For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins
For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins
side of a sperm whale – lanced open at sea, ink flooding the surrounding seawater like a storm; Someone elses hair gathered forensically in the plughole; Avoidable incident; Everything removed from everything else; An 8B, applied to censor; Or to redeem; The stuff he shat out when suffering from a suspected superbug and/or reacting badly to the Sunitinib (sp.); Pulped egg boxes (etc.); A certain kind of shell, dark at first – fresh from the water – then lighter – dried in the sun, crystals of sand sat; Tears summoned by not blinking while playing something shit on the computer till about five in the morning; The first hour of developing light in the morning, early May, London; Smoked glass; That last cigarette – ever, apparently – smoked and understood standing atop a moss-covered boulder on an island near Helsinki; The smoke, I mean, streaming from every orifice, solidifying into the form of a dung beetle on your delightful ear; Apple Mac-grey; Tim Hecker, the bastard; Dishwater, tomorrow; The floor of this place; Overcast sky on its way to another continent; The waves, Padstow; The head on a pint of [...], the light dimming in the beer garden; The engine room; The absent legs of a quadraplegic, glimpsed on the
horizon from the window of a double decker bus driving through rural Oxfordshire; A story that ends ambivalent; you’re response is fierce; Your head, hitting the pillow, trying very hard to summon the face of [...]; A fucking truth; A beautiful goose; The majority of Onibaba; The sun, actually; ETC. etc. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Dad’s death. It’s strange that I had almost forgotten about the significance of tomorrow... (how can I know it and have it ?) [...] You lick the digested and shitted word and a great curve of tongued STUFF flicks off and into your mouth. And your whole mouth turns black, impossibly dark. Even when you open it for inspection by your family. We can make out nothing, they say. But it reeks, they say. Putrefaction. A tar pit full of sheep carcasses, says your infant son. A bloody basin, offers mother. Your mouth has become a massive infected wound, riddled with [...] A nightmare trip to the dentist confirms this. He loses his tools to the void. The nurse faints. All the dentist can add to the diagnosis is that, apparently, there’s a sound coming from inside. Something insistent, nasal, apparently. Sounds familiar, he says, but beyond that addendum, I want nothing more to do with you. And there’s something particularly worrying about being abandoned by your dentist [...]
- Page 313 and 314: Somebody’s baby boy
- Page 315: Somebody’s Baby Boy, half dead, s
- Page 318 and 319: [...] Can you smell that? (*RUMMAGE
- Page 320 and 321: like skull; your skull is more poro
- Page 322 and 323: those trapdoor spiders - those trap
- Page 324 and 325: piss-stream. The ones that hook-on
- Page 326 and 327: channels. Purposeless. The stuff I
- Page 328 and 329: whistling, singing - whatever it is
- Page 331 and 332: Air for concrete 2011
- Page 333 and 334: mouth. Do you even have a mouth? [.
- Page 335 and 336: […] I’m sure you can picture as
- Page 337 and 338: ody’s. Microscopic flakes of Leon
- Page 339 and 340: ody. […] Surrounded by gratuitous
- Page 341: Your father’s horrific sunglasses
- Page 345 and 346: a click, looks up towards the ossif
- Page 347: impunity, fearlessly, expressively!
- Page 352 and 353: 450You, standing DUMBSTRUCK in a be
- Page 354 and 355: within the hole. 1(These things, ag
- Page 356 and 357: 40,000 ADThe patron saint of atroph
- Page 358 and 359: seems so phenomenally archaic as to
- Page 360 and 361: patron saint of poets and refugees,
- Page 362 and 363: valued member of the team’. A ton
- Page 364 and 365: 1372A polytheism that describes the
- Page 366: with his right. The words he uses,
- Page 370: © Ed Atkins 2013 -- For the happy
horizon from <strong>the</strong> window of a double decker bus driving<br />
through rural Oxfordshire;<br />
A story that ends ambivalent; you’re response is fierce;<br />
Your head, hitting <strong>the</strong> pillow, trying very hard to<br />
summon <strong>the</strong> face of [...];<br />
A fucking truth;<br />
A beautiful goose;<br />
The majority of Onibaba;<br />
The sun, actually;<br />
ETC.<br />
etc.<br />
Tomorrow is <strong>the</strong> anniversary of Dad’s death. It’s<br />
strange that I had almost forgotten about <strong>the</strong> significance of<br />
tomorrow... (how can I know it and have it ?)<br />
[...]<br />
You lick <strong>the</strong> digested and shitted word and a great<br />
curve of tongued STUFF flicks off and into your mouth. And<br />
your whole mouth turns black, impossibly dark. Even when you<br />
open it for inspection by your family. We can make out nothing,<br />
<strong>the</strong>y say. But it reeks, <strong>the</strong>y say. Putrefaction. A tar pit full of<br />
sheep carcasses, says your infant son. A bloody basin, offers<br />
mo<strong>the</strong>r. Your mouth has become a massive infected wound,<br />
riddled with [...] A nightmare trip to <strong>the</strong> dentist confirms this.<br />
He loses his tools to <strong>the</strong> void. The nurse faints. All <strong>the</strong> dentist<br />
can add to <strong>the</strong> diagnosis is that, apparently, <strong>the</strong>re’s a sound<br />
coming from inside. Something insistent, nasal, apparently.<br />
Sounds familiar, he says, but beyond that addendum, I want<br />
nothing more to do with you. And <strong>the</strong>re’s something particularly<br />
worrying about being abandoned by your dentist<br />
[...]