Search for alarm clock shows I may be out of time

According to a report in last week’s Daily Telegraph, the alarm clock may well be going the way of the dodo. Apparently more and more people are using their cellphones as alarm clocks – that’s in addition to their multi-use as cameras, access to e-mail and the internet and so on.

But I didn’t need to read that article to know that alarm clocks are hitting the skids.

I searched for one for months, yes months, a seemingly ordinary thing that has become harder to find than, well, VHS video tapes. Because yes, I do still buy those. I’m one of the few people left who doesn’t have a PVR, doesn’t see the point of one when my ancient dual view machine is still functioning, and yet has to record just about everything to accommodate a crazy schedule.

So yes, I can still find VHS tapes – although that does take perseverance – but alarm clocks are becoming just about impossible to buy. My search for an alarm clock wasn’t prompted by a reluctance to use my cellphone as an alarm clock. I recently acquired a new touchscreen cellphone with a 5MB camera – and my big bulky digital Nikon has barely seen the light of day since.

I’m all for small is big and I am just about umbillically attached to my technology. In fact, I love the alarm tone on my cellphone – it’s a cheery happy party-like ring and you wake up not groaning but smiling It’s a real “come on, let’s get up and party” type of ring tone. I wish more cellphones or, ahem, alarm clocks, would incorporate this fun tone in their repertoires. Instead, my search has been prompted by the plethora of SMSes that come to me throughout the night and pop up alarmingly early in the morning, disturbing my precious beauty sleep.

There are the usual suspects: my service provider sending me a note to tell me I have used more than half my free minutes and it’s only the 5th of the month, or again, my service provider sending me a little recording with dancing characters, letting me know about the latest, greatest specials on offer. Never mind the offers I receive to purchase discount furniture, discounted theatre tickets and to view property – all of which come cheerily bleeping through at odd hours of the morning.

Add to that the messages I receive from my friends, to whom, dear as they are, SMS etiquette does not seem to exist. I have had SMSes at two in the morning – from a friend who couldn’t sleep and was contemplating a job change in the dark and needed to tell me about it. Or another who knows that I don’t exactly keep normal hours and made a cartoon of a photo she had taken of me and sent it at midnight. Or the SMS I received, complete with picture, from another at 1am telling me she was just catching the midnight sun in some Arctic place. Then there are the 7am SMSes on a Saturday or Sunday asking if I would like to see a movie that night. 7am on a Saturday? Who could possibly be up at that time, never mind planning their evening?

So, my next solution was to turn the phone on to silent, but what do you know, the thing vibrates everytime a message comes through, and wakes me, and no amount of fiddling with buttons and controls seems to turn off that vibrate function and, believe me, I have gone through every menu and submenu on that phone.

Hence the search for a cheap, ordinary alarm clock. Finally, after weeks of searching I found a big ugly thing, rather primitive looking and without even a light you can touch should you be up at 3am turning on your cellphone just in case a really, really important message has come winging through the ether…

(Published in First Words, Sunday Independent, September 20 2009)

Dachau

The statue of starving, granite figures
grasp against the Bavarian blue sky.
I stop there, pause,
can't go on any longer,
hit delete.

Germany glides past me.
Tall, long-storied houses
line the banks of the Danube.
We drift, at night,
I imagine I live long ago,
and that I row a boat with my goods
past houses shuttered to me.

I can't look anymore.
Download, then hit delete,
usually I check, look one more time,
but not this time.

Days later, and I can't look.
I thought it had not affected me.
Walking around, taking notes for a story,
taking photos of a place that is not beautiful,
listening to a guide tell us of the horrors.
Only once, alone in the cement corridor
of the VIP prison unit did I feel
what went on here.
And I almost ran towards the light
coming from the door ajar at the end of the corridor.

Even at night, alone in a hotel room
with the TV in German for comfort
and an empty bowl of tomato soup,
I did not feel it.

Then aboard a luxury river liner,
with too much food served and prepared,
I can't look.

Months later, the words still won't come.
The article is unwritten,
there are too many words to express it.

By day you feel the long forgotten brown buildings,
long torn down,
at night, one can only imagine what you'd feel.

Churches, a synagogue line the end of it,
prayers for peace, prayers to cleanse the ground.
There's a statue, yet another, of a prisoner,
skinny in his garb of oversized coat:
'Den toten zur ehr
Den lebenden zur mahnung'
A homage to the dead,
a warning to the living.

Hit delete, once, over and over again.
The brown buildings exist.
The houses glide past.
I imagine I'm a man in another life.

(Published on Big Bridge 2009 issue)

Friends

It was ten to six, and the sun was still hot. It would be another hour before it would go down. Around us, in the outdoor coffee shop, children played, people walked, cars reversed in the parking lot.

It was time to leave. We'd been talking barely an hour and it was time to leave.

I got out my notebook and asked Athina to write down her address and telephone numbers so we wouldn't lose touch again. I wrote my details down too, even though my email address hadn't changed in ten years, and she could have got hold of me anyway...Read more here

What matters

What matters is not
whether seize is spelled correctly,
or you use an ellipsis instead of an em dash;
not whether you used 500g of butter, when the recipe called for less.
Not the vendetta of the neighbour,
nor the spite of the colleague in the corridor.
What matters isn’t whether you wear horizontal stripes instead of vertical,
or the wrong colour camisole beneath your jersey.
What matters isn’t the power plays, the corporate games,
the stalled computer and the dropped connection,
or who will be the next leader to lead the free world.
What matters is the neutral breath, the needle-like teeth,
brushingaway the layer of dust, restoring your black coat by wiping it clean
with hands or kisses.
What matters is your world, reduced to kisses,
turkey mince on a plate, fresh air, the expectation that everything will be alright,
the pure wide-eyed surrender, your rush at life.



(Published in Illuminations, USA)

Chapped heart

Nearly thirty seven,
and there’s a chapped heart on my chest,
paint peeling off the red silk-screened t-shirt.
My toe is pink and swollen from a bee-sting,
no bee in sight, just a sting left on a carpet.
A deepening of my face.
Evening implies a quickening of the pulse.
Summer nights are beautiful, I’ve discovered,
now savouring the cool air,
as though it were sweet ice-cream.
A wet rag brushes away the day’s oily accumulation.
The carpet in the bedroom needs replacing,
the colour’s all wrong
and the kitchen needs updating.

And the heart, the chapped heart,
well, it’s harder to deal with that.
Scrape a few more flaky bits off,
see the still-good t-shirt appear from beneath.
I’ve had it for over ten years now,
it’s worn well, never lost its shape or colour,
only the heart, scraping off now, chapped,
scored through,
indicates time’s passing.

(Published in Green Dragon 6)

Inside and Outside

Sitting inside I type,
analysing novels.
I learn about the secret Muslim marriage
called a sigheh, recalling seventeenth-century Persia.
There’s a psychiatrist detective hero with Parkinson’s,
a Swedish writer who died too young,
an ex-memoirist who’s astounded his critics
with his breathless first novel.
I conjure up other people’s fictional worlds,
I tell people whether to spend their money
on eight new novels.

Outside a grey bird, wrapped in a brightly coloured bathmat,
stops breathing, wing broken.
My cat, tired from the chase and capture,
eats his supper of mincemeat.
Outside his prey lays his head in his
wing, and quietly gives up the fight.

(Published in Green Dragon 6)