Why won't they leave me alone and live their own lives? Why won't they leave me alone, so I can live mine?
Gentle Jesus says, suffer the little children to come unto me.
Bows his head, pays his last respects. From the edge of the funeral crowd watches his children allgrownupnow, and no longer needing him. As the world falls away, he stands beneath cold, polished winter trees, looks up and absently puzzles Kandinsky leaves on hectic wires. Walks away unseen, shuffles off in shapeless slacks. Pauses briefly. Turns to see atop the snowy hill little mittened hands waving goodbye from the steps of the closed-up summerhouse.
Arriving at the end of the high school party, he hears the last strangled notes of an exhausted party blower across the streamer-strewn dance floor and watches the last few slack-mouthed theyshoothorsesdon'tthey couples stumbling cheek to drool-smeared cheek over pale yellow boards. Witness the wake of the seventies and the pyrotechnic blossoming of ten thousand bravenewworlds (and every one the same): a national rational-cage curriculum cheerled by wad-waving Loadsamoneys; and everybody's happy nowadays.
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Why am I so sad? Asks the Bergen-Belsen tour guide. Business is booming, he mumbles through the pistol in his mouth.
However many lost weekends I endured, hunched in dark bars at pains to drown my sorrows, they just kept bobbing back up. My sorrows have good lungs.
Ticking in the street. Everyone running wildly in every direction. Won't somebody please come and defuse me.
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'When I talk to Sebastian, I feel really special.'
She is flesh and blood. She is all that matters. We are standing together and sharing one, unique, unrepeatable moment.
The management killer on the other hand is never wholly present. She is only conscious of the event from an external position. She always has her eye on the prize. Every warm human relationship transforms into the cold strategic means for the preservation of the company and the achievement of her own selfish ends.
She sacrifices the richness and depth, the precious otherness of each moment, to save herself. She plays to win. She is cold, hard metal. She is the machine. No warm heart glows red and pulses in the grey ashes of her chest.
She sacrifices the richness and depth, the precious otherness of each moment, to save herself. She plays to win. She is cold, hard metal. She is the machine. No warm heart glows red and pulses in the grey ashes of her chest.
Gentle Jesus says, suffer the little children to come unto me.
Be here now.
Why try to live a life that isn't real?
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Quietly leaving over bedtime rooftops, Mary Poppins bids adieu to bankers, cooks, suffragettes and other children. Melancholy angel folds her wings, forlornly bows and whispers: "Where's my cheery, tiggerish chimneysweep? Where's my Dick Van Dijk?"
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Losing his grip, he finds himself slipping away. Daily, vaguely, seemingly endlessly waving goodbye. Drifting off. Crumpled, beige and balding under the Telegraph by the cricket pavillion. Left-behind ancient alien satellite, inert tumbling hulk finally exiting earth's orbit.
Bows his head, pays his last respects. From the edge of the funeral crowd watches his children allgrownupnow, and no longer needing him. As the world falls away, he stands beneath cold, polished winter trees, looks up and absently puzzles Kandinsky leaves on hectic wires. Walks away unseen, shuffles off in shapeless slacks. Pauses briefly. Turns to see atop the snowy hill little mittened hands waving goodbye from the steps of the closed-up summerhouse.
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The rise and rise of the misanthropic simpletons. A new generation of management killers. Hear the tiny, tinny cymbals of the clockwork metal monkeys, as they perform their machine functions to the letter and insist that everyone does the same.
Teacher, I think I have a coherence problem.
Hmm. I'll examine your text. Yes, I can certainly see some sentence and paragraph connection issues. Here are the links to some cohesion activities. Do two of the activities everyday morning and evening for four weeks, then come back and see me. You can make an appointment with the receptionist on your way out.
Thank you, Teacher. Good-bye.
Good-bye. See you in four weeks. Next.
Thank you, Teacher. Good-bye.
Good-bye. See you in four weeks. Next.
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In the grey magical wind that swirls around the ancient statues and monuments, with the old woman's unspoken help, I find each separate wooden piece among the small gold coins, receipts and bus tickets in my coat pocket, and we reassemble the city on a small wooden board.
As I turn it on finger ends and hold it up for the beautiful, golden-haired, raggedy vagabond thief to see, we all gaze open-mouthed in wonder.
"When you put them close together like this, they look like ancient apartment blocks. It's not like, Wow - the Parthenon, or something - a gleaming, solitary, timeless artefact. It's more like twilight post-apocalyptic Gotham, like a native American adobe tenement."
And on an upper floor, having followed the ragged carnival crowd around the winding wooden stair, that arranges itself before us - open-mouthed - we find a perfectly clean, synchronized row of fresh-faced, beaming, sparkley-eyed Audrey Hepburn nuns in black cloaks and stiff-pointed white-sail veils, a row of poised, legs-crossed fifties sophisticates perched on bar stools, lifting gleaming - ping, clean - starlight champagne glasses.
Captured by a sepia, ragged pirate on the lower floor, you arrive with a stiff black cardboard box ...
As I turn it on finger ends and hold it up for the beautiful, golden-haired, raggedy vagabond thief to see, we all gaze open-mouthed in wonder.
"When you put them close together like this, they look like ancient apartment blocks. It's not like, Wow - the Parthenon, or something - a gleaming, solitary, timeless artefact. It's more like twilight post-apocalyptic Gotham, like a native American adobe tenement."
And on an upper floor, having followed the ragged carnival crowd around the winding wooden stair, that arranges itself before us - open-mouthed - we find a perfectly clean, synchronized row of fresh-faced, beaming, sparkley-eyed Audrey Hepburn nuns in black cloaks and stiff-pointed white-sail veils, a row of poised, legs-crossed fifties sophisticates perched on bar stools, lifting gleaming - ping, clean - starlight champagne glasses.
Captured by a sepia, ragged pirate on the lower floor, you arrive with a stiff black cardboard box ...
