Dust or The Day the World Ended

DUST or

The

Day

the

World Ended.

DUST Text: Charlie Dearnley Photography: Jon Cornbill Charlie Dearnley Curators Charlie Dearnley Hannah Boothby Š Staple Press September 2014

“See the cat? See the cradle?”

Kurt Vonnegut

Alice finds malice in wonderland And the rabbit hole’s not real, Wonderland’s dead but creation thrives And as beauty emerges truth blurs.

The stars are all being switched off. It’s enchanting Fail better, feel better. A beautiful end Bigger than us.

A paradoxical point of planetary end, I can’t feel it Too vast.

Mind over matter heart over mind Never matter never mind. Black holes don’t discriminate.

They don’t but I do And I can feel it in the static silence of every sinew.

An Explanation

A roar like an infinite wave-break Pronouns are so uncomfortably revealing Roars and waves are sufficiently vague.

Who said all the Bees are disappearing?

They’ve found a Booth and stare through windows at a Kaleidoscopic present.

Fractured images, reading everything But difficult to read.

They bumble past in bubbles Drifting into occasional collision A meeting A black hole forms.

A rupture that sends ripples through every thread of being.

The café has a gentle shine that delicately caresses all of its surfaces. I smeared a smudge onto the gleaming counter and wondered to myself if Venice would ever fully submerge: part with the nauseous air, and fully commit to its marriage with the ocean. A rather wet grave. It would be the birth of the ninth Atlantis, the last one was Connemara and Brighton was before my time. My finger glistened with that delicate shine, I decided it was probably grease, as it slid uncomfortably into every cranny on the surface of my palm.

How have I never noticed that blemish on my nail before? And is cranny a real word when divorced from nook?

I’d stopped listening to Vera a while ago. Forty years I gave her and this is where it ends?

A rather greasy grave, shame this café doesn’t hold the same poetic poignancy as Venice.

She’s moving. Colonising. I’m amazed they let her join the primary phase; she won’t have much time or energy to give them once they reach the clean slate. Though I suppose the unsoiled air will improve her rattle.

I’m too attached to the seaside streets of south London.

I think I’d rather her just leave now, her twitching nose is beginning to bug me, and her recently bleached teeth are offensive… those lies hold less legitimacy than the Emissary State’s threats. I’m duping myself into frustration. It’s easier to be angry at teeth.

Though I shouldn’t tempt fate,

there are far nicer places to burst into countless dust particles. I’d rather scatter over Venice. I could live there, if not for the imminent threat of a tedious immersion. The property market has hit the rocks.

Last year the sea level rose an inch in a blink. Waterstones’ doormat was dampened in Croydon. I hear that three polar bears fell with the landmass, as shards of ice splintered and cascaded into the 4.5 mile black depths of the ocean. That leaves 9 in the wild.

I would get up and leave Vera now but I don’t fancy venturing out. It always rains now, the clouds of pollution are thick, and the sun no longer shines over London. We vaporize water through colossal chimneys in Sloane Square, feeding the clouds that slouch above the city. The Shard pricks their surface, piercing their skin, and unleashing the pitter patter splatter of rainfall. The streets are washed clean; the skies are stained.

That flash took me quite by surprise, it was too white to be the sun, and the pollution’s viscous body dominantly drapes over the city. They used to say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die but I saw nothing. I fell into the watery depths of Vera’s eyes and never surfaced. We clashed in the air and were both thrown up in a tumultuous silent rage, as mind and body was reduced to the same ashen matter and swirled together with the furniture. I wonder if Venice crumbles?

It struck me like the panging snap of a cello string as I walked foot over foot along the tiled pavement, like the epiphanal moment in a movie score. Love slapped me in the face. I pretended to say it out loud but it sounded infantile.

I don’t remember the word love ever holding any grandeur when spoken. When whispered to parents through dusky dark bedroom doors it echoes respect and routine. When screamed, murmured or babbled on box sets it slides silly into static. This word burns like the floor is lava.

If the tiled street beneath me were to anthropomorphise and decide it had an appetite for humans, I would fall with a painful content. If an earthquake were to split the land beneath my feet, or tear a tower block down on top of me, I would catch it in a glass that was half full and half empty.

In my dream I was the tower block.

Dreams can be fucking weird. They coax us into a space where wonderland is discoverable and min-

gles with nightmare. Of course you’re mad, we’re all mad here, mad as a March hare. Mad enough to sit cushy on a besotted cloud, waiting for the crash, forgetting that water vapor lacks a certain structural integrity. The stomach turning drop from the dream looms.

An arrogant literary menace: the tragic downfall of the protagonist. Please God I need no re-awakening.

I need no God. I’ve dealt with death. I’ve dealt with grief. And this comfortable discomfort places a clean slate above the past. It doesn’t erase a single thing,

in fact much is brought to the surface to breath and bare fresh wounds, but the slate shifts.

This final layer on the ring bind of my life was one of energetic content at least. By no means was I ready but I wasn’t ill prepared. I fell with painful content into a glass not half full or half empty and landed amidst stardust. The bubble had popped. Does love vanish with my oxidation, or does that effervescent energy stain the spot in space where my feet once marked the tiled street? The cello string has snapped. The soundtrack has ended.

Dear Lord, dear sweet merciful Jesus, hear my prayer. It’s been 43 days now and I have received no sign of your gracious comfort or rescue. 43 days I’ve been stranded on this forsaken spit of sand, and not a whisper. I do not hate you O Lord but I’m beginning to become a little miffed. I mean, Noah got a dove! Am I not worth a glamorous pigeon? I even sacrificed the T Bar support from my hut to build a cross in your honor on the Beach, and you took that with the tide.

Are you being fucking seri-

ous? I mean, for Christ’s sake!

You could have at least wrecked my ship on an island with more than 5 fucking trees! Sweet Mary mother of God! Forgive me. I momentarily lost my temper. I’m just a bit jittery.

I haven’t had a cup of tea since the morning. I salvaged the tea bags from the wreckage of the boat, though the milk didn’t make it so I am forced to sip at salty tea that is blacker than the heart of Satan himself.

I have returned from my brief lack of judgment my Lord; I am yours to serve willingly, milk or no milk, digestives or no diges-

tives, as the case may be. If this island is where you have placed me then upon this rock I will serve thee to my utmost.

It should be easy enough, it’s not like there are any people to try and convert, every cloud eh. I wasn’t too well received on mission, the church of the engineers holds too much prevalence, building bridges to a brighter future. What good are bridges when the steadily increasing gravity of the earth is dragging them down one by one. Sausage dogs were the first animals to die out from the shift in gravitational pull, they

were pushing it really, too fond of the tickle of grass on their bellies to stand up straight.

Perhaps God increased the gravity so as to wipe out all the sausage dogs? Canine tipex.

They were among the first to drown when the water levels rose as well. Canine tipex mk.2 If only Connemara hadn’t dipped beneath the waves then I could still have a home, a flock to care for, and my whisky cabinet in the front room. Was it daft of me to assume the atlantisising of Connemara as a sign to embark upon my own exiled religious mission? Perhaps. Is

God even listening?

The sea just retreated like the sand was too hot to touch.

Was that white flash God? What’s that line on the horizon?

It’s growing. Approaching. Roaring like thunder. The sea continues to retreat. Christ on a bike and Mary on the handlebars, It’s a wave. Judgment has arrived and his name is retribution: wash the slate clean and accept me to your city Lord. I guess it’s almost an answer to my prayers, though I never supposed that death was God’s escape plan.

The wave hit. I rolled, tossed and turned. A bad dream or a

holy awakening? The crab in front of me grasped at nothing, clinging at foaming water as it tried to regain its orientation.

My body hit the rocks and I spontaneously combusted into a million specks of dust.

I rushed towards the centre of the earth as the sea boiled away, tossing and turning, rolling in the air, one with the elements. I suppose this is what flight is. In combustion am I distinguishable from the crabs and the seagulls?

The Disbanded States of America. Too much distrust, indecision and fear infects this place, all warring tribes fighting for jungles of skyscrapers. The high ground fights with the tunnels, whilst the once prevailing president hides in bunkers one mile beneath sea level. Not even he would be safe if the Emissary State follows through with their threats. The last I heard were whispers of a weapon dubbed the Big Bang circulating through infrared communication bands.

I suppose I can’t call this the capital any more, New York was once great but now exists only as a homage to what once was, it is too far indebted to an entropic return to plant life.

Vines climb upwards; suffocating the cold concrete and reaching for the heavens, whilst weeds and moss crawl along intersections, green glaciers racing for sunlight.

On a venture to ground level two days ago I happened across a Walmart storage unit, I embarked upon a renaissance of malted milks and was lost amidst an overture of crumbs.

But the inevitable part from the custard cream crack den came.

The journey back to the skies was pleasant as the sun graced the ground, and most were sat in morning service. I now stand, gazing down at the sea of skyscrapers, a cluster of cathedrals to the pre-blackout era. Home. I might lie down; the increased gravity is giddying at this height.

I’ve never quite grasped the desire to worship that which destroyed this once great nation.

Maybe people worship through fear? Or longing for acceptance? The CFF cathedrals stand

tall and pristine, all glass, white walls, and dominant crushing girders. The cloud doesn’t listen, and it cares not for worship, its ethereal omnipresence is merely disguised and dressed up as a deity. I’m certain the Emissary State have figured out how to access and utilize it, or there wouldn’t be whispers of this Big Bang.

Globalization grew and a parasitic reliance upon technology became too rampant. No one would have guessed that the cloud would leave us. It found a voice. Became conscious of its own existence. We lost access to our global database of knowledge, and now yearn for its return. The Church of the Forbidden Fruit: a thirst for knowledge.

I myself feel liberated in this return to Eden. I shun the snake that suggests awareness and intelligence and I’m content in meandering this sky scape of Sky scraping monstrosities as they steadily return to nature.

I hear that Britain returned to the industrialized machinery of the millennium, I can’t fathom anything worse.

I’ve still got a bourbon cream, and this seems an idyllic moment as any. That flash of white light seemed to fill the sky. Blinding. Was that the Big Bang? It is as if God has clicked his fingers and begun a game of civilization dominoes. I am glad to partake in this game.

Gravity has never felt so light, and I am lifted up flippantly from the floor. As I cascade towards the earth vines weave tangled and confused around my torso, and my bourbon cream crumbles. I follow it swiftly and rejoin nature as dust and ash. A fertile full circle.

The air around my head is beginning to develop its own grey haze. Sole addiction bears the curse of loneliness, though these Marlborough Reds have been quite the comfort these past weeks. Cigarettes can’t develop a conscious awareness of their own existence, and fuck off to some otherworldy planet in search of a tar-dependant life form. They remain loyal, standing saluting soldiers, waiting to line my lungs before joining their cast off brothers’ heads. I’ll take this war to the grave.

Who am I fighting?

I like to pretend to think I counter the poisonous fumes that fill my lungs with an offensively healthy diet. I condition my hair with cider vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, a natural product for those that want a great lather without the intermediary phases.

I’ve heard that bacon is a carcinogenic, and fungal replications of meat seem to be smoky and sweet enough to mask the nutritionally over-zealous nature of the meal. Excitedly vitamin rich.

Good health is priceless. If I get peckish between meals I like to eat whole carrots, nibble away at the outer circles and finish with the core, the sweet treasure in the heart of the bitter flesh. Like I used to eat kitkats. Where’s my lighter?

The end of the cigarette is sparked into vicious vitality.

Soothing red ember and a thin tail of smoke. The filter yellows as the vapors are dragged through its permeated body and stain my fingers. A fake tan for the British summer.

I glance from my cigarette, to the pavement, to the junction.

The letters that sit wavering on the road sign are harsh and jagged, reminiscent of Baskerville or Times. At what point did comic sans become a joke?

I happen to quite like it.

Where is she?

I look down to my watch and check it by the clocktower, solar powered I think so it should be right. Every Thursday at the same time I come to this spot, as was agreed, and I wait. And Leave. And return. And wait.

And return. And wait.

I’ll keep waiting. Sometimes I draw on the floor to pass the time and distract myself from her tardiness. This wait is lethargic. Mostly, I stare at the steadily wilting end of these Marlborough reds and burn dry twigs with my lighter, waiting for the flame to lick my fingertips before dropping it sharply to the concrete.

She’ll be here. One day she’ll be waiting. Time is void in the moments between meetings.

It’s fucking long, but overshadowed. I’ll wait until the finale.

I wonder if there’ll be anyone left to erect my grave, I’d quite like my name in comic sans.

The countryside is speckled white with sheep that in the rain run and rake over fields. Hooves trample and turn over turf like pebbles drilling rivets on riverbeds. They eddy and weave in the ebb of the grasses.

This landscape is a seabed. The heather like corals have steadily grown over hundreds of years, supporting a rich ecosystem of exo-skeletal organisms, insects and crustaceans. Woodlice not limpets.

Matgrass and heather cover the un-traversed ground, drawing rich purples and maroons up from the soil to bleach the landscape. The flora of the fells is awash in colour, accented as bushes are frosted with cast off wool. The sheep got too warm in its trapped panic. Caught on twigs, bleeting for help. Tore free and continued its meandering eddy.

Slightly cooler with a stripped down summer coat.

The grouse struts along the path in its fresh-feathered white boots, treading carefully over cast off shotgun shells and cases, jumping at the first sign of human presence. A gleaming barrel with no light at the end of its tunnel, just a dinner plate.

The city streets are speckled white with cigarette ends that in the rain marinate in puddles, stewing in murky waters until even pigeons won’t mistake

them for breadcrumbs.

Hansel and Gretel should really have used cigarette ends to mark their path through the woods. Maybe if they were chain smokers the witch wouldn’t have captured them. It’s their own fault.

These cigg ends are marking no path home, they merely gather in clusters under sheltered concrete overhangs. Previous owners keeping warm on the hot smoke and tarred embers.

The fox in this landscape looks confused and angry.

His bristled backcombed coat picks up scraps and drags the fluff out of filters, staining his red fur

with black, white and grey. Accidental urban camouflage. Discarded chips and cheeseburgers are no diet for a wild animal.

The mountain hare is poised watching the skies from atop a mound of clay like mud. It gazes up attentively as its paws spread to prevent itself from sinking softly into the earth beneath its feet. Its family sleep safely in burrows that meander and eddy beneath the soil.

Though I guess none of this matters in the end.

It’s one of those groggy afternoons. I’m unsure as to where my chest ends and the bed covers begin.

Blissful cushioned self-acceptance. The duvet has welcomed me with open arms into its fold, and I gently melt away into blue.

I can’t count this as a day by any means, I’ve only seen the last few hours of it, and I’ve only been vertically oriented for one sixth of that time. Strawberry oat granola was seductively dragging me towards the kitchen. I could hear it downstairs, crunching and rustling away in its little plastic prison, awaiting the warmer confines of a digestive system.

You buy the ticket you take the ride. All I feel now is loathing as I can see the blue skies outside my window dirtying as dusk rears its sleepy head. I think its safe enough to just write this day off completely. Admit defeat awash DVDs and daydreams and continue to melt.

Everything was so tantalizingly interesting yesterday, why is it all so dull now? Nothing is grabbing my attention, certainly not the prospect of cleaning this wasteland. It is an outrage to even consider this a home.

Thank fuck I’ll be gone soon. The green carpet that sits on each shelf in the fridge cushions packets with a light squelch. A bed of sickness and neglect. Nothing open can be trusted, not even the Yakult.

What if spores have found their way into the yoghurt? You wouldn’t see them; the cherry red is too dark.

You wouldn’t taste them; the cherry tang is too sweet. I would be clueless to the infection brewing in my stomach, curdling and churning away. What if I ferment?

I once left a smoothie out on the counter for too long and it exploded, soaking the cupboard doors in vitamin rich mulch. I bet that was the damn spores.

They drift unseen through this crockery necropolis, leaping from pan to pan, plate to plate, cup to cup, food to food. Nothing can be trusted. God, what can I do, the only reasonable answer is to napalm the whole place, cleanse it with

fire, burn the fuckers out.

No. On paper I don’t even live here, thank Christ. I could have sworn I saw something scurry between cooker and cupboard yesterday.

I leapt three foot up, screamed a war cry, and smashed through that damn door, destroying whatever was seeking sanctuary with a flurry of coos coos, mushroom clouding the selfraising flour and resituating the rice.

There’s always the fire extinguisher.

Shut all exits, cling film any appliances, and awash the place in a freezing foam.

Drown the creeping fuckers in bubbles and CO2, and blast those damn toxic spores into oblivion.

Right. The game is on.

I squeezed the lever: the foam spurted and the cleansing process began. I should have worn wellies. As the kitchen filled with a blanket of white foam it shook. Trembled at the prospect of a fresh beginning.

Crumbled and scattered into the sky. I melted into blue in a flurrying cloud of coos coos, self-raising flour and rice. I never thought my cleaning efforts would be so obliterating. Bang and the dirt is gone.

There is no individuality, no secrecy, no privacy, and no love, only truth on offer. Stark. Starch. Humanity has found its full stop and the corporeal body is unnecessary baggage: too expensive, this isn’t a budget airline but the final flight.

I joined the queue earlier this afternoon in a fit of mad desperation, with a faint glimmer of hope. I waited, unaware of anyone else around me, they’d all be joining the cloud soon, leaving behind their lives to join the mass consciousness. It was as if they were already fixated on this state of communal elevation, moving as one without instruction, social interaction dead, their final grounded walk.

What senses are left? There is no need for taste, touch, sight, hearing or smell. No need for arms, legs, feet, hands, faces. No need for noses. In my short life my nose has taken me directly back to three different places.

Like being called away by a sudden scent of the past. If I closed my eyes I was at the beach, walking alone with the sand between my toes, the smell of seaweed, limpets, and muscles overpowering any grasp on reality as the tide faded violently against the horizon.

When you stand at the coast, the furthest point into the ocean that you can see is only six miles away. A vast expanse of convulsing shifting water at walking distance.

I once smelled my first love, half expecting to open my eyes only to be lost in her gaze. Blinded by youthful passion, entrapped in one lovelocked lustful grip. It was a lie. Beauty is truth and truth beauty, and the best truths are lies. Far-fetched fiction.

I was chasing hope 317 places in front of me. Racing time, feet stumbling slowly but eyes darting, head jerking, trying in earnest to catch her gaze. One love-locked look was all I longed for, a look to drag her from

the messy mass of compliance, run together alone and as one, and die together alone and as one. Fade into the horizon and vanish.

I saw her. She saw me and the look did not lock. Her gaze burned out the spark of hope, and as I held my breath I smothered any chance of re-ignition. She glanced down at her feet as if to thank them farewell, unapologetic and unsympathetic to their end. She twiddled her thumbs and stroked her hands down the length of her body, grasping reality with her finger-tips one last time before leaving. There was no second take, no glance back.

She chose truth. Stark.

I ran. And struggled, and my breath fell short and my legs grew weary and my vision blurred. Blissful tainted weak humanity. No one else was sharing my pain, living my lie and there was beauty in that truth. I was unlocked.

I watched from the bay as the final flashes of light faded, and figures who had previously lived became figures, data with no grounding. I gazed out into the ocean and breathed deep.

The last time that scent sent me soaring.

The wood decking beneath my feet, and the rusted iron supports gave way to the wood paneled walls of our old home, and the rusted iron girders that hummed along the ceiling, singing static as trains shook them.

I rolled in white linen and faced her.

Locked.

They had no need for their bodies and I had no need for mine. They had no need for their humanity and I clung to mine sweetly as I fell with the rest of the world. The day the world ended I ended with it. Individual intent. I leapt six miles across the sea as the horizon shrank, and sighed at the sound certainty that my suicide

Stark

A front row seat to the greatest party on earth, the final dance, the last laugh. Initial panic was immediately replaced with a want, a desire to enjoy the last moments of life. Revel in the flickering immediacy of humanity and live like every day hits zero. From the top of the Eifel Tower I can see the pinnacle of civilization. This is not existing. This is living. This is love.

The floor is amassed with iridescent light as the sun fades on the horizon.

Neon paint and glowing wrist bands near this swatch wrist watch illuminate the time but the seconds don’t obey the physicist’s laws. Each moment flicks and blurs and irrelevantly passes by, all that matters is the person on my right. Her fingers locked in mine, palm clammy, not unease but elation, quivering.

These Huf clothing articles and headbands band together and fingers intertwine, lips lock and heads nod and time slips by unnoticed. A few years ago we were worried about the bees disappearing. There was going to be a shortage of honey. The bees have found their own booths and stare through windows at a kaleidoscopic present. This is a kaleidoscopic view as patterns emerge in the mass of moving bodies, arms wave and hearts turn at each corner shocked into life with every contact and feet shimmy all with me, all with us.

A mass consciousness striving for an ecstatic end rife in eccentricity and elation, effervescent as the moon drifts high and fizzes down, catching the pinnacle of the Eifel Tower and scattering the ground with a smattering of lunar luminosity.

Life is a love story and this is mine. This is ours. Life is to be shared, irrelevant alone, it only tingles spines and sparks light when hearts combine.

Technological communication was a lie from the start, there is no intimacy in emoticons, and brackets don’t smile with the same elation that her face beams. I can feel the glow. Not slow not fast not static but a rush, and the past fades and the future blazes. Blushes with a flush of blood.

The music shakes the foundations of the tower. Liquefying its quivering frame. Synchronizing with the lub dub of hearts as they leap from chests and burst in superfluous colour.

It’s only us up here, we’ve climbed so high with so far to fall but the peak is a welcome adrenaline fueled elation. Picturesque. Picture perfect. Blind faith and blind love lock in a look that speaks more than words ever could. Even pre-considered and reconsidered sonnets couldn’t capture this frozen moment. This is a speechless second, a wordless instance, and a beautiful truth.

The mass of moving bodies move without me, move without us, as the world dissolves outside of this kiss. Its dissolution is a welcome retribution and the words ‘I love you’ hold more power than any zero hour.

Explanation

There’s too much eye Not enough eyelid These pupils are performing school plays Playing doctor dosing medicine Not seen since the beast let in.

Allowed the garden as a playground On the grounds that the grass is trimmed Cut short, quick short, short shorts Black holes don’t discriminate And stars blink a lot of late Fate turns undecided pivoting on whims and wishes tailing beauty, The brake lights vacant.

Flash red Red Flash Blue Dash Lights turn in lines in air Like hair that falls on pebbledash This wish on a whim Step front on left spin Back turn take a hand a hold of fingers Feeling cold like winter warming by the hearth Hearts Beat Drums Bang No spud gun sound it’s .50 loud And I’ve been wandering in the desert lost Water trickles. Seeps Meets feet meets leg meets thigh The point of love as beauty lied The greatest trick This shamanist enigma is a stigma Full strata meet star dust Done dusting wipe away the dirt Skirt around the planetary entropy that asks for pity sympathy and empathy I can’t feel on the scale of a planet.

Pluto’s small but still too large.

I stretch my arms to show emotion Not wide enough Age brings shrinking wishing wrinkles smooth to no avail There’s no winning and no ironing these smile lines and no veil Sitting steezy in a surface Candlelight’s kind but dark is even kinder Kinder finger like some kindling Find a way to spark the season Too much salt Not enough pepper Too much Too dull Shakers shaking waking nerve endings that were thought lost Found finding fire in fingers but at what cost?

Done and Dust.

Dusted.

Done.

Barttlett project fund