Kinship and Community

Him

In our turning we do this, that or the other. I’ve lived in this turning for fifty years,
and here I intend to stay. They’re new here they’ve only been here eighteen years.

I’ve got friends at work and friends at sport and friends I have a drink with. I know
all the people around here, and I’m not invited into anyone else’s home either.

It doesn’t seem right somehow. Your home’s your own.

They’re all related in this street. It’s awful, you can’t talk to anyone in the street about any of the others,
but you find it’s a relative. You have to be very careful.

Her

It’s friendly here. You can’t hardly ever go out without meeting someone you know. Often it’s someone you were at school with.

Since we’ve had the children I’ve got no more friends – outside the family I mean.
I don’t see my best friend much. She’s married too, and she’s always round

her Mum’s like I’m always round mine. Since we’ve had the baby, I’ve got no men friends – outside the family, that is.

Direct quotes from the research commentary in Family and Kinship in East London, by Michael Young and Peter Willmott (Pelican Books, 1957). Submitted by Peter Raynard.

Mythologise Anything

A recent exhibition of the work
of American artist Jeff Koons was
called Everything’s Here. I subscribe to that
worldview: you can live on “lipgloss and
cigarettes”. There are more references to
TV shows and showbiz entertainers

in my songs than references to the
Greek myths but it’s all valid. You can
mythologise anything if you put
your mind to it. In a way it’s more fun
to look for profundity in something
that’s not designed to have it. Or maybe

that’s just awkwardness on my part – I do
have a tendency towards that. When I
was nine years old, we were learning how to
draw bar charts at school when the teacher
decided to construct one based on the
times we got up in the morning to get

ready for school. For some reason I was
determined to have a bar on the graph
all to myself and so claimed to rise at
6am every morning (which was an
obvious lie as I was usually at
least five minutes late each day). The teacher

was sceptical but let it go and, much
to my satisfaction, I got my own
exclusive bar. I don’t know why I was
so determined to be different from all
the other members of my class, but it
felt important to me. Perhaps it still

is. But I’d like to think that it was more
than mere cussedness on my part, that it
was the start of a sensibility,
a desire to look in the less obvious
places – less obvious because they were
right under your nose. Pulp was the perfect

name for the band because this was an attempt
to find meaning in the mass-produced and
throwaway world that was, after all, what
we were surrounded by on a daily
basis. To sift through and find some beauty
in it all. Take a look – it is there.

Taken from Jarvis Cocker: the secrets of Pulp’s songs, The Guardian, 16th October 2011. Submitted by Marika.

I was playing D&D when I Came Out

and I don’t know if
I would have
been able to

had it not been
for the positive influence

that the game had
on me.

Why?

Because
it taught me
to be self-reliant.
It taught me to not

stand around

waiting

for some man to rescue me.

It taught me to always,
always,

check the ceiling
before entering a room.

From the LiveJournal blog of wyrmwwd. Submitted by Veronica.

Wanted

Easy Work! Excellent Pay!
Must be able to service the greater Northwestern area
Must have ability to climb poles
Must be willing to work varying hours and days

Must be a highly motivated, honest and aggressive self-starter
Must be able to service the greater Northwestern area
Must be clean, reliable, good with people, and have good morals
Must be willing to work varying hours and days

Must be hardworking and have own truck and tools.
Must be a highly motivated, honest and aggressive self-starter
Must be a skilled, “hands-on” person with a desire to create quality product
Must be clean, reliable, good with people, and have good morals

Assemble products at home.
Must be hardworking and have own truck and tools.
Must be fun, and energetic with a customer-service attitude
Must be a skilled, “hands-on” person with a desire to create quality product

Must be an aggressive, motivated, enthusiastic, retired military officer
Assemble products at home.
No experience or training required.
Must be fun, and energetic with a customer-service attitude

No phone calls please.
Must be an aggressive, motivated, enthusiastic retired military officer
Must be bondable and know federal regulations
No experience or training required.

Must be familiar with procedures and equipment
No phone calls please.
Must be trustworthy, dependable and possess leadership ability
Must be bondable and know federal regulations

Prefer high school graduate
Must be familiar with procedures and equipment
Earn money at home reading books.
Must be trustworthy, dependable and possess leadership ability

Must comprehend English well and be in good physical shape
Prefer high school graduate
Must be an ambitious, level-headed problem-solver
Must be trustworthy, dependable and possess leadership ability

Must be friendly and zippy
Must comprehend English well and be in good physical shape
Must have a neat and clean appearance.
Must be an ambitious, level-headed problem-solver

Will train.
Must be friendly and zippy
We want some hard working, clear thinking, basically good people.
Must have a neat and clean appearance.

Must be outgoing, ambitious, patient, and work well with children
Will train.
Must be dependable, enthusiastic, reliable, highly motivated, articulate and well-dressed
We want some hard working, clear thinking, basically good people.

$4.50 per hour (depending on experience)
Must be outgoing, ambitious, patient, and work well with children
Must be well-groomed and able to drive a stick-shift.
Must be dependable, enthusiastic, reliable, highly motivated, articulate and well-dressed

Easy Work! Excellent Pay!
Must have ability to climb poles

Taken from the want ads in the San Francisco Chronicle, 1991, and arranged into a pantoum. First published in Trade Trax, the newsletter of an organisation called Tradeswomen. Submitted by Lita Kurth.

Hanging Lie

Looks at the ground
So little light left
No wind at all
It has to happen now

Avenue of humanity
Red, clamouring together

What have I done?


All words taken from commentary of the final day of the US Augusta Masters golf tournament. BBC Radio 5, 10.30–11.00pm BST, 14 April 2013. Submitted by Winston Plowes.

More Pigs Occur

So.

The first thing we see
is a plastic trash bag
with some paper chains spilling out.
A man
in a green t-shirt grabs it and deposits it
in a dumpster.
A boy
on a bike watches him.
A man uproots
some plants in a greenhouse
and harvests the squiggling maggot-y worms in the potting soil.
He puts a couple of them into medicinal capsules. Mirrors figure
conspicuously.

Later
something happens to Kris.
The man
puts her under a spell. She sees, tastes, feels
and does whatever he tells her to, but she can’t
look at him because he says

his head is made of the same substance as the sun.

Her mind records
entire conversations, and the complete text
of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.
Another man collects, records
and plays sounds
and performs synchronous surgery on Kris
and a pig, apparently transferring a parasite
from one to the other, establishing
an indefinable psychic link
between them.

Kris encounters Jeff
on a train.
They connect. Their thoughts
get mixed up, which is to say that they’re both convinced
that some of their memories have been
appropriated by the other. Their conversations
transpire
in several different places at once, or perhaps
at different times
in the same place.

Or different times at once. Some orchids growing
on tree roots
by the edge of a stream
change color.

More pigs occur.

Some association
is evinced between them, Kris
and other somnambulists.

Kris is
confused
and afraid.

From a review of the film Upstream Colour, RogerEbert.com, 11 April 2013. A few subclauses left out. Submitted by Wesley Brown.

The new wasteland

This is how Americans live today
drinking coffee made from snow
and living in tents and
buying guns to kill each other
especially children
some people complain about the guns

These trees are full of snow
You’ll see there are no birds
they’ve been eaten by the people
who live in these tents and corridors
this man awaits heroin
their houses blow down very easily
and they have to live in tents like these

Again, there are no birds in the trees
apart from these
which will be eaten on Tuesday
they are yummy
You can also eat the snow
of which there is plenty

These people lie huddled together
with their dead friends in blue body bags
drinking coffee-cups full of local snow
They are very good friends
They are together in adversity

In other parts of America
often disguised as foreign countries in Europe
people live the same terrible life
This man, a former Republican candidate for Oregon
is now having to get coffee made of snow
from these trucks
Many Americans have to live like this daily
and are entitled to one cup most days
The weather is freezing
but the hot snow tastes nice
They enjoy it immensely

Meanwhile in the major offices
factories and railway stations
people sit around
under expensive adverts for Dell computers
drinking snow from plastic cups
People pass by, not caring
for they are all in the same situation
These telephones no longer work
There is no one to call

This is how they live in modern day America
Huddled together – the poor, the cold, the lonely
and the homosexual
Mean time these people queued up for handouts
from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
and were each given a cake

Taken from a North Korean propaganda film. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

Commuter Chat

I have a vision of the universe
– because nobody can find the end of it –
as stuffed in a glass jar
on someone’s desk,
maybe God’s desk
but a desk, anyway.

I think the white noise on TV
is the leftover noise
from the Big Bang.


Overheard at Macclesfield station, March 2013. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

The Secret Life of Daniel Craig, Poet

Awake at dawn with nothing to do.
I don’t want to think about it.

Aung San Suu Kyi.
Jealousy.

Travel. Home.
It all depends on how you interpret them.

Answering questionnaires.
I don’t know if I do.

“Fuck off.”
At a free bar.

Opposable toes.
Ruddy.

My knees.
Oh, they’re just perfect.

Krill. Ink.
Where I live now.

My third nipple.
A good mustache. A good mustache.

E.E. Cummings and Kurt Vonnegut.
Maggie and Milly and Molly and May.

Blisters. Quickly.
“Breathe in… breathe out. Repeat.”

Daniel Craig’s interview answers in The Proust Smackdown: Three Kings and a Questionnaire, Vanity Fair Magazine, February 2012. Submitted by J.R. Solonche.