Memory Of Your Nose

Re the UFO – the unidentified flying orifice -, the nose I thought I saw on the Dick: it’s the fin of a quibble. Quibbles are cars of the future: flying cars; cars you land – park - on your roof.

But once I got my nose into the Dick – I’m on chapter 22 -, look what I found. I don’t know if Louis Panda’s song, ‘Memory of your nose’, actually exists, but I do know that memory and smell are closely linked; smell evokes memory in a way that no other sense can. George Orwell – after running a second-hand bookshop – loathed the smell of old books, and Freud’s obsession with the nose is well documented.

I’m trying to remember all the ‘nose-books’ I’ve read: Pinocchio; Gogol’s, The Nose, about a St Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own; Patrick Suskind’s, Perfume – the story of a killer; there’s a lot of ‘smelling’ in Proust, and much about scent in Huysmans; and The Plumber, how could I forget The Plumber book? I am the plumber (according to the mother in the children’s section of the library). Freud believed reproductive organs were directly linked to the nose. Nose holes are also inextricably linked to toilet bowls. 

Getting Your Nose Into A Good Dick

I thought I saw a nose on the back of a Dick: a UFO - not the one in the sky - the unidentified flying orifice nosing - smelling - its way round the spine of the Dick. And no, I haven’t been on the glue again. This is my fist dip into the speculative world – I hate the term, Science Fiction - of Philip K Dick. I know nothing about Dick, have never read sci-fi, I only bought the book in the first place because of its title: Flow My Tears, The Policeman said. A title I later found I’d misread. I thought it said: follow my tears. I’d already envisaged some distraught detective, stalked – his wet patches followed, literally – by a femme fatale, in a complete role-reversal of the standard crime novel format. No, more than that, a whole new genre of writing - a fusion of Tearjerker and Detective story - Cryme Fiction.

But seeing I couldn’t even read the title correctly, that might have been the end of it - and I’d never seriously intended to penetrate the Dick that deeply anyway. Not, that is, until I received an off-the-cuff remark from my next-door neighbour. The book was lying about (unopened) in my flat, when this neighbour eyed it, and said, ‘He - him on the cover - it could be you’. 

Is it the curly hair; is it the nose? I don’t know. But there is something. Now this is the second time I’ve been told that I look like a man on a book. The first was in a public library – I wanted to learn how to fit a toilet seat, so I’m browsing the books-for-sale in the children’s section; had my head in a book called, The Plumber – one of those illustrated children’s books on real-life professions (The Doctor, The Policeman, The Lighthouse Keeper, The Dustman and so on) – when this woman, a young mother, a complete stranger – pointed to the photograph of a plumber on the cover of The Plumber, and said, ‘You should buy that, you look like a plumber’. What, with this likeness and the Dick likeness: I'll be able to unblock noses. 

Plumber photographs © Chris Fairclough. 

The Butterfly Effect (from behind)

Yesterday, from the tube - the District line - where the train runs over-ground near Wimbledon Park - I spotted a man in his back garden, kick his dog. A Dalmatian. At first-sight - from the rattling train – I didn’t see it right; a foot connecting with a blur of black and white: I think: he’s kicking a football. The sign adjacent to the emergency button (in the carriage) said: ‘penalty for improper use’. Was reporting a dog being used as a football, worth the risk of a penalty?

I hit the emergency button on the London to Dover train a couple of weeks ago. I was in the toilet and I always flush train-toilets with my foot… sort of kick it. But as I'm poised on one leg, about to flush, the train rocks (points?) and I fall onto the help button. Next thing, a voice comes from a concealed speaker, “This is the driver. Do you need assistance?”

‘To make a work of art that doesn’t look like a work of art’: the lines (tracks, designs?) on First Great Western’s train seats are very Duchampian. Do they record the contours of the journey? I’m thinking of Duchamp’s “Three Standard Stoppages”, whilst, with my toe, tracing the line I’m taking - through time (a timeline?). Back to the dog-kick: to be affected but feel unable to effect a change. A family once lived in a shoe. I live life in a sock - a sock the size of a body bag. Permanently 'socked' - always on the hop - another skin between your own skin and everything. How do you kick a sock that size, off?

This morning I drew the curtains to see the biggest butterfly I’d ever set eyes on - gigantic, on the grass beneath the tree in the garden - its bright-coloured markings comprehending the sunlight; I ran for my camera: I’m an artist but I love to connect with my amateur-side. And what barmaid’s arm wouldn’t benefit from a papillon tattoo? I can make a tracing from the photo (there’s this tattooist on the Fulham Road…)

I’ve got a chime hanging in my window; some days it looks like a UFO but today it’s more like a halo. As I’m framing the butterfly through the halo the boy who lives next door runs out into his garden, kicking a football around. The noise and vibration of the ball ricocheting off the garden fence seems to have no effect on the butterfly, it doesn’t flap a wing. I zoom in.

It is indeed the biggest butterfly in the world. I’ve discovered a new species: and when you do that you can call it after something; name it after yourself even. I’m not dressed yet, so I put on my brightest coloured socks - (attractive socks?) and social worker sandals - in the hope of attracting the enormous creature onto the end of my foot. Not to kick it: for a close-up shot.

But when I am up (down) close, when I’m analysing it like a social worker, the butterfly says: Brazil; Portugal; Tunisia; Mexico; Korea; England – 2006. This butterfly didn’t shed its caterpillar skin; this papillion’s a species of dog-eaten football (‘The Shot-Spotted Butterball’?). So I can kick it after all.

I collapse near Dover whilst kicking a toilet, causing a man to kick a dog near Wimbledon Park, causing a dog in Putney to chew a football to death, causing a butterfly to be born of the dead skin: The Butterfly Effect (in action, von hinten)?