XCV

He hunts in the night that cries black tears

Maddened by the filth beneath his finger nails:

His thoughts are motionless. In the forest by a creek

Dressed in winter lace, he sits with his long memory.

When he fixes you with those eyes dark and clouded

Like an infant’s, it feels like communion.

This murderer with hair like the down of ducklings,

How will you ever forget him when he leaves you?

There's a bad smell hanging around, like an atmosphere, like someone who you know. And god-dammit is that a trident in my heart? It has leaves with alterations of veins between them, thin rivers of who the fuck cares, certainly not life, which is in me now. So you sit there highly strung and you're awful worried the second mother will come and when she does boy the shit will hit the fan. I'm awful, you see, I mean I tried harder last year but people around me find evil sexy.

No but I was talking about the weather. It'll come in great wide washes, and they'll bring tears to your eyes, because British people are sentimental about that sort of thing, and that's why the sun never shone on Nelson's funeral. Are you still with me? I'd gladly steal everything you have, but I'm not sure I could get you to carry it home with me. So OK then there are these broadsides, these shots from afar we give each other and I'm not sure how much I like it. Although you always said blood brought colour to my face. Anyway that's the worst sentence so far, we'll simply have to do better.

Then it's a case of mistaken identity. You heard me right. One blossom flies and a pigeon haunts the skyline - it's a still-life on the run. You fucking idiot. I hate it people who use the word 'cuss'. All right so you're on top of me, and things are so intimate I'd rather kill you than look at you again. Christ I hate these moments when you think we're seeing each others' soul. You have little pigs' eyes, really, locked into your conventional doll-face. Oh yes and I'm a misogynist and yet I'm always talking to women. You see, really it's that I hate the world, but women are the only ones I'll talk to. But I'm meandering. No, it's a bad fashion. I listened to you until I could hear your teeth, or feel your sadness - but in the end it was a thin drone, barely disturbing your moustache.

Well and we aren't so used to silences any more. I stretched out something along a plate and hoped, oh Christ I hoped, that it was a continent. You can come up and see me any time. It's good to hear from you. I wonder if you could help me? How do you do - how do you do anything, when there's so much idle chatter and you can walk through life on auto pilot and not notice until the fucking thing crashes? Oh why aren't I more intelligent? Is this all that I have to say? Oh it's so bare and lean and yet at the same fucking time, above it all, it's so bloated and rotten. A fucking - a thin man with rotten teeth and stinking breath, he's drunk but there's something about him that occasionally strikes a note, and that's my art, my prose.

All right then but let's not get too self-analytical ... please let's pretend that it's France and we're happy. There's an orchard and someone is eating oranges. I file away each memory as it happens, knowing how much it will mean to me someday. But you can be force-fed that kind of happiness, drowned in honey. So we won't go there for now. Let's pretend one of us is having a tough time with their marriage. No, let's just pretend that there is more than one of us, with me, above me, inside me, someone there - always there. Oh but you silly fool, you're bleeding all over the page. One more blood metaphor and I'll shoot you - you know you only do it because it vaguely amuses you, and manages to make your suffering trivial.

No. We're in taxis in the middle east. There are no seat belts, just a thick blanket spread over the seats, because priorities are different here. Your taxi is following mine with the luggage, and I'm with the kids. That sentence hurt: I can't think why. My vital life is draining away and there's no one to witness it. And I almost made myself cry. Surely this must matter to someone somewhere, what I'm doing. But really I'm so awfully boring. And I could pull off a con, you know I could, before some people who mistook boring for meaningful, and get shown in front of a panel of critics, and they'd expose me past my skin - they'd say I was boring, tho' I'd rather they told the world my entire sexual history than strip me down to such a truth. Deep down in your heart you've only ever been frightened of being called a fraud.

On the other hand, it's not like you have anything to be fraudulent about. I mean, you're not exactly a success story, are you? You have few friends, little love, a ruined education and no achievements beside - what conman wouldn't want to be you? Great rushing oil from her bosom. Streaks of light across the night sky like paint being stripped. Or something better and deeper that I can't see. You're almost 23. Desperately trying to hold out for old age, hoping that's where you come good. But you know that the people who are better at being young than you now, while you talk to old people, will be better at being old too - and so you'll talk to young people. This is all so lousy I could cry and scream but what the fuck do you expect, it's 4 in the morning. No, I'll tell you Sammy, you may not be much of a writer but you're an artist with the excuses.

Listen, I remember the monkey bars in the park. Please don't take that away from me. I'm going to die, and the only one who'll remember the monkey bars will be my sister, and she'll realise that the memories are only real to her now, and that's if she cares to recall them. I remember the fucking monkey bars in the park, I remember the plastic tree outside McDonald's where you got inside and it stank of piss. None of it is of any exterior worth to anyone, although I desperately want it to be. I think I write to commemorate my little world and make it come alive again. Although I never can or will. If the smell in my garden can be remembered, when I tell you that my garden is a person sitting there, that the smell of my garden is alive - no, I'm going to screw up the entire thought for you, but if it could ever have been remembered then the memory would have been something somehow. And people think it's the place, and they take you on a god-damn tour of Dickens' London, but it was never the place, it was the memory - and this is what you won't believe - that memory could have been made anywhere.

1177 words.

The River, 3rd Draft (send to Tom)

EXT., RIVER, DAY

DYLAN, a young man of bookish appearance, and JO, a young woman with a charming smile, are walking along by the edge of a river together.

DYLAN

Let's have a swim!

He takes off his top and jumps into the river.

JO

What, here? I'm not really -

DYLAN

It doesn't matter, the water's amazing ...

JO stands on the edge and looks at him. Then she loses her uncertainty and plunges in. We see them splash around for a while. DYLAN holds his breath and dives under the water. JO looks for him, and he appears further down the river. They improvise little games until they get bored and climb out again. They lie down in the bright sunlight to dry off.

JO

I can't wait for the start of the season to begin. Arsenal are going to peel off the frontrunners by boxing day, though, I reckon ...

As DYLAN looks at her, the sound of the river begins to drown out her voice and he is simply gazing at her body and face while we see her talking.

INT. COTTAGE, DAY

DYLAN is kneeling in front of a severe-looking icon.

DYLAN

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven ...

We see flashes of JO, laughing in the sun.

DYLAN

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses ...

We see shots of DYLAN making notes beside a Bible, covering the edges of a sheet with "JO".

DYLAN

As we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation ...

We see a shot of JO's bare arms.

DYLAN

But deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.

He rises quickly and leaves the room. He begins throwing out all of the food in the little kitchen. He heaves a great mass of it outside and pours it into the compost bin, covering his mouth to protect it from flies. When he returns he finds a rabbit in the kitchen, eating pieces of strewn-about lettuce.

DYLAN

Neither of us are getting into heaven, my friend ...

INT., COTTAGE, NIGHT

We see shots of him in front of the icon, sweating and looking ill, occasionally holding his stomach.

INT., SHOP, DAY

DYLAN stands at the counter of a village shop, still looking pale. A set of Victorian scales lies behind him. A voice from the back of the shop calls him.

SHOP-KEEPER (O.S.)

Dylan, can you take a bag of potatoes over to the Three Lions this afternoon?

DYLAN looks apprehensive.

DYLAN

Sure.

INT., PUB, DAY

DYLAN enters an ancient-looking pub. JO is behind the bar.

JO

Hey Dylan, you can just leave those here, thanks.

DYLAN

Right.

JO

Something the matter?

DYLAN

I've just never been in here before.

JO

It's lovely, isn't it.

DYLAN

No, it's ... horrible. I don't know how as a Christian you can ...

JO

You work at the village shop, that sells alcohol to fifteen year olds. Get real, mate. You see what you want to see, that's all. What are you laughing for?

DYLAN

You called me "mate".

JO

We are mates, aren't we?

DYLAN's face clouds a little.

DYLAN

I thought we were more than that. But I guess you're right, I see what I want, don't I.

DYLAN walks off.

JO

Dylan ...

EXT., RIVER, DAY/ INT., SURGERY

DYLAN sits on the rapids in the river, his head and feet above water. He observes the dragon flies at play in the rapids.

DYLAN

My body is without sin!

He looks at his hands, filtering between the sunlight, then looks around in a white room. He is lying on a surgical bed in the centre.

A surgical knife cuts under his left pectoral, and water rushes out. We see his sleeping face. The flap of skin is lifted up, and a river of images flows beneath, of icons and JO and animals. We see his body change to a woman's one.

EXT., BEACH, DAY

A man is standing at a beach. His back is turned. A woman rushes towards him.

DYLAN

Joe! Joe!

The man looks behind him.

DYLAN

I did this for you, Joe ... so we could be together.

JOE holds her at arm's length and looks at her body up and down. Then he embraces her. We see the mouth of a river, running out into the sea.

FADE.

TREATMENTS

1: There is no continuity in the film. Clothing changes constantly, furniture changes from shot to shot, and in the pub scene clients disappear, and JO's arm against the bar in the foreground of a shot of the pub is a man's arm. During the scene where DYLAN runs towards JO(E) - who is clad in a man's version of the shirt he wore in the pub - objects change in the tracking shot itself, rather than between cuts, but when JOE turns around things achieve a perfect stillness.

2. The opening shot of the film is of a narrow river. This shot is in a ratio narrower than 4:3. By the end of the film, the shot of a river flowing into the sea, the ratio is panoramic. The ratio slowly expands throughout the film, although the film itself will be shot in panoramic.

3. For the shot during surgery where DYLAN is opened up, there is going to be an insert shot of a double exposure, that of flowing water and that of a body of images loosely associated with each other.

All 3 treatments will hope to show that not only is the body a river, but so is the film.

The forest was filled with dust. From the assorted animals there hung spider webs, and the colour of the sun was faded. The forest had been constructed for me to play in, and then it became a romantic place for me to take my sweethearts, before the grime became pervasive. It was night in the attic, and the two-dimensional trees cast broad shadows in the torch light. I set my lantern down by an eternally startled deer.

When I think of my wife, I think of lemons. Their brightness, and the images of the sun that collected around them. How they could sit on the shelf of a grocery and still bring a bit of the continent with them. Just like lemons, my wife went with a cocktail perfectly. Her dresses lit up parties, and her sharpness suited conversation well - in small amounts, of course. Her body had the small hardness of a lemon: but most of all what reminded me was how they tasted when sugared, and when bitter.

german count murders wife, hides her in the secret bits of the attic he played in as a child, then becomes obsessed with hiding the evidence that he didn't love her, which forces him deeper into his childish world, until in the highest part of the castle he finds a keep sake of hers he placed when they first met, and this convinces him to give himself up.

The Vegetable Girl (418)

It was one of those expensive places near Oxford Street that cater for a particular type of person: the sort of person who would pay large amounts of money to spend part of their day eating a salad, while spewing afternoon nothings from their mouths in carefully bred Islington lilts.

I reached the centre of the room without anyone really noticing me, and found myself alone with a great glass display case. Inside, tempting concoctions of rare fruits and vegetables lay on large white plates. Prising the glass open at the bottom, I slipped my hand in hungrily.

Someone grabbed my arm: I turned up my eyes to meet the glare of the girl behind the display. She pulled me around the counter. I wasn’t resisting, only trying to think of an excuse. Finally she guided me through a little curtain, and we were alone in the darkness of the kitchens behind the shop.

There we faced each other, and I looked her fully in the face for the first time. Her features were long and ethereal in the flat square of light we stood in. She whispered in my ear ‘let me show you something’. I saw that she was trembling slightly.

She walked past me and opened a small cabinet nailed against the wall. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to make out what it was that was moving around. In the box there writhed the head, arms and torso of a girl, who appeared to consist entirely of fruit and vegetables.

Her hair was made up of lettuce leaves, her fingers were flailing strips of cucumber and celery and other green vegetables, and her lips were formed by passion-fruit. The girl reached in to the box and cut a carrot areola from the dark skin, and the vegetable girl began to cry. But the tears blossomed as flowers from her red tomato eyes and we were captivated: the flowers of things that do not blossom are lovely as dreams in stone.

We stood there and watched while she twisted in silent anguish, because they had taken her tongue for a gherkin, and by the stump one could tell that it was just beginning to grow back. We stood there and watched: because even empathy can be overwhelmed by something when its suffering is beautiful.

The Human Abstract (340)

The prince's walls are near, and before the gates six thousand slaves revolve around millstones that may or may not move something in the nether depths: but as I watch them I would stake my life on those grinding wheels turning the slaves themselves, like puppets in chains.

Brightness hovers near me, and opening my mouth I let them count my teeth. My mind swims deliriously in the narrow path of the seeping light, the light that seems to flow through my being: that seems to have at its core the depth of my mouth, and the light gently brimming.

Then I am bereft, and the ochre colours rush like breath back into my body, encasing me. I take up the next piece of iron and pierce my thigh through with it. The pain is intense - the spear seems to nestle within the broken shards of iron welted into the rasping wounds, each sealed with the heat like rosebuds blooming inwards within me.

I look up to where Jesus sways on high Golgotha, directing thousands of us with the spear he has torn from his skeletal side. It is only my abject mind that fuses me to him and the fires that burn under his gaunt brow. Sometimes I think that he is weeping, and it is the lights they have shone upon him that make the tears dance like flame. Such is the narrow angle of my heart. I look up again and he is gone.

This is the human abstract: we below haunt ourselves to chase ghosts from the blesséd, and it is on us that they must test their weapons, so useless against unflawed skin. Within my roots, there is an ecstasy of weakness, and in that weakness there is the Word. My body bangs within its hollow trunk, for my thoughts are trapped beneath its shades. But oh, heed my fruits, fear my fruits. They are soft enough to break your mouth open and split your entire being down to its last unblemished sliver.

THE GREEK VASE (296)

A takeaway boy smokes a cigarette under the beating of the sun, beams filtering through his smoky breath. His motorbike: his glasses: his white trousers. The mountains in the distance flicker like flame beneath the shifting clouds. His eyes on the mountains, he looks unapproachable, a living portrait.

My bare legs: my towel: my wine-glass. I see an old woman with her hand against the window, looking down on us, flattened against the darkness of the room behind her. Fingers pressed against a window pane seem grotesque, more naked than mere surfaces. I let the towel slip from my body, and feel two pairs of eyes locked on me: suddenly I am the piece of art, with the artist trapped inside.

We look at each other from the back-stages of our lives, the stacked scenery hiding us from the spotlight. The old lady still stands at the window. I let him do the work. Suddenly a Greek vase - James' present for me - falls with a crash, but I don't want to clear it up: some things just happen, that's all. Afterwards, he walks away down the garden path. Slowly he becomes a silhouette, and his movements acquire a shadow's grace to them, stretching out in simple shapes against a backdrop of roses.

Ten minutes after he's gone, I get up with a strong feeling of loathing. Love-making seen backwards is disgusting. I kick the pieces of vase into the pool, returned to dirt once more. It had survived wars and plagues, James' little hint that personal history transcends conflict. His desk: his instruments: his frowns. Yet the two things he valued most were broken by a boy in badly-fitting shoes. I smile, and think to myself that all things should be destroyed this way.