PILOT FISH.

Harley on Reenroe beach

Ballinskelligs castle

Retro Dan Dare comic for fanzine Space Ship Away

Image for re-released Heavy Petting CD by Doctor Strangely Strange on Hux records

Christmas card 2010

 SOMETHING BETTER

The living room window, some twelve feet high by six feet wide and of an autumn evening as the light fades, I sit before it in a comfortable armchair, John Fahey on the turntable, the room awash with sound and Harley the rescue greyhound stretched on his back on the sofa, the great sythe of his chest vertical between outstretched front legs, the harmonic rasp and twang of the acoustic guitar relaxing his dog being and I am relaxed as well, the blue dust of evening  gathering me in while the Fastnet light beats it's eight second flash and in the bay, the islands hump their sleeping backs against the dim mark of the horizon and Harley twitches, dreaming  his hare brained dreams. 

I take a sip of wine. 

The LEDs of the stereo rack transcend to fabulous green and red  jewels, as the rural world outside my window turns from blue  to darker blue, the first stars emerging, the far headland of the Beara bowing out, fading away on the rim of the world and Harley's back legs are cocked either side of his chicken haunches, the feet  relaxed, toes curled and I settle  deeper into the cushions. 

I take another sip.

I look over at Harley checking him out, taking pleasure in his pleasure and when I look back the window seems split in two, a thick bead of brightness descending slowly down the centre of the frame, leaving a trail of light like a deliberate chalk mark and as I stare the lower part, the curser, hits something  - perhaps the invisible line of the ocean out there - and ends abruptly. The following wake takes maybe  two seconds longer before it too fades, flowing down it's flight path, collapsing in on itself, to leave the night a slight bit darker. 

 What in the hell was that?

Not a meteor - I've seen meteors lots of times as they briefly scratch the eyeball - this is something much more deliberate. I leave the chair and venture out the front door, the world below me that bit more relevent, clearer, focused and I am almost expecting to smell something, a touch of sulphur perhaps and maybe  - like a movie - I should feel some sort of tremor through the soles of my shoes but there is nothing and after a bit of looking around,  the chill air  rattles my bones and I head back inside where Harley sleeps on, his mouth smiling, teeth slightly bared and all right with the world. 

So what did I just see?

Or was it merely my imagination? No. I can not imagaine that it was - I do not imagine shit like that. I imagine fleets of  antagonistic spaceships and cosmic darlings clad in impossibly tight latex sexsuits, but not a fat white line of light descending stately as a galleon from beyond the edge of reason.

It takes a while to get to sleep that night, but after a few chapters of Thomas Pynchon the mind succumbs and the morning, bright and clear, reveals the bay, the islands, the far cusp of the sky in exact clarity and the fat white slug of light down my evening window pane settles back into "file under harmless".

I walk the beach everyday with Harley, sometimes twice. He's a greyhound and the beach sand between his delicate toes reassures him and he springs, prances and stretches into his elasticated stride and my heart lifts like a bird to beat alongside his as he runs full out across the smooth safety of the tidal flats. And, some weeks into this event, my foot hits a stone  here on the water's edge where the exhausted surf  marks the sand with a minute hairline as it receeds and I look down and the stone I have encountered seems to have a painted marking set deliberately onto it's surface, postered, as if to attract the unengaged eye. Which it does and I bend down and pick it up and out on the edge of my periferal, Harley banks around, full stretched but tiring, coming home.

As does the stone, obviously some artists prank, for there are a nest of them just up the road, huddled paint dabbed fledglings in  their retreat, and I would not put it past any one of them to leave a painted rock at the tide line to confuse and infuse the bewildered such as I. 

But it is not quite like that.

What at first I had thought to be  an acrylic painted design, a touch "Celtic" became on closer examination a tightly incised wirework pattern, minute, almost nano engineered swirls of colour, not laid on the surface of the stone, but somehow emerging from deep within the structure and the stone itself does not seem to bear any semblance to what you might expect to find on a southern Irish beach and neither does it have much similarity to any rock, igneous or aluvial. More like a micro engineered something or other and Harley - the gentlest of animals - with his hackles up and his gums bared in a very unconvinving snarl because a stone fresh from the cold autumnal ocean edge should not seem warm to the touch... should it? Nor retain that slight heat, even after a testing night in my fridge-freezer.

There are signs now, down on the beach: signs of something up, something that bit out of kilter. Thousands of small shining globes at the high water mark, baby jellyfish washed in out of season and last week the derilict husks of hundreds of small crustaceans, scattered like abandoned packaging and the wading oystercatchers at the sea edge seem to have added extra notes to their usual "meep"and maybe I'm paranoid, but the patterns have changed somehow, shells ranged in ordered rows, mimicing digital algorithms.

On the beach, Harley close by, brushing occasionally against my leg for reassurance, his nose cold and damp against my hand, sunlight flaring from seawater puddles, the boom and suck of dissipated combers nudging the 

frontier between worlds. Out by the yellow and red buoys - moorings for summer boats - water splashes, spray arcs and glistens. Somebody swimming, crazy winter athlete. A body breaks the surface, smooth and dark, then gone again. I stare. A sudden propulsion, a rising water curtain and above, rotating gracefully at the apex of it's leap, a dolphin, frozen for a nano second, then down again without a splash, and my heart leaps with illogical joy and Harley growls deep in his chest and freezes, convulsed by shivers spasming through his body. Nervous fool, frightened by what he does not comprehend.

Same as myself.

It's the lack of comprehension that does it. Somewhere in the oceanic gyre of the Pacific there's a new Saragosso comprised of floating plastic packaging waste, discards from the multinationals now becoming part of the living structure of the creatures forced to endure it and all because humanity needs stuff fast. Give it to me now and give it to me swaddled so as I can consume. Never mind that I understand nothing - I understand my wants, capeech?

Now something new ticks slowly beneath the breathing waves. The Dolphin is back today and he's brought his friends and as I watch them leap and play I am somehow cogniscent of their emotions and intentions, their allies and their agreements. Humanity's last days will not be pleasant but the planet and it's intelligent species will survive. Not so the money, not so the lust for attention, not so the leperous greed. All off for a little stroll down Dinosaur Lane. Turn right at Dodo drive, why don't you and good riddance.

Click click click....something new, something better.

More retro Dan dare for Spaceship Away 

The Politics of Desire