Notes — Tara Fraser

Elderly couple laying together with hands entwined in the parklands. I say I think they met later in life but he disagrees, and wants to bet on it. He insists I should be the one to ask them: 'You need to learn to touch the world,' he says.
Flight attendant's skirt split caught on pantyhose
Rock that gives birth
While on the phone speaking in his native tongue he placed a note written on the back of a receipt in front of me. It read: my friend is telling me about her hook-up with a Hollywood actor.
Bending over to catch a glimpse through the window of the red earth below. The woman standing next to me cooed at a baby I could hear but not see.
Seeing a sliver of red sunset on landing
We stood next to each other in front of the bathroom mirror brushing our teeth. 'Well this is surprisingly intimate isn't it?' he laughed. We hadn't spent time together in earnest for eight years. Through a mouth full of toothpaste I told him it felt like being on school camp.
He told me I was walking too fast: 'keeping a leisurely pace is one of the great pleasures of this part of the world.' He spotted a whale in the distance and we walked the coast following its trajectory for an hour.
Slipping wet bathers off under my dress on the side of the road when the cool wind picked up
My body jolted in the early minutes of sleep and I awoke to him laughing at the ferocity with which my leg kicked. I thought of the child next to me on the plane who kicked a custard onto the floor in her sleep, and the man I know who always enters sleep this way.
A man was chastened by a ticket officer on the bus. After their conversation, they sat a seat apart at the back. The man leaned forward and crudely asked 'you're wearing Deep Heat aren't ya? That stuff bloody reeks.'
Picking her up from her yoga class. All the women looked like her, petite frames bundled in jumpers and beanies. He remarked on how small she has become with age.
I have always respected his anachronistic politeness. When I told him I had separated from the person he was enquiring about he gently touched my shoulder and in an earnest tone said 'forgive me, I did not know.'
Young boys fishing off the pier. One cast a line and hooked the jacket he was wearing.
A man walking by pointed to two planes travelling in the same direction on the horizon and told me that they looked as though they were synchronised swimming.
Man sitting in front of me on the bus playing a game on his phone at full volume. He had a distinctive greying pattern at his cowlick, like a giraffe's coat, and a plastic toothpick in his phone case. My mum spoke over the whirring sounds of the game. Pointing down a side street she said 'that's where they found her body, they say she'd been there for years.'
My doctor turned her screen towards me so I could fill in a questionnaire. When she returned it to be facing her the screen went black. As she struggled to get the cord back in she maintained conversation nonchalantly 'un huh, and any feelings of self harm? Hmmm.' She ended the appointment, as she always has, by saying 'take care, pet.'
Up until now she and I had only exchanged polite smiles. Now I nodded as she leaned into the edge of the doorway, searching for the words in English. 'Hilsen...hilsen...' she said, thinking aloud. I was touched by her concern as I suspect she was touched by mine.
A seperate bed was brought for me and placed against the wall. The nurse assured me she had recorded my presence. Should we have to evacuate in an emergency 'you will be accounted for' she said, in what seemed an uncharacteristically grave tone. Her face was distinct to me then but has been subsumed by the many nurses I have spoken to since.
Woman in corridor of hospital dressed all in white: shirt, pants and shoes, though she was not a nurse. When we entered the elevator together she pressed multiple buttons and laughed. Looking at each other in the elevator's mirror she shrugged and told me she can never remember which is correct.
Birthmark on lower back that looks like the Milky Way
'You will soon feel comfortable enough to fill it with your presence too.'
A goodbye hug so tight I could not speak through it
On a video call I could hear a distinct wailing. I asked him the origin of the sound: is that human or animal? He said it was a patient, probably in pain. While on the call a nurse offered him earplugs. Later, another nurse would tell him the patient was not in pain but instead confused.
He is right to tell me I am folding in on myself. He tells me to try to take up space again. He also tells me to make my bed each day and, on waking, say 'what a wonderful day, I'm glad to be alive.'
'Well that's what it needed, a little history.'
Poet of the window
Bruised lip first visible in the harsh overheads of the change room
In the middle of the night I woke to the bedside lamp being switched on. He was standing by the bed with a jar of honey. Gently he said 'your cough is getting worse, you should have some' and held a filled spoon toward me. Either because I had misunderstood, or because his gesture suggested to, I didn't take the spoon from him but opened my mouth just enough to receive the spoonful of honey, and went back to sleep.
She gripped onto my book and spoke wth an intensity I couldn't meet. I sensed a likeness with her that unnerved me.
Gifted a single sunflower from a friend's garden. Before it was carried inside the house she and her son gently placed a bumble bee that had been sleeping at its centre by the doorstep.
He misremembered a line from a television show he watched as a child. 'You can't be everything, you should just be okay.' Later he would send me the line in its original Norwegian and an updated translation, but I told him I liked the first better.
Two women sitting at an opposite table in the cafe. The woman in green stood to take her jacket off, revealing a heavily pregnant belly. She stayed standing and moved her hands across it performatively. The woman in red gasped and put her head in her hands, laughing. It was hard to tell if this was surprise, or joy, or embarrassment.
The appointment was double the length of that assigned and I was touched by the doctor's unexpected thoroughness. He apologetically explained that he was going on leave but knew his replacement well and could attest to him being a kind, gentle man which 'would probably be good' for me. At the appointment's conclusion he added: the world is full of arseholes. We have to try to overcome them without becoming one ourselves.
A new bruise, this time my right earlobe. We discuss its changing hue. When I run into a colleague I cover it with my hair.
Woman carefully peeling half eaten banana with red suede gloves
I fumbled with my laptop and chided myself under my breath. 'Oh my goodness, oh my goodness' she said, repeating my words back to me with a mocking affectation. 'I'm going to start saying that when I speak English.'
Toddler in mother's arms resting her foot on her sister's shoulder like a stirrup
Man seated so close behind me I could feel when he leaned forward to take a sip of coffee
Delivery of firewood by a new friend. We walked up and down the many stone steps carrying the bags from her car to the house, speaking only when we passed one another and were in earshot.
A slow evening walk to buy groceries. Re-routing where I can to keep the full moon in my sights.
Trying to walk and text. Leather jacket autocorrected to leather levity.
She tells me she has lived her life for other people and is insistent I need to find what it is I want, otherwise I will never be happy. She speaks with a new authority, perhaps because we are no longer kin, or because age has given her clarity. 'The rest will follow' she repeats.
Woman gingerly holding onto the arm of her taxi driver while being walked to reception
'It may be possible for the family to fly on the same flight as the deceased if this is their wish.'
'...barren word-mongering.'
He told me what was taking place between us was not intimacy, but the enactment of intimacy.
She sat on the floor holding a glass of red wine with one hand and flipping through the pages of a heavy book with the other. Occasionally she would reach to massage the feet of her son who had stretched out on the sofa behind her. She reminded me of a version of my mother I never met, and I was charged by being in her company.
His first pig sighting
He tells me to look around on his behalf while he waits by the entrance. The retail assistant who wears sequinned devil horns sees me mock a salute and heartily tease 'yes, Sir!' in response.
Woman leaning in so close to read the poster on the community notice board that her nose is touching it
She saw a man knitting on the street and expressed how much she admires men who knit. Someone told her she should go and speak to him. 'Not on a Sunday, maybe if it were a Friday I would' she said.
She described them as having been 'married by the universe' without either of them playing a part.
She greeted me like I might a lost child in a supermarket. I was too fragile to assert myself beyond the space made by this gentle welcome, or the plainly earnest circumstances, so folded to them. When I was leaving another woman was entering and I was careful not to meet her eye, making the entire episode feel clandestine and unreal.
Looking at google maps of their home city. 'This is where I learnt to swim.' 'This is where I lost my virginity.' 'This is where the revolution happened.'
She explained that she senses people visually. She said she can see a distinct rippling beneath a smooth surface that she expects reflects a madness in me that differs from her own.
This is not the first time, the undertow of domesticity is stronger than I am. As are desire and shame. Again, always, pulled between two poles. Unsure where to land on its invisible spectrum when every notch feels as obsequious as the next.
Butter button up
He told me I am trying to live life with both hands tied behind my back.
Dream journal: I have dreamt about him three times this week. First I dreamt that we had sex and when I rolled over to be spooned he spoke into my ear, scolding me: why would you let me do that? Haven't you any shame? The next night I dreamt that he woke me in the middle of the night and again, scolded me: why must you sleep so much? Don't you have things to do? Last night I dreamt that he had been speaking with my new doctor. She relayed his message and then scolded me herself when I grew upset at its contents: why cry over what is already known?
A man who works in a slaughterhouse described his young colleague as having 'a gift for the knife.'
Woman standing in the water with hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer. Young boy curled up in a wooden beach trolley that looked like a crib.
In passing I mentioned an earlier breakup and they both looked confused. One of them stopped me to gesture beyond the door to where my current boyfriend say: 'Not that one?' 'No, not that one' 'Another one?' 'Yes, another one.'
Bite mark and bruise spied on right shoulder
'Have courage' and a kiss on the forehead
'I wasn't thinking about you, I was thinking about small bones in the foot.'
Looking out the window to the lights on the dark fjord with three small guests, children of a friend. I pointed to the boat that had appeared in our view close to the water's edge before realising it was a police boat sweeping the area with torches.
I woke him with my sleep talking. 'What a beautiful child!'
'...was unstable, and made little eye contact. Nicely dressed.'
Phone call with a friend and famed bachelor. I hear a woman's voice appear in the background and he promptly ends the call as he 'needs to make dinner.'
Man with blue jeans too long for him, so that the hem is folded half way up his shins.
The chaplain directs the lively conversation for five minutes and then synthesises what has been said in a single English sentence. She maintains her gaze at me as she does this and I am careful to meet her one eye that is not lazy.
She makes a point of moving her chair back against the window so as not to obstruct my exit 'should I want to leave' but instinctively crosses her legs in my path as she speaks.
I have come to recognise the few male staff before they enter because they wait longer between knocking and opening the door.
I mentioned my dream baby name. He said 'I used to know someone with that name. That's a good Irish name. She died age six in the dentist chair.'
Next-of-kin changing of the guard
Her mother's satin bed coat. She wanted it when pregnant 'because I didn't have her,' but her sister would not relinquish it.
'Occasionally I enjoy your little performance.'
'I don't know why she doesn't like to wear the hat' a mother said of her baby. 'Because she doesn't like to wear the hat' replied the baby's father.
Warm, hard chest like sunbaked rocks after an ocean swim
Dream journal: I dreamt about huge tidal shifts in the fjord. First, the water rose to half way up my bedroom window so I could see marine life through the glass like an aquarium. Later it emptied and I walked on the seabed, stepping on huge, mud covered sea creatures who I would only notice when they blinked or my movements stirred theirs. Then the fjord filled again and I was a stranger on a manned fishing trawler. The crew lowered me into the water in a diving cage.
'Concrete questions are asked in several ways before information emerges.'
'Wait for reality to take the stage.'
Like carrying a blown quail's egg in the coin pocket of your jeans
The prescient feeling? I want to be old and invisible. And I want a glass of wine.
In his dream I opened my mouth and freed a baby bird.
The security guard asks where I have been. The barista says 'my friend, so good to see you again.' The sauna master holds me close. It all feels staged and unreal. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker...
Woman with a perfectly round birthmark on her cheek like the stylised blush of the bisque doll my great aunt made me.
Caught in a storm with a small umbrella between us. We ducked into a restaurant, each with one drenched coat sleeve.
Woman and man walking in parallel ahead of me. One speaking Arabic, the other Danish. I was marvelling at their bilingual dialogue when the woman gained speed and I realised they were both having private phone conversations.
Nurse who smells like my father and sits on the communal sofa in the same way. Left arm resting over the length of the back of the sofa, legs splayed. Implicitly in charge of the remote.
'If I was a writer I would write about this.' 'Anyone can be a writer.' 'Says the writer.' 'Well, except me.'
The first time I saw her in tights she was going to a funeral. She told me I spent the day stroking her legs, transfixed.
Darning together with a hotel sewing kit. A sense of something deferred being fulfilled.
She repeats the word pathetic back to me, catching the t's on the tip of her tongue. They jut out in her otherwise tranquil purr. Pah-theh-tic.
Video call with a friend. He is a medical tourist in Japan and shows me a printout of the tools used in the invasive procedure. He describes how a nurse holds him down throughout. 'Now I think of it, it might actually appeal to you.'
Young man with ringlets like a cherub swinging the prayer beads hanging off his middle finger as he walks
A rare sunny day. A woman walks down the centre of the road towards me pushing something large. When she passes I turn to look and see that it is a hospital gurney. She is taking a bed bound patient for a walk.
Man lying rigidly at the centre of the lawn in his front yard wearing his work uniform
'We have cared for the same woman. That is our connection.'
My wisdom teeth are pushing my already crowded teeth together. I picture my lower bite like a highway pileup.
Two children playing among the bikes in the window display of a sports store. One notices me looking and presses his face against the glass in a grin.
'How's it garn' darlin'?' he said as he gripped my shoulder. So familiar, unfamiliar.
I watched him from behind through the window. His head was jerking as if in conversation, though he wasn't. When he returned inside I told him this and he replied 'oh dear,' knowing too what it meant.
Plaited blood
My late evening, her early morning. She was on a walk and put the phone down for over a minute to free her hands as she readjusted her bags. The sound of waking birds was overwhelming.
Unprompted, he tells me I am a 'landswoman' and it is for that reason that he feels a duty to protect me.
Moving targets
Slender arms adorned with ornate gold jewellery, a forthrightness I had forgotten could emerge between acquaintances. She and her son have the same clear eyes and long eyelashes. My gaze flicked between them over the rare meal served at that table that I had no hand in making. As conversation continued I noticed my body language was entirely turned to her presence and I had to make conscious efforts to include the other diners.
Dream journal: catching a train to the beach. Along the journey we would jump off at one station and run between two train tracks to catch the same train at the next station. When we arrived by the water I changed into swimwear and was visibly pregnant. My companion, an ex-lover, told me that given his medical studies he had known all along. He pointed to an unusual protuberance and said I must be quite far along. He added: 'you really hadn't noticed his heartbeat?'
It occurs to me that in five years I may find it difficult to remember his name, let alone any remarkable features. It is the cruellest thing I could say to him. One, because it strikes at his intrinsic self-concept of inimitability. And two, because it is at least ostensibly true.
Holding hands with a friend across a cafe table. An unspoken affinity made explicit.
I told him he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. 'Not the whole world, just small bits.'
Woman seen through open street facing window leaning forward awkwardly on a couch while watching a movie so as to leave room for a sleeping child secured in a sling on her back.
"Sweet protection" helmet brand
My dentist looks like a blonde Christy Turlington. Hair in a high ponytail, curled at the end and swinging as she walked. A Barbie in white scrubs and healthcare clogs. The consultation was more expensive than I expected and I regretted breaking the heart of my former lover who runs a dental practice. Not all retribution is timely.
Couple in activewear. The short woman jogged next to the tall man who was able to maintain a calm stroll.
As I take the stone steps down to the house we used to share I can just see his curly hair grazing the top of the doorframe, the rest of him obscured by trees that line the path. I'm surprised, I don't recall him being so tall. As I continue walking the doorbell rings out and I realise he is stood on a chair cleaning its mechanism above the door.
He said that he has never seen someone's face change so much across an evening, as though as entirely different person when smiling and when deep in thought. 'I've lost you again.'
Dream journal: trying to impress a haberdasher by chain smoking what looked like plum Sobranie Cocktails but the brand was 'Poirot'
He asked the symbolism of my jewellery. I told him I've worn a silver bangle almost every day since I was a teenager, but it has no meaning per se. 'Something you wear every day that has no meaning? Forgive me, but there's no such thing.'
Woman with a sailor cap on her head and a bucket hat slung behind her neck. She was still wearing her thick black Prada sunglasses even though it was well after dark and she was about to cycle home.
Sitting by a lighthouse for a feast marking the last days of summer. My friend gave a lively demonstration of how to separate and eat a crab, proud to show off the Sørlandet way. Characteristically forgetting my vegetarianism, he put pieces of crab on my plate while he performed and I moved them to the plate of my lover without him noticing.
'A perfect handful'
'Is this song sad? This song is sad, right?'
Returning home I rode my bike in the tight corridor that runs under my building. Focused on one man standing by the door, I didn't see the other behind it and about to exit. As he thrust open the door it hit my bike and knocked me off course. The first man saw it happening and gripped the sleeve of my blouse to stop me from falling. All day I had to put it out of my mind to stop the cold sweat of embarrassment, but now the entire scene is charming to me. I am glad I had been wearing velvet.
Head in lap, fingers run gently through hair. 'In seventh heaven,' but also, 'in the first of Lecoq's Seven States of Tension: The Jellyfish.' A thespian through and through.
Dream journal: watching a livestream of a woman whose boyfriend held a plugged in curling iron above the water while she was having a bath.
His mum came to the front door holding four coat hangers. She was surprised to see me. 'He always needs more coat hangers,' she said, handed them to me, and walked away.
'You're sending a signal to your ex-lovers with that' 'No, I'm sending a signal to my current lovers with that'...of which he is one.
Min lille Tornerose
'Starch her flat'
Two young girls standing on the edge of a skate ramp each holding a scooter. They are goading one another to be the first to go. After some time they both push their scooters off the edge unaccompanied and watch them tumble down, expressionless.
Middle-aged couple in matching black tracksuits and matching white sneakers walking with matching limps.
Early morning hospital appointment. A patient in a second floor room raised his coffee cup in greeting while I was parking my bike.
Dream journal: I got off a bus on the side of a highway at night and walked along the shoulder of the road with the other disembarking passengers. I noticed a road train coming up behind us so tried to direct a young child walking ahead of me further away from the lane by affectionately touching his shoulder. He thought I was trying to steal his backpack and ran straight ahead without looking back until I could no longer see him.
On learning of the planned late night boat trip his father said 'I don't like this...I don't like this at all.' I hadn't spoken to him before so I was surprised when he bypassed his son to speak to me directly. He insisted I keep an eye on both men: the skipper and his son. 'If they're driving too fast you'll tell them to slow down, won't you?' I nodded, knowing I would likely meet my two friends with precisely the same deference.
In turn he chastises me about my diet which is equally wanting. He likes to believe I need him to care for me. 'I'm not a child,' I tell him. 'And yet you need to be treated as one.'
She is a tall ship.
'I want You to be a fembot, a mekanik girl.'
Prominent brow that shuddered with his fervent gaze.
Coffee served in bed. Orange curtains casting red afternoon light. Woven leather slippers and a plaid towelling bathrobe. Bass singing coming from the shower. Laying in the kitchen nook listening to NRK Jazz while the 4PM fry up cooks. 'This is Sunday behaviour, we have no business acting like this on a Wednesday.'
He used my name generously in such a way that I might construe as cunning, if I didn't have the same habit. The few times the phone dropped out he phoned back and said: I'm sorry, I'm so embarrassed.
'This trip feels like our love. I feel like I'm on a trip when I'm with you. Do you feel that?' I shake my head. We are not in love. He registers my indifference and closes his eyes again: 'Well you're always on your own kind of trip...you're never here.'
Early evening, a rocky outcrop overlooking an island. Sat with two friends passing a pair of binoculars between us. One holds a beer in his left hand, a lighter in the right, and a durry in his mouth. It won’t light so I use my hand to block the breeze. With the now lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth he puts the lighter down, picks the binoculars up from his lap, and pretends to look at me through them. ‘Merci Madame’ he says in his crudest French accent.
Location scouting: a bit too Postman Pat
A compact box of Marianne dragées accidentally abandoned somewhere on the journey between Trondheim and Kristiansand.
Three nurses huddled at the edge of the bed. One held his arm as the others looked on and conferred in Norwegian. I stood at the top of the bed and continued to brush his hair. When they left I told him his temperament leant itself to this level of attention. 'It's a symptom of being the eldest child' he said.
Three in the morning making up the spare room bed. The house was disheveled and I couldn’t find matching pillow cases for the pillows. ‘There’s no such thing as matching pillow cases…they never fit, they never really fit!’ my friend shrilled, laughing and stuffing a pillow into a case much too small for it. This is our eternal dynamic, I want precision and he wants efficiency. I chided his slovenly ‘turndown service’ and he sandwiched me in a hug between the two pillows he was holding to quieten my teasing.
Solo canoeist followed with binoculars.
Her father's cream knitted silk scarf, made by one of his sisters for his 21st birthday.
'I wish I could live a life like that, where I could forget my laptop somewhere.'
'You masochist' he said, but I told him I like to look things dead in the eye.
At this detail, a comparatively trivial scene amid the boy's sorry childhood, the man is overcome. His head falls forward and he is weeping. The shift is so sudden it takes me a moment to register it. He is a sentimental man but not given to crying often. 'I'm sorry, I don't know why I remember this and forget so many other things.'
Dream journal: he showed me the acknowledgements of his book where he thanked his wife. This is how I found out he was married.
He said he understood he was trying to land a salmon. 'You shouldn't reel when the fish is fighting.'
Affairs of the hearth
Sitting in a bar with a new acquaintance. Unprompted, and quite off topic, she told me she had just broken up with her partner. When I offered my condolences she said she didn't want to talk about it on a night out because it makes her sad. Later I asked our mutual friend about them and he said they had broken up at least a year ago.
He is striking when he walks around naked. Tall, tanned, and lean. A confidence that threatens caricature. He draped my white t-shirt over his erect cock to walk through the shared kitchen.
I beat him back to the derelict top floor apartment we were renting in the heart of the tourist district. Knowing he wouldn't be far behind me, I left the front door unlocked. When he returned he stopped in the doorframe of the room where I was laying and admonished me for this recklessness: 'Don't you realise anyone could come in?' 'What a shame you're so insistent to tell me what to do everywhere but in the bedroom.' Eventually this would be our undoing.
Sitting on a couch, both in bathrobes. For once I am honest and my heart pounds with the extraordinary relief of speaking in retrospect. He said he could feel my entire body shaking. I told him I didn't know if my body was protesting vulnerability or simply drinking coffee on an empty stomach.
I turned down a quiet street and jumped off my bike to make the call. Stood on the side of the road holding my bike, we spoke for a few minutes. 'Oh, I see you' he said. He had turned onto the same street from the other direction and was walking towards me.
Misread ‘like having boned a pillow’ as ‘like having a boned pillow’
He discussed me with a mutual friend. ‘We both have no idea how you spend your days, no idea what you do.’
He told me about when his daughter first recognised her mortality. It was a preoccupation for many months. ‘Of course she was afraid, and she was afraid of losing…what if you are gone tomorrow?'
A woman in an angel costume hoisting up her white gown to retrieve her phone from her jeans pocket underneath.
He told me that everyone has a great internal dilemma that dominates their life. Mine, he thinks, is that I love men but I will never forgive them. Here he refers to men as a sex, not as individuals.
Dream journal: swimming laps in the shallows of the ocean while an ex-lover watched from the sand. When I returned to her she gave me a small sculpture of my face she made from pebbles and told me she would always love me.
Wake deeply moved by a dream where I again worked with young children. On a walk shortly after, a child pokes their fingers through the fence of a kindergarten at me. I wave and they turn away.
'I will take care of you and take the decisions from now on'
‘As I grew up in the marine life tradition…’
Dream journal: '...hair like a storm, but she's still my girl'
'Masochists can't hear that they're loved too much...' A lot of his sentences are like this, they can be read either way. But I know what he means.
We tried to share the hospital cot but I couldn't sleep. In the early hours of the morning I gave in. I wrote a note and placed it where he would see it when he woke up. 'My spirit for romance is strong but I couldn't catch a wink - forgive me?'
'Are you going to join my church?' 'I'm the sacrificial lamb, aren't I?'
I tried to explain that I needed to pause until my mind and body were united again, as if through a stereoscope.
Dream journal: standing on a stage filling a glass jar with Venus flytraps
I phoned him to read an old text. It was meant to be a bedtime story but after it concluded he wanted to discuss it. He said the story could be about a father and daughter, but it could also be about two lovers. He is not sure which lens to view it through because 'both sides in me are very strong...it is moving and exciting, both at the same time.'
He told me that after we parted ways he realised he had just encountered a version of me that he had forgotten existed, one with energy and spirit.
Beautiful stretch marks on lower back revealed when she turned to undress to try on the top she is crocheting.
Holding his hand on a difficult anniversary. As if outside myself I saw the distinct comfort of a woman's care.
Hair pulled taut down my back so I could only see the plaster moulding of his high ceilings.
He said he leant against the stove but liked the welt it left.
Man whose ear has a right angle
Middle-aged man in bright red beanie holding the hand of an elderly woman I presume to be his mother
An uncouth sext sent because I felt lonely. He didn't reply to the content of the message and instead just replied: you are here now.
They said three years was too short a time to lose one's accent.
A song sharing the name of one of his ex-lovers played. When it ended he said 'you know she's pregnant now?' 'Everyone's pregnant now.'
Dream journal: escorted off a stagecoach and instructed to ride the horse as punishment
Openly weeping walking along the street. Stopped by two American missionaries who asked me the same question they ask everyone: what do I think happens after we die? When I said 'nothing' they asked if I hoped for something else. 'No, I really hope this is it.'
Phone call with once familiar shouting in the background. A realisation that I was audibly shaken and she was not.
'I'm an empath that's for sure, I'm not sure that you are. I don't think so.'
'Our time together coincided with these exceptional low tide marks.'
Man puts a book down at the library checkout and pulls a comb from his pocket to neaten his sparse, white hair. Then he pulls a handkerchief from the same pocket and blows his nose. There is a person stood behind him but he is in no rush.
Dream journal: peeling a mandarin in a perfect spiral
Walking around coatless and shoeless at airport security feels like being tarred and feathered
Grecian nose and heavily flagged book
I met someone from my home city and she offered to buy me a drink. I said no thank you and she said 'don't worry I make a lot of money.' I told her I don't drink and she said 'oh you're one of those.'
He asked if I had lightened my hair and I recognised it as an attempt to declare he recalled having met before, and perhaps progress a sense of closeness. I don't mind seeing the mechanics of intimacy like this, I do it too. 'No, and I would say it's from the sun but it can't be that' I replied.
'Aren't you sick of finding yourself exactly where people need you, when they need you?' He shrugged and said 'it's just the way it is.'
'Until tomorrow, my Moonlight'
I asked him to retrieve something I left at his workplace. He sent me a photo of a coffee cup with a bright red lipstick stain on the rim and asked 'is this yours too?' A strange echo of a time when my forgotten, lipstick stained cups littered our house and he would collect and wash them begrudgingly, stood at the sink with his legs wide apart so as not to stoop.
By chance I spoke to him on his birthday. He had just been speaking to his mother who recounted the story of his birth. He was born on the first day of snow that year. The next day, to return home, she shared a car with another new mother who happened to live nearby. They were in a car accident that could have killed them all.
An impenetrable coolness that belies what he tells me. When the mail arrived I messaged him: I love that you thought of me. 'It was too close' he said, referring to the book's resonance with my practice. 'Don't undercut it' I replied promptly and sharply.
'I was walking around like a wounded cowboy from the south'
His uncle has dementia and can't read the newspaper anymore but is sometimes seen reading the Yellow Pages.
A woman waiting to board the delayed flight nibbles the ear of her companion affectionately.
He had a pronounced manner of active listening that punctuated the phone call pleasantly and dulled some of the tension. ‘Hmmah’… ’Oh yes I see…hmmmmah’…’Uh huh, uh huh, hmmah.’ Much of our conversation was him reading from a report from a year ago and asking: is this still the case? And this? And this? No, I am not with him anymore. No, I no longer live there. Yes, I am still depressed…but not that depressed.
A skydiver who is afraid of heights
Dream journal: we carried a mattress through a canefield until we came to a lone tent. Once inside the door of the tent the mattress fit perfectly. It was understood we would sleep there together that evening, the night before her wedding.
Conscious of my appearance when they return home long after midnight. Feeling wifely and chaste. Sensations misplaced.
I rode to the old bridge as if floating.
'You wouldn't let me give up.'
'I was thinking the table under the snout of the pig'
I offered to help a woman use the public printer I had just struggled to figure out before realising my limited language would probably make it more difficult for her than if I hadn’t intervened. When we managed to print what she needed we clasped hands awkwardly, an instinctive but excessive sign of gratitude for one another’s patience.
He deferred our phone call again. I asked him to at least reassure me about the tenor of the conversation and he said he couldn’t. ‘I’m not like that, I’m strict.’ I don’t know when we are role playing and when we are not.
I realise that in the time since disconnecting some years ago we both faced private catastrophe at precisely the same moment and thus find ourselves reconnecting as wholly changed people, but bonded more than we may have been had we ever allowed things to crest.
He sent me a photo of himself with a young bespectacled women leaning on him, her eyes closed. I thought he had sent it by mistake but he explained it is his niece. ‘She is down and out’ so he is taking care of her. ‘Much is done just by being there.’