Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
Another huge and weighty package of books came in the post from the Library. What a joy it is to receive them. I think I’ve always felt this way about books, and indeed, reading, though I’ve never articulated it to myself. As a child borrowed books from the public library were a source of delight and comfort, as were my school ones. And now these academic tomes, mostly about drawing as they are, fill me up. How blessed I am.
He didn’t mean to, but the clattering noises he was making at 10.45pm last night woke me. It broke my sleep, which unusually might have be an uninterrupted one. I will never know. I woke up dislodged, cross even. I didn’t want to walk, to do the usual morning chores. I must rally. It is nothing compared to all the chaos of lives out there.
He took them away. I expect to hear the noise of them but it has gone. The silence is beautiful, though not complete, for now I can hear the tick of my clocks.
Can I demand it? Can I insist that he takes them away? I want quiet. Peace. Those machines are demanding, my heart beats faster when they are on. Shall I trip their switches? I feel like it. Can I insist that he takes them away?
I have to believe in it. No, I do. I do believe whether I feel compelled to or not. I trust in it, even when all is bleak, as it so often is. Like now. Goodness will come through and the good will survive and shine all that they have on the rest of us. Tyrants will not be rewarded. It cannot be so in a just world. Peace will come. Let it be fair, kind and lasting.
It was the tiniest hole, made by the rubbing of a water pipe from the back of the washing machine against the chipboard circle it feeds through. Is it anyone’s fault? Possibly. So much damage, not just in this flat but several below. I am sorry for us and for them. The machines blast away trying to dry it all out. They stole my sleep and my equanimity. I need to be steady now. Calm down, work and get my body out of its flight mode. All will be well. One day I will see it as a gift.
It’s been remiss of late. A tawdry showing. Sometimes it has come out in the late afternoon but always as a milky, half-hearted attempt. I know it is nothing. In the whole scheme of horrors that are currently being perpetrated, it is nothing. But I am lifted by sunshine. Can it come, soon?
I found out yesterday that I have to return nineteen books to the library. Nineteen, of the, what have become precious, tomes that currently fill my bookshelves. It threw me completely. But there is nothing for it but to return them and hope, possibly beyond hope, that they will let me renew them and carry them all the way (200 miles or so) home.
We were in a coffee shop. He’d gone off to collect his coffee from the counter and on his return to the table he was scowling. He’s just farted, he said, inclining his head towards the man who was sitting behind him, a really loud one, I just heard it. He also told me how the same man had stared at him really aggressively, and how he’d stared back. Perhaps he may not be well, I said, remembering how the man’s wife had, on leaving to go to the toilet, told him what she was going to do in a slow, laboured way. Yes, maybe you are right, he said. Perhaps he has dementia. We both watched him then, when he and his wife rose to leave. He looked far away, unresponsive, lost. Poor love.
It was only a dream. We were on a bus, he and I and I lost him. He must’ve got off somewhere, I remember thinking. I wasn’t concerned. Perhaps I should’ve been. Then a man telephoned me. I don’t remember answering my phone, just hearing his voice. He’s had a stroke, he said, and there can’t be any rules any more. The rules have to stop. He sounded angry with me, as if he held me responsible for his condition. Was I? He put him on the phone. I had fun on the bus, he said.