Tuesday, May 20, 2008

An excerpt from Smack by Melvin Burgess

LILY pages 171 - 175



You get under my skin but I

don't find it irr-i-tating

You always play to win but I

won't need reha-bil-i-tating

Oh no

I think I'm on a-nother world

with you... with you

I'm on another planet with

you... with you-oo

Another girl

Another planet

Another girl another planet

THE ONLY ONES



Everything is free. That's a secret.



The only thing that isn't free is you. You do as you're told: you sit in your seat until they say, "Stand." You stay put til they say, "Go."



Maybe that's the way you like it. It's easy. It's all there. You don't have to think about it. You don't even have to feel it.



I sometimes wonder how this planet keeps on sticking to my feet. They did everything they could to pin me down... my mum, my dad, school. They put me in homes with kind guys and they put me in homes with bastards. They did things to me you can't even talk about. I'm okay.



What about you?



It's mind control, see. You have to go to school, get those exams, get to university or college, get a job, get married, don't miss the boat, do it now or you'll shot your life down the drain. Yeah. They got you as soon as you were born. They never risked a second of your life. When you have kids they'll be telling them they have to wear a plastic mask and put a penny in the slot above their nose before they can breath in.



Listen: Auntie Lily knows the way it really is.



Air is free. What, you know that? Good for you. Okay. Food is free. Ah, you didn't know that one! Listen, this is how you do it.



First you gotta find the FreeFood shop. You go out of your front door and you walk down the road. Sooner or later you come to the FreeFood shop. You can't miss it. It might be called Sainsbury's or Tesco or Morrison's if it's a big FreeFod shop. It might be called Smith's or School's or Singh's if it's a little one. It doesn't matter what it's called. the food's piled up everywhere -- on shelves, in great heaps and stacks on the floor, in boxes and bags and bins. You want it, you name it -- it's yours.



You go inside. You have a look around and see what food you want. You put the food you want under your coat or in your shopping bag and then you take it home and eat it.

Yeah. I expect you thought that you had to go to school, get educated, learn a job, do the job, get paid, take the money down the shop, give people the money before you could take the food home, huh?



You listen to other people too much.



Once you know how to do it, you look about and you'll see FreeFood shops all over the place. The only thing you've got to worry about is that there's usually someone about who thinks the food belongs to them, so you have to make sure you're invisible.



That's easy, too. Because you can be anything you want to be. It's a big secret. You're magic! You're terrific. you're anything you wanna be. Believe it!



Liberate the food! Yeah!



If one of those people who thinks the food is theirs catches you, it's no use arguing; they're too far gone. You better leg it instead. And once in a while -- maybe your aura has got a few holes in it today -- you may get caught. Then you get the police and you go to court. If you have money, they'll fine you. If you have no money, you'll get Community Service. that's okay. It needn't happen often. I know people who've never been caught in years. All that stuff about going in and out of prison, that's just another form of mind control. But even if you do get caught, I'll tell you... Community Service is maybe forty or a hundred hours. what's the alternative? Going out to work every day for the rest of your life? I mean, what kind of sentence is that?



Sometimes I look out the window and I see all the straights crawling past, going to work, coming back from work, going to learn how to go to work, whatever. and I want to shout out, "Hey! Listen to me! It isn't like that, it really isn't like that..."



Only I never do. It's useless. They must weigh about sixty thousand tons. I'm so far away from people like that, they can't even see me.



Do you want to know more? Listen, I'll tell everything.



You can do anything you want.



You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head -- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never even given a chance to know.



Remember when you were little and they used to say, "Naughty girl, naughty boy," because you broke something or said the wrong thing? They told you, "You are a bad person."



But it wasn't like that, it was just you were doing a bad thing. It wasn't you who was bad. You're beautiful. You're wonderful and everything that you do is wonderful because it's you doing it. You're that strong. You can do it bad and know it bad or you can do it good and know it good but it doesn't do anything to you. You're still you.



Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words. You can be anything, you can do anything, you can be anything, you can do anything. Listen to the magic.



You are anything... everyone, anyone. Whatever you want. I'm showing you. So long as you stay yourself inside, you can eat dirt and it'll taste good because it's you that's eating it. You can even lick their arses if you have to. You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep around you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear.



Maybe you think your mum and dad love you but if you do the wrong things they'll try and turn you into dirt, just like mine tried to turn me into dirt. It's your punishment for being you. Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.



I've done everything. all of it. You think, I've done it. All the things you never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did'em. I did'em yesterday while you were still in bed.



What about you? When's it gonna be your turn?



***************************************************************************************



I just finished re-reading Smack, it's a fantastic book. British punk 80's drug slum stories. I may or may not use some of that excerpt as a monologue sometime. I can't sleep right now, but maybe I won't go back to sleep.


That wasn't all a commentary on things going on with my life. Just a little bit of it.



I'm going home June 4th. Mom's happy, I think... I'm not, but things aren't about me, I guess.



Now until June 4th: Long island.

June 4th until June 23rd: Home.

June 23rd until August 11th: Working at CTY.

August 11th until August 24th-ish?: Home again.







Ready, steady, go. Go... go... go.