Musci

I like to leave music playing in my room when I walk down to the other end of the corridor to make photocopies or pick up some fucking documents from my pigeon hole. I leave the door closed so as not to annoy my fellow-workers by allowing the music (usually electronic, Thomas Brinkmann currently) to escape disturbingly into the corridor, like a cloud of intoxicating or noxious gas.

I enjoy walking back down the corridor and hearing the rumble of music in the room as I approach the door. With Brinkmann, it sounds like a strange techno machine is going nuts behind the door, clicking, buzzing, booming, crackling and clanking. Pushing its membranes out in a compulsive trapped dance. Threatening to disintegrate yet always holding together.

Came out red

I dreamt that I drew a primary school teacher then started romancing or seducing her. When I poured what I thought was white wine into a glass, it came out red.

Thunk

When I am drinking a bottle of beer in the garden, I look forward to chucking the empty bottle onto the lawn. I will usually leave it lying there, sometimes for a couple of days, before slotting it back into place in the crate from whence it came.

I get great satisfaction from lobbing an empty bottle onto a soft surface this way. The flight of the bottle (usually a parabola) and the 'thunk' sound when it hits. These sensory pleasures combined with the faintly subversive gesture of throwing away a used object, both disrespecting it and 'loving' its heavy murky-coloured bottleness.

A similar though not as sweet pleasure comes from slamming an empty bottle, cup or glass down onto a wooden table. This might annoy (slightly) anyone with me who does not take kindly to sudden, loud noises. My pleasure is generally not lessened by this, as I tend to rationalise my action.

People who make a fuss about sudden noises are most likely those who are squeamish about certain foods.

Text Bananas

When I prepare Willem's sandwches and drinks for school, I usually put a banana in his bag. I write his name on it. The other parents write the names of their kids on their bananas.

Sometimes they do elegant curly letters and little pictures (stars or hearts or tiny spots).

I generally scrawl 'Willem' on the yellow berry.

But even when I write quickly, I take into account, albeit at a barely conscious level, nuances of letter type and handwriting style. Call it love, or vanity.

Marnix no longer eats fruit at school, so I cannot write on his banana.

blissed-out dreamy satisfaction

It is slightly frustrating that my wife does not walk around with a look of blissed-out, dreamy satisfaction on her face the day after a good bout of marital sexual intercourse.

Come to think of it, neither do I.

(why not?)

Therapy?

The Underground

I have just completed the Tilburg University employee survey. The final question asked for suggestions for new personnel policy.

I suggested a maze-like system of underground tunnels, caves and lakes be built, hundreds of feet deep. These would be used for recreational purposes like dreaming, writing and creating. There could also be caverns for breeding. There would be a secret entrance to Tilburg somewhere in the Stedekestraat, possibly on or near the site of the old La Poubelle.

This is unlikely to win me a Nintendo Wii

search

From a dream of last week:

I was unsuccessfully and rather frantically searching for a sheet of blank A4 paper, on which I was to write someone else's letter.

millefeuille

Daniel and I ate a millefeuille each on the shore of the River Thames, directly below the Royal Festival Hall. It was low tide, and very sunny. A millefeuille is always tricky to eat but these were especially so. They were like bricks. We stretched our mouths to silent howls to take bites of these confectioners' custard and flaky pastry double layered pastries, and, inevitably, some of it wound up on our fingers. We washed these in the grainy waters of the Thames.

On the way back, over Waterloo Bridge, we watched a fat river cruiser ferrying tourists westwards. As it passed under the bridge, Daniel said how nice it would be to drop a millefeuille onto the deck of the boat, or better still onto the head of a tourist.

The shock and anger partly dissipated by the satisfaction of tasting the sweet gooey mess picked off their head like sticky rubble.

"It's millefeuille! Hey! It's millefeuille!!"

porridge with golden syrup

I dreamt I was leafing through a magazine of my past, progressing through the 1980s until I was woken up by Benjamin calling 'mama, mama'. I walked shakily down the 'steps', formed by a judicious arrangement of IKEA cupboards, to the laminate floor and went to haul Benjamin out of bed and take him downstairs to breakfast, and, most likely, morning TV.

Earth-shattering

Spam e-mail advises me that there are 3 distinct ways to ensure that my partner has 'earth-shattering' orgasms.

Neither of us wants to shatter the earth in this way. Leave the earth out of it.

And what about my orgasms? Why is a validation of male sexual performance in terms of shattering things so important?

And what's with "give your partner earth-shattering orgasms"? It's not a gift in the same way that a book about gravel gardens or a CD by Johnny Cash is a gift.

Though generosity plays a role, orgasms require collaborative effort, not just what Woody Allen referred to as 'astonishing sexual technique'.

Over-styled people

The Rough Trade record shop off Brick Lane, the cafe, the general area.

"Are you often here?" I asked Daniel.

"mmmmNot really," he said. "It tends to get full of over-styled people."