I read a description in a book a few months ago, somehow fascinating and repellent: "...ornate, abstractly phallic orifices". What is an abstract phallus? Is it a metaphorical penis? The kind that women of a ballsy nature supposedly have, or am I confusing my metaphorical body parts? While we're about it, what is a phallic orifice? Blame Kevin J. Anderson.
It puts me in mind of a Lalique homage, a fountain, in charcoal cement, oddly smoothed: grey concrete paving in a cold canyon between black skyscrapers. There are no seats. Men and women are here, not gathered, but not wandering; standing still in deep shadow. The light is that of dawn, but darkness holds sway here. The men wear black suits, black shiny shoes, white shirts and black ties. The women wear black suits with knee-length skirts; their shoes are flat; their hair is long but sternly fashioned. They all look cold between the black glass.
Water gushes, steaming, from the fountain. Standing close to the fountain is warm in spite of the dampness from it. No-one stands close. That way lies madness.
Hello, it's been a while, I'll be a little weird this morning.
Creepy fragments are shooting through my head this morning. ("Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a small cottage, and her husband beat her.") Don't ask me, occasionally my head just comes up with this sort of thing, although the rhythm of that sentence comes from Neil Gaiman's American Gods. The story of the twins for those in the know ("...the rest is just detail."). The woman in the cottage lives alone, just to confuse the issue. It might be in fragments, but there's an awful lot of detail in the unwritten words.
It's early in the morning, husbandly has left for work and small lad sleeps, sprawled in a warm bed. I have hay fever and am trying not to sneeze - I don't want to wake him.
I have housework and sleeping before paid work to consider for the day, but a twitching in my fingertips that wants me to type, to write something, anything, even if the ideas cupboard is full of fragments and Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" keeps hovering at the edge of my mind.
In a reflective mood I carry on, even if he lied in every word and looked askance to see the effects: in my case it's statistically more likely that she lied. Most of my friends and acquaintances are girls (of varying ages and probably not qualifying for the soubriquet of "girl").
Labels only matter if the substance of them is wrong, and to my mind we're all kids yet. Why not? It isn't a matter of being a child but rather retaining childhood's filters, seeing the world anew every time. That I'm a grown woman with a child of my own makes no difference that I can see. Even in those times when I have to be the grown up and responsible. That's part of the fun too.
The cat sits on the table outside, puffed out and cold looking; while she would like to be patted, and warm, if I bring her inside I'll score another puncture as she tries to bite me. She tolerates me, but it's husbandly she truly loves. There are birds squawking rather than singing in this post-dawn apocalypse. I don't know why "apocalypse" seems right and the word itself looks wrong the longer I look at it. I keep waiting for the steel drum to start, but then realise that I'm thinking of calypso music, with a quick cross-reference to Pirates of the Caribbean and weird crab things. Full of fragments, that's my head this morning.
I could go like this all day, but prosaically I have to consider the morning-before-school routines and I want to post this because I'm tired of coming across this blog in corners as something undone and waiting. I like talking, even in the written word, and that this is not so much a conversation as a whisper in your ear is of no moment. Whispers, intimate things, reaching out in the dark (I don't care that it's dawn here, whispers should always happen after lights out, the best way to share secrets). This whisper reaches out to you, to stir not response but reflection; man, do I have my freak on today.
