Alan Moore - Jerusalem

what

what was that, that

stuff, that atmosphere it’s gone it isn’t here now and that’s how I know it was here like a noise that you don’t notice till it stops the sudden silence what just happened what just happened to me nothing nothing happened you just it’s just mental illness you just had a run in with it obviously it’s disturbing but there wasn’t any need to panic not to run out of the pub like that I must have looked a proper wally nothing happened calm down nothing happened everything’s alright everything’s normal for a minute the old heart was banging like a dustbin lid but I can see now I was being stupid letting it all get to me like that I don’t know I don’t know what I was thinking, that the world, reality, it had just I don’t know just broken and I felt like I was falling down the cracks but look at it I mean it’s fine its Regent Square its Friday everything’s okay there’s

traffic lights like freshly sucked fruit pastilles and

an ice mosquito biting on my neck the threat of rain with

couples young chaps striding and not staggering it’s early yet I’m

walking in a daze towards the crossing that will take me over to the top of Grafton Street the dark sluice running down into the valley there that’s what I mean it’s not like I made a decision or at least not consciously yet here I am I’m toddling across the road the pelican tweets chivvying with its emerald wink as if I’ve chosen to go home this way and not up Sheep Street back the way I came I don’t remember choosing anything it’s just my feet I’m at the other side now and they’re taking me along what’s left of Broad Street one brown shoe and then the other and it’s not of my oh fuck me what’s the word volition not of my volition it’s like every step’s already set in stone and nothing I can do about it like it’s all predestined but then there’d be no such thing as oh watch out I nearly swerved and fell into the road casino lights up on my right I’m walking like I’m drunk but how can that be when I only had a pint a pint up at the Bird in Hand there with

Benedict Perrit

fuck that must be it I must be still in shock but that’s ridiculous it isn’t like he

raining a bit harder now and I’m not really dressed for it you know it was so nice when I came out I’m going to get soaked through if I’m not careful for that matter I’ll get soaked through if I am, another bloody stupid saying all that business in the pub no, no I’m better off not dwelling on it one brown shoe and then the other slapping on the shiny pavement wet now puddles gathering where the reflections of the sodium lamps perform a yellow shimmy one brown shoe and then the other not of my volition but then there’d be no such thing as free will there’d hold on what was it I thought earlier it was quite funny I was going to put it in the column it was oh yeah I remember it’s free will or free Will Shakespeare no on second thoughts it doesn’t sound as funny now too difficult explaining it the point still stands though, if this was all scripted in advance and for all that I know it might be then we’d all be actors no one would be innocent or guilty and well I suppose that if that was the way that things turned out to be we’d all get used to it in many ways it might be a much nicer world with no one questioning your ethics all the time no reason to feel rotten over anything you might have done some bad decisions that you might have made some time ago a while back a long while back I’m not talking about me now obviously but there’s people who are sensitive who are in torment over things they’ve done and if there’s no free will well you can see how some of us, people like that, it would be like the slate wiped clean and no more bad dreams no more sleepless nights over the other side of Broad Street the dual carriageway there’s just the top bit of the old Salvation Army fort the other one the one that hasn’t been pulled down yet actually I think it’s listed just the top bit of it you can see where it pokes up above the fencing upper windows like it’s looking at you trees and undergrowth around it looking at you from across the fence as if it’s an old dog penned up and left to die it doesn’t understand it doesn’t know what’s happening here’s the Mayorhold coming up it’s

pissing down literally spattering on the carriageway the paving slabs on me “I’m gunna catch me death” that’s what they used to say down here that accent like

Benedict Perrit

talking to thin air laughing at nothing nothing’s the last thing you want to laugh at nothing’s the most dreadful thing of all after you’ve gone I’m in my sixties now I don’t believe in hell or all the rest of it I mean it’s just the end death isn’t it that’s how a grown-up looks at it but then Benedict Perrit in the Bird in Hand the cackling and his painful eyes and all the people that were only there to him and yet

and yet I mean the ghosts even if only he could see them in a way they’re still there aren’t they even if he’s mad then they’re ghosts that are in his mind all of his memories of the neighbourhood dead people all of it ghosts that are running through his mind and if you’re sitting there up the pub corner next to him you can’t help almost seeing what he’s seeing well not seeing ghosts but seeing how he sees the world so that it almost makes it real to you as well just for a moment I think that’s his house below me on the right one of the ones in Tower Street I don’t know which one it almost makes it real to you as well, the ghosts and everything, so that you feel as if it’s you as if it’s me who’s being haunted and not him as if the district and the dead were talking through him to me passing on a message why do I keep feeling as though this place hates me after all I’ve done for it how did he know my dreams that awful cellar and with no way out up on my left the Mayorhold’s knotted guts are growling with nocturnal traffic, with strangled monoxide farts ahead of me down Horsemarket there’s noise one of those howler monkey conversations young blokes who don’t know don’t care how loud they’re talking like they’ve got their headphones lager headphones on I think I’ll take a right down Bath Street cut up through the flats and that way it looks quiet enough no one about how did he know my dreams

and that’s another thing isn’t it if there’s no free will then why has this place got it in for me giving me nightmares giving me Benedict for fuck’s sake Perrit I’ve done nothing wrong you name me one thing I’ve done wrong and if there’s no free will then there’s no wrong no right no sin no virtue nothing everybody’s off the hook away and on the right that place it used to be the drill hall for the Boy’s Brigade I wonder Bath Street’s dead tonight I wonder if there’s still a Boy’s Brigade no but the free will business if nobody’s done anything wrong then why should anyone feel guilty when nobody had a choice and if there’s no free will then we’re all really free and by that I mean free of feeling bad and free of dreams and drunks and madmen you could smell ghosts on his breath we’ve none of us done any wrong and that’s objective fact objective scientific fact except

for it to be objective fact there’d have to be some sort of outside some sort of observer and

there isn’t one there’s only us just us seeing it all subjectively and

so

to us

to us there’s wrong we think we’ve got free will we think we’re doing wrong so the morality I mean that’s just the same free will or not we think we’re doing wrong and we can’t get away from that but that’s worse isn’t it the worst of both worlds no free will but there’s still sin there’s sin to us and we’re the only ones it matters to what’s that the Muslims say it’s something like “a saint may slay a million enemies and be without sin unless he regret but one” it’s that it’s the regret free will or not that doesn’t go away we’re trapped then aren’t we all of us trapped in our lives trapped in all this in Bath Street in the world the Boroughs everything it isn’t fair it’s