Barry Graham: Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky
Novelist, journalist, poet and Zen teacher from Glasgow, Scotland, now based in Portland, OR, USA
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Robert Bresson wrote: “Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.”
I used to want a bad reputation… or a good one. The difference didn’t seem to matter. The first fictional character I ever identified with was Frankenstein’s Monster. Growing up, or trying to, in Maryhill, Glasgow, doing good or doing evil seemed equally valid to me, but being ignored, invisible, cast out, hungry, did not.
Now, ideas of bad or good seem less interesting than the details, the facts, what is… and is not.
In The Book of Man I wrote:
The middens were infested with rats. They’d appeared in force during the months when the Cleansing Department went on strike and rubbish filled the back courts in stinking piles. When the strike was over and the rubbish was gone, the rats were still with us. They got so big that the tabloids began printing stories about “super-rats.” For once they weren’t exaggerating. They were true, the stories about huge hungry rats attacking babies in their cots, and fighting back like angry cats when hysterical mothers tried to drive them away. Nobody wanted to believe the Victorian horror stories under the banner headlines. But, in 1970s Glasgow, they were true.
Over the years, readers have praised my horrific imagination when discussing that part of the book. But I didn’t imagine it. The part about rats attacking babies is most likely apocryphal, but the rest is true. When I saw this photograph from 1975, I remembered it again, the mountains of plastic garbage bags, and the big rats running around. In the evenings, little boys would go out rat-hunting, sitting on top of the middens with stones and bricks at the ready, trousers tucked into our socks so rats couldn’t run up our legs. I remember rat footprints in the dried lard in a frying pan.
Raeberry Street, Glasgow. The street where my life began. This picture was taken in the early 1900s, but little had changed by the time I came along in 1966 except for the addition of rats, broken windows, graffiti and faces slashed with blades. It was the model for Hunterdun Street in Of Darkness and Light. I remember the songs children sang:
Robin Hood in the nude
ridin’ through ra glen
Friar Tuck ran like fuck
tae get ra merry men
And:
Dis yer maw drink wine?
Dis she drink it aw ra time?
Dis she ever get ra feelin’
thit she’s gauny hit ra ceilin’?
And:
Harry Roberts is oor friend,
is oor friend, is oor friend,
Harry Roberts is oor friend -
he kills coppers
Let him oot tae kill some mair,
kill some mair, kill some mair,
let him oot take kill some mair,
Harry Roberts
I happened across the cover image of this book online. It brought to mind a Maryhill gang song I learned as a child:
Ah went tae a party on Setturday night
Ra tongs wur therr an’ they waanted tae fight
So Ah pult ma blade oot as quick as a flash
An’ Ah shoutit, “Ra Young Team, ra Young Team, ya bass”
The furst wan thit came wis five foot four
Ah liftit ma boot an’ he fell tae ra floor
Ra cunt wis in agony, ra cunt wis in pain
So Ah liftit ma boot an’ Ah fuckt him again
About 16 years ago, I spent New Year’s in Santa Fe, NM, with some friends who lived there.
Early in the evening of New Year’s Eve, my friend Bett and I had dinner with two friends who were older than us, and who intended to make an early night of it. Bett and I had other intentions - we were going to the big party at the Railyard. But that was still hours away, so we headed into town in search of mischief.
We stopped briefly at a restaurant where Bett’s girlfriend was having dinner with some friends. As we talked with them, even though I had just eaten dinner, I ordered some food.
As we left the restaurant, Bett mentioned that many of the town’s art galleries were open, and were serving free drinks. We agreed that alcoholic freeloading would be a fine way to pass the time before the party, and off we went.
It turned out that some of the galleries offered free food as well as booze. I partook mightily of both, even though I’d just eaten dinner followed by an appetizer.
As I chomped on some buffalo wings, I saw Bett looking at me.
“You can’t turn down food, even when you’re not hungry, can you?” she said.
“You’re right,” I said. Even before I explained why, she already knew and she already understood.
There had been many times in my life when the only way I could eat was to steal food. When I was a child in Maryhill, Glasgow, food of any quality was seldom available to me. One of the most painful moments of my life, a moment of pure grief, pure loss, was caused not by the death of a person but by being deprived of a meal.
I was in my early teens, and I had just been handed a plate of chicken. This was a rarity. My diet was almost exclusively one of fried processed meat - usually cheap sausages - potatoes, eggs and white bread. Chicken was an expensive luxury, so I was excited.
Before I could eat any of it, a woman who was supposed to be taking care of me came into the room. She was drunk at noon, and she didn’t like me. She said something unpleasant to me, I responded in kind, and she knocked the plate of food out of my hands. As she stomped the chicken into the dirty carpet, the hopelessness I felt was so huge that there was room inside me for nothing else.
That woman is dead now, but, more than 30 years later, I can still see the look of dumb malice on her drunken face. In the years to come, I was to mourn the loss of that meal more times than I could keep count of.
There were other times, times of inadequate food or no food at all. And, when these times were over, I still lived in fear of their return. I could never bring myself to pass up a chance to eat. I still felt that I had to take it whenever and wherever I could get it, because if I ever had to go hungry again I did not want to have to remember the times when I could have eaten but chose not to.
As Bett and I walked through the snowy, dark streets of Santa Fe, I told her all of this, and the love between us eclipsed the pain and fear that always came with the memories.
Things started to get better after that night. The memories still come, too often, but they don’t have the power they used to. This morning there is plenty of food in my fridge, but, not feeling like eating breakfast yet, I am only drinking tea.
Early in the evening of New Year’s Eve, my friend Bett and I had dinner with two friends who were older than us, and who intended to make an early night of it. Bett and I had other intentions - we were going to the big party at the Railyard. But that was still hours away, so we headed into town in search of mischief.
We stopped briefly at a restaurant where Bett’s girlfriend was having dinner with some friends. As we talked with them, even though I had just eaten dinner, I ordered some food.
As we left the restaurant, Bett mentioned that many of the town’s art galleries were open, and were serving free drinks. We agreed that alcoholic freeloading would be a fine way to pass the time before the party, and off we went.
It turned out that some of the galleries offered free food as well as booze. I partook mightily of both, even though I’d just eaten dinner followed by an appetizer.
As I chomped on some buffalo wings, I saw Bett looking at me.
“You can’t turn down food, even when you’re not hungry, can you?” she said.
“You’re right,” I said. Even before I explained why, she already knew and she already understood.
There had been many times in my life when the only way I could eat was to steal food. When I was a child in Maryhill, Glasgow, food of any quality was seldom available to me. One of the most painful moments of my life, a moment of pure grief, pure loss, was caused not by the death of a person but by being deprived of a meal.
I was in my early teens, and I had just been handed a plate of chicken. This was a rarity. My diet was almost exclusively one of fried processed meat - usually cheap sausages - potatoes, eggs and white bread. Chicken was an expensive luxury, so I was excited.
Before I could eat any of it, a woman who was supposed to be taking care of me came into the room. She was drunk at noon, and she didn’t like me. She said something unpleasant to me, I responded in kind, and she knocked the plate of food out of my hands. As she stomped the chicken into the dirty carpet, the hopelessness I felt was so huge that there was room inside me for nothing else.
That woman is dead now, but, more than 30 years later, I can still see the look of dumb malice on her drunken face. In the years to come, I was to mourn the loss of that meal more times than I could keep count of.
There were other times, times of inadequate food or no food at all. And, when these times were over, I still lived in fear of their return. I could never bring myself to pass up a chance to eat. I still felt that I had to take it whenever and wherever I could get it, because if I ever had to go hungry again I did not want to have to remember the times when I could have eaten but chose not to.
As Bett and I walked through the snowy, dark streets of Santa Fe, I told her all of this, and the love between us eclipsed the pain and fear that always came with the memories.
Things started to get better after that night. The memories still come, too often, but they don’t have the power they used to. This morning there is plenty of food in my fridge, but, not feeling like eating breakfast yet, I am only drinking tea.
