The Fire Prance

Step by Step: The Fire Prance
(A dance for swabhands, arrangement: circular)

1. Light a large fire on shore, when the flames have died down rake the embers into a large circular formation.
2. Share a flagon with the swab next to ya and wipe away the dribble with the back of yer sleeve.
3. Now, pace around the fire making rhythmic hauling noises. Thrust a cutlass to the click-cracking of the embers.
4. Now all point at the first man in the circle (he is easy to spot as he is at the front of the circle).
5. The first man must walk directly across the glowing embers towards the back of the circle. During this the remaining swabs should use palm or banana leaves to scoop up some of the embers and hoist them into the air, hollering in celebration, ‘We’re not at sea, we have no need to break our backs!’ (for example) while the hot embers rain upon them.
6. Every swab who has walked across the fire no longer partakes in the hoisting of the embers. Now they should think about how much they miss the waves and spray of the seas.
7. Repeat for each swab in the circle.

Your Electric Light

When we need it, your electric light is there to find feet in the tangled night-time woods, traipsed recklessly. Whisky vision is good enough to reason with a small cliff-face, to spot a foothold, best yet to be delighted by it. The woods feel wilder than the ones I grew up with, and there’s no doubting I know them not a bit. Whisky only makes the heart grow unremittant, more fevered, lots of other things, more forgetful without losing reaction to it all. I forgot to navigate. A trickled stream makes itself known visually, almost catches your ankle, and a vague notion is swigged by my far too wandering mind delightful; streams run down, to the river, to the path, but we smiled relentless away from it, losing little. It feels like what it looks like, any time, from setting out to long before the dawn and there is no timepiece comes to eye, and it pleases me. I could die out here; I could live out here; brambles tear at legs and you, like me, keep walking. It is a universal truth, particularly applicable in the midst of flowing whisky, that there are no wrong turns when travelling blind. Very easy, and surprising to tree-trained eyes, a clearing strolls for seven yards ahead and the moon is visible only just. We sit or collapse, though not exhausted, and the still-flowered very early autumn stretch of woodland grass is not big enough to be a destination. We decide anyway, with almost nominal scepticism from some quarters, that the next leg of the journey is return. And that’s much quicker.

Your electric light proved as useful on the way back as it did on the outward clamber, maybe more so. We made it, as you know, to the safety of our harbour. The night’s sleep, though grizzled by whisky, was restful from adventure; morning, just lately, feels longer ago.

Next time, or the same time because the past has not kept grip sufficient, if I have my way, there will be no return journey, no thought of batteries. Your electric light will come from eyes and, converging with my eyes, and her eyes, and his eyes, will be light enough to grow the universe, make a clearing home; the roof dangling from clouds, the trees already walls, the sea nearer this time, and that patch in sunlight there looks to be a field of corn to me. Guitar alright with the smoke from fire come night-time, significant soon to birds, there is moonshine aplenty, but really we’re drunk from that and from actual shining of the moon, from crispest air, from your electric light, but mostly we’re drunk from that moonshine whisky and it tastes so very good.

The Church

Sadly it was the rather stupid Charlotte Church that instigated this evening's thought processes.
I want to talk a little about religion. I want to, but can't. I know literally nothing about it. Well, not literally. What worries me most though is that I'm joined by about 6,578,257,375 people. 6,578,257,375 know nothing about religion. On a side note I had this theory once, or more of a fantasy, that women had a huge secret, and its such a deep hidden secret that they can't ever tell a male, without destroying everything. So not even a lesbian could break the vow...not even riddled with drugs and frying in a pancake oils. I don't know what the secret would be, obviously. Probably something to do with machines... maybe the world is hollow and lined with little rubbery handles, so that when the menfolk go to sleep (after a hard night hunting amphibious birdlife?) they drop down specially crafted tunnels that they dug as part of their initiation. They slide down these hand crafted tunnels and drop into the hollow earth, wildly grasping for a handle as they plummet into the innner void. If they manage to catch hold they can swing around, so that from a distance away into the space and turning back their shapes make important concentric patterns. That would explain magnets. If they miss they just drop...although the problem is after they have dropped for say, a thousand or so miles they'll be approaching the 'core' of the empty space. If they dropped any further they'd actually be flying, if you get my drift. So obviously they come to an abrupt stop in the centre....where surely thousands of women from all around the world will be dropping to. Exactly the same point. At high velocity too... no doubt creating intense heat. A huge boiling fleshball of oestrogen, and er, hairstyles and screaming and mangles.
I forget my point.