lying in my throat

A million dollars

It's been an age since I posted anything, at least six months. Reasons will be forthcoming, but one resolution has been to include a 10 minute writing exercise into my day. The (quickly) edited results shall be posted here with the tag 10 Minutes of Writing. Here's the first.

“I had been feeling like a million dollars,” he said.

At the age of thirty-four, James Reader had found himself in a hotel room in the west end of Glasgow, alone and unemployed. At noon, check-out had long past and yet he still clutched to the bedclothes and the trapped warmth of his body. Inadequacy and loathing were his fastest qualities, there from waking and not leaving until the opening of a second bottle of wine, and so he clung to the trapped warmth. In the inert silence of the hotel room, it was all he could expect from himself.   

“Definitely,” he insisted, “a million dollars.”

The Rememberance of Things Fast (July to December 2009)

14th July 2009: On this day, of all days, I burn my boats and storm the Bastille. When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire so, sans appartement, sans emploi, I am moving to Paris.

14th August 2009: I am dispossessed. My worldly goods are variously at my mother's, with friends, and with strangers, courtesy of Oxfam. I think of Marcus Aurelius, Erasmus and Vladimir Nabokov. I have two suitcases and a wedding in Ireland to attend.

18th August 2009: I am in Paris. Just. I have slept for two hours and have dragged myself and two suitcases to Dublin airport. On the plane I try to die. I succeed. It is 35 degrees and I am sweating champagne. I am in a youth hostel. I am not in Paris. I am in hell.