ellen bell

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?

It was a crossword clue. It asked for the name of a Fairport Convention song. This, I believe, was its title. And I am, almost all of the time, even with this aching back (which I am both learning to accept and, at times, forget). For I am blessed. I know this. So much love and care and opportunity and yet I look forward to my end. The peace of it, and I hope grace.

I worry that they are not protected, that they have been bullied into it. I hope they have found wise counsel. And that they are made safer by it.

I fluctuate between being able to bear it, to detach myself from it and plunging into depths of self-pity. This see-sawing can happen within the same hour, sometimes the same minute. I wish I were more stoic. I am frightened. It isn’t improving. It isn’t healing. I will see her in a a week or so. Will she identify it? Solve it? Heal me?

I usually write a brief one page incantation, or prayer each morning just after my bath. It’s a repetitive thing, a kind of reminder of all my blessings. Of late I’ve struggled to do this, not, I might add, because I no longer feel those blessings, I do, but because my beleagured body is sapping me of the inclination. It is taking so long to go. Too long.

It’s his birthday today. He used to be a major athlete, a cyclist, renowned for his skill and personal style. He told me at breakfast that he’d read that he’d gone bankrupt, that he’d lost his wife, his house, everything it seems. Such a fall must be hard. Poor love. Is it better to live in the shadows? Possibly. No highs but no real lows either.

I don’t remember ever having laughed in a dream before. And I do remember them. Last night I did and I watched myself do it. It was a rich laugh. A genuine one, replete with the pleasure of it. I was at a table with a group of people, possibly in a restaurant. I was watching myself and them from above. I noticed how happy I looked, relaxed, safe even. It was nice.

So much of it is a nonsense. Or at least how it is reported. This odd mish mash of the catastrophic and the idiotic, the important and the silly. Food is running out in Gaza. The woman abused and trafficked who killed herself. The Pope’s funeral. And finally, a bear is found in somebody;s garden playing on climbing frame. How are we to make sense of it? Act, even. What is it asking of us? Is it entertainment or life? I feel tainted by it.