Hannah Nicklin
I have just read a sentence in a book
which might have knocked the air out of my lungs
had I been breathing in
A historian who wasn’t there
reporting an ancient warrior
who probably never said it
but still the worlds stick
matted seed in the spaniel’s fur of history:
“They create a desert and call it peace”……………………………..
It’s a year ago
I am arguing with a boy about neoliberalism
When I say ‘boy’ – this man is a year or two older than me,
but I say ‘boy’ because I am sexually interested in him.
We are discussing neoliberalism
in a nice cafe in Hackney
after swimming around a reservoir at 8am on a Sunday morning
and I cannot answer his question.
I am trying to explain why
a desert is not ‘peace’,
why violence and destruction are not necessarily the opposite of it.
But I’m also not sure it shouldn’t be.
……………………………..
We are in a maze.
This is not a metaphor.
There is a maze in Crystal Palace Park
and it seemed amusing to go in it
but now we are stuck,
and it’s less amusing.
I am wondering if you can view a schematic of it online.
I wonder if this is ingenuity or cheating
We sit at the centre of the maze.
Rajni says to me that she is not certain,
But she says it certainly.
……………………………………
At 11:17pm on the 26th of September 2015 my friend Alice who recently moved to Edinburgh tweets.
I would like to be mist. I have a week off work soon, and would like to spend it as mist. Any sensible, practical tips for becoming mist?
This is funny, Alice is funny. It’s also sad. Alice has a long history of struggling with suicidal thoughts. Over winter the way she managed that was she would go swimming in the Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath. Cold cold cold temperatures. More than I in a wetsuit could stand. She would swim heavy breastroke and try and sink into the water. For a while all she would post on facebook would be descriptions of wanting to become the water.
On the 30th December 2014 she wrote “First icy swim, a large disc with razor edges in the centre of the pond. I snapped off a shard and gazed through it at peach and purple sunset clouds, my chilled fingers barely melting the pane.“
I send her a jokey reply about the mist thing, mostly as a means of going ‘we’re all still here, and are glad you are too”
……………………………..
……………………………..
Two years ago
My friend Kieran is saying to me over email
gently and lovingly with the knowledge
of how it might hurt me,
me, a policeman’s daughter
“all coppers are bastards”
And I want to find a place to agree with him
but the best I can do is
“I, too, am a bastard”
……………………………..
19 months ago
I am excruciatingly ill
I have been for 3 days and there are 3 more to follow
I have not slept and right now whatever I am watching on Netflix
has achieved an almost psychedelic level of boredom
……………………………..
I’m watching some theatre
Chris’ blue eyes meet mine
and I realise I have never seen him
in anything remotely like a suit.
My friend Chris might as well be wearing the skin
of another man.
His blue eyes rest on me, momentarily.
He tells me
(and all the people I am sitting with)
about a conversation he had with a national socialist.
He is angry. He is really angry.
He is talking about confirmation bias
but I am not quite listening because I think I already know what that is.
I worry that I have been wrong, for 10 years
to believe that people are basically,
are basically,
……………………………….
Last Saturday evening
I make chickpea spinach balti and stream the UCI World Championships elite women’s Road Race. It’s only viewable from the US, so I view it through a proxy connection, Youtube’s live stream is handed an American IP by Betternet for my access.
Lizzie Armistead is perfect, strong, careful, transcendent.
……………………………..
I don’t remember when I wrote this on my phone
Oh, another bus stop.
It is late and hot dusty
London air shifts around us.
I bet myself that if I clear the next hand of Sage Solitaire
He will love me
……………………………..
At 11:58pm 26th September 2015 I tweet
“Quietly in favour of smashing up cereal cafes, but also suspect there’re bigger more complicated things that need smashing, not just emblems”
I receives 8 faves, and including my clarifications and responses, 58 replies.
I transfer from phone to keyboard so I can type more clearly.
……………………………..
the beach where Deirdre met John.
Two years ago my friend John died
John who I knew, firstly, mostly, online.
Twitter and Instagram and emails and visits and friendship
Things in common, the same cadence in our sense of humour
Interests, politics
Last summer
Dierdre and I travel to this beach
near Dunbar
we swim in the sea.
The sky is a ragged grey
high where it is evaporating to blue
but it’s grey where it meets the sea
and the quality of the sun is like
old metal
it stretches out along the water to meet me.
We do handstands underwater
and laugh and
when we get out we are
cold
and
salt-water sticky.
She takes a photo of me with my phone and I post it to Instagram
shivering
……………………………..
I wake up next to my ex boyfriend. We have not slept together, we’ve just slept, together. Something there is worse.
He makes me scrambled eggs
I don’t want to ask him what’s happening between us.
Thankfully when I plug my phone in,
news that David Cameron put his penis in the mouth of a dead pig
is there to share and distract.
………………………
I go through my instagram and write down a description of every selfie I see.
Selfie with a rug
Selfie with a new hair colour
Selfie in front of a Chinese buffet
Pretend selfie of a cat
Selfie of a woman filtered black and white, side profile, high bun
Selfie of possible new shoes in shop mirror
Selfie in clinic examination chair (taken by the doctor)
Selfie of a man’s eye marked with last night’s make up
Selfie in running stuff
Selfie on train
Selfie with boyfriend and plastic penguin
Selfie with cat
Selfie with recently born son
Selfie with wife and recently born son
Selfie with cat
Nail varnish selfie
Selfie smashing kinder egg slash patriarchy
Selfie struggling to open ben & jerry’s
Selfie in mirror, denim jacket, record-label beanie
Selfie processed in some kind of cartoon effect filter
Self with glitter post-gig makeup
Selfie with giant moustache on a stick
Selfie with a new hair colour
Selfie of superman tee worn under a button up white shirt
Selfie of new tattoo
It is black and red.
Depicts a young woman with regency hairstyle
thick eyeliner, visible eyelashes
wig piled high on her head.
And in the wig, there is church
red flames licking out of it.
Something Other 