S. RIDDOCH
Much has been made of the links between writers lives and the stories they tell. Airports have provided the ground for some bizarre feelings. Being in transit, meeting up in a strange context is a cocktail of emotion. Speaking to travellers around you is unsteady - time begins to blur and glow - things at an airport seem to happen at once immediately and pointlessly. I think I tell myself stories when I travel. I pick up the thread of old ones and incorporate them into grander narratives.
Some time passes. I find an excited travel manuscript and I edit. When I was there things happened in real time and bubbled under the text. Now I refocus my tools and aim to reproduce the movement in reality. There is no clear event or object but emotions and contact.
WISH YOU WERE HERE
There are strangers we don't see who live at the perimeter of our vision. These people are like air walls: I may depend on them for my water supply, I may lean on one inadvertently in a packed cinema queue. I do know they are beside me and necessary to the world yet it is not intently that I acknowledge seeing them or touching them or having exchanges with them. Yet I clearly do.
There are polite strangers: shopkeepers and tellers whom we see many times over the period of our life but not quite frequently enough to warrant intimacy or friendship.
There are strangers who intrigue us and to whom our eyes are drawn; a frisson whistles across the inner void. In the best scenarios, these strangers should be kept at a distance for seeking their company would feed excitement, sustained contact engendering passion, perhaps self-betrayal.
As I wait, I sift through the barnacled memories of the morning spent wandering through the city - a garden of memories after such a long absence. I tell myself that her coming is cursory, not linked at all. I pretend her look will be kind and her presence calming. It is, my stomach tells me, resonant.
I have not adequately planned the details of telling. I may never tell. I watch myself on a security TV. I think I look resolute as the people pass through customs. My stomach is now low meringue; yolks too heavy to fizz.
But the meringue is growing. The changes it has brought to my life so far are only a taste of what's to come. It will surely congeal soon. It churns yet. I crave the release I imagine disclosure would entail. The bubble bursts - she will have to walk away. If I tell it will be sooner rather than later. In any case acid has risen in my throat. My tongue swells. I will not tell. I am not prepared to tell. The pearl has gone missing. The meringue shall remain a secret.
As the passengers file out into the hall, they scan our faces. A rare moment when full-frontal inquisitive looking is permitted. I imagine their glances fall upon me with the blunt edges of quiet shock and puzzled discernment. Their eyes asked real or fiction? I clutch a pre-prepared postcard which reads Je l'attendais quand elle est arrivée. The flight number she had given me over the phone does not agree with any of those flashing - I feel awake and relief that all non-national airline passengers file out of a single exit.
I have been waiting sufficiently long for initial observations to have become fanciful studies of those waiting with me. There is a woman on holiday for the first time since the loss of her partner and this man pulling compulsively on his cigarette with an aloof beak. A sudden chill makes me shift, the people filing past create a charged wind which slips over us.
I had really stumbled upon the news of her coming. I wanted to collect her, proud, really that I could - and thrilled to play host at my flat. The chill was only first-time jitters. I would remember to continue the post card: PS It was thanks to your call while I was staying on at Aunt Fora's - and for the sake of her predisposal - that I answered the call.
I wait. She arrives, spotting me instantly, her face shaking up into a look of self-content. She is clearly pleased I am there. I wonder if she is pleased to see me. I now depend on a sponge cake stomach for balance. That same look - a game and a wrong answer - irreverent stuff and I know that I thought it was that.
I now stand in the moment where fields are engulfed by lovers, or steps become difficult. Watch an actor stumble forward to show you the knife in his back. She looks. Clocks. Looks down. Brings up a knowing smile. She waves and I tread time as she carries herself out and over the moment.
Improbably I find myself in such a buoyant mood, despite the low meringue. The wave has passed and I break a dimple as we draw closer. I conjure the recollection of multiple gentle reminders I had received earlier from the hotel staff.
The interruptions of the cleaning ladies missed the mark of securing my prompt leave, rather did they scramble the morning's sleep. The voice behind the door requested a sway in my step. The lady downstairs used the phone as a weapon. Putting the receiver down made me smile. Feeling the warmth of the shower made me smile. As did the shower head which drooped and sputtered against the tiles.
Am I gaping ? I feel something flow through my fingers which do not yet relinquish her arm. I hear that it has taken some time to go through customs. I do not record how many hours they were forced to stay on the plane. We move toward the eating area. She sounds delighted to be released from the plane. I am able to concentrate on breathing. I watch her hands.
I only take my focus from her hands when I hear her tell me that she thought perhaps I would have gone. The foam coffee cup ignites my teeth. I look round at an airport café torn from IKEA. She is asking for it to remain untold. I have become accustomed to her concept of time which excludes utterances, where the indicible becomes a state of being. Life realising the indicible is not the life of the atom sought by scientists and philosophers alike.
This is why the people are sometimes puzzled by my appearance. I am neither scientist nor philosopher. I like to see the looks end in warmth and friendliness. The woman opposite me has always ended supermarket transactions in a glare. She has not thrown off the curse.
Lips glisten and teeth flash. I must look mesmerised. I ask myself whether she senses the meringue. I am what has come and there is much in the world to suggest that she is close enough to me to feel it. I sit back. I do not accept being restricted to telling. I will I feel she knows because the meringue is inside. She has come from visiting you - the father has gone - Has she been told?
Later, after her arrival, I will be sitting heavily on a hard chair. I am listening to her, or trying. I think I have slipped through a hole. I have come detached from my shadow. I see the shadow departing with the bundle. I trace the departure from under the water. The shadow crosses the fluid horizon.
I stroke the pearl and feel his skin. I have always forgiven his kindness. I have faith in the present crossroads leading him back. I make a wish for it to be sooner. I forgive myself for overlooking the duality - at once the child born into conventional religion yet unscathed by human interest. An animal of ritual. I cherish the way a barmaid's sneer turned into gushing and giggles as he dropped coin after coin on the floor.
A lark darts across the vined wall. Something is scratching my eyelids. I must surface. She says. She is saying. As I emerge - expecting her voice - happens a man stands in the doorway sending sparks through my veins. He has visited me in dreams where I float in a stream and he is there, at the edge, reeds clinging to his wet beard.
This stranger curbs my laugh. My feet shoot instinctively to the floor. I wish to melt into the anonymous. Public transport where I gulp for air and stroke the pearl to distract myself from the churning of the whites into meringue.
I clasp my chest as I wash my eyes over his antlers of hair and the bristled sinews of jaw. A furtive glance around the faces of the busy hall suggests I have not displayed my dilemma; I take a long draw from my glass and the vodka soothes the legs that nearly bolted. With some difficulty I manage to unbend my legs and coyly sit back once more in my chair. I light a cigarette, composed yet conscious of the rumbling from somewhere deep within where this man's appearance has sent a cannon rolling.
He remains in the entrance as people - the other strangers - push by in raincoats like floor colours, shaking their heads and wet phalanges of their umbrellas on the grey airport floor. I am beginning to submerge and my ears fill, garbling her words sent rushing for the shore. I have been here. Before. Recently.
The pearl is gone. I must tell her. I want her to know. To help me find it. I must interrupt the parade of gestures seated opposite. Hear me. I would like to find my pearl, please. It must have fallen off.
I retreat back to safety in numbers, catching the young man in whites with stiffly-gelled hair (a student no doubt) by the arm as he moves towards the bar. No thank you, just a menu please. Emotions seemed in that moment so sharp and physical, raking my mind to turn it lurching.
The man moves up the bar and glances at the prominent clock. The waters become dark and still. She remembers a moose upon the downs. Unremarkably downs. Yet unremarkable. He waits as I had some hours previously. I have been told there was a problem with changing the date of her ticket. She will depart in a short while. I search for an appropriate way of conveying this later. PS Je ne regrette rien.
I grab the flesh around the meringue. I cradle and rock. I look up at the man who consults his watch and waits. He surveys the room, follows the cornice as far as he can. He lifts his eyes to the frosted dome, and pauses and bathes, closing his eyes ever so shortly. He snaps his head toward the door, betraying the object of his attention.
I wait for him this way. He has left a parasite in my skull. I learned some time ago that contact induces dormancy - that change will see the beast's head. To me, his departure is a loss perhaps more quantifiable than intrusive. It was active, partial to flaring up, to gnawing, to scratching. Scratch Scratch Scratch forgive me, forgive giving me, give me forgiveness, give reasons, ask why, give reasons why Scratching the loss on my mind.
It is almost time for her follow-on flight. She has left me to make some last minute purchases and freshen up. I have a moment. The meringue stiffens and I return to the calm measure of my breath. This tranquility evokes a crossroads from where he will return. He wants to understand I think I think. That I act in reaction. But this is naive for it is clear that I act to prepare. He leaves now and again - creating a shifting floor of emotional ground, perpetuating a constant flux of promise and abandonment - building the shelter then torching my desire - now I avoid the reason in convenient addictions - I resort to these ways of being that I am not convinced are purposeful or beneficial to me. Modes of commitment and survival.
I have not been as attentive as I would have been in another day to day setting. The excitement and the meringue have whipped up expectations; words find me impermeable, living in the need to confess. I suppose I have appeared to care less in the past - and accordingly I now react less to separation. I do feel your words and actions impair - that you wish to lead - my phobia prevents this - and we have created another worldliness - a sort of virtual relationship - which intermittently nourishes and starves.
I feel I feel. It is sometimes prudent to deny my feelings. To choose to ignore gut feelings. I bombard myself with situations and devices that ferment my stomach and make lucidity a sacrifice. These reflections flow, I am on my own at the table. I calmly prepare postcard and pen. I confess I have pretended to look always for stability or reason. I now realise that I was seeking somewhere I wouldn't feel self-conscious. It was chance this happened. This seed sprouts a tuber and life is now spent watching roots, stems, leaves, blossoms and fruit. I feel close to identifying the nature of this species we have become. I cap the pen. There is no space left to write.
The man remains at the bar. He is elegant in his concern; he displays no gesture of self-analysis. This makes me acutely sensitive that others around me, even at this moment in the airport, can become attuned to the scratching. I would like to stand on the table and ask those around if they notice. I would say But he is a moose and you have failed to notice. The man strokes his chin and he looks at me. I watch his shoulders move up and down as his eyes quiz me. He grows taller, heavier - his companion has arrived. They are already untangling. Their bags skip and bounce as they make their way out.
Sometimes there are walls. Made of people. Made of air. Places are blurred layers of time you have spent near somebody. I know I experience surrogate times. I suspect I create them. I will add to the post card my words of gratitude for your understanding. I hear the walls echo my words as I leave the wet grey building.
Corresponding Millenium
The ineffable bird steals through the shadow of dream
Shifting bark obscures the flow of meaning
Memories skip over the ripple words
Trees swollen with souvenirs drop threads into the murmur
of river slipping through fields and city to dome
- a slipstream of accelerated time
And thoughts fall aimlessly among the reeds
Meanings detach themselves and
sink
swimming on their sides
to cling like mud
When the water is gone
we see the river bed
words lie scattered in discarded patches
of sun on the parched pavement
But sleep in fluid
those who ignore interest or reason
Floating endlessly falling in the stream
Cat's Eye London
A surprise
some years
this town
Like diamonds on the crown
I remember the
textures of your pavements
As feline footed friends
pass endlessly forward
without clear place to go
on the day
that nobody wanted to know
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