There is always too much, those ten thousand things to which the Buddhists refer. Sometimes I think they will drown me. Most can wait, few are urgent so I can only surmise that it is my obsessive need to impose order, to put things away, neatly in order. And all the time I know that there is real chaos out there, real calamity, real catastrophe, real misery. The word ‘depravity’ was there on the front page of the online paper he was reading at breakfast. I don’t want to know more, that word says enough. Acts of depravity perpetrated in the name of war, of egotism, of braggadocio. And then there are those captured humanitarian workers accused of spying. I know as much as I can bear to know. Let there be an end to it. For them. Soon. Please.
When I’m walking in the night I sometimes catch traces of smells, odours that people have left behind. This morning it was that bubble gum sort of smell, sweet and cloying, from a vape cigarette. It was lingering outside the glass block of flats opposite the M&S and Tesco depot. I also caught a whiff of cheap body spray, male, it could have been Lynx. It makes my nose wrinkle. That was on South Marine just beyond the house where the man stands outside to smoke and read his phone at 4 am.
It was a bulletin on the News. A woman had been interviewed in Ukraine. And elderly woman by the sounds of it. She’d been in her basement ever since the war began. Holed in for all that time and yet she was still positive. It will end, she said.
They said yes. I am to have it (with small provisos, naturally). It hasn’t sunk in yet, I’ve a head full of writing that must be made. It will. Eventually. He’s as pleased as punch.
He’d gone in to check on her just before lunch and found her still in bed, sleeping. Is she breathing? I asked. I’ll just go and check. Yes, he said, calling up from the stairwell, she is. When he checked on her again at just before three she was still in bed. He called her son. Yes, he said, it used to unnerve me too when I visited.
She sleeps a lot, apparently. And why not, she is over a hundred. She sleeps so trustingly, never locking her door so people, such as him and the meals on wheels and D. her help can come and go as they please. Though, of course it isn’t quite like that, they come merely to see and attend to her. She doesn’t ask much. And that sleep. I wonder about it. How will I feel if I get to her age, will I succumb to such deep, restful surrendering? And without a fight?
I struggled to remember my dream and why it had unsettled me so. And then it came, that image of the bird, wounded. A woman, a mother had hit out at it because it had nipped at her grown son. I thought it had died but I saw it’s chest heaving up and down though its feet had been broken off. Just its feathered legs remained, black as a mole’s velvet. I knew she usually cared for birds but this son of hers meant more.
I didn’t tell you about the two cyclists we saw on our return from Newtown last week, did I? I noticed the one behind first because there were two crutches strapped to his back. He and his friend we motoring along. And then he overtook. And we overtook him and then it became clear. His right leg was missing. There was just a gap and his shorts on that side flapped with the emptiness of it. But he was cycling and fast. He raced along, his left leg pedalling like billy-o. We were dumbfounded. How does he maintain his balance? I asked. We were both silenced by his courage, his energy, his determination. And he was so young, twenty or maybe twenty two, three. Incredible. A marvel.
And then there was the cat this morning. A black cat, young with a white mark under her chin. She ran across the road and I could see the approach of a taxi. Then seeing me she became spooked and dashed back across the road. No! I shouted. But the taxi slowed and swerved and just missed her. Is it six or seven lives that cats have? I asked him at breakfast after recounting what I’d seen. Nine, he said, nine.
It’s the Easter holidays and I’ve been watching grandparents interacting with their grandchildren during our various coffee shop and café visits while I practice my drawing. It has been an interesting study. Some are clearly at ease with the relationship, others not so. The most fascinating examples have been in M&S. Perhaps this is evidence of a particular place or site reflecting the demographic who choose it. It was an altogether stiffer affair, like the man sitting in the little alcove with his grandson. ‘You talk funny,’ said the little boy. The grandfather had been eating a dry pretzel and complaining about it’s saltiness then it’s blandness. I don’t like the white bits, he said. They’re salt, said the boy. They were a discordant pair. The man was so offhand, and mostly distracted by his iPad which he had propped up on the table in front of him. There was another grandfather at a more central table that I also began to draw (I’d moved tables by then for a better view). He too was distracted by technology, though he did try to engage his grandson in it. He spoke in Welsh. The boy was fidgety and squirmed about on his seat, eating a scone and sucking a drink through a straw. He leaned into his grandfather, clearly fond. And even when he pressed the box containing the drink so that the liquid shot up in a fountain and sprayed all over his grandfather’s food, tray and phone, the old man kept calm and remonstrated with him in a measured, placatory way. The generational gap in both cases was a chasm.
I think of them all, those women that are near, far or in my thoughts. They are mostly older than me, and in better financial circumstances. They have led full lives, raised families and some have had a professional life too. Some are a little ill, or infirm or have poor eyesight and hearing. Their lives are slower now. They have little they must do, or, I suspect, want to do. Some, I know, do a little of sitting. Some sleep in the afternoons. Some are tired. Some not so. I think about them and what it must be like to take that rest, to accept that state of having not very much to do and relishing it.
Downstairs she watches TV. She told him that Pointless is her favourite now that Eggheads and University Challenge is ‘off’. I even got a ‘pointless’ the other day, she told him. Pleased as punch no doubt. Her’s, out of all of them, is a unique case. She is 103. Her days are un-prescribed. There is nothing she must do for she is on borrowed time. So why not? Why not do fuck all?
Ukraine darkens our thoughts, always. I hold my breath for them in that steel plant. And yet, there is still joy. Handel can do it with his Sarabande. Upstairs I dance for the joy of it.
Ukraine’s President said that people are returning home, that he said he’d seen the traffic jams. And yet the news this morning tells Russia’s increased bombardment. They are so brave, those remainers and those now returning. I humbled by their courage.
As I am by his. He too returned, a different man, a transcendent man. Leaving us behind.
He mentioned that he’d said hello to him. I’d also seen him a couple of times from our upstairs window. He stands outside, or sits on the railing, smoking and reading his phone. A young man with a lean body and expensive trainers. Yesterday I watched as a woman drove up to the bottom of the stairs and opened the car door to let two children out. A girl and a boy, they both hurtled up the stairs, the girl lagging a little behind, being younger. They obviously knew where they were going. He waited on the step (having come out to meet them), not saying much to the woman before she got back into the car and drove away. He watched after the car for what must only have been a moment and then turned towards his flat and his children.
I dreamt I was looking at my lower legs which were very hairy. I remember thinking in my dream that I’d only just shaved them. I remembered this as I sat in the bath, thinking my legs never get that hairy. Does the growth of hair in a dream symbolise strength?
I wake with heartburn these mornings. Sometimes it comes in the night too. It’s just under the ribs. I try to endure it. And mostly I do. Those sweets he offers me are full of crap no doubt but sometimes I succumb, not that they do much good, but there is comfort in taking something, anything. Sometimes.
I remembered part of my dream about ten minutes after I woke. (I think there is moon stuff going on, it looked full to me when I looked out at it from my studio window at 2 am, so my dreams are bound to be vivid.) It featured a man I know from Norway, of whom I am fond. He was getting alternative treatment for a painful shoulder and back. His therapist spoke to me about him, not endeavouring to mask her obvious apathy towards him, and to him I noticed and remembered later. She told me how he could heal himself and showed me some drawings she wanted me to give him. One was of a cruel, despot and the other was a vision of happiness. They were like my drawings, quite dark and heavily worked. She wanted me to show them to him on her behalf. I did. Or at least I managed to show him the first. And he knew his name when I did not. Then he gave me a sweet, which he put in my mouth and said he’d return to see the other (or have me explain it to him). And then, inevitably, I woke up. The significance of all of this is clear to me. Is it to you?
I walked this morning hoping for moonlight but it had floated off behind a cloud. I walked with music in my ears so that I might not focus so heavily on my iron legs and shallow breath. It helps. And sometimes I sing. Who cares, there is no one about, except a girl who stops to stare at me, swerves a bit and then takes another drink out of bottle and moves on, up the hill. Returning home and climbing the gravelly path the light from my torch found a tiny snail making its was across the stones and leaving a minute trail of dotted lines. And then there was a spider scurrying off down past me. The air was warm, almost breathless.
And now I must write. And to celebrate I will make a pot of tea, Lapsang Souchong to perfume the room. So breathe, relax and all will be well.
