© Laughing Cloud Records 2011

TERRY ‘TWO FINGERS’Chapter 1RAMPANT DUMBNESS & THE BOTH RELIGION

Terry — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:10:15 +0000

My name is Terry Monkley.

This will be a great letdown.

I hardly remember anything of life.

I have anyway nearly no teeth.

And fuck the novel!

Just what we don’t need.

Fuck everything, including the sitcom.

28/10/05

Terry — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:10:06 +0000

According to Mum, I’m forty eight years old..

(which reminds me
a lot of people’s egos are different
but mine is the same)..

Mum says I have woken from a long sleep.

The last thing I remember, I’m twenty three and in love with Maria. That was for three months. After three months making love at least three times a day she should be pregnant. And what does the erstwhile robustly intelligent sexual being, who after all got us this far, know about contraceptives? Fuck them too.

And now I’m forty eight.

Meanwhile, 96% of the universe is unaccounted for. Gone missing. To explain this scientists have concocted ‘dark matter,’ or ‘phantom energy,’ or whatever. It may be hard to imagine how scientists can have misplaced 96% of the universe. But not for me. Scientists are incredibly stupid.

29/10/05

Terry — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 04:14:35 +0000

One of the first things Mum says to me is “what do you want?” Mum’s brilliant like that.

“My guitar,” I say.

30/10/05

Terry — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 06:30:43 +0000

Norman comes round the other night and I show him the little I’ve written. He hates it, as he now hates everything I do. This then is the novel we wrote together, taking turns mid-sentence:

It was a dark & stormy night. Already her eyes reflected the future events of that evening.
“Sounds like total crap to me,” ventured Abigail. “Killing that bastard will solve all our woes.”
“Curtains don’t move without someone hiding,” said Latch.
“What the hell would you know? I’ve been the one that’s been living with him.”
“Fuck it.”
Abigail stood up off the bed and pulled the trigger. Fuckhead was dead.
“Good girl, Abbie. Our future looks just as rosy as the blood pouring from his temple.”
They put all their things in a pile. With the accelerant and the cheap hotel carpet all clues to the hit evaporated like backwash. The night grew stormier still.
Latch lit a cigarette.
“Tomorrow, my girl, we’ll be gone and he aint nothing but a cinder.” Latch packed up his barbecue. Looking one last time in the direction of the newly deceased Fuckhead, he said: “be still.”
Across town the night grew tendrils.

After that Mum comes home, and anyway we’re too drunk to write.

01/11/05

Terry — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 06:51:32 +0000

When I first open my eyes after twenty five years in a coma, Mum is sitting in a chair a short way from the bed with a green blanket on her knee. I can see her in the mirror. A television is on. I think we both wake up at the same time. She stands up carefully and walks over. Disbelieving, she stoops over me. She kisses me several times. We are already both in tears.
“Terry,” she says.
I try to speak but there is something wrong with my voice.
“Terry.”
I try to speak again.
“Terry.”
“Muuh..”
With this, Mum lets out a sort of wail, a sound I have never heard before.

Sometime later, I discover my voice.
“Mum. I’ve slept through my entire life. What will I do?” I want to know.

06/11/05

Terry — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 06:54:17 +0000

At twenty three I was pretty keen on astrology. That is until I found out about the precession of the equinoxes, the upshot being that the sun is nearly never in the sign of the zodiac where astrologers say it is.

Long ago, in the days when the Roman Catholic Church pretty much called the shots, medieval scholars realised the time had come whereby the observation of facts could be relegated to the work of no one. They themselves would no longer bother with them. The sun could stay put and not be so shifty.

Following this initial break-through, the age of dumbness kicks in proper.

Centuries compete to see which will be the dumbest.

Only, it is certain that each will be dumber than the last.

The year is now what?

Take the last century.

Its greatest inventions have surpassed all for sheer, out and out lack of intelligence.

The centuries before that?

Amateurs!

Although I do consider the telephone to be one of the dumbest inventions of all time.

7/11/05

Terry — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:25:30 +0000

It would, of course, be perfectly possible to discover the exact birth date of the Age Of Dumbness by calculating the date when the sun actually was at the first point of Aries on March 21st. The very day on … Continue reading →

9/11/05

Terry — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 22:28:47 +0000

My sister is breaking up with her husband. Somehow, her children’s lawyer comes round to interview me as a witness. God knows why, perhaps to see what sort of numbskull I am. He asks me: “what are you going to do with your life?” Not really having thought about it (I am only forty eight), and because I am a numbskull, I say: “I will be this country’s greatest ever poet.”

I hate poetry. Just so, I’m in with a good chance. And especially because of my prolific silence. I do not expect to be published before the year 2891.

I assume my country will still be here.

11/11/05

Terry — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:30:11 +0000

Cicadas equal silence.

What can a poet do in this age?

Nothing.

Much as Jesus answered Pilate.

I love Romans.

I love irony, the stuff from which the universe is made.

21/11/05

Terry — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:32:13 +0000

Mum has hooked us up to the internet. She explains the whole thing to me: military, pornography gone mad, great educational tool etc.
Mum’s teeth have gone quite yellowy in her old age. On the other hand her hair has hardly greyed, and remains for the most part resolutely brown.

I am reading the most boring book in the world with a fifty rupee note from the State Bank of Pakistan for a bookmark.

This, conversely, is not a novel, Mum. I’m not going to make anything up.