Category: Writings

I’ve broken my fast. My mouth is uncertain about the explosion of tastes that I have inflicted on it this morning. Take it easy, he says at breakfast. And I am doing so, but I want to taste fruit again, and nuts and yoghurt. They are unfamiliar to my tongue, sharp at times and my stomach is threatened by the acidic-ness of them. I will adapt. Allow it. And begin to enjoy it, them, again. But I haven’t forgotten those who have nothing. He says that he will allow basic food to get through. Let it be now. Please.

How are they managing? Journalists write of no aid being allowed through. What is the world doing? Has it gone on so long that we no longer hear their cries for help? Let there be some breakthrough, not soon but now. Please.

Rice and more rice. It is food. And I am grateful for that, but the sameness of it soon begins to pall. My withdrawal symptoms from no tea yesterday have been mildly discomforting but not impossible to bear. And I am feeling better inside. Another two days to go. I think.

I told him about the man I saw in Boston airport. The man who I’d seen earlier working in the stationers in the concourse, and was then on his lunch break. A lunch, that is, which consisted of white rice, that he was eating out of a tupperware container. I took it as a symbol of poverty, that that was all there was. Perhaps I was wrong to that. Possibly he liked rice and was content. He appeared to eat it with gusto. I too am to eat rice for the meantime. I like it too. Though brown not white. But while I stay the fast? I don’t know. I will try.

I am not well. Not ill but not well. I haven’t been since our return from Yorkshire. I don’t know why. Is it stress? What is my body rejecting, not wanting? What am I supposed to learn from this? It is a mystery. I cannot find my wisdom about this.

I thought of them as I ate. I have food, too much sometimes, and they don’t. I fantasised about sending what I had in the post to them. But it would be a mere drop in an emptied out ocean of need. I can only think, wish and pray that succour, safety and peace will be theirs soon. Please.

He began to read a sentence of an article from The Guardian, saying that the writer hadn’t eaten for over 30 hours. There’s a blockade, nothing, no food, aid, medical supplies are being let in. They are being starved. Can nothing be done to prevent what amounts to genocide? We are all culpable. If nothing is done their blood is on our hands. Help us to act.

It was a dream about another. She’s the manager of a coffee shop chain in town that I used to frequent regularly to practice my drawing skills. I don’t have the time that I did then, and rarely go in there now. I was outside this coffee shop, though it was bigger and detached from the other buildings in the street. In fact I could walk around its whole circumference, which is what I did. The windows and doors were open wide. It was a hot day. I could see her through the windows working being the counter. She’d done something, achieved something, though I couldn’t remember what. And I thought, as I watched her, that I must go in and congratulate her. But I had things to do and didn’t really have time to stop. I will do it later, I thought. And then the alarm woke me, leaving me with a sense of something being incomplete. Was that dream really about me?

I’m not tolerant of them, particularly with the ones that he emits. He says he can’t help it and I do believe him but moan nevertheless. It is too much for my nose, it wants sweetness not rancid, fetidness. We manage them, most of the time, these small things, these minor inconveniences. It’s the real stuff of marriage, after all, the rest is flim flam.

I want time. I want time in which to tidy. To tidy my life away in drawers. I crave an order that I don’t seem to be able to impose. I wish to go through every drawer, give away what I no longer need and neaten each and every object. But there is no time in which to do this. Work must take priority, even though to do this tidying would make me feel lighter. I know this. One day, eh?