Concrete and Clay

Last night I felt the urge to see a film, I put out my cigarette and put on a shirt. Two sprays of cologne and I'm ready; quick junky check, phone, card and keys:

Roger. Roger.

I close and lock the door behind me, tourists and traders surround me, the biegel shop full of freaks and satires of east end life. A group of 20 or so bin men in fluro neon yellow jackets dazzle my eyes and leave me relying on sound and smell for a fragment of the day. I hear three or four different languages, Spanish, French, Japanese and some Bangla dialect interrupted by throat clearing and lung butter loosening. I can smell the sun heating the rubbish in the truck and thrown all over the streets. The remains of a fish stall, thousands of pink prawn tentacles and shrimp head congregate around a blocked drain gargling milky blue water. I pause to think in Technicolor...

I walk towards the train bridge and notice the sun shining off frozen figures staring in amazement. A blonde hair man appears from nowhere staggering, gasping for breath, head bobbing, blood stained clothes and painted face he touches an open wound where his eye was and passes. I swing round and capture this image, he stumbles and rests against the bridge, the stench of alcohol follows him.

Click.

Shouts and screams grab and twist my head 180 degrees, a gang of Asian youths about 10 or more, shaved and styled, 16 to 20somethings, angry and unwanted. come flying out of a bar I visited the night before on request of the manager concerning dj work. A broken Stella bottle brandished in one hand a branded face worn by all of them. An elderly couple pause to watch, one of the youths run back in shouting and throwing fists and sethered glass slaps. I start to walk off metaphorically shaking my head, 5 steps later a girls scream then I turn to catch the bar sign fly through the window and the manager of the bar run out with a kitchen knife. I cant watch any more, a small crowd had gathered for the show, no more blonde man, no more gang, I’m off to the cinema.

The signs and salesmen of the curry houses drown out all other stimuli, saffron and mangos mixed with halal meat stained butchers pushing carcasses in shopping trolleys.

Large green spherical sweets in shop windows, pistachio or almond coated. Gold and patterns mixed with incense and shit.