Pudong

Old wood is like wine.  In the grain, you can read the story of a hundred men - men who drive dirty steel cars and have heavy brown hands, and men who spend their lives in factories and dust to produce beautiful things for others.  The smell of old wood brings back memories you never had.

When time is on your side, you start to take notice of the things around you.  I've been noticing the floor.  It is wood, dark, rough-cut and scratched like a tired old face.

I try to imagine how far away I am from the closest person who can understand what I say.  It doesn't scare me, thinking this way.  But it makes me sad, all these millions of people.  I will never make friends with any of them, and we will never know each other.  Alone in a city of millions.  How different is it from walking alone through a forest?  Apart from the smoke and cigarette butts...

Outside the sun shines like a gold coin glinting in the light of a giant white halogen lamp.  The streets are an unreal grey, lit up like a film set.  This place is so new, it seems.  New metal and concrete stretched tightly over everything, taut and groaning.  Waiting at the edge of a road full of cars, I start to notice things.  Like the way my feet, white even through the dust and grime, look like aliens amongst the shiny leather and American sneakers.  My feet don't fit in.  Some people - like me - find it easier to be alone if they're hidden in a crowd.

I walk for miles, taking photos of cracks in the pavement when I find them, a postman in a blue delivery van, a child peering out of a third floor window, a small cat with three legs.  I turn it on myself once, watching my reflection in the lens blip out of existence and back again.

On a hill in the middle of everything but hidden by trees and broken stone walls, there is suddenly no-one, just me and three kids, maybe 18 or 19 years old.  They are smoking pot.  I wander over, my heart jittery, and ask them in my language for a puff.  It's silly, I know.  They can't understand a thing, and when one replies, handing me the joint cradled against the breeze, it's like singing, sounds without meaning.  I take it carefully.  They are rich kids, I can tell that.  Their clothes display a finely tuned disorder.  I sit down and inhale deeply, a few times, and then hand it back.  'Pateicos', I say, to no-one in particular.

By the time I get back I am breathing differently.  I wave to the girl in front of my building, who is standing there, straight backed in uniform, belt tight around her waist high up, shoes gleaming.  She sees me and smiles.  In my room, I take a mobile phone from my suitcase, hit '1', and lie back on my bed with only underpants on.  The fan cools the sweat covering my body.  I launch into conversation the moment the phone is picked up on the other end, and can't stop.

Later on, sitting outside on the steps with wet hair and a can of Coke, eating noodles and reading about Chinese martial arts and architecture, I feel that I am truly happy.  It is humid and the air is thick, like warmed-up pillows, and fragrant too.

Reflected

Humble Deaths

I've taken these cells and muscles

tensing and releasing in great shifting strides

over windblown scapes and pitted roads.

Me,

a creature of bone and shadows

crushing glass and small things as I go.

Grasping tight

smiling stupidly at the bite of cold air on my skin

and the tears whipping from my eyelashes.

I feel like I'm running out of time.

No matter how fast the wheels are spinning.

I know how things slowly disassemble on the pavement.

--especially when it rains,

and the roadside fills with all the exhibits of our fortunes.

I know the stubborn divide and multiply,

and the quiet retreat.

And while we carry on,

a million humble deaths are happening in private,

left behind and washed away.

My friend

Come now, come.
The words will find themselves outside.

Come now,
Step out and remember.

It wasn't long ago you walked like this
bare feet on the path.
You've been here before.
Look around,
can you feel
the same?

Go on, throw a punch.
It might feel good
to clench your feet and teeth
and then
release.

Come on now,
step forward and forget.

I've held a thousand joints
and you were there to see it.
I've caught a thousand embraces
and I saw you watching.
I've seen the sky in a million permutations
of cloud, and light and water,
and you were lying there beside me,
looking up,
weren't you.
I've climbed a thousand steps,
wood, stone and sand.
Sometimes there are birds,
and sometimes it rains.

Think about it.
You've studied a million faces,
and there's a million more
in photographs you saved.

Lift yourself up and step out and forget.
It's like, we never even met.
I promise.

Climb

I've climbed so high.

*

Crawling up over great
blocks
of straw.
The city falling away below.

I was wearing sunglasses
so dark
they killed the glare
but blackened the rooftops too.
All I could see
was the sun in the sky.

So beautiful.

The straw feels solid
packed like bales of hay
clenched so tight I won't fall.
I jump a bit
just to see,
but then stop.

Nothing moves.

I look down and
for a moment I can't breathe.
Really
I'm scared of heights.
REALLY.

Things are slipping
out of my pockets -
spare change,
a nailclipper
and a packet of chewing gum.

I sit and watch my stuff
bounce away.
It takes a long time,
bits of straw knocked free
floating
slowly downward.
Some float up too.

The sunlight smiles all over everything
glinting off treetops in the distance.

*

I've come so high,
and I can feel the warmth on my shoulders.
It feels good, so
I keep climbing.

No Booze for Street Smokers

Tonight I feel good. I'm sitting at the bar, smoking a cigarette and trying not to look sleazy as I glance at the girl behind the bar. It's easy to look sleazy. I'm drinking whisky.

I was up early to see a polluted sort of mist slowly rise up off the buildings. I walked a random route through alleyways paved with cracked concrete stones with flower shapes cut out of them. I noticed ants everywhere, so many types, some an extraordinarily beautiful shade of green. I needed to piss, and went in a dirty little black stream. A little boy was pissing on the other side of the stream. He was wearing thongs, and his piss was going all over them. He wasn't concentrating, because he was staring so hard at me.

When I walked past a woman selling fish I thought I'd buy one. She was old, but her skin was stretched neatly over her face, and you could tell she was peaceful inside. I knew what she was saying, but not from the wavering words coming out of her mouth. I could tell by the way she was grinning at me that she was teasing me for being all alone in this city, buying my own fish from her, far far away from home.

As I was walking away, the fish hanging from a loop of wire in my hand which was threaded through the place its gills used to be, I realised that I didn't have a stove or a kitchen or any way to make this fish into food, so when I got back I gave it to the guy who worked at my hotel - he didn't want it, but by then I didn't want it either so I just left it hanging on a nail in front of the builidng. I came back ten minutes later, after brushing my teeth, and it was gone.

Now I'm wondering whether it would be dirty to try to chat up this girl. She's beautiful. Naturally so. There's no-one watching anyway.

Outside, I guess there are still people sitting on pieces of newspaper smoking cheap cigarettes - much cheaper than the Malboros i'm smoking - and laughing at people going past. One of them is a guy I gave money to on my way in. I hope he got himself a nice new pack of cigarettes with it, becuase people on the streets can't drink alcohol here. Poor bastards.

I'm pretty uncomfortable thinking about those guys just about fifteen metres away on the street. I just order another whisky, and sit there sipping on it, smoking and trying to think of something to say to this girl.

Lazy

The heat of a thousand soups is warming this island. It's cool and quiet in my room, but I can feel the heat crashing in heavy waves on the walls. I lie back and put my hands under my head, watching the fan swing lazily, dragging a cobweb behind it.

I think about going outside. But I'm still very tired. And the thought of all those people sweating and rushing around in that sticky air makes me uneasy. I don't know a single one of them. Where do I start?