And I Feel Fine

Sep 13, 2007 by Nicolas Papaconstantinou in Archive Words

So we’s standing on the brink, and we’s chucking rocks as is common hereabouts over the side, and us hearing out for what the rocks might sing out as they fall.

Time was that we’d hear the clop or the thud or the splash of stone or mud or trickle-stream… We’d hear it, and not too far off away from after we’d chucked ’em.

But these times, we hear just nowt …

… And nowt more besides, as since the first time we done it and happen this, we listen right harder. No breathe nor chatter allowed.

But we hear just nowt, ever since and even though, and only the flossam-jetsum of the cloud our witless…

Sorry there and sorry plain. Our witness, not witless.

Wordings ain’t so cut-dried, since the dummas-ness set in. Used to be, me right smart with the wordings, till the anti-smarts took charge. They’s come in, slitherin like so no-one-ud expect um, and sudden-like, no more books. No more paper, ‘cept what they give us. Big fires on our outskirts, but with no splanaition why, and then we’ve got nowt but t’telly and t’chat to keep us acquainted, and nowt but nowt to keep us ‘tertained.

But anyways so… Being enside with mam dunt do nowt but drive us barmpot, whawith her Britney ‘en her Diana ‘en her Maddy Mckenna ‘en her Derren Brown trickin’. All the holy missus martyrs, laid out in the loony twinklin’ of her rightmost bloodshot eye. And then all stop at five-of-the-clock for the soap start on t’telly, til the made up people stop their dyin’ and their cryin’ and their jesus fuckin’ cheatin’.

And pap ain’t no joy, ‘cos as he is, he weren’t no joy when allus he did was off t’work at his place of business, but now ‘en he ain’t even got that, he just sit, and think, about t’state of t’world.

Pap allus talk about t’state of t’world, but now it’s clear, even to us young uns, that talk as all it was. And maybe that’s allus paps is meant for. Everyones, ever. Get you half-prepped for how hard life is, but never nowt use for answers.

Paps, indeed!

Every-now and then-though, when mam wasn’t a roundabout, paps would click-through on the old emPee player, till the Britneys had played out, and play the music that made mam do the roll-eye and go lie down when she was there. Music with names like the Beat-Lows, and the Happy Mamdays. But pap’d always quit away before this one music-name’d finish out, grinding things down while pulling the wet-eye after t’one song’d start through.

We didn’t get pap’s sadness, so this one daybreak we dragged out t’emPee player to the edge of the brink, the fuck-damned precipice, and wound up the playthrough. We found the track that made pappy’s eye wet-like, and on trying to make heady tales of the screener saw that it was by a Mike Stipe of t’Roving Eroticism Mandate band.

So we played that motherfucken’ bitch, as Fiddy C and his Fun Boy Three might say, and watched as the music done float on by, like in the song, but with the walking. On bi.

You haveta get this: That when we allus got drove to live in this place, this was a near as fuck-dammit paragraph. Shitnit, I meant paradise. As in, this useta be a road, and across this road useta be my friend Bill-Dave done livin’.

But then, overnight and sudden-like, it want no road no more, and was a stream instead, and I had to wade through stream-water to see Bill-Dave.

Then stream became river, and then river became valley, and it looked like all us water just trickled down away. Then valley became “where-the-fuck done Bill-Dave and kin gone”. As’n all his whole house, and his whole side of the road, was gone, and all that was left was cloud and blue-sky besides.

Then t’telly had to say that that was that. No more Bill-Dave, nor other side of the road, nor anywhere else… no choice, no foul. In spite-a some, the clouds stayed, when what you’d think would be dark blue empty.

When lookin’ over the side, one was blind for as far as the eye could see, cloud all the way down, and all out in front.

Before he went too far aways to shout no more, Bill-Dave useta yell across the street-valley, sayin’ as like his da said what was happenin’ want normal. That it was prolly some sorta space-alien experiment, or a man called god that we ent met was angry at summat as happened, ‘fore we was born. At least, musta been before we was born, as ain’t nowt happened at all since then.

At least, we’s think that’s what he said, on accounta how his words best made sense to us. Since I can remember, me and Bill-Dave and Mikey-Hunt next door, and alla our kin and pups and kittys, we all d’aint usin’ the same words for the same things. Lotsa our talks and meanings has to be took on faith. Allus try not too talk too much, as is. Playin’ rock throwin’ makes more sense; less chance for mistaken understandings.

Da is what Bill-Dave called his paps. Mikey-Hunt calls his fader, I think on accounta he started not being around so much, till in’t end he just sits in his dark room out back and does his duties through wall-knocks and quiet tears.

We dun know how it was when our paps and mams was before us; if they made the same words for things as each other, like; but they musta ‘cos otherwise, why would they be sad, like they was missing something? When we play the Mike Stipe noises, we like the shapes it makes for us to caper and dance and throw rocks out into nowt to, but we don’t hear the sense of the words that make paps do the wet-cheek thing. It’s just noise, is all. Nowt that you can get a grip of, nor sulk about.

The crack is bad, ‘cos it took our Bill-Dave mate away, but it’s good, because now our street is rocks instead, and rocks is something to do. When the rocks is gone, it’s no nevermind – we found us signs of more breaking apart between Mikey-Hunt’s place and mine, so there’ll be more rocks besides as the valleys come atween us. Maybe we’ll even make some fun out of throwing the rocks out at each other…

Mikey-Hunt and me and maybe somewhere elsewhere Bill-Dave, alla us stood on t’brink, apart and together, throwing rocks out to nowhere, while old Mike Stipe skips along loud around us, his meaning lost like allus elses, but his noise moving us all the same.