Satori

Swalling, waiting for the bus, having an existential crisis.

“In other words, and after this I’ll shut up, made-up stories and romances about what would happen IF are for children and adult cretins who are afraid to read themselves in a book just as they might be afraid to look in the mirror when they’re sick or injured or hungover or insane” - ’Satori in Paris’

***

That there index was squirming over the head of that there three there, with them there pinkies loitering somewhere to the fore of five - all this indicating that our Hennessy had been drinking for a wee while now - the handful becoming the fistful becoming the bagful, as they often did with himself. The Monte-Cristo was one of those weird wee bars, just off Buzz Street - down an alley then a sharp right and violà ! who’s your uncle! It was a regular stop over the known years for aul Carlsberg-Heads and Tequila-Rosé-Shooting-‘Party Bikes’ - strange pair of bedfellows, yeah - but, the two came together to birth an eclectic atmosphere on those loooong weekends with those bucked out school disco lights working overtime and auld Grainne belting out her hymns in the corner, ‘preach it sister ! - let them know the word of good brother Presley !’. Hennessy liked a swall in here because he knew the barman - Freaky Gregor - Freaky Gregor and his forthcoming heart - O Gregory ! who will you love this weekend ? will those flowers turn to dust before she comes to know the depth of your love ? does your bar tab cover the measure of the loving you are yet to give? Your human necessities Gregory - carried tauntingly, flauntingly and jauntily - like a cracked bandolier .. awk sin é anyway ! The two had got up to all kinds of madness and badness in the months previous, with the usual point of origin being right here in the Monte-Cristo - it’s entirely possible that a period of time can become so intrinsically linked with a ‘place’ that the squalid and sordid circumstances of existence take on a charming and tender hue. The insidious charm of the Monte-Cristo was it’s lack of hope, and it’s easier to look yourself in the eye when caught in murky light than it is when in the neon of your own sex. Despite the name, there was nothing high class about this here place - it was for the down and out, the drifters, the movers / shakers / ‘oh you can’t let it go’-ers. If you watched the clock long enough in the Monte-Cristo - that clock up on it’s perch atop the wall, the more fingers would begin to supplement the palm; two becoming four, four becoming eight and so on and so on…

NineA. Ten past five. Numbers rattled about his head like a blue arsed fly -

“I have that bastard bus to catch, don’t I” - he was doing that drunk stumble mumble to himself, that kinda mumble when it’s a long drone tone, quiet enough so no-one can make it out but loud enough to know that there was a sound coming from his throat.

He was right though, he did have a bus to catch - nineA ten past five straight from the feet of City Hall, not that far of a jaunt - five minutes would do ya - but only if you were in possession of a lucid mind, something no-one at that table could claim. Our mate H found himself in the company of a real miscellaneous ensemble of reprobates, an undoubtedly eclectic group of freaks - an offbeat subsection of society capable of pushing the art of guzzling to stupefying heights. Like how so many beautifully bizarre posses start, no-one had a notion how all these fuckers came to meet. The age range varied from his own (still so old in his shoes) to geriatric (one foot in a six foot hole kinda schtick) - there was that wirey jittery chef; Dave-y? Damien? Darr-ayy-uushh (?), then a local rat catcher with those sunken hooded eyes only a man who catches rats can have, fingers covered in old prison pokes tattooed when he went under for ‘running that dark night lad!’ (caught with two kilos of bottom shelf toot), a loud round women built like a boiler, an Italian in a hi-visibility jacket and finally a decrypted man complete with walking stick and a scalp that was peeling away who every so often would say something like “Ah fuck you up nai!” or “Hauld yer pish wee mawn!” -

Hennessy’s nights are a stout-soaked alleywayed Heaven complete with barpersons, barflies and barbacks stumbling through tall tales of last year’s charm .. he knows all the spots in Town where a scoop or two is chucked on spillage after hours.

“Fuckit sure - I’ll take another glass of that there red” spat Hennessy towards the bar, wrestling with the words as they cooked up in his mind then fell from his mouth -

it’s nigh impossible to reason with the desires of a wandering heart, darling - just concede to the will of it all and you’ll be dancing in no time. He had this idea in his head that his poison was red - not a nice red nah nah nope - no notes of oak and vanilla on the nose; full bodied Burgundy Beauty, just look how it clings to the glass ! - he was more interested in a red that was dirty and more importantly cheap, preferably above thirteen percent - real scumbag swall - something that would sit heavy within him and bring about a warmth in his belly / heart / throat so he could ‘keep on singing!’ - ah, maybe he thought of himself as of continental parturition, what with his; cheap red, brown cigarettes and pensive demeanour - and maybe he would’ve been y’know, like say if he was sat in Paris or Madrid - but he was not - he was blocked mid-afternoon, tucked away down one of Belfast’s many entries, those twisting arms that reach in and around the city and scoop up all the mud then chew it and spit it all back out - blocked ! blocked leering into a palm nailed to the wall, watching his fate laying there, scrutinised before him by the jury of his own mind. Irregardless of all this, he was of the belief that there was no station greater than the one he held now - he was;

“La Boheme”

He had been telling himself this for weeks now, but - he was an artist in all but work. Like say Jangling-Jack who spent days hallucinating luminescent gack / Bang-Dangled-Bull and his veins shot full of muck fucking his ways to the truth through the medium of Mexican rent boys / Morosely-Meticulous-Mishima falling on his sword after the startling realisation that his ‘Imperial Vision’ was nothing more than a mirage of PISS as seen through cracked factory window glass (concise concise, bastard liar !) - he thought life could be lived in a way that the tap would spin and the words would keep a-flowing begging and crying to jump out on to the page and make sense just being sat square on a piece of paper - yet through all this he had never found the one undeniable truth all artists face up to one way or the other; to want to write about the life you lead, you must first love it enough. Besides, the levels of perversion Hennessy reached would never top that of the late great Henry Miller - he was aiming for the stars so to speak, destined to be caught adrift in the chunder of Belfast, one day I’ll walk into that river, he thought - my pockets’ll be filled with pebbles and I’ll sink… I’ll sink down so deep that the riverbed will seem like the sky, clean for the first time and baptised finally … something omnipresent was dictating within his head, monosyllabic sentences jutted down waywardly within his notes app.. the biographers will take care of it, they’ll make it make sense - no thought given to form - to structure, presence or purpose. Great Hennessy - master of rhyme, lover of women, spinner of charm - reveals secret dirty underbelly of Belfast pub scene - they’re serving Guinness in Harp glasses ! God fearing Hennessy ! Author of book currently unwritten, ah how this book would move people to places they have never been before, if only they could read it Hennessy, those unwritten words, my God - they would laugh, they would cry ! fools they were ! for not believing in that which their eye couldn’t behold, bastards ! tell them ! - “I’ve just gotta live a little man, just gotta do a little more yeaaaa.. yeaa I have a few ideas.. mhmm..” Oh yeah baby ! - he’s so right with his prose, he’s got it under lock and key - so right with his girls… Gwan you bastard, ask him yourself ! - “Big things coming.. big things..”

Allow me, if you will, to transcribe the details of this aforementioned book (currently unwritten) (please, give him time) that Hennessy carries around with him, tucked neatly between the third and forth rib of his ribcage. I’ll draw your attention to the front cover, a fish wearing a suit blubbing out; “I’ve stupefied myself on worse accounts!” - you’ll then notice the prose; hyphens, lack of periods, rivers of pish - the continuous droning on creating an insipid body of text with seemingly no end ……….. three magpies for a boy lost somewhere within the sheets, plucking away at the imitation mahogany of his bedroom window blinds, time to salute ! - plot matters little when in the thick of it, for the wood is barely visible through the trees … description of tree, turn to Whitman - surely he’ll fucking know? With the spirit of being earnest well in mind, it would be important to note the lack of nature present within the authors work, perhaps an issue with the terracotta (the worn down portion of the brain responsible for processing verdant colours) or maybe the photosynthesis (the sapling that sprouts behind the frontal lobe when you raise a daffodil to your chin) - I’ve watched the bastard soak three books in a shallow bath then proceed to wring them out over a sheet of paper, with the hope that perhaps the soaked ink will run and create a magnificent watercolour using ‘the perfect coming together of words’ - matters of the soul are only ever published in Heaven, to reiterate in the common tongue ( Belfast-ian (?) ) would be doing Himself up there (Falling Homeward, Angel) a grave disservice of Biblical Proportions .. perhaps we will never know the intricacies behind Hennessy’s work, like I say, like I say… the books not yet been written.

Ah, sweet tail of a Bordeaux, a real interesting place to be - especially for our Hennessy - you see, wine had a method of robbing his moral in-teg-rat-teee, leaving that poor bastard bankrupt. If you don’t pay these things attention, they can surely creep up on you - and let me tell ya, Attention ‘Capital A’ isn’t the kind of man you want to get into a debt with. H sat there staring into the end of his glass, with the wine drying into the walls of the thing like communal blood on The Stipe - his very own cross to bear - thinking what to do, muddled, unclear - nineA. Ten past five. Ah, time to get up the road, but the notion of gallivanting is a hard one to push against.

“Fuck this here, I said I was for sitting down tonight didn’t I - ya fucking moonbeam” - this one was exclaimed to the table, not addressing anyone in particular, in fact - no one had actually even asked him to speak. It was a reply to the workings of his own mind, an attempt at reason - reasoning with that wee wine fiend dancing about his head, him versus him - fighting the desire to make life more difficult for himself, his need for ritualistic self mutilation, lifestyle suicide.

Now listen here, this wasn’t the first time our Hennessy had told himself that he was for catching that early bus home to sit down on his arse and bate away at his keyboard - in fact, he had been saying this every night, for the past twenty three nights - it was twenty three nights ago y’see that the bar down the way (that tourist trap ‘Irish’ themed pub with the seven pound stout and the plaque of an RUC man on the wall) terminated his zero hour contract with zero hours notice - and H remained resolute in his silence when it came to breaking breath on the issue. Every morning for twenty three days he would wake up at the usual time he would’ve had to if he was opening the bar, around about nine thirty - he would walk down the road towards city hall passing by all the shop fronts opening up with students putting out garden furniture for BTniners to sit on and sip away at ‘speciality’ coffee and natter over the intricacies of how Adele at Tuesday morning ‘baby yoga(!?)’ was a good for nothing social climbing painkiller munchin’ hoor! When at City Hall, he could smoke his cigarettes and read his book (today it was Sterling due to financial restraints and Jean Genet’s gender-binding-prison-daydreams (wank bank recollections) ‘Notre Dame des Fleurs') - sometimes (if he was willing to dance the wire) he would strike up conversation with whoever was sitting on the bench next to him, a thrilling roll of the dice - all manner of uniques chose the benches outside City Hall as a resting place (reader, you can lump Hennessy in there with them while you have the thought in your head) - when the clock up on the tenement would strike eleven forty five, Hennessy would make the short five minute walk across town towards the Monte-Cristo, just off Buzz Street, down the entry from his old place of work - the same place you’ve been reading about for the past five minutes - and he would be the first customer there. Him and that boy Gregor with his big ol’ heart would rehash all those dead memories of weekends gone by and by God ! could either remember it was always “Errr yeaaa ummm aye ! aye ! yea him and then he said to her umm aaahh mm yeeehh..” two wee grannies of the sowing circle, brain rot n’ all - he would take up his usual seat at the high table where all the regulars usually sat, just perpendicular to the bar - so as to negate the need for getting up to order a drink. If H was nursing a hangover from the night previous he would start with one of those ‘Rum Bastards’ - rum because it’s made with rum and bastard because oh you fucking bastards I’m fucking lit here yopaaa! Spiced rum, Coke with a Guinness head, luvvvelyy. After his head shrunk to it’s appropriate size he would move onto the cheapest red on the list; some Tempranillo from some wayward Spaniards vineyard mass produced to taste like balsamic vinegar - the day could really start now.

“For Art”

he sat and repeated to himself, Jesus - everything was always ‘for art’ with him now, the poor neurotic bastard - it was that bastard ‘art’ that forced his hand and made him nick all that drink wasn’t it, all that drink he stroked getting himself sacked in the process. O Lord ! if ever he got his hands on this ‘art’ he would surely batter the prick - ‘art’ made him steal that one hundred and eighty pound bottle of Method & Madness, didn’t he - I assure you there was no method in the madness of believing pricey whiskey the antidote to procrastination. It was ‘art’ that got him so drunk every shift - by God could the man talk after a few beer and surely it’s only through the act of breaking bread with strangers that all writers worth the pot they piss in find their stories!

Yet even though he had robbed all this drink, and caused all this mischief - the paper still lay there naked draped across the bed - she lay there spread legged and waiting - waiting for the consummation of art and artist - all that was needed was for himself to astride herself and stick it in, send all that emptiness away - cast out that “ba daat da dat da ‘makes no sense’ you’re wasting away” - lets hear it for the man with the BIG IDEA ! fuck her proper, let her just lay there and take it all in, him just working away at the ‘roman-à-clef’, ‘surrealist free association’, ‘poetic erotica’ - let the page forget it’s toiletries sure just use Hennessy’s toothbrush, there ain’t no more poetries here darling (I’m violating long standing performance conventions) - so what’s it to be ? -

Twenty three nights she lay there rubbing her cunt with both hands, twenty three nights came, twenty three nights edged - twenty three nights spent looking for a way home - a way home that would never come.

On account of having no coin in the purse our Hennessy had got himself in a spot of bother with his friendly neighbourhood landlord (conniving rat bastard !) - he had to get his hands on three hundred and seventy five Great British pounds which would equate to roughly one half of one months rent - which was one month late by about now. His landlords grace afforded him one week, or seven days depending where your sitting (comfortably I hope). H’s roommate concurred with the landlords sentiment, as it would fall on his head if the coin was not coughed up. A real stickler of a predicament, but alas the world continued to turn on it’s axis - with Hennessy in that fucking Monte-Cristo relaxing. The lazy fucker really needed to find some money, or a job - and I can assure you now - if I’ve not made it abundantly clear - it was not to be found sitting around that high table where the regulars sit in the Monte-Cristo, yessir that one was for nothing. One more thing, it was not sat there floating in a bottle of house red, nor a Rum Bastard! The monkey was there for all to see, attached to Hennessy’s back - he could feel the bastard but by God ! did he do fuck all about it. The issue at hand had paralysed him, too many thoughts at once - so he bided his time, biding time until the brain calmed - differing until the emergence of Godot. The hand on the wall continued it’s crawl, with the index getting acquainted with twelve and the little pinky giving five a tickle. Those thin fingers acting in accordance with the great magnet, commanding all to dance. To dance always! Dancing until empyrean reveals itself and showers all with the electrifying smear of clarity. H’s laces were tied together.

“NineA. NineA. Ten. Five. One hour. One month’s rent” he rhythmically chanted to himself, loud enough now for his comrades to make it out.

“Wit tha fuck are you on about wee mawn” the boiler shaped lady blurted out in a shrill tone.

She had some set of pipes at her to be fair to the girl - there was no way to prove it (other than maybe asking), but everyone agreed unanimously that she was fucking the streak of piss chef - and this man wasn’t much of a chatter, to us anyway - wasn’t much of a man either, depending on how you look on it. Hennessy had allowed himself on plenty of occasions to let his mind wander in to the ‘bendy bit’ and think of those two specimens fucking, how she’d have the wee fella bent over the pass, doing all sorts of badness to his arse, giving him that good good reach around, tugging away at it, him blowing his muck into the garlic spuds, the thirty day aged sirloins, whatever the special of the day was. Hennessy knew it was freaky, freaky, free-keeyy. It frightened him, some pleasures aren’t meant to be known by mere men.

Time was wearing it’s mask now, in our little slice of Heaven - it’s face now unrecognisable as the curtains drew, and the pantomime ensued. It was nearly as though everyone else had been afforded a degree of freedom in the Monte-Cristo - grey Monte-Cristo of the fallen pennies - everyone rose but our freaky bunch and filed through the fire exit into the cold light of day - vacant expressions, the ‘avant-garde’, obscene abstractions of the mind and body - O World ! Sweet dissipating fogs of the train tracks - how about now Kerouac? Where will you and your ‘character of Bleak inhuman Loneliness’ hide? Where will we go if not the Monte-Cristo ? Trapdoors unrevealing skeletons with gritted teeth, hologram shopfronts, silicon daydreams, imitation concrete. These dirty bastards, perversions of a blank soul - Hennessy included - chained to the floor ! - nothing would shift these fuckers - as was such most days, and all days to come.

“Sure, what’s the fucking point like, I’m all tied up here, I’ve drinks in the pump sure, I’ve drinks in the pump… drinks in the pump..” H spoke out loud, but not to any amongst the bunch - his words chortled up the pharynx, each syllable with palpable pronunciation - it was nearly as though he were talking to you, the reader - or perhaps I, the narrator. Answering our questions as we thought them - potentially we haven’t given our Henny enough credit! His grasp of the metaphysical world of storytelling knows no bounds by the seems of things! If only we could get him off his arse, dear reader! If only we could get this rat bastard onto a bus and up the road!

If you looked into his face closely, you would see his wee cogs in his wee brain turning - he furled his bottom lip and wrung his hands around one and other, he squinted his eyes at nothing in particular and crows feet sprouted on his temples. He was contemplating what he was getting the bus for, that bus that would travel up the Lisburn Road. The bus up the Lisburn Road that would stop then he would climb on and sit down, then Hennessy would stop, then the bus would go - but it would continue to stop every few minutes (traffic dependent) (time of day dependent) then finally H would stop stopping and climb off. Berappt tatata taaa - drum fill rhythm. Dizzying thoughts for a man after a feed of drink, aye.

“Sure look fuckit - what would auld Fyodor do?”

He wouldn’t be climbing on the fucking nineA you stupid fucker! (He can’t hear this though, he’s in the story - we are not) He would be rotting in his room, probably a wino - like you! “Beauty will save the world” - how about we start with a shower, Fyodor? Pseudo-intellectually fading away pishing all over the walls of Monte-Cristo singing his blues - with an IQ of eighty five.

These thoughts confronted Hennessy also, our collective consciousness bleeding through - his pout breaks into a grin - although there was no peace to be found within young Hennessy’s soul, he still found some respite laughing in the absurd face of it all. Even he knew himself that his heart was mid-transit, he had been trying so long to pitch a tent in Eden - but that future can only exist in the eye of his mind - irregardless of how much he filled his life with the habits and routines of his idols, this would all mean nothing if he didn’t partake in the act of creation. It was clear creativity could be the remedy, a good slow steady fuck at a piece of paper. Ah fuck, aye - artistry is a beguiling path, a path inhibited by Gods and Angels, horny old misogynists, suicidal men and women, junkies, pill-pushers ect. ect.. - there are no Gods and Angels down the entries of Belfast - just highly visible Italians and chefs built like matchsticks. Hennessy needed to get back to his earthly form; the creation was vindicated here.

The wine was making the alcoves where the walls met the ceiling vibrate gently at first, then completely distort. The Big Finger in The Hand pointed towards the floor, with Hennessy’s internal hand clinching. Christ, hold the hand inside - grip tight and true! It was nearly twenty five minutes to five and in twenty five minutes he knew he would have to make the five minute walk across town to climb onto that ten past five nineA bus -

Jim Morrison sang - “cancel my subscription to the resurrection, send my credentials to the house of detention” in his bourbon soaked voice while The People campaigned for Love in the LOVE GENERATION because “people have the power!” or so the punk-poet-laundrette sang - liquored beat-up beatniks face swollen fuggenidup on the television, returning back to a childhood authoritarian faith, swearing allegiance to the old guard of J. H. Christ, showing that life truly does swing on a horseshoe - O Lord ! Christ Jesus ! can someone take that fucking bottle from him - where’s your vigour Duluoz ? lost with your vanity ? - he’s doing the metamorphosis, funk in the mind - spun on in the spinning chair, brain-pierced - I guess drink really will twist you in strange strange ways - everything moves on shifting levels - (notions, dreams, actions) - bridge a gap / skip a synapse, bask in splendour … when everyone sleeps the mind is accosted with dreams, thoughts clammer through the subterranean subterfuge of A Mind like fruit flies towards shite.

Strange days on the radio, strange days ringing out - and the Lizard King is giving his concluding remarks. Two thousand and twenty four. The year of the dragon, or so they say. Hennessy’s lucky year, or so he thought. It seems to me lucks just chance clad in a shower of pish. This here rhythm beats (ba da brapt ba da brapt) along with the whims of life, scampers arbitrarily like a pup in tow. By God, did our Hennessy believe he would enter the year magnanimous; he had a blind belief in his luck finally changing! Yet here we are at the midway point - monotony appears more apt. Twenty three days spent sitting around that high table, thinking about all the things he would say, twenty three days playing;

“La Boheme”

Hey Hennessy! Maybe drink a few more glasses of that cheap red! (or smoke a few more of those signature brown cigarettes!) (or hold onto that pensive demeanour you got slarried over your face!) Maybe then that crystal bullet would ring out from ‘the gun’ and strike you between those two dark eyes that confound my attempts at metaphor! Your paper would no longer be bare, the choir in your head will sing - they’ll sing a Psalm! - hand in hand with all lived experience! A soul renaissance! O Praise Be His Virtue For Only He Understands The Folly Of Man.

Hope is a dangerous thing for the deluded to hold onto, they only fall further through the cracks.

The hand cast a shadow of an L on the wall, with the thumb trawled downward by the weight of all that room had become. His mind fortress, holding all - great big cosmic sponge soaking up the rain water, oozing out and porous. Finally he rose from his motley congregation, wishing no farewells or see yas laters. The hi-vis phosphorescent Italian man chirped a - “Ciao! Same time tomorrow!” which followed H out as he glided across the floor towards the threshold.

“There’ll be no fucking seeing no-one tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that even - yous may bar me now because I’ll not be back in this shitehole again - swear down!” -

The world outside was still continuing it’s great crawl towards the precipice, the monolith on the hill - this Hennessy could never understand, but learned to accept as he grew older. The air claps thick, birds are circling, pavements are softening, life being recorded through the lens of Wee-Westie-Millies - black dry-fit / River Island handbag slung over the shoulder, Smick in tow with ninety sevens / ninety fives / two seventies reflective stripe along the lace, Junky on the corner - great pity of his heart, pocketed face / pan handled by God - drenched in afternoon sweat. To walk the streets, to crawl, means action without reaction, rhyme dulled by reason - a symphony of inconsequence, buried beneath sublimation - we’ll all sing and dance some day but not today, no not today - all the fun yet to be had along with our dreams unseen are often intermixed in this free styling universe.

Hennessy was giving much thought to the path he found himself navigating, you could see in his beating heart that he had lost much of the vigour he felt when he dropped out of college to pursue a freelance freewheeling freeloading life - he thought he had something important to say, as they all do - all those under the eye of God - ‘sweating’ for Him. It was all

“For Art” -

art they would not understand, art he barely understood.

One pronounced and purposeful step into the evening light with the right foot, into an eternal space, in evening light, it’s eternally evening - note the faces of those flowing through the entry, Hennessy - what do they do ? what do they say? A stream of worms obeying the legal code of the road - all left lane / right lane /give way to the left. By this stage he was blind drunk, ‘lit up like an ocean liner’ - and behaving as so. It was five past five, and he had five minutes to get across town - the nineA wouldn’t wait, and neither would his landlord - he had one week, seven days … as we grow older some of us grow drunk, no reason for it - we’re just obsessed with the song and dance - in love with the ‘SECRET STORM’, the twilight zone of our minds … -

***

“Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the Angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.” - ‘Journal du Voleur'