Notes — Tara Fraser

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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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 them 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.
She 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
'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 on 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