Tuesday

Love. When neither one trusts the other one cares at all. Not one bit.

One thinks the other hates them, with their guts. The other thinks the other is nonchalant. The epitome is when two persons sit on a bench in a fading summer’s day in silence, not thinking of anything other than it feels better to be near each other than it does not to be. Not a matter of conversation simply presence. Then they aren’t lonely. They are happy. But love, forsaken, taken for granted and lost to eternal thought, never makes its presence known.

Stare

To be still and not afraid. Concentrate really hard on what the other person is doing. Feel the phone through their hands, try and hear the music through their headphones. Don’t miss a beat or a bat of an eyelid. Define each eyelash. When are you allowed to stare? Babies stare widely, soaking up every bit of light bouncing off strangers’ faces, and feel every shout and slam of the door. So sensitive. But they’re not afraid, they have nothing to be afraid of, yet. Not yet. To be still and not afraid. Sat in the underground station at Aldgate East, the dim lights glow and across the platform there is an enclave that holds a bench. On the bench sit two men who do not know each other. I am allowed to stare because the train has not yet arrived and from across a train track the gaze doesn’t feel so intrusive, merely glazed. The two men sit and one handles a mobile phone. The other has his back bent forwards with elbows resting on knees. He is in a broken prayer position. The train shoots past and things bleep and doors slide closed and whoosh the train goes. No men are left on the bench. It looks like an aged photograph and the frame is the shadow cast by the enclave. Two women click clack past the bench, both wearing black tight dresses and holding clutch bags. One of them puts on a playful trot and giggles whilst the other woman laughs, walking behind her in the follow like a newborn foal. They exit the frame and the bench is left empty again, like normal. 

(Time has passed and nothing feels real because everything has been observed... Like you weren’t actually there, it was all third-person. But you were completely there and that’s why everything was noted, absorbed and felt. Babies are not blank they are ciphers to another world where the individual does not exist but the whole world around them does. And there is nothing to be afraid of. To be still and not afraid must be wondrous.)

Bougainvillea

She was put upon getting us here. Driving on the left side of these starkly moonlit roads that wound around and round the countryside. Dirt tracks by the end. There was no other car in sight, we saw a man standing under a street lamp when we drove through a deserted town.

‘But it’s Friday night!’ exclaimed one of the passengers merrily.

‘Yes but we’re in the middle of nowehere’ replied Mark.

Waking up in such a pretty (escape) landscape is heaven. An abundance of flowers bursting out of vases, and lots of glass objects that retain the sunlight placed higgledypiggledy around the houses. The main house has been decorated with love, and in love there is room for eccentricity. So many colourful prints hang off the walls, and there's a large slow-moving revolving fan up on the ceiling, brining home the fact you’re away.

Autumn's Here

Autumn’s here. I saw two leaves fall off a tree in front of me. There’s a Big Issue man wearing an unzipped jacket stopping people on the street. And look that’s nice, I just passed a Budgens that had the banner ‘Best Budgens Store Winner 2013’ proudly hanging from its rooftop. Congestion down Central Street where my bus keeps stopping and starting, I can see the city looming in the distance but we don’t seem to be getting any closer. Suddenly we’ll be in the city. Out of nowhere you’re surrounded - that’s always the way - shock tactics. The new development of a block of flats with the catchphrase ‘Where City Meets Fringe’, we ride past that as well. It’s not made for people living on the edge per se just for those who can afford the glamorous pretense of living amongst the impoverished. Grunge chic. A fellow described to me the other day, the cafes that succeed around here have a certain calculated quirkiness about them. That sounds daunting doesn’t it, calculated quirky. Its almost contradictory; enforced liberty.