FIXED
LIMITS
(Excerpts
from a Journal by Michael Savage)
Long
Prose
Copyright
© 2012 John O'Loughlin
_____________
FRIDAY
17th SEPTEMBER
It has just gone
God, these cigarettes are ghastly! They burn down far too quickly. No sooner have you begun inhaling them than
the wretched things disappear in a cloud of smoke and fire of creeping
ash! You wonder why you bothered in the
first place. Actually now I come to
think of it, they are virtually the cheapest brand available, so I guess that
was the guiding factor in my buying them.
But I couldn't really afford to buy any dearer brand at present because,
being a poverty-stricken writer with a limited income, I simply don't have the
money to spare on luxuries.
These cigarettes are marked MIDDLE TAR, though it wouldn't
really bother me if they were something worse.
I guess I'm secretly indulging in a form of self-punishment as
well. At the beginning of the year I
made what I now perceive to have been a foolish New Year's resolution. I said to myself: "You've been smoking
like a chimney for well over six months (a slight exaggeration on both counts,
but never mind), your health isn't very good anyway, and you're bored with
cigarettes and dying for a change. Make
this year somehow different!" So I
stopped buying cigarettes and started buying confectionery instead. For a while I felt like a saint or, at any
rate, like someone saved. Then to
consolidate my change of heart with a change of health, I began doing
press-ups, no more than twenty at a time, because my arms weren't strong enough
to support me initially, but just enough to make it worthwhile, to mark a
beginning.
Well, that resolution lasted about three months and almost
killed me. In retrospect it surprises me
that I could have persevered so persistently, taken it all so seriously,
considering that I didn't really feel much better afterwards. But, strangely, it never once occurred to me
to think objectively about what I was doing; I just acted. When I staggered out of bed in the morning
the first thing I did was attend to the press-ups. I acted like a robot. And before I climbed back into bed last thing
at night it would be the same thing: more damn press-ups. It must have been like somebody saying his
prayers and paying his worldly dues at the same time. Yes, but at least I might have profited a
little from these exertions; for it seemed to me that every attempt I made at
becoming stronger only succeeded, eventually, in making me weaker, in removing
my ability to extend the number of press-ups.
By the time I got to the twentieth one I was a physical wreck. My nerves twitched as though they had just
received an electric shock, my tongue shot out backwards and forwards like a
jack-in-the-box, my breathing became hoarse, and my arms felt like putty. They became noticeably weaker for all the
exercise I gave them!
Well, so much for all that!
These days I am back to smoking again.
Indeed, I might even be fatuous or outrageous enough to regard it as a
form of slow suicide, a sort of long-term investment policy with death. It doesn't feel very much like pleasure,
anyway. There is nothing particularly
sensational about it - not, that is, unless you are prepared to regard a pair
of constricted lungs as something of a sensation. But I would be deluded, all the same, to
assume that my life could be done away with so easily. It might take another thirty to forty years,
during which time I would probably continue to drift in and out of tobacconists
with the residue of an insane resolution in my head: to do away with myself at
any cost! No, I don't really feel I
possess that amount of patience or resolve, least of all at the moment. It certainly takes a lot to kill a man. If we could all be disposed
of that easily, there wouldn't be many of us left here now. In relation to life we are as stubborn as
mules - absolutely fanatic! It would
definitely take more than a few thousand cheap cigarettes to finish me off,
money or no money. So there is evidently
little consolation to be had there!
This ashtray amuses me.
Indeed, I don't think it was actually intended as an ashtray at all,
since it is too pretty. In actual fact,
it is an Italian souvenir marked Ŕ PAVO, evidently its place of origin. I don't even remember where I got it, but
somebody must have made me a present of it some years ago, because it's not the
kind of thing I would buy myself. I
absolutely detest its formality!
To begin with, it is a piece of oblong plastic measuring some
6" x 4". The edges are curved
slightly upwards, no more than half-an-inch (as might be expected from an
ashtray or tiny fruit bowl), and the interior, if such it can be called,
contains the reproduction of a colourful painting which depicts five medieval
knights who are seemingly paying court to someone in front of and slightly
above their gazes, though to whom, exactly, I haven't a clue because he/she
doesn't form part of the picture - at least not as it stands here. Perhaps the title of the original painting
would enlighten me on this score? But I
don't possess an encyclopaedia of Italian art and really don't wish to put
myself to the trouble of finding out. I
mean, there isn't actually all that much to get excited about when you think of
it, is there?
These five gentlemen are evidently the cynosure of the work. However, if by some miracle they knew that
someone was using them for an ashtray they probably wouldn't look so proud of
themselves. They would more than likely
take offence and unsheathe their swords specifically with a view to reigning
blows and imprecations upon the offender.
Indeed, they might even get hostile with the manufacturer for putting
them on a souvenir which could be used for such base purposes.
But all this speculation is obviously of small account. I don't even know whether or not they were
originally painted from real life, though they look plausible enough
anyway. What particularly amuses me,
however, is that the fellow at the rear of the group - a man, incidentally, who
looks somehow wiser and more experienced in courtly protocol than his
companions - is staring rather higher than the others, much as though he were
at a private audition, while the third one from the front, a rather
effeminate-looking character in headgear, is wearing a sort of peeved
expression on his face which stares directly at the painter, or where one
imagines the painter should be, instead of straight ahead of himself like all
the others. You get the impression that
he considers himself a cut above the rest and that the tedium of having his
portrait painted is gradually becoming too much of a strain, in consequence of
which he would like the painter to damn-well hurry up and finish the job as
quickly as possible. Well, that may or
may not be the actual case, but it is essentially to him, and in part to a more
manly-looking fellow to his left, that I owe the privilege of a few irreverent
diversions.
In mentioning all this, I took the precaution of wiping away
the accumulated ash of an evening's bum smoking from them. But now that I have lit myself another cigarette
and am consequently obliged to deposit fresh ash somewhere, I am gratifying my
sadistic impulses by carefully depositing some of it on the effeminate one's
face, rather like those fiendish little delinquents who take a perverse
pleasure in effacing the more salient contents of billboards, public notices,
and anything else suitably vulnerable to derogatory amendment. What surprises me, however, is that I
actually experience a sense of fulfilment from crowning his little naked and
vaguely arrogant chin with a bustling outgrowth of beard-like ash. It is almost as though I had actually achieved something by so
altering his demeanour. Why, with this
funny little beard, he could almost pass for Ezra Pound, even with those
doleful eyes! At least you would never
take him for a woman now - not, that is, unless you noticed his bright red
tunic.
As for the sharp-nosed fellow nearest to the painter, who
appears to be kneeling on the ground and resting his hand on the arm of the
chair or couch upon which the foremost of his four companions is seated, it's
not so much his face that concerns me as
the overly centrifugal nature of his striped dress which, reaching to the
ground, suggests a strongly autocratic disposition. With two swift dabs I'm able to obliterate it
and lend him a more knightly appearance which, however ragged the ensuing
armour, seems to do his sheathed sword slightly more justice.
Aggravated by the childishness of it all, I stub-out the
remains of my cigarette on the front one's neck and disgustedly push the
'ashtray' to one side. It has ceased to
amuse me. In fact, it might be better
employed, in future, as a soap dish, so that I can obliterate its courtly
contents in a cleaner and less hazardous fashion. From now on I'm going to do something more constructive with my time!
At the moment, it is raining heavily. I can hear rainwater spurting down the drain
outside my french windows. There are also regular dull thuds against the
panes, though I can't see anything because the curtains are drawn. Nevertheless it reassures me to hear such
sounds. I am reminded that there are
other things than people in the world.
On these wet days I like to think that people are too diverted by the
weather to have much interest in anything else, least of all in individuals
like me. Its inclemency acts as a kind
of shelter against humanity, a refuge for sick and outcast souls. Things become more subdued, the streets
appear to withdraw into themselves as though in a silent conspiracy against
nature. They remind me somehow of a dog
that doesn't want to be washed.
Now this torrential rain will certainly make the ground easier
to dig next week. I was beginning to
despair at the prospect of how much additional back-breaking labour I might be
in for, by digging over the back garden on the landlord's behalf. Admittedly, I only managed to do about
half-an-hour's digging there each day last week, but that was quite
enough! At times it seemed as though the
fork would break from all the pressure I was obliged to put it under, in view
of the stony nature of the ground. After
this, I only hope it doesn't rain all week.
My room becomes frightfully depressing after a few days of solitary
confinement.
For the time being this stillness is agreeable to me; I don't
want to ruin it. If I were to practise
blues runs on my acoustic guitar or play some rock albums on my stereo, the
neighbours would more than likely take offence and quickly find some means of
retaliating or, at the very least, defending themselves. They would regard my activity as a sort of
infringement of their rights, the rights to a given quantity of silence, to a
couple of hour's tedious repose in a bath of somnolence, to a little mutual
vegetation. Quite frankly, I don't wish
to bring that kind of vindictive tribunal to bear upon myself this evening; I
have already suffered quite enough noise for one day. If I were now to stretch my self-indulgent
pleasures beyond a certain low-key level, the neighbours would probably think
me barbarous and summarily accuse me of behaving like an adolescent. It would definitely be wiser to share in the
half-life of the community for a while.
Then they can testify to my self-restraint.
If my eyes didn't hurt so much from reading I would read a
little longer this evening. But I have
had enough of it and, besides, you can only do so much of a given thing. Beyond a certain point you come to feel that
the world is too narrow, that the sanest thing to do would be to take a week's
holiday or have a few days’ break just to make a change. If variety is really the spice of life, then
mine must be pretty tasteless! Sometimes
I get the impression that I'm actually suffocating from culture, since the
stereo only leads to the bookcase, the bookcase to the notebook, the notebook
to the typewriter, the typewriter to the guitar, and the guitar to the radio
... in a vicious circle of enforced intellectuality. When you feel like that, you might as well
destroy everything, since the world has evidently become too narrow. However, as far as today is concerned, I'm
most definitely suffering from an overdose of culture. I badly need an antidote. Ideally, the best thing would be to get drunk
and chase after women. But I haven't got
the money for it and, besides, there aren't that many women around here whom I
would consider it worth my while to chase after. In the end, I would only humiliate and
disgust myself. Well, the next best
thing - other, of course, than to smash furniture or to burn books - would be
to turn-in for the night. But as I won't
be able to sleep for at least another two hours, and it is now only 10.45pm, I
may as well persevere with things a while longer.
I abandon the writing table (scarcely a desk) and shuffle over
to the bookcase. There is an 8"
Venus statuette on the top shelf which immediately catches my attention. Actually I think it's an Aphrodite statuette
because, although the shopkeeper I bought it from said "Venus", the
hairstyle is of that slightly erratic nature especially favoured by the ancient
Greeks. Why, it's almost a mess! But that is precisely why I like it so much;
this goddess is approachable.
Like a good many other such symbols she has taken the trouble
to turn her head to one side, so that one gets an enchanting view of her fine
brow and long nose. Surprisingly, her
mouth is exquisitely beautiful in its refined sensuality, and farther down, in
the exact spot where her nose seems to be pointing, we discover the
indisputable cynosure of this mythological effigy to be an exposed left breast,
the very breast which the questionable modesty of her raiment has permitted her
to reveal to us humble mortals in order, presumably, that we might have a
sufficiently cogent criterion by which to acclaim her sexual prestige as the
goddess of love.
The aesthetics of the thing momentarily overwhelm me. For an instant the insane desire to smash it
possesses me, and I grab her in my left hand as though to dash her against the
opposite wall. But something checks me;
the act would only bring me remorse later, particularly if the nearest
neighbours decided to take offence. No,
I have destroyed enough things for one day as it is! And quietly. My diaries are in shreds in the wastepaper
bin, and so, too, is my latest notebook.
I don't see that I shall benefit myself all that much by also destroying
this harmless statuette. I replace it on
the top shelf of my bookcase. The
eternal woman is re-enthroned, her sexual sovereignty inviolable. When she has gathered enough dust I shall
wipe her clean and place her in a different position - for instance, rump
foremost. Actually I'm not at all
convinced that she shouldn't be viewed from the rear anyway; you see more of her
body then. Until now I have been fairly
content with a frontal view. It didn't
occur to me that she might benefit from a contrary perspective. I ought to have swivelled her around a bit.
I abandon the goddess of love and automatically fish out a
rather cryptic-looking booklet from the bottom shelf of my bookcase. It has a black cover and measures about
8" x 12". Strangely, you
wouldn't know which was the front and which the back just by looking at its
cover. In fact, you wouldn't know
whether it was upside down or not either.
The most significant thing you can say about this enigmatic cover is
that it's incredibly scratched. Its
surface literally glistens with tiny silver threads which criss-cross it in all
directions, lending it the vague appearance of a relief map. If I really wanted to know exactly where I
stood with this cover, I would have to study the scratches and count the
dots. But so much attention applied to
such an insignificant item strikes me as crazy, the sort of behaviour one might
expect from a lunatic, and I certainly don't regard myself in that light - at
least not at present. So I immediately
stifle the idea, since my life has quite enough crazy little idiosyncrasies and
obsessions already.
I have thrown the booklet onto the bed and am now sitting down
beside it. As a matter of interest, it
is a souvenir from a Grateful Dead concert of several years ago. Officials were giving them away free and I
just happened to be in the right place at the right time to collect one. You couldn't ask for more. There are about thirty glossy pages in this
memento, a majority of which are dedicated to close-ups of each of the
musicians, a few group photos, and a number of facts and quotations. These days I don't remember all that much
about the concert, but I can certainly recall that it took place at London's
Lyceum, off the Strand, in May 1972.
Anyway, as this booklet is quite large, it serves as an ideal place to
deposit photos, and that is precisely why I have opened it this evening.
At present, there are some ten photos in it, photos or, rather,
photographic reproductions of young female models which I carefully selected
and cut out from various men's magazines several months ago. Now these photographic reproductions, which
are in colour, are all different sizes.
Whenever I take the trouble to look at them, these days, it is purely
from boredom or for some ostensibly aesthetic and even poetic reason. The initial erotic quality which some of them
once possessed for me has long since faded away; I am much too familiar with them. However, the most significant thing which now
strikes me about these models is that they are mostly wearing some form of
clothing, even if only a pair of nylon stockings or the briefest of briefs. There are only two of them who are completely
nude, but they look silly to me, since all you can see, in each case, is a bare
rump. There is nothing particularly
individualistic about them - not, that is, unless you were prepared to utilize
a magnifying lens in order to study the minutiae of their respective
behinds. Of the rest, a few are
pretending to indulge in what my little
Well, whatever the case, their self-indulgence leaves me
cold. I much prefer those models that
have opened their legs a little and are lying back on the bed, as though
waiting for a lover to approach them.
Somehow they strike me as being a more agreeable and less narcissistic
type of female; they haven't turned their back on men. However, as for those who are purely aesthetic,
whose casual postures seem to suggest the utmost complacency, affluence, and
restraint, I have to confess that they generally leave me cold, too. It is as though, already well fixed-up
sexually, one could afford to pay merely for the sight of naked back, breasts,
or thighs, anything more revealing being considered infra dignum or, at the very least, quite unnecessary.
I have had enough of photos for one evening. After a while they all look the same. You might as well tear them up, for all the
good they do you. Naturally, when you
see them for the first time in any given magazine it is a kind of novelty, you
are visibly surprised. You secretly hope
to discover someone really worth looking at, someone who transcends the
fully-dressed conservatism of the majority of neighbourhood women, granting you
a degree of voyeuristic intimacy. If
you're lucky, you may even encounter the spectacle of a model who truly appeals
to you, gives you a momentary thrill as she seduces you into admiring her. After which you might cut her out, as though
to distinguish her from the ruck of other models, and
pin her up somewhere or, failing that, hide her away in a large black booklet
for future reference. But if there is
no-one who particularly appeals to your aesthetic sense, you might end-up
throwing the entire magazine in the dustbin.
I suppose that depends on your temperament and idiosyncratic bent. Though if you're like me (and I can't be all
that unique) you probably avoid reading anything. You may consider it too 'feuilletonistic',
too much of an imposition to wade through the sordid facts of somebody else's
sex life, too perverse because, in reality, there is nothing in it for you and,
anyway, you would know the kinds of things to expect, so what matter? Everyone according to his tastes and
insights! The dustmen may reap a
gratuitous reward, assuming they don't automatically consider such magazines a
waste of frigging time and consequently set about having them disposed of, in
the usual fashion, as quickly as possible.
I return the booklet and its extraneous contents to their
allocated place on the bottom shelf of my hard-pressed bookcase, squashed
in-between a couple of large hardbacks, one of which just happens to be a
largely pictorial biography of Henry Miller.
That, it seems to me, is quite enough pleasure for one evening! If I suddenly had the good fortune to
experience knowledge of a greater pleasure, I would probably end-up feeling
sorry for myself. "Where ignorance
is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," said the poet Gray somewhere, though I
can hardly regard my condition as blissful.
All of a sudden I begin chuckling to myself. The sight of some old LPs reminds me of the
fact that I once sold someone a record without realizing I had left about
fifteen similarly erotic photos between the inner sleeves of its cover. It was one of those single albums that open
out like a double, and in the spare section, as it were, of the cover (which
had somehow come unstuck along the outer edge) I had previously secreted what I
imagined to be a quintessential distillation of choice erotica. What amazes me is that the photos remained
hidden away during the transaction. For
the shop assistant made a careful inspection of both the disc and cover without
in the least suspecting anything. I am
only too glad that I didn't remember about them at the time, otherwise I would
almost certainly have become quite visibly embarrassed! He considered the album worth a quid anyway,
so I didn't quibble with him. Indeed, it
wouldn't have surprised me if he subsequently discovered that he had acquired a
special bargain. Nothing but those
photos could have elevated the album to a higher plane!
