Bernal Heights. San Francisco. October 10th 2005.My life could become a series of rest stops, in beautiful places looking down at remarkable cities from well known vantage points with an empty head.Here the dogs take turns around the mount, shit rising, while I gaze down at a sun burnt city, Oakland bridge gliding and blue water glinting, I think of youYou came suddenly to mind today as I scurried through the tall buildings of the financial district, of how you must love it here. The Eucalyptus flank the sidewalks.Yesterday I drove through a forest of them and here Im staring down at perfectly aligned houses, wondering which one belongs to us? Im high on distance solitude, all possibilities streaming towards me like the sun on the windows below.Yesterday I drove a highway with silver sided lorries hooting derision as I passed, today as I gaze over the blistering city I miss you again , wonder why we dont talk? try to reincarnate my feelings, try to imagine a world with you.(C) Victoria Mosley 2006
People with brains who make me laugh
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Exert from 'Angel's Wharf'She dares to wonder if she is dead, but she had hoped that dying would be like going to sleep, a peaceful and involuntary coma of unconsciousness. This is nothing remotely close to anything she has ever encountered. . I have gone crazy; I am opening doorways in my brain and walking down the synapses of the past…….she mutters under her breath and it reverberates through the tunnels and is echoed back to her .She is on a sub-cellular cloud-ride into a world of ordered, moving beauty She reaches out to steady herself against the walls of the passageway and draws back with an intake of breath as her hands sink up to the elbows in warm and pulsating tissue. She stops and looks closely. There is something opaque that she can push through. It sucks her in like she would imagine the slurp of a peat bog or the inhalation of quicksand. (C) VM 2008
No thanks
www.trophywhitebird.com. A novel. (C) Victoria Mosley 2006.City sleeps in cocoon of winter violence cold covers fingers, hands, exposed flesh flakes drift slowly sideways; upwards landscape shifts.London January snow.The tube lurches onwards like a mad worm snaking its way through the brown burrows of the frozen city. She watches the faces bathed in the bluish shade of neon light, “ or is it fluorescent?" Her eyes pick mercilessly at each passenger, noting skin blemishes, lines beneath the eyes, the smear of too much makeup, she breathes in the stench of city life, watching herself in the black mirror of the window a small dark haired woman with high cheek bones and brown eyes, she contains a vibrancy that brings the air around her alive. Sara is 36, a single mother and a writer with a mission, this winter she’s researching a book on internet dating and her notebook is already bursting with jotted entries, lines for characters, indents of pages that are taking shape in the scurrying recesses of her brain. Outside, miles above her it’s snowing she can feel the heaviness of it from down here deep beneath the city’s dip and sway and the drum of slushy footsteps; cocooned underground ?her mind clatters onwards, and her pencil skims its indents on the cramped pages of the scrappy notebook. Cat walks gingerly line of fence ,patting white powder like dynamite" She sighs, scribbles another line and, feeling eyes on her, she turns to meet the gaze of another black eyed vision in this dark tunnel with so many threads to follow and none of them gold. ?Outside it must be snowing in small flurries, white crystals fall effortlessly like goose down, she can feel that the sky is red. She shuts her eyes and visualises the snow on her garden, iced pockets of misery for the birds. The tube lurches to a stop at Victoria Station and she pushes her way through the commuter crowds to the train for South London, watching the lights over Battersea Bridge, watching the flurries blinding on the window of the train. Back in the comparative comfort of her house she huddles into gym gear, layer upon layer of warmth, glancing out of the window as she draws the blinds, she can see the trees picked clean by winter’s fingers. Empty gardens, derelict garages and acres and acres of sky above London rooftops, her house an oasis of calm against the backdrop of this wasteland. Glancing at her watch its still early, not yet time to pick up her small son from after school club she settles in front of the computer and clicks on the dating sight she has picked for today’s research. The idea had come to her when she had received a free weeks membership by email; on a boring Sunday evening she had flicked through the pictures of the men in the 24 to 38 age range and it was like shopping online, or flicking through a women’s magazine at the dentist, that was until she had actually met one of them, until her life had been turned upside down by love. To a certain extent it is the most rational way of meeting men these days when everyone is so taken over by work and the liquidity of society seems to look askance on the normal bonding patterns of human beings. Everything is disposable and has a sell by date and these dating sites are no exception. If a relationship doesn’t work out there are another 13 million men out there just waiting to pounce Sara has a penchant for younger foreign men; it’s the smooth softness of their skin and the eroticism of the colour difference that she is attracted to, that and an indomitable effervescence of spirit that seems to be sadly lacking in Caucasian men. She clicks idly through an online profile.www.worldwidedating.comName. Ali Gender. Male Age. 28 Race. Middle Eastern Hair Black Eyes . Brown Education Medical Income High Star Sign Gemini Status. Single.Profile.Hello ladies, I am looking for a serious relationship with a Caucasian woman, I am highly educated, own my own aeroplane and have a baby tiger. I live in Chelsea and hope you will reply to this so that we can share some good times together.The profile is complete with a picture of Ali sporting a large moustache, and his personal hot mail address in case the ladies wish to bypass the rigours of the internet subscription dues. Sara flicks down a line of photographs using her magnifying glass to scrutinise the postage stamp sized pictures. This is how it had started; she’d clicked on an interesting looking African guy and flirtatiously sent him a message. His name on the site was Sam and he looked innocuous enough in the studio portrait, a high black polo necked sweater and shaved head, he was a young looking 32 year old, a professional internet architect working for the BBC, was how he had described himself. He had turned up at a writer’s talk she was conducting at Battersea Arts Centre and at first she didn’t recognise him, he was several shades paler than the photograph and obviously Asian. Throughout her time on stage she had been conscious of a pair of eyes boring into her, and after the show he had politely sat for a drink with her and the other writers and then left. She hadn’t thought much more about it at the time, now she passes a hand wearily through her fine chestnut hair and grimaces to herself. She thinks of a Rumi poem, "Everything that passed before my eyes beheld you beloved, was all lost time" It had started so slowly, a text message, a telephone call from an unknown destination with the sound of waves crashing in the background. She had thought it romantic, but now the romance is tarnished with fear and distrust, and she is thrust into the torment of a love stronger than anything she has ever known before. Switching off the computer she goes about her evening chores, driving in the dark to pick up her child, as they walk the slippery pavement she thinks. "The road is a skating ring, treachorous, iced, like life" Much later huddled with a hot water bottle in bed sleep comes and goes in flashes of vivid dream images. The flaming colours of well known faces playing parts in new dramas; the face of her lover flashes before her. I fly above forests high into black night. You and I play our Russian roulette but with toy pistols pacing the distance between us, marking territory in our minds. This growth between us is slow and cellular, you are better at it than I am, more sure of the map, aware of a destination, maybe it’s because I know there is no destination, only broken pathways, disused tracks. I like to lay my head on your shoulder close my eyes, rock gently while stroking the soft firm flesh of your back. You drive me insane with your measured phrases, deadlines and designations but your letters written at 4.am. from a whisky brain leave me breathless, page upon page of intimate thoughts and phrases, so intimate my heart turns in my chest leaving an unknown pain. : I look at you; love is a filter cleaning impurities disguising glaciers. We are old friends now on an angled cliff with the sea jousting in front of us, a New England sea spread with turquoise, you show me the colours of your thoughts and I embrace them, give them form. There’s nothing to stop us from flying away, in this filtered air, from flying away, running hand in hand through copper woods: except the effigy of time that’s printed an expiry date on my shoulder where you can’t erase it. We are sitting at a table drinking wine, you are silent, your white shirt crisply pulled down over your slender wrists. Two glasses of red wine, sediment sticks to crystal, tongue holds heaviness of the grape, of sun and rain that grew this. The scene changes and we are walking hand in hand around a public park, the lake is frozen and sun glints off iced patches of water, crazy paving the surface where fowl slide graciously. Families perambulate muffled children faces itchy red with the cold. I remember spending time with you here, wanting the moments to linger into hours and the hours into days when we were not lost to the world. Now we’re truly lost to the world. The sun is a pale spotlight in the ceiling of a winter sky, if I hold my breath I can see spring poised beneath the harsh earth. I catch this light; hug it to me to ease the encroaching twilight. She wakes shivering and remembers their last meeting where he had asked her for time to be alone, to think. She remembers. You asked me to leave you alone until you contact me , but maybe I should leave you alone permanently "Oh my beloved", before I stumble down the well worn path to dependency. You once said that you didn’t want to be accountable but the smallest atom, split, can destroy a world. There’s no peace in the night when we are apart, there’s no peace in the night when we are together, and we struggle with the definition of words searching for a meaning each of us caught in our own tunnel vision. She twists and turns remembering their first dates, a walk along the river at South Bank, a lunch in a French restaurant in Dulwich village, how he had been mysterious and intense, looking deep into her eyes and telling her that he wasn’t interested in dating her, only in her becoming his wife. Thinking on it now in the silence of the house with the wind scattering the last of the leaves in the garden, she curses herself for her curiosity and impetuosity that had let him so easily into her life, into her heart. The first time they had slept together he had cried and told her that she was his woman, she had stroked his head and looked bewildered into his almond eyes, and yes she had begun to believe him, had been flattered by his intensity and vision of a future with this stranger that she hardly knew. That was before he had disappeared for the first time, walked out the front door promising to return after work, but he hadn’t come back and his phone was off her email returned unanswered. The first time had been three weeks of incomprehensible misery waiting for a call, before he eventually phoned her from New York as if nothing was askance. This time it’s been six weeks and she has begun to wonder if he is a figment of her imagination, she snuggles down further into the duvet and mutters to herself into the emptiness of the room with its memories and shadows. Talk to me of the difference time has made the difference between last week and today? Clouds come rolling in, black oppressive tight waves of distress splashing me with your mud layered multiples of years falling in salt systems, I wipe them from your cheek. Our midnight language becomes effete in daylight squabbling, you follow me a shadow on my days, if I turn quickly I might catch a glimpse of you on street corners, military in style, small, steel, Barbour against cheek everything purposeful neat sweet smelling, soft kohl rimmed eyes. Love spoke to you today in spirals of genetic coding you felt your body couple of its own volition you wanted to curl up inside me and never be separate again. She sleeps at last, her pillow damp from tears and her hand reaching out to catch his wrist, as if he was still beside her.…………………………………….
My children, my friends