swishism.com
Kinda dropped of with the posts to this main site this week, sorry. I’ve been working on my other blog, swishism.com.
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Valentines
Check out my other blog, a special valentines day swishism features: stop!wait… initiate.something.heart-shaped. Ben Schwartz’s vid below is a funny reminder that it could be worse.
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Well I’ll Be – Feb 2009 from verbswish on Vimeo.
Nobody (haiku)
Nobody
I am nobody
and nobody has a clue
what is going on.
The piece is a new addition from the 2nd edtion of Selected Swishes (which is going to press at the end of the week). I’ve been fascinated by the concept of nobody for about 8 months now. (Funny, given I’ll be 27 in a couple of weeks;)
Seriously though, I’ll be posting more on this topic, but in the meantime Prodigal Jon’s post on the same topic is a good one. Check it out.
Hats off
Same hat, different story. Yesterday I posted a blog inspired by the loss and swift return of my favourite hat. In yet another feat of absent-mindedness I lost it today, again. This time on a Northern line tube. I get of at Clapham Common and almost immediately my ‘might-be’ sense tells me that there just might be something missing among my personal belongings. I rifle through my bag for my hat, nothing; I pat myself down– dagnabit, still nothing.
As the sliding doors of the departing tube beep and collide, I muse that this would, if I had the necessary prop, be the part where I remove my hat and throw it into the dust in frustrated disgust. Instead I just look on in casual slow-motion as my hat escapes. Perhaps it’s the fact that I lose stuff so often that I wasn’t alarmed. I flashed back to those heady days when I would chase down carriages or slap the sides of routemaster buses, all the forgetfulness and adrenalin of Jason Bourne, none of his effectiveness. Then again though, I did catch the tube behind and tracked my hat down to the end of the Northern Line: ‘Have you seen a black acrylic, Dr. Seuss-looking hat, with stitched ruffles?!’ I asked, breathlessly to 3 cleaners, each luminous bib a beacon of hope. I was directed toward a blue carrier bag on the platform containing, another less fortunate, orphaned piece of headgear, and my very own. Hats off to the cleaners.
Snow more good will?
I don’t know about you, but in London, my hometown, it’s been snowing heavily and even more remarkably I’ve had more conversations with strangers and neighbours (read other kind of strangers)in the last couple days than I have in the past 3 months.
Amazing how this abundant blanket gives a common patchwork we can identify with remark on, enjoy, admire, throw around and complain about. On the whole people have been chatty (uncommon in London) and friendly. I’ll enjoy the snowmen and goodwill while they last; as it melts it seems hearts grow colder. I can almost hear “harsh reality” composing her own LL vs. L-Boogie Mashup ‘Don’t call it a comeback… It all falls down!’
Lock and key, Part 1
Last week, as part of my other life as a part- time technologist/school teacher, I’m working late grading my students mid-term reports in my computer lab. I don’t notice that the janitors are locking the entire joint up for the night. Clearly they hadn’t noticed me either. It’s not ’til I’m leaving that I discover I’ve been locked in. I try some corridor door handles, once just casually, then again with the slight urgency and confoundment you see in horror flicks, the old rattle-the-handle-and-look-over-your- shoulder-quickly routine.
I stopped short of the ‘now look here, open this door I tell you’ melodrama, not ’cause it wouldn’t be funny, but because when the only way out is locked and you don’t have a mobile phone, you quickly realise that there’ll be plenty of time for audience-of-1 humourif you don’t think fast.
By some sweet mercy I had, earlier that very day, picked up a skeleton key from the janitors office (you couldn’t make this stuff up, honestly). That got me through a couple of doors only to come up against a huge Hogwart-style oak door requiring some old skool key. A bit of a caper ensued: fumbling into the staff room, finding a phone, calling up a colleague, getting directions, groping ’round some more in the dark, unlocking then locking doors behind me, and stumbling through an obscure fire escape that locked behind me, trapping me in a locked courtyard–all the while unable to shake the feeling that I was somehow breaking the law! By this point I’d had enough I threw the keys in the bag, scaled the school gates and whistled off into the night.
Considering I had been reflecting on the question ‘What is School for?’, and that I am paid to draw out the potential of students, there seemed something funny/symbolic about being literally locked in the building myself.
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Who/what is [verb]swish?
A type of word + a sound, in a noun? a lyricist; a name, a style, a purpose, a privilege
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A lyricist from South London, a collector of swishisms, someone.who.is.still.hoping
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