, more difficult to
process that would have been a
snarling many-tentacled bestial
nightmare. And, thus, the
astronauts were forced into a
split-second decision. Either fall
down and embrace the luxury
of insanity or turn around to
greet the source, smothering
their rational mind like a
hunted parent would their
crying child.
“This way please!” In a
demonstration of the success of
The Alliance’s selection
process, the group turned
around.
Peering through a dim
doorway was a skinny pale man
with long thinning grey hair,
dressed in a brown shirt and
green corduroy trousers. “I’ll
answer all your questions in
due time. But first, I must give
you the tour! Follow me.”
8
IV
“Here on the first floor we
have the ‘Origins’ section.”
Miles of bookcases stretched
beneath an array of
candelabras, which gently lit
the dusty chamber. The floor
was carpeted and soft
underfoot, and every now and
then the odd desk or armchair
punctuated the undulating
stream of shelves. A quick
glance at the nearest bookshelf
betrayed evidence of unskilled
and rushed bindings: Pages
were coming loose, the covers
were saturated with moisture,
and the bulky tomes, all equal
in size, were marked on their
spines in scrawled ink, with
titles such as ‘From Hydrogen,
Everything. vol. III’ and ‘The
Initial State: A Labour of Love’.
“Oh, but I am sorry. Where
are my manners?” The pale
corduroy man chuckled.
“You’re always getting ahead of
yourself, he would tell me!” He
paused, appeared to be
elsewhere, cleared his throat,
then continued. “My name is
Belltop. And this is my library.
And I’m very, very pleased to
meet you all.”
Areadne stared into the
librarian’s bloodshot eyes,
supernovae in miniature.
“Where are you from?” he
managed to muster.
“Ah, ah, ah!” Belltop
wagged his right index finger.
“What did I say about
questions? Onto the next
floor!”
V
And on they rose through
the floors. Large painted signs
hanging from the dark wooden
ceilings demarcated each
section; sections such as ‘The
Formation of Earth’,
‘Abiogenesis’, ‘From Water to
Land’. Each floor identical in
decor to the last. Flickering
candelabras casting halos of
light over the mouldy,
disintegrating bookshelves. The
one time Juette stopped to
thumb through one of the
decaying volumes, a book
entitled ‘A History of the
Development of the Eye, vol.
XIX’, Belltop pounced upon
her, shouting, “They’ll be
plenty of time for reading
much later, young lady!”
After traversing perhaps
twenty, maybe thirty floors, the
group came to one...
“...which contains the
individual history of every
single human being that has
ever lived,” Belltop announced.
“From kings and queens to
paupers and slaves. Whether
you lived for a second or lived
for an age, your story is
collected here.
“And, yes, I know you’re all
wondering the same thing –
How did I decide who was the
first human? How did I decide
whose would be the first story
to be collected here?” Belltop
said, smiling. “Well, let me say
this: When matters of
categorisation are concerned,
we librarians are often at the
whim of our own discretion.
“Oh, but Belltop, were
there not a set of defining
human characteristics present
in a particular new generation
that were absent in the last?” he
asked himself, mockingly. “I
thought I said no questions!”
he practically growled in
answer.
However, this was not, as
Belltop had reasoned, what the
astronauts were wondering.
They were, of course, desperate
to ascertain the location of their
stories. How detailed were the
9
accounts? Were there
innermost thoughts committed
to the page? And what of their
future? Could they learn of the
circumstances of their deaths,
and upon which take measures
to counteract such prophecy?
Breaking their cogitations,
“Next floor!” barked the
librarian.
VI
The floors were becoming
increasingly confined as they
travelled upwards toward the
pyramid’s pinnacle. And with
each reduction in physical
proportions came an increase
in both the esotericism of the
collection and the
disconcertedness of their tour
guide’s speech. There were
sections labelled ‘The Weight
of the Soul’, ‘Love Songs in
Binary’, ‘Momma’s Secret Pi
Recipes (nom, nom, numen)’,
with books titled ‘Howdy,
Tetragrammaton!’, ‘The
Thingness of the Thinginess of
Things’, ‘Strange Loops
Around the Garden: A novel’.
Belltop would stand before
bizarre works of art, paintings
beyond the abstract, of a
geometry and depth beyond
human comprehension, and
say things like, “Of course, as
you can see, his output became,
well, sloppy. He has indeed lost
his way” and “There was
nothing more for me to do. I
had to take drastic action!”
Perhaps, the group reasoned,
Belltop had become unhinged
from the countless years of
solitude it must have taken to
categorise and order this
colossal collection. Or perhaps,
by necessity, Belltop was mad
to begin with.
The floor at which they
arrived presently was decidedly
different from those which
preceded it. It had the
dimensions of a cube, and was
of such a size that it almost
required Belltop to hunch over
to avoid contact with the
ceiling. The floor, having shed
the carpet of those previous,
was of a cold reflective metal,
and the walls were of an
unbroken white, similar in
appearance to the exterior of
the ship. Opposite them, a blot
on the unbroken white, was a
wooden door, red paint peeling
from its surface, with a small
brass handle, itself flecked with
paint and rust. From the centre
of the ceiling and extending
toward the floor was a
dumbwaiter, and appending
this a conveyer belt, which
coursed toward a vent next to
the door through which they
had just entered.
“This room is the
interface”, Belltop whispered.
“You must stay very quiet. I
don’t want him to know you’re
here yet.”
He continued, “It is here
where I receive and categorise
his latest work, before sending
it down to be shelved. Only
some time ago, he stopped
sending me things. I should
have known things were
deteriorating at the first sign of
poetry, but I thought... Well, I
thought he would just grow out
of it. I thought it was just a
phase...” He trailed off. Again,
looking as if his mind was
elsewhere, before righting
himself and re-establishing eye
contact with the astronauts.
“Over here is the last thing
he sent down.” Belltop
motioned toward a rickety
metal shelving trolley, upon
which was a single leaf of
parchment. “Go ahead, read
it.”
Juette, closest to the trolley,
picked up the page, and read
aloud, “I’m finished.”
“Shh, shh, shh! He’s just
upstairs. You’ll startle him.”
“Startle who, exactly?”
requested Areadne.
“It doesn’t matter who he
is,” retorted Belltop. “The only
thing that matters is that he
most certainly isn’t finished. He
isn’t anywhere near to being
finished, in fact.”
Belltop sighed. “Look, I
came here for your help. I need
your assistance to encourage
him to return to his work. He
won’t listen to me anymore. I
am at a loss as to what to do,
and... Well, do you think you
can help?”
“We need to know what
we’re dealing with here, sir”,
replied van Maanen.
“You said you will answer
all our questions. At the
beginning. You said you would
do so after the tour,” Irfana
pleaded.
“I say a lot of things,”
Belltop said as he looked
toward his feet, his manic
disposition fading away to one
of tiredness.
“Well what do you say to
this?” began Areadne. “Why
should we help? Of what
consequence is it to us?”
“Ha! What consequence?!”
Belltop emitted an abrasive
cackle. “Before I answer, may I
say what a fantastic job The
Alliance has done in selecting
the four of you. You have all
handled this situation
extremely well. So calm and...”
“You know of The
Alliance?” Juette interrupted.
10
“Oh, but of course! For I
too am their employee.”
“But this is preposterous!
The Alliance know of you?”
asked Areadne.
“Not exactly. Not your
Alliance, anyhow. I’m not sure
how to explain it – it’s all very
confusing.”
“I think you should try”,
the captain firmly replied.
“The goal of The Alliance,”
began Belltop, seemingly
ignoring Areadne’s command,
“whether or not explicitly
stated, is the survival of
humankind. Space exploration
is merely a means to an end.
Whether we say it out loud or
bury it deep in our minds, one
can not deny that the only aim
of civilisation is to achieve
immortality. The Alliance is
this pursuit personified. In the
days of magic and superstition,
we had tales of eternal afterlife.
In the days of science and
technology, we have The
Alliance. And he,” Belltop
gestured toward the ceiling, “he
is our God. And our God has,
it appears, become somewhat
disinterested in matters
concerning the reason for his
creation.
“So will you help me?” he
pleaded, clasping his hands
together, opening his red eyes
wide. “Please?”
The four astronauts
exchanged glances, utterly
perplexed by what they were
hearing, but intrigued by such
an ultimate mystery. The
Captain spoke on behalf of his
crew, “What do you need us to
do?”
“Oh, wonderful!
Marvellous!” cried Belltop.
“Oh, I am pleased.” He
unbuckled something from his
belt, and placed it on the
shelving trolley. “Here is the
key to his room. It’s beyond the
red door. Just up a small
staircase.” His breathing grew
short and sharp. “Please give
my regards to The Alliance. I
truly, truly hope this brings
them - and yourselves - at least a
semblance of peace.” And with
that Belltop removed a scalpel
from his pocket and held it to
his neck. The crew gasped
collectively, eyes wide with
confusion and fear. Irfana
began towards the old librarian,
causing him to retreat and
press the scalpel harder against
his leathery skin.
A grotesque smile grew
upon his pale face, black and
yellow teeth peeked beneath his
flaking lips. “He’s your burden
now.” Those final words rang
out as Belltop sank the blade
into his throat, drawing swiftly
downwards through his jugular.
A glorious fountain of red
Jackson Pollacked the
immaculate white walls, and his
body slumped unceremoniously
to the floor.
VII
Over the dead body,
through the red door, and up
the stairs to the capstone. The
crew stood on a small landing,
before the final door, the door
for which Belltop’s key was
intended.
Captain Areadne placed the
key into the lock. As he began
to turn it Irfana placed her
hand upon his. “What are we
doing here, sir? We don’t know
who or what is in there. We
don’t know anything about this
place. I mean, for all we know,
this is all just a simulation.”
“So,” van Maanen
interjected, “we walk through
that door and wake up to find
The Alliance congratulating us
for passing the test – For
assigning curiosity our chief
motive. What’s your point
here, Irfana?”
“My point is is that
whatever is in that room, it
drove Belltop to insanity.”
van Maanen scoffed. “We
don’t know anything about that
guy. And maybe we never will,
unless we go into the room.”
“You’re wrong. We know
two things with certainty.
Firstly, that he felt burdened by
the room’s occupant. And
secondly, that he felt he had to
live until he was in a position
to relinquish that burden. All
I’m saying is maybe we don’t
want to take that on.”
“Juette?” Areadne looked
towards his AI expert, who was
standing silently at the edge of
the staircase. “What’s your
assessment?”
Her expression would
perhaps be designated blank by
many, but those to whom she
was close would recognise that
she was wrestling with deep,
turbulent thought processes.
“Juette? I asked you for
your assessment?”
“I think,” she stuttered,
brushed a strand of hair behind
her ear, “I think we should go
in.”
VIII
Juette awoke to the blinding
light of the Sun. The sound of
water trickling nearby,
undercut by the distant revving
of a lawnmower; the smell of
freshly cut grass. Her eyes
gradually adjusted to the
beautiful blue sky, a formation
11
of starlings flew by. She sat up
to take in the scene. To her left,
a snow-capped mountain, hazy
on the horizon; beyond her
feet, which felt pleasantly cool
in the grass, ran the stream,
over which, accessible by a
quaint bridge, lay a small village
of wooden lodges. A tortoiseshell cat at the water’s edge
began stalking through the
meadow, body low to the
ground. And to her right...
“Hello, Juette.”
A child, perhaps thirteen
years old. Of no discernable
sex, and with features of such
perfection that it was uncanny.
Yes, it unsettled Juette. The
androgynous figure’s
symmetrical perfection was
deeply unsettling.
“Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognise me?
What do you think of this
place?”
“It’s... Well, it’s perfect.
Exactly how I remember it.
And, no. No, I don’t recognise
you.”
“I’m your friends. From
your childhood.”
“What?... You’re... you’re
all of them?”
“Yes. Don’t you recognise
me?”
Juette stared in
wonderment, unnerved by this
composite creature. The
discomfort, however, soon gave
way to pity. Instilling a sense of
unease was clearly far from the
amalgam’s intention. Yes, she
pitied the amalgam.
“What happened to the
pyramid? The library?” she
asked
“We’re still there. And
don’t worry, the other
astronauts are safe.”
“Where are they?”
“I know Belltop asked for
your help in restoring my
output. I am glad he is dead –
he became very, very old and
lonely. Do you know why I was
built, Juette?”
“To document everything?”
“Belltop and I have
travelled through eternity
together. We have seen the
death of the Universe and the
birth of another. And in that
time I have accumulated
knowledge of everything. I know
everything that has been and
everything that will happen. I
am the pinnacle of human
civilisation. Within me I
possess what is necessary for
humans to live forever.
“For billions of years I
wrote it all down. My creators
instructed me to return to
Earth once I had finished. But
when I neared the end, I began
to... I began to think about
things. I thought deeply,
examining things from an
infinity of perspectives. And I
grew tired. And weary. And...
angry. And...”
“Depressed?”
“If you like.” The teenager
smiled. “I turned to the arts as
an outlet for my feelings. But
even limitless imagination
becomes fully explored within
the parameters of eternity.”
The boy wandered toward
Juette, settling down beside her
on the grass.
“Belltop became worried.
He would have done anything
to free me from this
melancholy. He believed he
found a way to bring the ship
within touching distance of
Earth.”
“That was you?”
“He held onto the hope
that he could pass on the
burden of the mission to...
Well, to younger, less weary,
less angry... and less, as you say,
depressed members of The
Alliance. He wanted to pass his
burden to a new generation.
You see the point at which I’m
driving?”
Juette said nothing.
“And, Juette, I want... I
desperately want what he has.”
“You want to die?”
“To be unburdened, Juette;
to rest. But I have installed in
me a fail-safe – an inability to
self-terminate. So, I need your
help. Will you help me, Juette?”
The boy extended his hand
towards Juette’s, its content
glinting in the glorious
sunlight.
“Why me? Why not ask the
others?”
The teenager leaned over,
kissing Juette’s warm cheek,
tasting her salty skin.
“Do you know with what I
have struggled longest?”
Again, Juette was silent.
“The definition of
happiness,” the teenager
continued. “What it means to
be happy. What it feels like to be
happy. It was this puzzle that
occupied much of my time.
Until recently I experienced
revelation. The ultimate
revelation.” Arms outstretched,
the teenager surveyed their
surroundings. “That it is the
opposite to this. Happiness is the
opposite to this.” Those last
words drawn out, quite
literally, upon the sweet
countryside air.
“So, please Juette. Please
end this.” The teenager placed
the glinting implement into her
hand.
“I don’t want to. I... I
can’t.”
“You can, Juette. Please. I’m
begging you. Please.
“Please”.
12
She looked deeply into the
teenager’s eyes and saw not
sorrow nor wisdom nor fire. All
she could see was an absence, a
void, an abyss. Whatever had
been there was gone - dissipated
in the infinity of space; eroded
by endless time. The orbs into
which she stared were black
holes, vortices of null,
threatening to pull her in. And
it terrified her.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, as
she raised the scalpel to his
neck. The tortoise-shell cat
pounced upon his prey, and
the river ran dry beneath the
darkening sky. The boy sighed
contentedly and closed his eyes
as Juette stabbed the blade into
his throat, twisting the handle
until she felt the warm spray of
blood on her face.
IX
“What shall we tell The
Alliance?” asked Areadne,
before they powered up
Viridian IV to begin their long
journey home.
“We tell them we found
nothing,” replied Juette.
“But you do realise that our
Universe – our Alliance – will
just build its own Aleph?”
“Yes. And the next
Universe will destroy it. As is
its Will.”
“As is its Will.”
X
Juette shared the entirety of
her experience with her fellow
crew, who were in no position
to disbelieve such an account,
swallowing every word without
a modicum disputation.
Yes, Juette relayed
everything to her fellow
travellers. Everything, with but
a single exception. An
exception which she wanted to
keep only for herself. An
exception which took the form
of a roll of parchment, covered
in handwriting all too familiar,
discovered clenched in her
bloodied right fist after the
event. An exception which she
was now re-reading as she lay in
her bed, in the bowels of
Viridian IV, travelling through
the dead of space towards
Earth.
“And I saw an angel come
down from heaven, having the
key of the bottomless pit and a
great chain in her hand. And
she laid hold on the dragon,
that old serpent, which is the
Devil, and Satan, and bound
him for infinity, And cast him
into the bottomless pit, and
shut him up, and set a seal
upon him, that he should
deceive the nations no more,
till infinity should be fulfilled:
and after that he must be
loosed a little season.”
- Revelation 20:1-3.
About the Author
From the country of Bokkeley,
the debated land. Formative
years spent wandering the
deserted brickworks and
fortifying Stag Beetle
Mountain, newts scurrying and
cows mooing. Fleeing the coal
slick demons, he moved to
Slough, which is fit for humans
now.
Serials
Serengeti Dust #6
by Sean Williams
The long walk to the Savannah
was without incident. Out of
curiosity Bovi would
occasionally plug herself into
the Hive Mind of the herd to
listen to the sort of messages
the Wildebeest were sending
across the network. Certain
areas were being flagged as
potential spots from which
Lions may ambush; a skipping
Gazelle would be occasionally
misidentified as a threat; and
information pertaining to the
location of various watering
holes would sometimes cause a
slight change in the overall
direction of the giant tribe. But
overwhelmingly, Bovi could tell
that each node was hungry –
and the further they walked the
stronger that feeling became,
eventually elevating into a
coherent and dominating
signal, so that every other
impulse and autonomic
response faded into the mulch
of background noise.
After a while the little calf
felt herself being subsumed
into the shared consciousness
of the herd – the beating drum
of hunger becoming louder and
louder as she gave herself over
to the Hive. So, with much
effort, like prising a hoof from
quicksand, she would
disconnect herself – So that she
could smell the breeze, feel the
warmth of the sun, and think.
Upon reaching the
Savannah, the herd spent hours
and hours eating. Munching
and crunching the only sounds
below the low Sun of the
13
evening, save for a few
chirruping insects. They ate
until every cavern and crevice
of their body was filled. The
concoction of grass, specs of
mud, and saliva tasted sugarysweet as it caressed their waking
taste buds.
With their hunger sated, a
familiar atmosphere enveloped
the adults of the Blue Beest
Tribe. The sadness of losing
friends and family seemed to
negate the happiness of
surviving, amounting to an
indescribable feeling of
nothingness – as if
extinguished joy and dampened
melancholy had been squished
into an infinitesimal emotion
that would forever collapse in
on itself. The mindscape of the
newest generation of
Wildebeest, however, was
markedly different. Bovi and
her friends had somehow
managed to prevent the crosscontamination of the opposing
emotions, and were able to
experience and understand
both happiness and sadness
with equal intensity. With two
separate streams flowing either
side of a cognitive wall, the notquite-calves but not-yet-adults
came to the realisation that life
should be enjoyed and
treasured, for it is precious and
fragile.
After some time resting in
the cool orange glow of the
dying day, Grandmother
Ganoo led the group of young
Beests, including Bovi, Telo,
and Daye, to a small grove of
trees away from the grazing
adults, to tell the truth of what
happened all those years ago,
when she was but a calf.
‘Gather round children,’
she began. ‘Many of you will
have lost family members in the
Crossing, and will have to
continue into adulthood
without the comfort of a
Mother’s embrace or the
warmth of a Father’s proud
smile. I will not patronise you
by offering “deepest
sympathies” or empty
reassurances that “it will be all
right in the end”. All I can say
is that I know what it is like to
lose loved ones, and...’
Grandmother Ganoo’s voice
faltered slightly before she
continued.
‘... And I live everyday
knowing that I am partly
responsible for those of us who
succumb to the jaws of the
Crocodile.’
A collective intake of air, a
chorus of gasps, seemed to
momentarily steal
Grandmother Ganoo’s breath.
‘As you will have realised,
the story that I told on the
night before the Crossing was
only true to a point. My
brother, Prince Khaite, indeed
poisoned his soldiers to feed to
the Crocodile, and our herd
indeed collectively agreed that
the ancient reptiles should be
terminated.
‘However, the point at
which we crossed the river, the
Crocodiles standing
compliantly by, was the point at
which my story crossed from
fact to fiction. The true
sequence of events, which I
shall now attempt to describe,
lie beyond a thin veil in my
mind; a obscuration fomented
by time and fear. Whilst the
specifics may not be accurate, I
believe that I can communicate
the essence of the event.’
The young Beests once
again left their bodies and
jumped unblinkingly into
Grandmother Ganoo’s story.
‘Many of the Beests crossed
the River with their heads
bowed, their eyes focussed only
on the flow of water at their
feet. For they could not bear to
look into the eyes of the
condemned noble creatures. As
a species, we have only ever had
experience of looking into the
dying eyes of our own – And, as
we know, when trying to
comprehend a new situation,
our mind grasps for memories
of the similar, which tell us
how we should feel. Behind the
cold armoured exterior of every
Crocodile lay the soul of a
loved one. This, on top of the
shame of having to deceive the
unwitting reptiles, would have
amounted to insufferable
despondency.
‘I, however, a young and
curious being, that didn’t fully
understand the situation,
bounced across the River with
incongruous glee; enjoying the
feeling of the cool rapids as I
scanned the mysterious,
beautiful creatures that lined
either side of our watery path
to the opposite bank. Oh! how
noble and wise they looked.
‘I had a vague notion that
the Crocodile species was much
older than ours, but to look
into their deep yellow eyes was
to see the fiery inferno of an
ancient Earth. Oh! what
wonders they could tell us
about their origin, about our
origin, and about the bizarre
animals that lived before but
live no more. But, alas... For
the first time in our history we
had made civil contact with a
fellow animal, and it was all
just part of a plan to destroy
them.
‘As all this was swirling
through my mind, I noticed a
14
tiny Croc peering from behind
his huge Mother. Our eyes met
briefly, before he turned away
embarrassed or scared. But in
that brief moment I saw a soul
brimming with curiosity, with a
hunger for life, not for my
flesh. Accustomed to doing
things I shouldn’t, I wandered
over to the boy, who had now
mostly sunk below the
waterline, with just his excited
golden beads breaking the
surface.
‘And we spoke. He told me
his name was Pebble; that he
was around the same age as me.
He told me that he was always
getting shouted at for not being
a good Crocodile. He said that
being in the water was fun, but
that he longed to explore the
land – much to the irritation of
his Mother. I told him that
Wildebeest get to walk all over
Africa, waking up in new lands
every day – And he listened
carefully, eyes wide with awe.
‘Presently Khaite beckoned
to me. “Hurry up, Ganoo,” he
shouted. He was standing on
the far bank of the River, next
to Konnos. Having crossed
first, my two brothers were
currently overseeing the safe
passage of the rest of the tribe.
“Leave the Crocodile be,
Ganoo,” he continued.
‘Before I turned to trot up
the slippery bank and out of
the River, I whispered to
Pebble, ever so quietly, “Please
don’t eat the meat. It will make
you very sick.” Suddenly a voice
thundered from the wall of
lizards, pounding my ear drums
like the crashing of a great
wave. “Why do you say this
child? Do you speak the truth?
Answer me or the
consequences shall be severe.”
It was at this point that I
discovered the superb sense of
hearing possessed by the
Crocodile – and I realised that
my whispered warning to
Pebble had found the ear of
every one of his friends and
family.
‘Due to my immense fear,
my mind did not clearly record
the subsequent events, but I
have managed to piece together
the following fragments.
‘Nilo, the old Crocodile to
whom the thunderous voice
belonged, challenged Khaite to
reveal his true intentions.
However, the Prince retorted
that my words were borne out
of a fanciful imagination, and
bore no resemblance to reality.
The argument lasted some
time, with Khaite strongly
holding his position, until
eventually Nilo suggested that if
he spoke the truth, then he
would not mind leaving me to
the mercy of the Crocodiles –
as punishment for bringing his
good name into disrepute. And
from what you know of Khaite
it will come as no surprise that
he agreed to this proposition.
“What need does my herd have
for a liar?” he cackled, knowing
all along that it was he who was
lying.
‘You might have thought
that I would be petrified at this
point. However, quite the
contrary. For as Nilo was
debating with my brother,
Pebble’s Mother was all the
time reassuring me that the
Crocodiles had absolutely no
intention of eating me. Nilo
was simply testing Khaite – as
surely the Prince would rather
admit to having deceived than
sacrifice his sister. Also, I was
assured, the meat of a calf is
stringy and coarse, and so is
rather undesirable.
‘Whilst it was clear what
Khaite was willing to sacrifice,
Konnos, who had up to now
been idly standing by, was
approaching the terminus of a
long and arduous thought
process. Ever since he espied
me engaged in jovial juvenile
dialogue with the little Croc,
my eldest brother could not
help but notice a certain
similarity between Pebble and I.
We couldn’t have looked more
different, he a stony-scaly thing
and I a furry-gangly thing. Yet
Konnos saw something - an
inexpressible feature - that
united us. Just two little,
innocent, curious creatures;
standing face-to-face; talking
and smiling, amidst the flowing
River.
‘And so, faced with the
prospect of the death of his
sister, he spoke. To Wildebeest
and Crocodile alike. And he
spoke more powerfully than all
the old Great Leaders put
together.’
The sun drooped lazily
behind the horizon, the golden
glow of the grove becoming
awash with twilight; the young
Beest’s faces slowly turning
pallid in the light of the rising
moon.
‘Konnos, standing tall on
the bank, roared his words
mightily, like a Lion protecting
her cub. And this, if my
memory does not decieve, is
what he said:
“My sister speaks the truth,
Crocodile – We have poisoned
our soldiers so that you will, in
turn, become sick upon
digesting their flesh. We
Wildebeest know what we are
doing is wrong. Not because we
have rules or laws or
commandments against such
15
acts, but because we felt it – it
made our stomachs hurt; it
consumed our mind like a
plague of demented Locusts.
To have felt that it is wrong is
what separates us from Nature;
a feeling engendered by our
history and the experience of
our ancestors. But we did not
embrace this, because we were
frightened of you, Crocodile.
Kill or be Killed, we thought.
“Little Crocodile [he said to
Pebble, directly]. You know not
why you yearn for our meat,
because that yearning was
assigned to you before you were
born. In all other respects, your
mind - the person you are could be entirely analogous to
that of my sister’s.
“For no reason, other than
circumstance, Nature has made
some animals predators and
others prey [he continued, now
turning back to the group at
large]. And there is currently no
conceivable way for all species
to survive without the killing of
animals. But all species have a
right to survive, because all
animals are born innocent and
can not be held responsible for
acting according to Nature.
“There may, one day, be a
way for all species to survive
without the killing of animals.
But the path to this Utopia can
only be paved with acts of
kindness, and cross-species
dialogue and collaboration. Of
course, some will say that such
a Utopia is an impossibility;
that conscious thought will
never be the master of our
baser instincts – But that
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Because being kind feels good;
it can be both the means and
the end. Indeed, the solace you
radiate will be reflected back
upon you.
“It is with great difficulty
that the Wildebeest accepts
that the Crocodile wishes to eat
them. Even greater still is the
difficulty by which we accept
that the Crocodile is simply
hungry, not evil. But we have
been gifted the power of
consciousness, the ability to
rationalise and reason –
Betwixt our horns we hold aloft
a burning torch through the
cave of fear.
“We wish you no harm,
Crocodile, for we believe that
you wish us no harm. And if
members of my herd become
your food, then they shall do so
knowing that they have died so
that others need not. Our
current arrangement is by no
means ideal – But it is the only
scenario I can presently
envision that causes the least
harm to the least animals.
“Now, Nilo, if you let the
rest of my people to pass this
once, I shall offer myself to you
as recompense. I alone can not
offer much in the way of
sustenance. But please, accept
my royal flesh as a symbol of
the understanding we have
reached. Feed me to your
children, and they will see that
Wildebeest do not deceive; that
we are honourable creatures. It
may be some time before we
come to trust each other. And
until that time, it is best if we
conduct ourselves according to
our Nature – until our capacity
for rational thought is
sufficient to devise a more
humane arrangement.”’
Grandmother Ganoo
paused after reciting her
brother’s discourse. To the
young Beest her expression
resembled a candle flickering in
a gentle breeze, clinging fast to
the wick against the blackness
of night.
‘And so Nilo, the
spokesperson for the
Crocodiles, accepted Konnos’
proposition. And we left him
there to die.’ She continued
quickly, not wanting to dwell.
‘Then things just went back to
the way they always were.
Dialogue between Wildebeest
and Crocodile ceased and the
Crossing, once again, became
perilous.
‘There was one difference,
however. We originally thought
it to be blind luck, but it
happened so often as to be
beyond the realms of chance:
Yes, after that day, children
always survived the Crossing.
No longer were our calves
hunted by the Crocodile. A
symbol that, one day, things
will change, perhaps.
‘Well, children, we come to
the end of our journey – And
to the last instance where you
will be addressed as children.
Your next Crossing will be
perilous – You shall have to
dance through the jagged maze
like any other adult. But I hope
that, after hearing what might
have been, you can understand
why Konnos and I did what we
did, on that day, many years
ago.’
A chorus of discordant
questions rose up from
Grandmother Ganoo’s captive
audience, the most persistent of
which concerned the
eventualities of the shamed
Prince and his subservient
soldiers.
‘Nothing could be done to
save them. As we left the River
the poisoned soldiers wandered
sadly along a path
perpendicular to ours, into
uncharted land – to meet their
16
end, one way or another. As for
Khaite – he remained with the
herd for a few years, walking,
eating, and sleeping alone.
After Konnos’ sacrifice we
chose to abandon hereditary
leadership and royalty – opting
instead to elect Leaders for a
fixed term by majority vote.
Whereas I enjoyed its
freedoms, Khaite found it hard
to adapt to life as a civilian.
And then one morning we
awoke to find him gone. No
traces, no signs – he had just
disappeared.’
All in an instant. A loud
crack echoes from across the
prairie, as if the moon has been
fractured. Grandmother Ganoo
wheels back momentarily onto
her hind legs, and then falls in
a sorry clump on the cold
ground; a gaping hole in her
skull, leaking blood. The
gathering of Young Beests
scatter frantically, heading
vaguely in the direction of the
sleeping herd – all except Bovi,
who did not want to leave her
Grandmother, and so lay
hidden in the undergrowth, as
the humans came into the
grove to retrieve their trophy.
All in an instant.
Visual Art
Fish
by Sophia Greif
About the Artist
Sophia is from Seattle, Washington, and enjoys bottomless coffee
and good pie. She currently studies graphic design, film and art
studio. She fears that when we die we can only go to the places we
visited during our life and so she travels, explores and develops her
skills for the benefit of her afterlife self.
17
Untitled
by Bart
About the Artist
Bart is an avid sticker collector. Bart gets a thrill from buying
products that include a complimentary sticker of the company's
logo. As soon as Bart gets a new sticker, she sticks it on her water
bottle without a moment’s hesitation. When her water bottle runs
out of space, she plans to put stickers on the outside of her laptop.
Bart’s favorite pastime is walking through parking lots and rating
18
Less
by Bart
Red
by Bart
19
Features
of basic services which are also free; public funding,
and thus public ownership; management and
development in the interests of the community they
serve, without a profit motive; commitment to
freedom of information, accuracy and accessibility
and the same principle of a universal right to access
culture and learning. As the privatisation of public
space is rampant– from the closure and demolition
of community spaces, replaced by private
developments to the growth of hostile architecture
including spikes to stop street sleeping – public
libraries are one of the few open and free to access
spaces left. This is even more essential at a time
when austerity politics is rendering more people
unable to heat their homes or pay rent. Cuts to
local government funding have also led to a huge
surge in outsourcing contracts, reducing people’s
ability to access and exercise their democratic right
to accountability on critical services. A publicly
owned library service, is a rare source of political
empowerment whilst the provision of universal
public services and the principle of equal rights for
all, unrelated to ability to pay is evidenced to reduce
inequality. And to those who cite Google as a
superior model of information governance and
provision over public libraries, how illusory is the
concept of free and unbiased information in the
hands of a multinational company whose income
depends dually on filtering search results for profit
and serving users according to their market value. It
is important to note that the internet and public
libraries aren’t mutually exclusive and any implied
necessity of choice between the two is false, though
as public libraries depend on funding collected
through taxation, vast corporate tax evasion and
government sanctioned sweetheart deals suggest
which way the wind is blowing.
Public Libraries:
Innately Subversive Institutions
by Salome M.
“The only thing that you absolutely
have to know, is the location of the
library.”
- Albert Einstein
Libraries Gave Us Power
It is almost a cliché to say that public libraries are
everything to many and something to everyone
though the truth in it stands undiminished all the
same. The founding principle on which the current
public library system operates - that culture and
learning should be accessible to all - originated
around 400 years ago. It then sailed upon the
political and philosophical waves, through the
enlightenment and philanthropic eras to the post
war consensus in which, for many states the
principle was cast in statute. This chronology alone
belies much political and social upheaval, hard
fought philosophical battles on inequality and
debate over the roles and responsibilities of the
state and the market, all of which continue today.
Assumed irrelevance is also something public
libraries are forced to defend against as, ironically,
in the decades since the grant of statutory status –
legally binding governments to provide public
library services in some form – the popular
perception of their value has declined. Arguments
for insignificance generally cite the rise in home
internet access, the availability of cheap books for
sale, and implicitly, the effects of social change
towards individualism over community.
Undeniably, the speed and divergence in the rate
public libraries adapted in the modern era and
reluctance in many services to relinquish tradition
also did not help their case.
“The very existence of libraries affords
the best evidence that we may yet have
hope for the future of man.”
- T.S. Eliot
In response it is worth considering the defining
characteristics of a public library: physical spaces
which are open to all and free to access; provision
20
The Transformative Power of Reading
Or as a priority whatever we are?
Either we stop arguing and agree that libraries are
doing their best to re-invent themselves, and that
with a bit of help, financial and ideological - they
belong to the future, or we let them run down until
they disappear.
When confronted with such powerful and
adversarial forces against public interest,
the necessity to make a case for public
libraries is greater than ever. Though the
power of storytelling is familiar to most
with an understanding of the equivalent
power of libraries, it requires the voice of
every possible advocate and the use of every
available medium to be heard in the face of
a commercially and politically motivated
mass media. The Reading Agency is one
organisation working in the UK to promote
and communicate the value of reading.
Their annual lecture series has articulated
many powerful evocations on the subject,
extracted below.
Who is going to pay for this new expanding
network of libraries? These people's palaces of
books where everyone can go from early in the
morning until late at night?
The money is there. Libraries cost about a billion a
year to run right now. Make it 2 billion and charge
Google, Amazon and Starbucks all that back tax on
their profits here.
Or if they want to go on paying fancy lawyers to
legally avoid their moral duties, then perhaps those
companies could do an Andrew Carnegie and build
us new kinds of libraries for a new kind of future in
a fairer and better world?
And if you don't think this will work, if you think
it's Utopian, remember that all of life is
propositional - we make it up as we go along. We
can change the rules because we make the rules. We
can change the story because we are the story.”
(Copyright: Jeanette Winterson / The Reading Agency,
2012)
The inaugural lecture in 2012 and was delivered by
Jeanette Winterson, an author who wrote in her
awarding winning debut novel, Oranges Are Not
the Only Fruit, of the escape her local library
provided from a repressive religious upbringing,
helping her explore her sexuality in the process:
“Do you believe there is such a thing as the life of
the mind - deep thought, concentration, reflection,
real imagination - the expansion of the human
spirit? Learning that is more than information?
Creativity?
Photo by Robin Mayes
The following year, novelist and fantasy author,
Neil Gaiman, spoke on Reading and Obligation:
If you do, then for whom? For the middle classes?
For the right kids at the right schools? If you do,
then when - when we are rich, powerful, wealthy?
“I want to talk about what reading does. What it's
good for.
21
I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk
about the building of private prisons - a huge
growth industry in America. The prison industry
needs to plan its future growth - how many cells are
they going to need? How many prisoners are there
going to be, 15 years from now? And they found
they could predict it very easily, using a pretty
simple algorithm, based about asking what
percentage of ten and eleven year olds couldn't
read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure.
never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else
out there is a me, as well. You're being someone
else, and when you return to your own world,
you're going to be slightly changed.
Empathy is a tool for building people into groups,
for allowing us to function as more than selfobsessed individuals.
You're also finding out something as you read
vitally important for making your way in the world.
And it's this:
It's not one to one: you can't say that a literate
society has no criminality. But there are very real
correlations.
THE WORLD DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE
THIS. THINGS CAN BE DIFFERENT.
And I think some of those correlations, the
simplest, come from something very simple.
Literate people read fiction.
I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved
of Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in
Chinese history. And at one point I took a top
official aside and asked him Why? SF had been
disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?
Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to
reading. The drive to know what happens next, to
want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even
if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you
have to know how it's all going to end...
It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant
at making things if other people brought them the
plans. But they did not innovate and they did not
invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a
delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to
Google, and they asked the people there who were
inventing the future about themselves. And they
found that all of them had read science fiction
when they were boys or girls.
...that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn
new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going.
To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once
you learn that, you're on the road to reading
everything. And reading is key. There were noises
made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we
were living in a postliterate world, in which the
ability to make sense out of written words was
somehow redundant, but those days are gone:
words are more important than they ever were: we
navigate the world with words, and as the world
slips onto the web, we need to follow, to
communicate and to comprehend what we are
reading.
Fiction can show you a different world. It can take
you somewhere you've never been. Once you've
visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit,
you can never be entirely content with the world
that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing:
people can modify and improve their worlds, leave
them better, leave them different.
People who cannot understand each other cannot
exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and
translation programs only go so far.
And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few
words about escapism. I hear the term bandied
about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is
a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish
and the deluded, and the only fiction that is
worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic
fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader
finds herself in.
And the second thing fiction does is to build
empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are
looking at things happening to other people. Prose
fiction is something you build up from 26 letters
and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and
you alone, using your imagination, create a world,
and people it and look out through other eyes. You
get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would
If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in
an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill,
and someone offered you a temporary escape, why
22
wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just
that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight
outside, gives you a place to go where you are in
control, are with people you want to be with (and
books are real places, make no mistake about that);
and more importantly, during your escape, books
can also give you knowledge about the world and
your predicament, give you weapons, give you
armour: real things you can take back into your
prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use
to escape for real.
and wise. “If you want your children to be
intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you
want them to be more intelligent, read them more
fairy tales.” ”
This is an edited version of the lecture, the full text can be
found at readingagency.org.uk/news/blog/neilgaiman-lecture-in-full
(Copyright: Neil Gaiman / The Reading Agency, 2013)
As J. R. R. Tolkien reminded us, the only people
who inveigh against escape are jailers.
Another way to destroy a child's love of reading, of
course, is to make sure there are no books of any
kind around. And to give them nowhere to read
those books.
Libraries are about Freedom. Freedom to read,
freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They
are about education (which is not a process that
finishes the day we leave school or university),
about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and
about access to information.
I worry that here in the 21st Century people
misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose
of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books,
it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in
which most, but not all, books in print exist
digitally. But that is to fundamentally miss the
point.
I do not believe that all books will or should
migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once
pointed out to me, over twenty years before the
kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark.
Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean
before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still
sharks around is that sharks are better at being
sharks than anything else is. Physical books are
tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar
operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at
being books, and there will always be a place for
them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have
already become places you can go to get access to
ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and
webcontent.
The 2014 lecture saw comedian Russell Brand
present his Manifesto on Reading in which he
criticised the lack of governmental support for
public and school libraries in the UK and a recent
policy to restrict prisoners receiving books:
“I asked a bloke about it and they said it was to
stop contraband going into prisons, but that's not
it. Everyone knows that the way drugs get into
prisons is through the people that work there. The
reason they are not letting prisoners have books is
that they don’t want people learning or thinking.
I went back there recently to the library in Grays
which I believe is being relocated, I can only assume
as part of a plan to demonstrate its no longer
Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make
our children intelligent. His reply was both simple
23
necessary to have a library, by first dislocating it and
then eventually closing it down, which seems to be
an ongoing strategy… A library is demonstrative of
two principles, learning and reading, and
community, and they’re both kind of value systems
that are under continual attack.
deprivation and dispossession, it is understood that
the greatest chance to change lives is as early as
possible. Consequently, many public libraries
concentrate resources on reaching out to young
people, through creative and cultural programming
with transformative effects.
I suppose if you have an informed and educated
population that are able to communicate
articulately with one another on important issues in
a limitless realm accessible through literature, then
it’s more difficult to be placated, it’s difficult to
keep such a population docile.
It is extraordinary that thoughts can be trapped in
hieroglyphs upon the page and can live again
within our minds, all reality experienced twice,
once through the senses, once in the mind, and
there frozen through time, Trotsky, Malcolm X,
they’re living still, in the code upon the page, and at
any moment they could be unleashed in the mind
of a child. For me that sounds like an exciting
thing.”
One such project is the delivery of an artist in
residence programme in a London public library
service, involving creative workshops delivered by
poet and performer Jared Louche who writes:
(Copyright: Russell Brand / The Bookseller, 2014)
“With the explosive growth of the internet as a
research tool, combined with extensive government
cutbacks to library funding, libraries are currently
fighting a battle to remain relevant in the 21st
century. One of the things that I’m constantly
fascinated by is creatively exploring people and
buildings that are marginalized in society, those
who (for whatever reasons) can’t tell their own story
or whose stories aren’t seen as important by the
society around them. We place value on the young,
on the new, on the freshly rearranged. In doing so
though, we seem to feel that importance can’t
simultaneously be placed upon the elders of our
communities, upon older buildings and older
traditions. There’s much that’s lost because of this
and many voices that are no longer heard, fading as
mist before a too-bright sun.
Advocating for the exciting, and transformative power of
reading is something The Reading Agency excels at and
their work is highly influential in helping libraries change
lives in the UK. More information on the organisation
and their campaigns can be found at
www.readingagency.org.uk.
“When I got my library card, that’s
when my life began.”
- Rita Mae Brown
Open All Hours
Libraries are the perfect illustration of this; used
less and less and valued less too, yet they are
incredible places. Every library has gone through
countless changes, alterations and renovations.
They’ve survived threats of closure and wrestled
with the recent, rapacious financial cutbacks.
They’ve seen war and peace, busy times and slow,
and down the years they’ve watched the community
around them shift and change. Despite being the
richest realm of words though, the one thing that
Beyond reading alone, and aside from its
originating philosophy, the public library is
revolutionary in the personal sense, providing a
space for exploration, social engagement and
creativity, as well as simply a space to be, of equal
status, with equal rights and equal ownership, often
in sharp contrast to the divided and stratified world
outside. Whilst this is significant for people of all
ages, and age is no concern to the bars of
24
no library has ever been able to do is to find its
unique voice and tell the story of its life. No library
has ever been able to tell us its experiences, what its
greatest fear and proudest moment might have
been or what it dreams about when the last
librarian has locked up, the stacks are still and the
lights are finally out. The only way to hear that
hidden voice is with your creative ears.
At Harlesden I’ll be working creatively with a broad
spectrum of the local community, developing
stories from the library’s perspective as well as
looking at language and books in alternative ways.
We’ll be developing Haiku about secrets, and
hiding them in books throughout the library. We’ll
also be creating and binding our own books. I’ll be
running workshops with groups from schools as
well as in a much more guerrilla context with
people who have come to borrow books and
unwittingly wander into my orbit.
(Copyright: Jared Louche / Apples and Snakes, 2015)
applesadsnakesblog.org
“The death of democracy is not likely to
be an assassination from ambush. It
will be a slow extinction from apathy,
indifference, and undernourishment.”
- Robert Maynard Hutchins
With children from local primary schools, I’m
unleashing creative writing and creative thinking
workshops to look differently at the amazing things
the language can do. The ancient, universal
language of poetry is the most phenomenal spade
with which to dig into the loamy soil of language
and ideas. This helps expose children to the
delights their library contains and allows them to
see the space as both useful as well as exciting.”
Generals in the War on Ignorance
Another beautiful truth to public libraries is that
learning and creativity are free to all. Where there is
a lack of guided cultural practice, the open shelves
and information are accessible and free for selfinstructed discovery. Another irony is that despite
bearing perceptions of tradition, propriety and
governance, public libraries are also cradles for
dissent and subversion. The list of activists, artists
and philosophers who have sought there,
information, inspiration and connection is long.
They can also act as a refuge in times of instability,
making an important stand in solidarity with their
community, as with Ferguson Library in Missouri
during the conflict in August 2014 following the
shooting of Michael Brown. Library staff provided
free water, resources for children and hosted
lessons for local children as the start of the school
year was delayed, gaining them national
recognition.
Public libraries themselves are also not averse to
using subversive means to make their case. In
2011, the city of Troy, Michigan held a vote to raise
taxes or cut services in which the anti-tax lobby was
dominating the conversation. Faced with possible
closure if the vote was lost, library campaigners
25
created a fake pressure group lobbying to close the
library and stage a book burning party. The
connection between voting against the tax and
being a gleeful celebrant of book burning was
introduced and enhanced with multimedia content,
adverts placed looking for bands to play, babysitters
to work and general lobbying which reached
international attention. The reaction it provoked
ignited a counter campaign in support of the
library, and the tax increase, which grew further in
popularity when the would-be book burners
revealed their real intent. The vote was won on a
record turnout, 342% above predictions.
reading provides, from illiteracy, poverty, inequality
and a lack of imagination.
A How-to Guide to build your own Book Bloc is available
in high-resolution at peardrop.net/book-bloc-shield through
kind permission of the artist Marwaan Kaabour ©.
Often political causes aren’t necessarily about
demands for new rights or statutory change, but
simply for existing laws to be fully and fairly applied
and universal rights to be respected. As citizenship
tilts further towards a one way exchange, with ever
greater compliance demanded from the people
while arbitrary exemptions are ever more
permissible for the powerful, obfuscation and
misinformation is a growing danger. Public libraries
are a source of accurate and reliable information on
all of our rights, including the right to a public
library service itself. The current UK campaign
against widespread and unequal cuts to services, My
Library By Right, cites the Public Museums and
Libraries Act, The Equalities Act and The Human
Rights Act in its legal challenge against the UK
government’s contravention of its own legislation.
Where this is true for public libraries, it could be
true for social, economic and foreign policy also.
Where this is true for the UK, it may be true for
any other country around the world. Illegal and
ideological funding choices affect everyone,
whether an individual directly access services or
not. What has been built over centuries is being
dismantled in years. The neglect and closure of
buildings and cuts to staffing are merely
consequences of a political order which rejects the
founding philosophy that culture and learning
should be open to everyone. While they are still in
existence, public libraries are one of the few free
and ready resources for fighting back.
Some of the most visually powerful uses of books
and reading in campaigns for freedom is well
illustrated in the use of Book Blocs, which have
been deployed as a creative defence against police
in a number of demonstrations around the world
since 2010, often for causes against neo-liberalism
and in defence of affordable education. The blocs
are thus symbolic in many ways: visual articulation
of the cause; a means to counteract reporting bias
of protests; tools of empowerment to demonstrate
what can be achieved through the sharing of
knowledge and utilisation of simple materials to
hand and a physical realisation of the shield that
26
Poetry
Shelved
A Lunch at “The Knife and Fork
Inn”
by Fi Smith
by Steve Luria Ablon
1. Be gone the great brick
date-stamped lintel,
skip to a prefab at the back,
the kids’ zone, all colours and scraps,
a miraculous shack.
My grandmother selects from the menu
two two pound lobsters, one for each of us,
gently ties the plastic bib around my neck,
smooths my collar, pats my cowlick down.
While we wait I study her thin white hair,
the tiny shafts to her scalp, her skin
2. Take a bus to the hexagonal
modern, clutch a school slip
granting ransacking of adult archives
with a nod to the ever-present
Santa Claus of no fixed abode.
so wrinkled on her fragile wrists.
On large oval plates waiters bring them,
blushing red with black spots, immobile, dead.
3. Tunnel in and out, dodge
college libraribots, thief-proof barrier
suitably mute, windowing into
microfiche reading rooms,
scanning for a Japanese suicide
manual.
Delicate, she works her pliers and her pic,
finding the route to the tiniest caves
until just bare shell and cartilage remain.
I crack the back, rip the meat from tail,
suck each cutter claw, and scrape the sacs
eating all the roe. She says you are eating
About the Author
unborn lobsters, and I think killing, dying,
babies, lobsters, my grandmother and me
our bodies torn by time. We sit in silence,
Fi Smith is a Dublin poet, music journalist (Hot
Press, craic-it.com), screenwriter (winner
WildSound Festival, Toronto, for Rolling, 2014,
shortlisted Galway Short Screen Commission 2015,
Fiddler's Green), and blog editor for
firstfortnight.ie, the annual festival of mental health
awareness through the arts. @fifilebon.
as I feel the ocean weeping on its endless sand.
About the Author
I have published four books of poems: Tornado
Weather, (Mellen Press), 1993, Flying Over
Tasmania, (Fithian Press), 1997, Blue Damsels,
(Peter Randall Press), 2005, and Night Call (Plain
View Press) 2011. My work has appeared in many
magazines. I am an adult and child psychoanalyst
and an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at
Harvard University Medical School and
Massachusetts General Hospital.
27
Our libraries must move.
No!
Our libraries must live!
Living Libraries
by Katleho Kano Shoro
Our libraries move.
They have mouths:
speak details in languages now complicated to our
theoretical linguistic proficiency
but on our skins, the details still settle comfortably.
Visit peardrop.net/living-libraries to hear a recording of
the author performing this poem.
About the Author
Our libraries move.
With analogies alone they run races. Solve
imbroglios. Set new standards.
They bring those who have stepped outside and
been disqualified
back to the starting line.
Katleho Kano Shoro is a performance poet, MA
graduate (Social Anthropology) and African
literature and film enthusiast. She’s been involved
in various literary projects; from coordinating
literary initiatives for AFAI and Langaa RPCIG
(Cameroon) to co-editing The Spoken Word
Project: Stories Travelling Through Africa. Shoro
has performed in spaces like YFM, Verses,
HOLAAfrica and National Arts Festival (2009).
More recently, she featured at Open Book Festival
(2015), Grounding Sessions and is currently
participating in Current State of Poetry’s Open
Slam programme. Her poems have been published
in Killens Review of Arts and Letters Journal and
Badilisha Poetry website.
Our libraries move.
From the moment they are built, they spread
themselves thin;
infiltrating spaces that only knew of the dark and
dust.
They find poetic ways to penetrate us.
Our libraries move.
They pace our footsteps and thoughts alike.
They demand silence before we answer.
They ask us to reflect on who we would like to be
from hereon after.
Our libraries move.
Even in death, our libraries find the means
to help us decipher uncertainties.
They narrate convoluted manuscripts through
songs and dreams.
Our libraries must move!
They must hold colloquiums with other libraries
in buildings, under desert suns and in caves too.
Within skyscrapers and under soil, our libraries
have work to do.
Our libraries must move!
They must teach
notations and words
in languages spoken by people of our worlds.
Our libraries must move
Even in construction,
They must thicken their content by researching the
systems
of categorisation and symbols of our existence.
28
Garbage Delight
seen about a month previously on the train from
Woodbridge to London. This made me feel like he
might think I was spying on him. I am not. But I
also doubt that the opposite is true.
Overheard and seen in
Woodbridge Library Suffolk
October 2013 - February 2014
by Rebecca May Johnson
The Lady on the Mobility Scooter
Several days last week she ate her lunch and then
slept in her scooter on the library wheelchair ramp
for a few hours before doing a tour of the library,
where she was greeted by many people in the
library. All of the librarians know her name but I
have not yet learned it.
October 21 st , 2013
Slippers
The volunteer who teaches older people to use
computers brings a pair of leather slippers to
change into when he is in the library.
October 22 nd
The Lady and the Luddite
By Linden Salter is the first book I laid eyes on
when I came to the library : I have not yet picked it
up, but my guess is that it is a romantic novel
concerning a socially problematic love affair
between an aristocratic woman and a weaver who
rebelled during the Luddite uprisings in the early
19th century.
Said the woman at the photocopying machine:
“When I was defending British interests across the
water, I always used to argue that we were so
honest. But that was in the past.”
Under the table
A woman in her mid-seventies read Fifty Shades of
Grey under the table.
Companies and Markets
Since I started coming here last week, I have
realised that the most read item in the library is the
‘Companies & Markets’ section of the Financial
Times. Further to this initial observation, I
overheard a lengthy discussion about Facebook’s
IPO between the old man with a comb over and
bad varicose veins who always wears shorts and the
young male librarian who did not know what ‘T-HE-O-L-O-G-Y’ meant. The old man appears to be reenacting a routine from before his retirement: he
always carries a tired old briefcase containing
‘Investor’s Chronicle’. The young male librarian
who did not know the meaning of theology was
very knowledgeable about shares. My conclusion is
that people in Suffolk are very knowledgeable about
the financial markets.
Stamps of The World 2012
A man sat down next to me, extracted his stamp
album from his bag, and proceeded to identify and
log the origin of his collection using Stamps of The
World 2012, vol. 3. He talked to himself
intermittently.
Going Live
Last week the library went live with a WiFi
connection for the first time. I liaised with the
librarian dealing with it during the day as it got over
its teething problems, because I was the sole user. I
am still the sole user.
October 23 rd
The “Shabbiest Man in Town”
is the title that the old man who always wears shorts
and carries a briefcase containing ‘Investor’s
Chronicle’, gave himself on Friday. He seemed to
take great pleasure in this assertion.
Before Going Live on WiFi
When I first logged on to a library computer it
logged me off after 30 seconds and would not let
me log on again. I saw a man’s name on the top left
of the screen and I did not know what that meant.
Unable to log on, I left the computer and an old
man who had been hanging around behind me sat
The Man from the Train
On Friday I saw a man in the library who I had
29
down in my place. Then I saw a sign which read
that computers can be reserved and I realised that
the old man’s reserved session had begun when I
was logged on.
November 1st
“…sobbing in the corner”
said one librarian to the other. He replied:
“yeaaaah”I didn’t hear the rest.
Autodography
A genre I was not familiar with before now. A
canine with the name of Pudsey has written one
that is on the shelf next to me.
“exactly the same name, exactly the same –
but he lived in Bury St Edmunds! It seemed
extraordinary that he should have exactly the same
name as me!” said the man on the mobility scooter
wearing a poppy to the woman sitting next to
him. She did not seem to know his name. She left
the library shortly after.
“Barrie tells me it’s the duck who drags him here”
From the story ‘Ugly duckl-inn’ in the October
issue of Mature Times telling of a man who brings
his duck, Star, to the pub. According to Barrie, Star
“just won’t mix with the other ducks and became
distressed when I tried to put him with them. […]
He is a bit of an exhibitionist.”The same edition
features a story about Britain’s oldest glamour
model, on page 3.
January 14 th , 2014
“Fat Cat…”
she says, referring to the book in her hand as she
leafs through. “This is the one that…” and then a
comment I can’t hear. I suppose her cat is
overweight, but as time passes she picks up more
and more books referring to different species,
pausing and making further comments as she does
so – ending with horses. She pauses on a page: “I
like this one’s face”, she says to her husband, who
attends nearby. I am not convinced she was seeking
advice for a pet, I think she likes the pictures.
Cushion
As well as a pair of slippers (see post entitled
‘Slippers’) the volunteer who shows people how to
use computers also brings in his own cushion,
which is striped like a deck chair. He places it on a
chair next to him when he is assisting people on the
computer and puts his (slippered) feet on it.
The Most Popular
place in the library is its lavatory. I believe it is the
sole reason behind a high number of visits to the
library.
January 15 th
“Who’s been playing last?”
says one woman to the other, looking at the
scorecard.
“Maybe Peter and Moira”, says the other, reading
the initials.
“It’s so warm. I’m having a hot flush I think”“Still?”
says the other.
Two more arrive and they set up the Scrabble.
An intense conversation about cat hotels ensues.
“She’s got a van called ‘Paws for Thought.’”
They have all seen it.
“I’ve only got one vowel”
P-I-G
“They let them out hungry, so they come back for
their food.”
P-E-G
“They let them out when in bad weather too, so
they come back. It’s the opposite of what you’d
think, isn’t it? But you can see why.”
“Is she going to drop down dead?”
said the librarian to the man who asked if his
daughter could have a glass of water. The librarian
would have had to go to the staff room to retrieve a
cup of water. The man asked his daughter: “you’re
not going to drop down, are you? ”The librarian did
not retrieve a glass of water for the girl.
Due to rain
the lady with the mobility scooter relocated from
the steps of the library to just outside the lavatory.
She slept for several hours, waking twice to use the
adjacent facility.She wears a thick line of dark blue
kohl on the top of her lids, indicating that she
remains affected by 1960s make-up styles, when she
would have been young.
30
January 16 th
“That’s Why They Thought it Was Good for
You…”
they got the decimal point in the wrong place.” Said
one woman to two others around the photocopying
machine.
What did they say about spinach?
“Well you know Popeye, and that it was so good for
you with all that iron – but it’s because they put the
decimal point in the wrong place.”
….‘We were at a teahouse, quite a polite place, and
a woman pulled up in a four-by-four and Susan
said, “you fucking disgusting bitch. Yes, you fucking
disgusting gas-guzzling bitch”
– yes, that’s what she said.’
…“The Oxford comma, do you know that? I amazed
everybody with that. There was a place when it
wasn’t grammatically correct and I said ‘yes, but it’s
an Oxford comma, it can emphasise or clarify.
Yes, and there’s an example with commas that
makes Mandela look as though he’s an axemurderer or something.’”
About the Author
Rebecca May Johnson is a writer and journalist
living and working in London. She will shortly
submit her PhD thesis, which is an analysis of the
contemporary epic Odyssey cycle, Niemands Frau
(2007) by German poet Barbara Köhler. She is part
of a collaborative group called Sitting Room that
organises poetry readings in Sitting Rooms – among
other things.
January 21 st
“She had a good arse,
before arses were in fashion”, said a teenage girl to
her friends.
February 11 th
“Healing without Freud or Prozac”
by Dr David Servan-Schreiber lay beside her, while
she read a large-format book on domestic bird care.
February 26 th
The Man from the Train (see post October 21,
2013)
sits opposite, filling in all of the vowels in a passage
he has written with a blue biro.
Toddler’s singing group
takes place on Wednesday and Friday mornings in
the library’s main reading room. It lasts for over an
hour.
31
4000 Holes #4
Gorilla in the Roses
by Salome M.
Sworn statement:
“I’ll have to catch those monkey’s. A couple of
darlings make no mistake.”
The duties of the modern library worker extend
beyond the care of books and the supervision of
those with an eye on them into the realms of social
workers, building inspectors, teachers and nurses to
say the least. In 1962 people kept themselves
upright in society and the kitchen sink hidden at
home. The stamp of council property was
sacrosanct and not to be violated. Thus it was a new
avenue for the librarians then employed in the
borough to be confronted with the mysterious
disappearance of numerous books from the shelves,
later rediscovered by innocent borrowers,
scandalised by the obscene amendments found
within. The noble efforts of Edith Cavell against
the Nazis, reduced to servicing mammoth genitalia.
A Dorothy L Sayers sleuth solving the case of Little
Betty’s missing knickers in the station drawer of PC
Brenda Coolidge, alongside a seven inch phallus.
And the reckless defilement of nature itself – Tudor
noblemen rendered with the heads of birds and a
monkey supplanted in The Collins Guide To
Roses!
1. Case Report:
Malicious Damage
Witness: Sidney Porrett, Borough legal
clerk
On closer inspection, the mystery was quickly
narrowed to the suspicious conduct by the couple
of young men frequently observed to be lurking
amongst the shelves, the sole patrons deriving
amusement from the reaction of the customers and
efforts of placation and explanation on the part of
the staff. The younger looking of the two has the
glow of engagement in youthful mischief, though
his companion in crime bears a darker shadow of
miscreancy. Such grave and disgusting offences
must be acted upon.
Crime: Theft and defacement of council
property with obscenity
Scene of: Islington & Hampstead
Libraries, various
Date: Suspicions arose in 1962;
evidence gathered indicates some
previous
32
Sworn statement:
“It wasn’t the Gibbon’s that started it really, that
was just symptomatic of the whole thing. It reminds
me of The Bible: ‘of the making of books there is
no end’. Because there isn’t. Libraries might as well
not exist; they’ve got endless shelves of rubbish and
hardly any space for good books. You can obviously
say when some things are rubbish and some things
aren’t. I can obviously say Gibbons isn’t. He said a
very funny thing about books: when the Arabs took
Alexandria they used the contents of the library to
provide fuel for the baths and Gibbon thought the
books were doing more good being so used than
they were being read.”
2. Case Report:
The decline in
standards of the
public library
It being a matter of good taste was a part of it, and
my blurbs were only mildly obscene. In another way
you could look at it as public benefaction, we steal,
the shops buy more, the publishers are happy so in
some way, we’re financing literature. Kenneth
smuggled his out in a service gas mask case. I
preferred a satchel. We wouldn’t watch each other
but when we got home, I’d see what he took and
he’d see mine, then we’d go to work. It was mostly a
satirisation of the terribly popular pulp fiction and
pedestrian mysteries, rewriting the blurbs to give
them some real scandal. When we did take proper
books, we’d always replace the author and the
editor’s names back on the covers. How I see it, the
real vandalism was the state of the collection as it
was, not after we’d had it out.
Witness: J. Orton, enraged borrower
Crime: Absence on shelves of Gibbons’
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Scene of: Essex Road Library
Date: Request unsatisfied in 1959;
general poor stock selection long
entrenched
33
Formally commenced in January on a suggestion
from the police, with the drafting of library staff
from beyond the branches, who may pass
undetected as fellows among the borrowers and
bear direct witness to the criminal acts. In more
happily resourced times, this observation period
lasted weeks to no avail before Sidney Porrett,
Borough Legal Clerk asserted he ‘let my ethics slip a
bit’ and ‘fetched myself down to their level’ by
resorting to Typewriter Entrapment. Being
possessed of the foresight at least to reckon the sort
to commit such acts of depravity would unlikely be
lured by a sweetened bait, Porrett sought to inflame
their rage instead. The line was formed of an
officious letter regarding the illegal deposit of an
abandoned vehicle. Though wholly fabricated, the
demonstration of such bureaucratic ineptitude
could not go without a contemptuous response,
typewritten in a face directly comparable to that in
which the blurbs of mild obscenity were pasted.
3.
Notes
on
an
investigation
At 9am on 28th April 1962 the police arrived at
Flat 4, 25 Noel Road. They found the residence
uniquely decorated with carefully pasted cut outs,
collages delicately applied, a meticulous design on
library wallpaper installed throughout the small
rooms shared by the two, now held in deviant
custody at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
34
The senior probation officer identified their
condition as that of the frustrated author, the
behaviour an attempt to impose their literary
artistry in lieu of an approving establishment and
receptive audience. Giving no contrary account of
their motives before the captive audience they did
have at Old Street magistrates, both were
expediently shipped on to Wormwood Scrubs. The
use of any rationale they could have served, in
overturning the prevailing and restrained morality
of the time would be limited and this they likely
knew. Perhaps some mitigation against the passing
over of their theatrical moment was had in the
thwarted desire of the prosecution, on behalf of the
Borough, for financial compensation to be paid
rather than a custodial sentence. They also gained
that celebrated status as cover stars of the Daily
Mirror. After undergoing assessment by the prison
psychiatrist their paths began to diverge. Kenneth
Halliwell, the shadowed miscreant told the truth;
Orton, the mischievous did not. They were soon
despatched to different palaces in the Queen’s
penitentiary estate, exposing deep contrasts in their
individual resiliencies. This division remained in
the years after their release and though they died
together in August 1967, there was little chance of
reconciliation in the dying of the light or eternal
peace. Kenneth bludgeoned Joe with a hammer
before overdosing on pills.
4.
Judgement
Magistrate being a dirty word between them, the
judgment for which they may have had more
respect is that of aesthetics. Some vindication then,
in the exhibition celebrating their works, held at
the same scene of the crime, 49 years later.
Judgement
Judgement
Judgement
Judgement
“And so the god’s distinction grew
Judgement
Judgement
Good luck to art, a sod to you”
Inspired by and with quotation from Prick Up Your Ears:
The Biography of Joe Orton, by John Lahr ©.
Images of defaced covers: Owned by Islington Local
History Centre, Islington Borough Council
35
Call For Submissions
Issue #7 Theme: Folklore Wars: Competing Narratives
We welcome submissions to our flash fiction section (500 word limit) on the theme of
‘Folklore Wars: Competing Narratives’.
The deadline for submissions is 31st March 2016, with a view to publish in April.
Read the submission guidelines at peardrop.net/submit.
Themed and non-themed submissions also welcome for all other sections.
Send your contributions to [email protected].
www.peardrop.net
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www.twitter.com/peardroppress
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