Thinking is a dangerous thing.
I think in recycled strings – like a passed on virus. As I wake up, I think that there should be a
vague comfort in my hand clutching another; only I pull them apart and find
that they are both my own. Wiping them across my face, their salt dampness
stings in my nostrils. It congeals with the smell of blood, though I am
not sure whether dangerous or natural.
I am attempting to perfect the art of ‘pulling myself
together’. Some do it exceptionally well. Like on the screen which has been
running all night beside me, a man stands in a pressed pink shirt with a tie
several shades darker, he is preened like a rasher of ambiguous meat people
attach adjectives to like ‘quality’ and
‘lean’. His mouth seems to chew over silence. Mine does too, only the jaws
cracking open with a gesture that makes
my ears pop and reminds my body of the compression of sleep being
lifted. There is a pain below my stomach but I am not sure what it is.
My feet feel inordinately swollen as I press them to the
carpet. I seem almost to sway to the bedroom door, before hunching my way
uncomfortably down the stairs. These were the stairs I once threw myself down,
as a kind of experience. Everyone else related to the incident seems keen to
emphasize the factors of ‘birthday’ and
‘alcohol’ but I do not remember either of them. All I remember was the hot
compression of my body crumpled above me whilst my face felt the cold of the
linoleum, watching the patterns of
grease composing secret footprints. It
seemed almost unfortunate that people regarded it a ‘shame’.
I reach the bottom of the stairs and retrace the routine aisle towards the kitchen.
The door handle seems
slippery and overworked. I put my hand to the brass and then against my tongue
and back again – the taste of touch. With it in one sense, socially unacceptable sense. It is a guise
that I seem to fall into. The succession
of libs flailing, whether my own or another’s, as I offer my stare to a person
on the street.
Now I offer it only to myself in a place I call ‘home’. I
watch my own eyes in the glass panel of the kitchen door. There is a black
rubbed around them, like a kind of war paint.
My body is painted too, coated with a close fitting material which
spreads over scrapes and knocks. I am not sure if the sensation is pain or
cleanliness or tiredness or them all. I
guess there is a relief shared as the door clicks open.
I occupy myself quickly in occupying past actions. There is
the smell of quickly cooled instant coffee, the type my mother drinks from a wide-brimmed cup in
hasty, unbreathing mouthfuls before leaving the house. She calls it a ‘home’
but I guess in my case it is ‘house’ – I am not meant to be here, by default. I
say that to a variety of people and it usually results in an agitation of
hands, tears and a GP referral.
On the table, still glimmering from damp cloth, is a
handwritten note on old yellow paper and a packet of diazepam.
Initially, the paper appears to present a kind of artistry –
a black line carved into curls and flicks, the type which make my eyes swim.
Then it blends to figures.
“I collected your prescription. Will be back for lunch. Love
u, mum xx”
I liked how she has
shaped the ‘u’ with a light wobble, almost in the imitation of flesh, a
personalised hieroglyphic. If she has already left, it must be relatively lake
in the morning,. The digital clock on the microwave swims and stings. A little
like the ‘x’s’ at the end of the message – sharp, stinging little crosses,
perhaps her confession of anger. Angry at what so many ascribe as my ‘waste of time’
– the time I lie, debating with sleep and consciousness, attempting to pull
words, myself, together. If I manage to write though, it redeems itself. Well
it will once it is transferred into
print sandwiched between two glossy covers with a price tag attached.
Apparantely.
Apparent but not real. That is how I feel often, that is how
I feel as I flick the switch on the
kettle. I indulge myself in the
assumption that there is water in it, it could be one of those magical moments
when there is not and there will be the shriek of gas and confused heat,
followed by the slow surging smell of burn. It provides an excellent
distraction, then again, if there is
water, there is the possibility of hurt. All it takes is a flick of the wrist to douse the contents just
as easily over the table as into a cup. Over my own chest. I would not have to
pay to watch the mornings entertainment, raised flesh and that array of
sensations we so easily constitute as ‘pain’.
Something close it quakes
close to where I assume my
stomach is. Perhaps it is hunger. Perhaps it is thrill – the thrill of knowing
the unacceptable, the knowing that I could pick up the paper note and grind it
down between by teeth and experience something different. There would not be so
much written on that, perhaps there
might be some kind of congratulation for being ‘experimental’. There sometimes
is, there sometimes isn’t.
‘Sometimes’ seems just to
be one of those assemblages – hanging as
part of that indeterminate barrier between acceptable and unacceptable.
I take the routine regular two diazepam as is accepted, popping them into my
palm with the similar gesture with which one pushes pus from a wound. I guess
that it is unacceptable. It is too as I
take another three. And I don’t take them with water, I chew them,
clenching the sour little pips against my teeth with my dry tongue.
Strange – the barrier between two and three which turn me from ‘sensibility’ to
‘insanity’ within seconds.
A milder version was the morning I didn’t go on my ‘ paper run’. I had to go
in the sense that the newsagent expected me at 7am, a series of people anticipated the familiar ‘drop’ of the
paper through the door. Instead, that morning, I created a talking point, a
different narrative. I was the author of interest. I lay there, head stiff against the pillow, and
created something different.
I didn’t go on my paper run again. My parents attributed
terms to it like ‘insane’ and ‘mad’.
Would they have understood if I said I was making interest?
Still, I have been pushed into a different profession, one
way or another. the polished surfaces in the kitchen begin to glisten, they
tell of human hands, not only the family hands, but the hands cutting, shaping,
transporting. Everywhere is hot with touch and yet I am cold. The newspaper
laid open on the table is cold, as if a body, defencelessly exposed. I take the
invitation of its pages and watch them burr between my fingers, falling text
after falling text. The text which constitutes the ‘opinion column’ – those
certain assemblages of recycled text deemed to be more worthy than others.
I could be ‘wasting time’ or gathering evidence.
I take the paper to the fire some indeterminate time after.
I watch the leaves lapse and gasp over the embrace of the flames. There is
almost an affection to reduction, I think. Like the tenderness with which I
extend my hand, I feel the heat growing close, closer to touch.
I am becoming a better actor.
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