MIREUIL MEANDER
2011

An Afterthought
(My Mireuil Meander as a written reminisce)

I arrived late and woke early.
Very early.
up.

The sun is a long way from
This is me alone in my company.
Alone.
New home.
In November.

CONCEPTION
And this will be because of how it is.
This is now how it was.

What kind of place is this?
Where is this?
Where am I?
How am I?
Me with my own company.

I must keep.
Alone.
It will be Christmas soon.
Look at those winking blinking lights.
A sea of multicolour.
A multitude of climbing Santas.
Almost there.
Not forgiven.
My gaze over the ocean of winking blink.
Towards the misty horizon.
All is hiding.
Hidden.
(Briefly I’m back in the sea.)
A town awaiting the exploration.

Forgive me.
This outburst.
And down there.
Somewhere.
Astrolabe.
The centre of its own universe.
Perverse to think that the stargazers have now become fund-raisers.
Do-gooders with me as part of the breed of new interlopers.
All tangled up and undone.
Too complicated to explain.
The show must go on.

FORCE OF HABIT
The dog barks and the moon comes

Down
It has got its hat on.
There are now men with faces on their stomachs.
They head to the bars for a coffee and klopp.
Sticky eyes.
This is what I’ve got.
I join them.
(I penetrate their inner sanctum by using my voice-activated recording device.)
This could be nice.
This might work.
This is the work.
My work.
This is what I do.
I’m hiding from the big guns.
A boat out of water.
I lie there waiting and doing my lookingabout
Then.
I wander.
Hither and dither.
Cold blind wowing the winter.

THE IDEA OF BECOMING
The street cleaner.
The town crier and the boxer.
They are everywhere.
Over there.
Here and there.
And.
Thereabouts.
Wither does thou wander?
The call to prayer.
The veil and Baby Jesus in his manger.
This where I’ve been.
Some of what I’ve seen.
This is where I’m at.
I’m on my back now watching the runners run past.
An orgy of fast being.

THERE IS SOMETHING INCOMPREHENSIBLE
High rise low rise and a life lived.
Pepys Estate Deptford.
This is what I am in mind of.
I have never forgotten what I had back there.
Then.
The corridors and the balconies.
The lookdown.
The remember.
The impending happiness of the River Thames.
Awoken from the gloom by the sound of the drumandbass fog horn.
What is that state of mind called consciousness if not the constant emerging from the tunnel of uselessness?

LOVE
I look inside to retrieve that moment of sustained sorrow.
Inflicted via the thought of her nowgone.
Angie.
What did you do to me?
Up there on the undercliff.
You make me giddy.
A thinkback.
Feel the heart going flutter.
You and that skin.
That skin that you’re in.
That face.
That face that you’re in.
And when I swim I look up at you
And Float.

ATTEMPTED SIMULATION OF INTERPRETATIVE DELIRIUM
I have been to the boxing gym and to the youth club.
I have been seduced by my unreliable narrator.
Vincent.
And.
The moon is a hole in the sky.
Don’t ask me why, the river’s not wide and I’ve crossed it to get to the other side.
There I’ve said it;
The incessant bickerings that perturb the communities of men.

ATTEMPTED SIMULATION OF DEMENTIA PRAECOX
I’ve tripped over my own spunk.
And.
It’s gone everywhere.
Paradise before the hoping of sleep.

(Intertitles OR chapter headings taken from The Immaculate Conception by André Breton and Paul Éluard)

So
Unless we manipulate our surroundings, we have as little control over what and whom we think about as we do over the muscles of our hearts.
(Fooled by Randomness – from The Bed of Procrustes – Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

PS - MIREUIL AND A POST CONCEPTION

Andrew
I just met the director of a social center in Mireuil which work with young teenagers (10-13 years old) during the year and holidays.
I wondered if you think it's possible to organize a meeting with some children, maybe we can show them a movie or something you've made.
The Festival has been working with them since last winter, they're nice, with lost of difficulties (social, family, school) as you can imagine.
It's just an idea, like that. They are in the center wednesday afternoon and thursday-friday from 16H30-18H00.
Let me know what you think about that.
Mathieu (the director) is although very nice and he has lot of idea where maybe you'll be interested to go around Mireuil: The "social koffee", the "brasserie de l'Europe", box training... i'll tell you on tuesday with Leslie (she knows lots of places too).
See you soon!
Nathalie

Nathalie
Sounds like a good idea - do you have a mobile number for Vincent? Is he still available for thursday 25th - maybe 11.oo am in Mireuil?
It would be great if he could give me his own very special 'guided tour' – I embrace misinformation and myth more than I embrace the 'truth' tell him!
See you soon - my mobile is 0044 7811 739 ***
A plus
Andrew

Poetry excludes calculation and premeditation: it is incompletion, foreboding, abyss. Neither a singsong geometry, nor a succession of bloodless adjectives. We are too deeply wounded and too despondent, too weary and too barbarous in our weariness, to appreciate, yet, the craft.
(From THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN - E.M Cioran)

© Andrew Kötting 2011

Acknowledgements

Andrew Kotting would like to thank

Emmelene Landon
Fabrice et Manu et E.D Distribution
Prune Engler
Arnaud Dumatin
Edouard Mornaud
Centre Intermondes et son équipe.

Vincent Martin

Nathalie Schmitt
Leslie Gauvin
Gareth Evans
Julien Lesage and all at Brett Lesage
Nick Gordon Smith
Emile Cioran
Samuel Beckett

L’Astrolabe, Centre social et culturel et son équipe.
Jean Michel Pérez
The Centre Social in Mireuil et son équipe.
The boxing Gym in Mireuil et son équipe.
Leffe Picon Bier and the Piscine in La Rochelle
Staff and technicians at Oakwood Park Maidstone Kent
UCA
UCA Research Office
Agresso Team Support

Catalogue Published by Badbloodandsibyl
ISBN 978-0-9568733-1-6