{The evening took unexpected turn.}
{The art of harbour balance.}
{Weaving their way through the city.}
{The Monte Carlo Amble.}
Part One
1910
From W.N.P. Barbellion's The Journal of a Disappointed Man
(W.N.P. Barbellion was the nom-de-plume chosen by Bruce Frederick Cummings)
July 22
As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?
Reading W.N.P. Barbellion's The Journal of a Disappointed Man (published by Little Toller Books). Just as the author's "intense pride of individuality, self-torturing capacities, and sentimental languishment" reminds him of Godwin Peak from the pages of George Gissing's Born in Exile, the entries made as a twenty-one year old reminds me of myself. Save for the parts about dissecting animals, and the palpitating heart that belongs to this, the "most articulate skeleton you could ever hear" (the author as described by the poet Tim Dee in his introduction. W.N.P. Barbellion died of multiple sclerosis at thirty years of age in 1919.). Jumping from the sublime to absurd, as any diary-keeper can and should, it is a fantastical mixture drunk as we gallop along through the days, and I am glad I chanced upon a copy at The Hill of Content and took a gamble.
Hold on!
(The above postcards are from one very long wall of collages I am still in the process of slowly sharing with you.)
