two become one

Most of my daydreams contain a grain of truth, nestled alongside a seed of doubt.

Sunday morning, a call from the middle of the Adriatic.  My parents, a struggle to interpret at the best of times, now victims of telephonic time slip.  Our words bouncing there and back via Norway.  The last scrap of sense surrendered - they answer my questions before I’ve asked them.

And later, from the foot of the mighty mountains he calls, seducing me with details of snow irrigation and new world wines of cash machines and high altitude climbs.  And when we say goodbye I ask him to give my regards to the condors.

long distance daydream

My worry takes the form of a daydream.  I see him weaving through a virtual city, rumpled print-outs creased in his hand.  Sweat making maps on his back, as the capital struggles to welcome him.  His bag dragging lower with every corner turned - the rattle of the travelling pharmacy packed within.  Something for pain, for digestion, for sleep or it’s lack, something for blisters.  But nothing for getting lost.  

And all the while the shadow of the angel moves with him.  She’s lost her way too.  Cast herself further south than she ever intended.  Blown down on a fair wind, with the litter gathered in doorways.  Waving good-morning in coffee bars and goodnight in strip clubs.  The vowels still muddle in my mouth and I wake wondering how many South American countries I can name with one breath.

the sound and the fury

They begin an hour after darkness descends.  Only sounds to start with.  Most seem to come from behind me, but some feel deep, too deep, like they are exploding beneath my feet.  Each sounds subtly different. Some remind me of my father breaking thick cardboard boxes apart across his raised knee.  Some sound like my hard drive searching for a file, or a driver missing a gear.  

fireworks whistle

and whine - last week’s ghosts

still lost and roaming

I don’t jump until the first flash.  Twenty to six and vivid pink thrown against my eyes.  Another reflects in the gloss painted parts of this room - as the door, the frame and the skirting boards white wink at me.  I feel like the world has turned upside down and someone is hurling light beakers onto the black floor.  Clocks of mercury shatter seconds before I hear the crash.

through fireworks

a shout - urgent,

excited or angry

And for an hour or two these annual effects punctuate my reading - dropping exclamation marks into an otherwise calm paragraph.  I am centrally heated but surrounded by war cries and danger and the smell of regret.

re-inventing the smile

He tells me the story of the family photo.  All the tricks of the trade that bring four generations together in one ten by eight inch space.  United forever in two dimensions.  Some focused, some less so.  Some smile in today’s technicolor, while others grin through a 1970’s sheen.  The living and the dead and those still hanging somewhere in between.  Ghosts with shared chromosomes.  A new hierarchy - centre stage claimed by those who have spread the gene pool farthest and widest.  And the three extra pounds to grease the palm of the virtual wizard who can remove the scar from her face.  The fun we had with those face paints, pulled from a cracker - all gathered together some thirty Christmases ago.

three's a crowd

[it seems I missed the third anniversary of this blog - sometimes its hard to believe that I’m still finding things to say that people actually want to read - I’ve got a few bits ready to go that are just lacking a picture, but in the meantime three observations from recent days]

Royal Road, relatively innocent at any other time, suddenly shifts pitch to a threatening tone.  A man runs round the corner, thin arms gangly triangles at his sides.  Fumbles mobile to his ear, doesn’t speak, only breathes.  He looks at us.  We look at him.  Try to communicate that we have seen him but would be willing to forget him too if he prefers.  A hasty diagonal takes him across the road where he joins a gender vague friend on a corner wall.  Without greeting or goodbye the friend stands and walks away.  And a few yards further along three men get into a topless car the colour of long stewed tea.  All events apparently unrelated but feeling somehow significant, somehow weighty with the flavour of danger.

- - - - - 

Our old knives have marks bitten deep into their plastic handles, paler blue breaking through.  Like they’ve been fighting in the dark, chewing at each other with serrated silver teeth.  Their knife nature unstoppable even when the kitchen drawer is closed.

- - - - - 

A crow chases a bread crust down a roof.  It bounces tile to tile and he follows.  Black after white across the red.  Like a strangely slanted game of chess.

where theres a will

Cocooned in faded brown sleeves.  She looks down at her arms, spindled and bent and moving very little, and wonders if she could pass for a tree.  If she stood still in the park would people overlook her.  Would the little white dog cock its leg in her direction.  Would that girl with the faraway smile come and sit beneath her as she ties and unties knots in that piece of blue string she always carries.  She looks at that string like most girls look at a best friend - only more unique, more treasured.  Not like something she’ll have lost and forgotten by the time she’s wearing faded brown sleeves.

the calm before the storm

Two collared doves rest.  One on the arm, one on the back of the flaking bench.  Like two balls of pale clay they seem to melt a little in the late afternoon sun.  They retract their legs and lower slowly - wrapping wood in soft balled feather.  Their white rimmed eyes blink slower blinks, their beaks mutter soundlessly.  The privilege of watching animals sleep.

A small cyclone of black fur panic.  A cat trapped in our conservatory.  It throws itself to the four corners trying to find escape.  Windows appear the correct shape but don’t work the same in this house.  They are closed.  A double glazed cage surrounds cat and drives it crazy.  Clinging with front paws and climbing claws cat abandons floor and heads higher.  Shimmies sideways along the top of the door - a four legged spider.  Black face gets lightly draped in cobwebs.  Foolish home-owner has now noticed cat and is beckoning and rubbing empty fingers together and repeating clickety sounds of ‘kittykittykitty’.  Foolish person disappears and reappears outside looking in at cat.  Person is where cat wants to be.  Cat investigates, tentatively exits conservatory, through kitchen, through hall where daylight smell gets stronger, into lounge where fool is pointing at open doorway.  Cat pauses then exits as if rebounding on invisible elastic.  A shriek of teeth and feet across the lawn, flying over the low wall without the slightest jump, up the tree, barely shifting the leaves.  And gone.

[It felt improper to photograph the doves as they slept, but I took the above with their permission, moments after they awoke.  The cat declined the offer to pose for me.]

our favourite stranger, revisited

Brimful of love with endless time on his hands he ponders mornings and tilts his head to better view an afternoon. He makes friends with all the little things most of us overlook.  Greets fruit and vegetables like he’s known them all his life and is relieved to see holes in their travelling bags and boxes through which to enjoy the view.  And he mourns every empty shell he finds - already missing the departed resident he never got to meet.

the fall

She brings home a handful of windfalls. Smaller than shop bought apples but far more sincere. Their skins a darker green - almost mossy, almost velvet. If apples were thunderclouds they would be this green. If apples were the eyes of a girl who never forgives ...

She slices them into uneven fans and scatters them on a square white dish. They are a funny colour and I eye her offering with a little suspicion. They look more like pieces of potato. But they taste like the summer that never arrived. Like listening to stories while sat on heaps of your mother’s skirt under the tree we never grew.

I bite into their uneven landings - the flavour of a tumble that follows a long cling. I taste their bruises and learn that sometimes bruises taste good.

the urban jungle

In the news this week - a lion on the loose in Belfast, in a park, near the zoo - where all lions counted and accounted for - all cages closed and locked - yet enough sightings for police to advise to approach with caution.

The thought lion. The one that got away. The one on the tip of your tongue. The eternal complaint, the silent roar the caged ones never make. The dream lion they send out to roam on their behalf. Conjured from sand and dropped lolly sticks. Brought to life by midnight incantations breathed through soft whiskered lips under Irish skies where anything is possible. A new king of Ireland with a leafy crown - sent to battle for sun and savannah and meals to eat on the go. Treading grass carpets under blue sky roofs - the lion that comes and goes while your eyes are closed. Golden shadows, wild wishes, sun ghosts. A myth to keep you on your toes.

Postscript - another false alarm - the big cat turned out to be a big dog, sandy coloured but otherwise harmless.

Cu & Ocimum basilicum

Two observations, from either end of an otherwise unremarkable day -

I am washing up. My fingers absorb the heat until they translate the feeling to one of coldness. I’ll never understand the mystery of nerves. I hear the rain growing more committed against the plastic roof. And then another sound, a different tinkle, more metallic, more tuneful. In another room she is counting coppers to give to the birds.

I hear her chopping basil and trying not to cry. There will be tears lying in wait behind her eyes. Her throat will catch, words are hooked there. Any that escape will waver a little in the air as if released from underwater. And from now when I smell basil, metallic and fresh, I will remember these words, both the said and the unsaid.

feng shui for the paranoid

a single unmade bed. in the corner of a room. always a corner. important to limit the ways they can come at you. a couple of inches out from the wall. you never know what could be crawling there. sheets only in white or mixed-wash grey. nothing too bold to stimulate vivid dreams. only checks or stripes on blankets or duvets. never spots or swirls. nothing to remind you of her.

a broken rainbow

[click to view detail]

it's the end of the world...

…as I know it. It’s three minutes of footsteps laid on wood. It’s metal suspended and sending me out over the sand, over the water, away from the land.

A place where old women slump, deckchairs moulding their spines into perfect curves. Heads eaten by floppy cloth sunhats. Arms at rest on polyester laps. Each a mess of veins, a blue knotted net thrown over their bones to stop them from blowing away.

A place where men line the pier sides. Arms crossed on the top bar of the railings. Never content to sit, they always pace or stand or lean. Silent and staring down to the water below. So blue today. Parallel bars of colour that deepen as they leave the sand behind.

And down below gulls dot the border water. Walking in and out of the fluffy ripples. Pecking and poking. And almost looking like they might grab the edge with their beaks and with a little teamwork fight the tide and drag the blue back up the beach.

all in all

(further impressions of my Friday night friend)

She loved men as if they were walls. Dressed in shades of height and presence, when they dreamed they dreamed of solidity and dimension. They promised welcome containment - offered boundaries to stop her drifting apart and away. She’d tried ones made of glass in the past but they always broke too soon. The best ones cast shade and gave her something to lean against. Always welcome to someone so prone to sunburn. Their mood could turn unstable with little warning but their conversation was something to graze her knuckles or her forehead against if the mood took her. The ones she fell for were usually well built and fairly logical - made up of little repetitive parts that she could count and measure, take apart and put back together at her leisure. Which was something, and better than nothing.

gathering dust

Just for one day I scare the skeletons away and reclaim the cupboards from no-mans-land. I sort through accumulated books and letters and cards. I dust off forgotten histories and polish flat packed promises.

I find his picture folded into a secret six - still tacky at the corners from where it used to cling to my wall. And I’ll never not be surprised at how quickly newspaper grows yellow and brittle with so little age. And on a paperback of the best known road trip I find a tea ring. The caffeine fingerprint of someone happy to deface. And then that battered Salinger - the one she left behind amid the heap of less obvious mess. Lost in her secretary chic and Friday night tangles, I wonder if she ever missed it?

I find French greetings and New York incoming flight numbers. Heavy goodbyes and fading Valentines. I read indistinct sentiment laid in bold black ink in a handwriting that used to be more familiar than my own. I discover teenage poems written ten years too late on airmail paper as if the words themselves carried too little weight. And a long gone song riddled with spelling mistakes and that is the least of its crimes.

just jack

Jack came out of the box. He cursed in fluent Russian and bit me on the nose. He said he is claustrophobic, asthmatic and scared of the dark. All of which I should have known. He said he’ll never forgive me. Swore he’d never let me go. Threatened to tie me up with second-hand parcel string. Stick on an obsolete stamp. And post me to a country that no longer exits.

when

When we’re aged angels. With these words written in the creases of our well-read faces. When our hair has fallen through too many shades of autumn and lies heaped beneath us, a knotted nest for our belated bones. When our gaze has cracked like china teacup sheen and all we see is sepia dreams. Of crosswords and washing machines. Then and only then.

baggage control

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see. My eyes chipped, a handful of overplayed marbles. My lips ragged from caging criticism. My brows tangled, a magic forest keeping the princess in her tower. My upwardly mobile nose, ever sniffing for the next suspicion. I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see. I don’t know you, do you know me?

A Case of Lost Property

I forgot to pick up my smile. I’d taken it off when I sat down to rest. I had a lot on my mind, if not on my face. It was starting to rain. I’d lost my shopping list, or it had lost me. Someone found the smile under the bench. A dog walking an old man. He handed it in to the police station. They noted it looked well used and a little worn. I never claimed it.

my favourite things

Repetition comforts me. It always has. As a child I would gain hours of pleasure sorting beads or Lego bricks into piles according to colour and type. Then mixing them up and starting again. Far more fun than anything I might actually make from them. I’m the same now I’m nearly grown up. I think about some things over and over again. There are certain memory lanes that I never tire of visiting. And there are certain themes that reappear regularly in my writing. Because each time, I think I’ve spotted a new angle, a slant to the light that will throw sharper shadows and show me something I missed before.

After the rain I was pleased to see that our garden had made the most of the downpour. Each leaf had sorted the raindrops in its own unique way. Each greened backdrop displayed a different raindrop style. The ravenous arum encouraging every drop to slide toward its centre taking our gaze with it. The vibrant little fir who set up ladders for playful raindrops to tumble down. The nurturing sedum, cupping her hands to gather remote drops into pure glass chunks. And not forgetting the dark velvet garrya letting the shyest raindrops sit quiet in the shade.