ellen bell

He says that I am good and kind. He writes it too. Is that enough? Is his saying such things about me enough to make it true?

I’m reading Susan Sontag’s book ‘On Photography’. In it she writes about the seminal moment, when, at the age of twelve, she came across a book of photographs in a second-hand book shop. They were of the Holocaust. She writes that from then on her life was split into two parts. The before she saw the photographs, and the after.

We were talking at breakfast and he was telling me about a girl that he knows in the 24hr SPAR. He’d asked her if she had any siblings. “Yes,” she said, “and they’re all in prison.” Apparently she’d laughed at this admission.

There is talk of that poor beleagured country being divided up. A line drawn through it. Just like Berlin, they say. Can it be stopped? Can this madness end? My heart is full for them. Can the meek inherit the world? Really?

I hear the first bulletin when I am in my bath. I don’t want to do so these days. There’s such madness. And his voice chills me. This morning’s flash told of a helicopter crashing into the Hudson river, killing all of its passengers and pilot. A family from Spain. Tourists. Gone. No survivors.

The diabetic nurse said that he looked well. And apparently it was a good session. Blood pressure, pulse, everything was good. I am glad. Perhaps not disappearing quite yet, then, my love.

It was good. A good day. A surprising day. Snapshots of pleasure. The Eames’ chairs, that first cup of tea, walking in the sunshine, sharing practice and then a slow journey home, sitting in the sun, eyes shut. Just being away. That was what was good.

It’s a nothing in the whole scheme of things. A little inconvenience. You handled it well, he said. Did I? I’m glad he thought so. Am I getting calmer, more peaceful? I am shamed by my sometime outburts. I have her in me. But then she was immensely practical, her outbursts were from another source. That well. Of unhappiness.

I forget them. I think of them, grieve for them, and then they are gone from my mind. How can this be so? Those who have lost so much in Ukraine, in Afghanistan, and in Myanmar. I forget them. I forget their loss and losing. I want to hold them inside of me. To bear witness to what life has brought them. Help me to do this. And not forget.

The distress of it woke me. She was a chef, Japanese, and she’d laid out on the ground the food she’d prepared for herself to eat on a black cloth. Everything was white and raised up on little plinths. There were shapes and foodstuff I didn’t recognise. Alien. One of these culinary objects was still alive. A bird. Denuded of all plumage, it too was white. It’s breast had been slit. No blood, just a line. And at its throat was a hole. And it was singing. The sound came throught the hole. I was devastated by the cruelty of it. The bird was dying but it kept singing. And she was going to consume it. I woke with the pain of it. Was I too culpable?