Let's abbreviate

Standing on the rocks (cooked fish rocks, striated like bones) and you just can’t say... let’s not make assumptions here, let’s not promise that you’re so far away that I can be alone. Purple shells falling through fingers keeping hands apart do you even realise I and my green glass Buddha are only attached to any of this by a little kite thread... I’m twisting in the wind above us can’t you feel the fabric of my shirt ripple in the breeze?

It’s like there’s this falling through orchestra all around us and it’s all in the light and in the barnacles and the seaweed, it’s in the fisherman, it’s in the dark skinned girl and her raggedy dog, there’s violins in the water and trumpets in the clouds, there’s flutes in the way our toes disappear into the sand. There are cymbals in the way you turn your head.

Let’s drink in time, rhythm to rhyme.

And then I’ll remember the ducks tapping out nom nom nom in the pondweed.

My mom just gave me a sticker. It says ‘California State Parks – Junior Ranger’ and it has a picture of a bear on it. She says I have to go smell our sweet peas.

Orgasmic Pendulum. Lovely.

So, panic time. I have no idea what I’m going to do in California because I’m too interested in what’s going on here – and now I’ve realised I do need to work that out. Then, I need to see everyone to say goodbye – moving date’s getting closer far too quickly. I have to pack – boxes for Exeter, boxes for Newbury, suitcases for California. I have to throw out a load of old stuff. I have to give presents to my old teachers. I have to go rescue all the stuff I left in school. I have to write an exam paper. I have to read a load of books. I have to remember who I am.

29. You're a Genius all the time