08 December 2007
06 December 2007
The xylophone truly is the instrument of madness, all music it makes is dressed as Napoleon
For a very long time metro tickets were turquoise. The streets of Paris were strewn with them, discarded after use. I have seen them in other cities, too, jettisoned from the wallets of Parisians abroad and visitors returned. Then not so long ago they became mauve. Now, with swift caprice, they have become white. With all this change it's no wonder that the celebration of incoherence that is Post-Modernism continues to be so popular among French intellectuals.
Beaujolais Nouveau isn't half as bad as it sounds, if pretty close to grape juice. Better for your kids than Ribena, that's for sure.
Later that night I dreamt of Hammersmith Bridge, in all its greenish glory, and woke in terror, as if I had looked on Hades itself. Odd, and a little unfair. What can it mean?
The recently opened John Lewis Food Hall is just a Waitrose, and not even in disguise. The Wholefoods on High Street Ken does not sell big tubs of chocolate raisins, so what's the point?
Beaujolais Nouveau isn't half as bad as it sounds, if pretty close to grape juice. Better for your kids than Ribena, that's for sure.
Later that night I dreamt of Hammersmith Bridge, in all its greenish glory, and woke in terror, as if I had looked on Hades itself. Odd, and a little unfair. What can it mean?
The recently opened John Lewis Food Hall is just a Waitrose, and not even in disguise. The Wholefoods on High Street Ken does not sell big tubs of chocolate raisins, so what's the point?
04 December 2007
If you've ever listened to 'You and Yours'
Consider the terrible fate that befalls so many who earn their living via their own pen. For a minuscule few this is the occupation as imagined: wads of money coming from royalties from the last two volumes, film rights from the first of these, and the hefty advance from the publisher for the one that's in the chamber. The work in progress being addressed from a table on the balcony of a Tuscan villa (the ninety day rule, you understand), a few hours every morning, then into town to be lightly interviewed by a visiting journalist before an afternoon and evening of sensualism and rest. Here and there a little pestering from one's agent, but that itself is only a form of flattery, easily fended off, should put yourself about a bit more to increase sales she says, but really why bother?
For all the other poor sods, oblivion. The economising, the doing just about anything that pays and involves writing so that one can maintain truth over the creeping fiction (hah!) that writing is one's occupation. The hundred word book reviews that generate about as many pounds in payment and hours in reading the blasted thing in the first place. The side pieces for magazines including (oh dear god no) trade publications. Running creative writing classes for the county council in some wire-mesh-windowed community facility. Always with financial consideration at the back of the mind, closely associated with the act of writing itself, rendering it a necessity, a nuisance, a burden. Work.
Being at home all day. Unnaturally attuned to the rhythms of the place, the postman's delivery, central heating switching off, noise of kids in the street a reminder that it's already twenty to four and nothing has got done. The time that can be taken in making your own lunch. Then the temptation to have a nap in the grey afternoon of this close, airless prison.
That's just if residing on your own, if living with another there's an inevitable list of tasks - explicitly written or tacitly understood. And if this actually doesn't prevent you from getting on with the job, it's nevertheless far too good an excuse to pass up ('There, cohabitee, I've done the ironing and fixed the door on the bathroom cabinet, but at the expense of the novel that was to define the latter half of the 20th century, I hope you're satisfied').
That's before anyone's even put a pram in the hall. Or a television in the living room. And don't get me started on the internet, bloody hell...
The temptation to allow 'local author' status sets in, leading to a stifling kind of prominence within the district, among other people who are never to be found more than the capacity of a weak bladder's distance from their own front doors. This would be fine in W11, NW3, Park Slope, the Cinquieme, where the pavements are regularly shaken by the tread of literary titans, but in Chiswick?
Then the writer's worst enemy lurking on every High Street - Ryman's. Even in parts of the country where functional literacy is at or near zero and there are fewer books in the entire conurbation than there are sitting beside the Andrex on my toilet cistern lid, there will always be a branch of this bland stationery shop. And in each you'll find at least one aspiring writer shuffling about in comfortable clothing, searching for the pen, the A4 binder refill pad, the print cartridge, the package of high gsm paper, that will in some way stimulate a creativity that has been so compromised by demeaning ill-use and suffocated by crushing domesticity. Hopeless.
For all the other poor sods, oblivion. The economising, the doing just about anything that pays and involves writing so that one can maintain truth over the creeping fiction (hah!) that writing is one's occupation. The hundred word book reviews that generate about as many pounds in payment and hours in reading the blasted thing in the first place. The side pieces for magazines including (oh dear god no) trade publications. Running creative writing classes for the county council in some wire-mesh-windowed community facility. Always with financial consideration at the back of the mind, closely associated with the act of writing itself, rendering it a necessity, a nuisance, a burden. Work.
Being at home all day. Unnaturally attuned to the rhythms of the place, the postman's delivery, central heating switching off, noise of kids in the street a reminder that it's already twenty to four and nothing has got done. The time that can be taken in making your own lunch. Then the temptation to have a nap in the grey afternoon of this close, airless prison.
That's just if residing on your own, if living with another there's an inevitable list of tasks - explicitly written or tacitly understood. And if this actually doesn't prevent you from getting on with the job, it's nevertheless far too good an excuse to pass up ('There, cohabitee, I've done the ironing and fixed the door on the bathroom cabinet, but at the expense of the novel that was to define the latter half of the 20th century, I hope you're satisfied').
That's before anyone's even put a pram in the hall. Or a television in the living room. And don't get me started on the internet, bloody hell...
The temptation to allow 'local author' status sets in, leading to a stifling kind of prominence within the district, among other people who are never to be found more than the capacity of a weak bladder's distance from their own front doors. This would be fine in W11, NW3, Park Slope, the Cinquieme, where the pavements are regularly shaken by the tread of literary titans, but in Chiswick?
Then the writer's worst enemy lurking on every High Street - Ryman's. Even in parts of the country where functional literacy is at or near zero and there are fewer books in the entire conurbation than there are sitting beside the Andrex on my toilet cistern lid, there will always be a branch of this bland stationery shop. And in each you'll find at least one aspiring writer shuffling about in comfortable clothing, searching for the pen, the A4 binder refill pad, the print cartridge, the package of high gsm paper, that will in some way stimulate a creativity that has been so compromised by demeaning ill-use and suffocated by crushing domesticity. Hopeless.
03 December 2007
Villiers-le-Bel? We brought back a couple of bottles of that from Calais didn't we?
Foreign languages, lots of them, I love it. There's something about seeing all the letters jumbled around in wild new conjunctions, all the differences, similarities, apparent and misleading. Half the fun of being abroad is not having a clue what's going on, then thinking that you're picking it up, but finding you were a bit or a lot wrong...
Not calling other places by their right name, why do we do that? Sometimes it makes the place-name easier to pronounce, but often not. In English the decision seems as much based on what the French call it as anything. Cologne is hardly a word likely to naturally occur in our language, yet we use it rather than Köln. Perhaps it belonged to the French once? Ditto Bruges, which almost everyone lives there knows as Brugge, but we persist with the Francophonic. Perhaps it too belonged to the French once? They seem very careless with their cities.
While we're in that region, I should pause for a moment to congratulate Belgium on having given up on government. They've been without one for nearly six months now and provide an example to us all that one can manage without.
Switzerland is littered with them, places squarely in the German speaking region which we in England cannot imagine as anything other than of Gallic stock. Luzerne become Lucerne, Bern gets an extra e on the end, and we commit the unforced error of calling Basel 'Basle' and silencing the s - because we're au fait with that pronounciation, y'know - despite the French calling it Bâle. Why? Who are we trying to impress?
Worse is when they do it themselves. The amount of nonsense graffiti I've seen on Northern European bus shelters using English words - which far from being hip just look like those little self-help phrases one sees stuck to the desk partitions of the unfortunate.
See also football, that sport that looks back to its mother country, undeterred by the homeland's intermittent failure to qualify for international competitions. Consider FC København, so irretrieveably middle class that they make Brøndby look like Milwall. Several years ago I happened to be in the Trianglen district when they were at home to Lazio and it was deeply embarrassing: 'Everywhere we go / people wanna know / who we are / and were do we come from / we are København / we come from Copenhagen...' all in perfect Engelsk. Makes one nostalgic for the Vikings.
And Rotterdam's Feyenoord, who have made the Feijenoord post-industrial district in which they reside more phonetically available to the easily confused English tongue. "Zowel Stadion Feijenoord als Feyenoord Rotterdam met een lange ij geschreven werd. Pas in 1974 besloot de voetbalclub een y te gebruiken, de lange ij gaf namelijk problemen met de uitspraak in het buitenland." It's like having your food cut up for you as for an invalid.
The Dutch have a natural sensitivity to hearing their language mangled - see how relaxed they are about our mispronunciations of 'van Gogh' "Van Goff, fine! Van Go, if you like!" Anything but hear us attempt the blend of strangulated respiration and expectoration required to emit the correct sound. Not until one of the kunstenaar's descendants got assassinated did we get to hear the real sound of it. See also what we call The Hague, which to them is Den Haag because even they can't be bothered to enunciate 's Gravenhage.
And while I couldn't hope to be able to pronounce 'Scheveningen' with any hope of being understood by Nederlanders, for their part they'll never be able to say 'squirrel'.
Not calling other places by their right name, why do we do that? Sometimes it makes the place-name easier to pronounce, but often not. In English the decision seems as much based on what the French call it as anything. Cologne is hardly a word likely to naturally occur in our language, yet we use it rather than Köln. Perhaps it belonged to the French once? Ditto Bruges, which almost everyone lives there knows as Brugge, but we persist with the Francophonic. Perhaps it too belonged to the French once? They seem very careless with their cities.
While we're in that region, I should pause for a moment to congratulate Belgium on having given up on government. They've been without one for nearly six months now and provide an example to us all that one can manage without.
Switzerland is littered with them, places squarely in the German speaking region which we in England cannot imagine as anything other than of Gallic stock. Luzerne become Lucerne, Bern gets an extra e on the end, and we commit the unforced error of calling Basel 'Basle' and silencing the s - because we're au fait with that pronounciation, y'know - despite the French calling it Bâle. Why? Who are we trying to impress?
Worse is when they do it themselves. The amount of nonsense graffiti I've seen on Northern European bus shelters using English words - which far from being hip just look like those little self-help phrases one sees stuck to the desk partitions of the unfortunate.
See also football, that sport that looks back to its mother country, undeterred by the homeland's intermittent failure to qualify for international competitions. Consider FC København, so irretrieveably middle class that they make Brøndby look like Milwall. Several years ago I happened to be in the Trianglen district when they were at home to Lazio and it was deeply embarrassing: 'Everywhere we go / people wanna know / who we are / and were do we come from / we are København / we come from Copenhagen...' all in perfect Engelsk. Makes one nostalgic for the Vikings.
And Rotterdam's Feyenoord, who have made the Feijenoord post-industrial district in which they reside more phonetically available to the easily confused English tongue. "Zowel Stadion Feijenoord als Feyenoord Rotterdam met een lange ij geschreven werd. Pas in 1974 besloot de voetbalclub een y te gebruiken, de lange ij gaf namelijk problemen met de uitspraak in het buitenland." It's like having your food cut up for you as for an invalid.
The Dutch have a natural sensitivity to hearing their language mangled - see how relaxed they are about our mispronunciations of 'van Gogh' "Van Goff, fine! Van Go, if you like!" Anything but hear us attempt the blend of strangulated respiration and expectoration required to emit the correct sound. Not until one of the kunstenaar's descendants got assassinated did we get to hear the real sound of it. See also what we call The Hague, which to them is Den Haag because even they can't be bothered to enunciate 's Gravenhage.
And while I couldn't hope to be able to pronounce 'Scheveningen' with any hope of being understood by Nederlanders, for their part they'll never be able to say 'squirrel'.
01 November 2007
17 October 2007
14 October 2007
Sunday morning
Recent model Merc pulls into the parking space outside my window. In between me and the car: six feet of pavement, railings, four feet of basement drop and stairway, my window and a net curtain, the table at which I am eating runny boiled eggs on bread rolls. Occupants of the car open their doors, then close them again without emerging. A man and a woman, he at the wheel and closest to the kerb. They are arguing.
It is a louder row than the usual listless bickering that characterises the interaction of so many couples out together and in public at the weekend. Or at least his voice is louder. Then there's a lull and I'm paying more attention to my breakfast and an interview with Jools Holland in which he extolls the virtues of keeping things bottled up.
Now they're out of the car, apparently about to leave for wherever it was they were going. I'd guess he's middle eastern, of the nearer shores rather than the Gulf, well built yet not the bloated prince type. She may be from another country abutting the Mediterrannean. She's well dressed, more likely to be his mistress or girlfriend than his wife. Aside from the intangible clues in her appearance, his argument seems too passionate to suggest a matrimonial dispute.
The discord resumes and they get back into the car. His gestures are more expressive now, he is practically throwing himself about in his seat. The exchange is being conducted in English, and his words "I could kill you right now!" are unmistakeable and lack any leavening trace of humour or figurative intent. Then he punches the inside of the windscreen, near to the top. That he manages to shatter it in that area is quite impressive - slanted, the glass is close to the driver so there's little room for building momentum and the surface is awkwardly slanted. Also, it's pretty tough glass. On the one hand, this would compromise the only act of intervention I had thought open to me if he started delivering on the "kill you right now" option, that of toddling out there and putting my fire extinguisher through the windscreen on his side as a sort of distraction. But on the other hand it's rather a relief to see him taking out on his motor, it suggests to me that his fury is likely to be diverted. And so long as he doesn't start lamping the lady, well, I can watch big expensive cars being trashed all day.
He jumps out, still shouting. Now the entire Sunday morning street knows that the girl in the car has taken the decision to leave him, but how could he have paid her more attention when he had a family to look after? So, no surprises in the scenario there. He punches the windscreen again, from the outside now, and she gets out, looking calm and sad. As she wanders off he gives the glass another clout, leaving a mark that looks pinkish in the powdered glass.
Holding his head he walks after her, out of sight. When they return he is hunched, and for a minute or so crouches at the open door of his car, her fingers touching his shoulder. Then they get back into the car and drive off. Now his blood is spattered about around the corner and several buildings down, but none outside my front door.
Christmas often brings out these tensions. Presumably Ramadan is just the same.
It is a louder row than the usual listless bickering that characterises the interaction of so many couples out together and in public at the weekend. Or at least his voice is louder. Then there's a lull and I'm paying more attention to my breakfast and an interview with Jools Holland in which he extolls the virtues of keeping things bottled up.
Now they're out of the car, apparently about to leave for wherever it was they were going. I'd guess he's middle eastern, of the nearer shores rather than the Gulf, well built yet not the bloated prince type. She may be from another country abutting the Mediterrannean. She's well dressed, more likely to be his mistress or girlfriend than his wife. Aside from the intangible clues in her appearance, his argument seems too passionate to suggest a matrimonial dispute.
The discord resumes and they get back into the car. His gestures are more expressive now, he is practically throwing himself about in his seat. The exchange is being conducted in English, and his words "I could kill you right now!" are unmistakeable and lack any leavening trace of humour or figurative intent. Then he punches the inside of the windscreen, near to the top. That he manages to shatter it in that area is quite impressive - slanted, the glass is close to the driver so there's little room for building momentum and the surface is awkwardly slanted. Also, it's pretty tough glass. On the one hand, this would compromise the only act of intervention I had thought open to me if he started delivering on the "kill you right now" option, that of toddling out there and putting my fire extinguisher through the windscreen on his side as a sort of distraction. But on the other hand it's rather a relief to see him taking out on his motor, it suggests to me that his fury is likely to be diverted. And so long as he doesn't start lamping the lady, well, I can watch big expensive cars being trashed all day.
He jumps out, still shouting. Now the entire Sunday morning street knows that the girl in the car has taken the decision to leave him, but how could he have paid her more attention when he had a family to look after? So, no surprises in the scenario there. He punches the windscreen again, from the outside now, and she gets out, looking calm and sad. As she wanders off he gives the glass another clout, leaving a mark that looks pinkish in the powdered glass.
Holding his head he walks after her, out of sight. When they return he is hunched, and for a minute or so crouches at the open door of his car, her fingers touching his shoulder. Then they get back into the car and drive off. Now his blood is spattered about around the corner and several buildings down, but none outside my front door.
Christmas often brings out these tensions. Presumably Ramadan is just the same.
08 October 2007
-
We had stopped drinking, after a couple of whiskies.
It was because I wasn't looking at him that I realised who his voice reminded me of: Benjamin Zephaniah. He has a gentle voice, quite thoughtful, with a slight lisp. He looks quite dissimilar to Mr Z, a fuller face (stocky in build, he is often mistaken for Nigerian), and of course much shorter hair.
I don't need a photographic memory as for the inanimate I've a camera and I'm happy with my visual recollection as far as the organic are concerned, but I wish I could capture exact speech. He said something like this, though more colloquial yet more eloquent:
"What's really lovely is being with her when she's getting ready to go out. You know, when they build it up right from the beginning. From the shower on. It's a bit like a striptease backwards but not really. And you're there in the bedroom and she is half paying attention to you but more on getting ready and there's the smells of perfume and hair things and all the clothes here and there and how she does her make up even before she's half dressed and no, I don't think it destroys the magic at all."
He wasn't talking of a particular she, but rather a generic one, though his character suggests that his interactions with women, or anyone, are anything but generic. He was talking of that experience within a relationship, and the wistfulness with which he said this suggested the scenario had not been played out before him for quite some time now. Or perhaps it had just been yesterday. Or that evening if they had then gone separate ways.
It was because I wasn't looking at him that I realised who his voice reminded me of: Benjamin Zephaniah. He has a gentle voice, quite thoughtful, with a slight lisp. He looks quite dissimilar to Mr Z, a fuller face (stocky in build, he is often mistaken for Nigerian), and of course much shorter hair.
I don't need a photographic memory as for the inanimate I've a camera and I'm happy with my visual recollection as far as the organic are concerned, but I wish I could capture exact speech. He said something like this, though more colloquial yet more eloquent:
"What's really lovely is being with her when she's getting ready to go out. You know, when they build it up right from the beginning. From the shower on. It's a bit like a striptease backwards but not really. And you're there in the bedroom and she is half paying attention to you but more on getting ready and there's the smells of perfume and hair things and all the clothes here and there and how she does her make up even before she's half dressed and no, I don't think it destroys the magic at all."
He wasn't talking of a particular she, but rather a generic one, though his character suggests that his interactions with women, or anyone, are anything but generic. He was talking of that experience within a relationship, and the wistfulness with which he said this suggested the scenario had not been played out before him for quite some time now. Or perhaps it had just been yesterday. Or that evening if they had then gone separate ways.
06 October 2007
Basel and Bern
Basel
Borders and boundaries and demarcations, territories within territories. At the airport you are given the option of exit left into France or right into Switzerland. Beyond the latter, a sealed umbilical road of a mile or so before Switzerland itself begins. National borders form much of the boundary of the city - customs posts slow the traffic but pedestrians cross to or from France or Germany unregistered. The Rhein Center sits in an opportunistic corner of Germany between the new footbridge to French Huningue and Swiss Kleinhüningen. It takes 9 minutes to walk from France, through Germany and into Switzerland (it took me longer in the other direction on account of the attractions of fish and chips from Nordsee). Several tram lines terminate within spitting distance of the border, though along the intinerary of the outer reach of the no. 10 tram, a single stop is isolated in France. An annexe of the main station, administered by the French railway company, lurks behind a visually impermeable structure, shabby yet intimidating in comparison with the rest of the station. Rather than 'Gare SNCF', the sign makes it clear that to enter platforms 30-35 is to enter France itself. The other big station in the town, Badischer bahnhof is a more solid and attractive structure, being large and designed to declare itself. Its innards are entirely Deutsche Bahn, from the ticket office to the coffee being priced first in euros. This extends to the forecourt, containing a green-banded German polizei van and one of those distinctive green and yellow 'H' bus stops. Nevertheless, numerous trains from France and Germany serve Swiss platforms and stations without bureacratic intervention.
Inevitable to wonder how, and in what circumstance, those borders might be closed or restricted. Reminders of the possibility of this in the SVP's sheep posters everywhere.
Evening. In a country as clean as this, one feels self-conscious just carrying litter. Somewhere around Zürcherstrasse I saw a bin on the other side of the road, crossed between the lights, walking over the clovered lawn into which the tram tracks are set. Bats were tumbling above the grass in the middle of the carriageway, I've never seen them so close before, under sodium lighting. Further down the road a middle-aged man on crutches waylaid me and addressed me in Swiss German, and then in English. He was not entirely sane. Grinning, he said 'I can see you are a game-breaker. Don't be a game-breaker! I am with the mafia, I shoot you, blam!' and with that he lifted one of his crutches to point at me, rifle-like, losing his balance and tottering backwards into the road. Regaining the kerb he assumed a sheepish expression, his repertoire evidently exhausted. We wished each other good night.
Apropos of nothing, Walter Benjamin once interjected: 'Germans, drink beer!' And they still do, on the move, from bottles, it is refreshing just to see it. Ditto the Swiss, at least in the north of the nation, and very brand loyal they are too, particularly in Basel, although the availability of Feldschlösschen in the shop fridges is mainly in cans. I see those blue and white cans in my sleep.
Bern
The River Aare passes around the town, flat but swift moving, a vivid milky turquoise. There was no river traffic but a small inflatable raft. That raft's two occupants lolled in the sun, occasionally maintaining their position in the median of the river with an oar as they were borne along. They were not equipped to make any progress in a contrary direction, nor did they appear to want to. Where they had started from, or where they would end up, seemed not at all relevant. Seen from the bridge, there was only now.
Borders and boundaries and demarcations, territories within territories. At the airport you are given the option of exit left into France or right into Switzerland. Beyond the latter, a sealed umbilical road of a mile or so before Switzerland itself begins. National borders form much of the boundary of the city - customs posts slow the traffic but pedestrians cross to or from France or Germany unregistered. The Rhein Center sits in an opportunistic corner of Germany between the new footbridge to French Huningue and Swiss Kleinhüningen. It takes 9 minutes to walk from France, through Germany and into Switzerland (it took me longer in the other direction on account of the attractions of fish and chips from Nordsee). Several tram lines terminate within spitting distance of the border, though along the intinerary of the outer reach of the no. 10 tram, a single stop is isolated in France. An annexe of the main station, administered by the French railway company, lurks behind a visually impermeable structure, shabby yet intimidating in comparison with the rest of the station. Rather than 'Gare SNCF', the sign makes it clear that to enter platforms 30-35 is to enter France itself. The other big station in the town, Badischer bahnhof is a more solid and attractive structure, being large and designed to declare itself. Its innards are entirely Deutsche Bahn, from the ticket office to the coffee being priced first in euros. This extends to the forecourt, containing a green-banded German polizei van and one of those distinctive green and yellow 'H' bus stops. Nevertheless, numerous trains from France and Germany serve Swiss platforms and stations without bureacratic intervention.
Inevitable to wonder how, and in what circumstance, those borders might be closed or restricted. Reminders of the possibility of this in the SVP's sheep posters everywhere.
Evening. In a country as clean as this, one feels self-conscious just carrying litter. Somewhere around Zürcherstrasse I saw a bin on the other side of the road, crossed between the lights, walking over the clovered lawn into which the tram tracks are set. Bats were tumbling above the grass in the middle of the carriageway, I've never seen them so close before, under sodium lighting. Further down the road a middle-aged man on crutches waylaid me and addressed me in Swiss German, and then in English. He was not entirely sane. Grinning, he said 'I can see you are a game-breaker. Don't be a game-breaker! I am with the mafia, I shoot you, blam!' and with that he lifted one of his crutches to point at me, rifle-like, losing his balance and tottering backwards into the road. Regaining the kerb he assumed a sheepish expression, his repertoire evidently exhausted. We wished each other good night.
Apropos of nothing, Walter Benjamin once interjected: 'Germans, drink beer!' And they still do, on the move, from bottles, it is refreshing just to see it. Ditto the Swiss, at least in the north of the nation, and very brand loyal they are too, particularly in Basel, although the availability of Feldschlösschen in the shop fridges is mainly in cans. I see those blue and white cans in my sleep.
Bern
The River Aare passes around the town, flat but swift moving, a vivid milky turquoise. There was no river traffic but a small inflatable raft. That raft's two occupants lolled in the sun, occasionally maintaining their position in the median of the river with an oar as they were borne along. They were not equipped to make any progress in a contrary direction, nor did they appear to want to. Where they had started from, or where they would end up, seemed not at all relevant. Seen from the bridge, there was only now.
01 October 2007
In a shop on Saturday. Queuing, there is a woman in front of me, and a woman in front of her, in front of the till. As she reaches into her bag for her purse her scarf falls from her shoulder without her noticing. The woman in front of me does and picks up the scarf, hands it to its owner. To my imperfect vision and poor knowledge of fabric, it looks like a nice scarf. Thin material, very white. You wouldn't want to just lose it, or discard it.
It's not the sulky undertone in which the scarf owner's 'Thank you' as she takes it that is so striking, but her facial expression, directed at the woman who has handed it to her. A look can be like a whisper audible only to the person addressed. This is not such a look, which I can see and decipher clearly from four feet back and several dozen degrees of angle skewed. It is of something between contempt and revulsion.
The woman in front of me looks in the scarf owner's direction just for a fraction of a second longer, enough to assure me that I haven't imagined the cast of the other's face. I want to say something but can't think of anything appropriate, useful, or that would make it better.
I can look at pictures in the paper of barefoot monks being beaten and ice melting that shouldn't be and while I think I'm concerned it's just an intellectual exercise. But this thing in the shop with the scarf I've been chewing at since. Though the woman in front of me has probably forgotten about it by now or washed it through by telling a friend who replied, 'Yes, some people are like that aren't they?'. And the woman with the scarf has perhaps changed her medication or is possibly on her way to changing herself. It was all in an instant, or it should be.
It's not the sulky undertone in which the scarf owner's 'Thank you' as she takes it that is so striking, but her facial expression, directed at the woman who has handed it to her. A look can be like a whisper audible only to the person addressed. This is not such a look, which I can see and decipher clearly from four feet back and several dozen degrees of angle skewed. It is of something between contempt and revulsion.
The woman in front of me looks in the scarf owner's direction just for a fraction of a second longer, enough to assure me that I haven't imagined the cast of the other's face. I want to say something but can't think of anything appropriate, useful, or that would make it better.
I can look at pictures in the paper of barefoot monks being beaten and ice melting that shouldn't be and while I think I'm concerned it's just an intellectual exercise. But this thing in the shop with the scarf I've been chewing at since. Though the woman in front of me has probably forgotten about it by now or washed it through by telling a friend who replied, 'Yes, some people are like that aren't they?'. And the woman with the scarf has perhaps changed her medication or is possibly on her way to changing herself. It was all in an instant, or it should be.
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