A Different Kind of Sunrise

A Different Kind of Sunrise

the light when it shines

burns so bright that it bends round corners 

drowning the shadows

and the time is stretching

wide and thin

so that you can skate over it

I lie perfectly still in the cold dark morning, so not to disturb the air around me and rouse its creeping bony fingers. The lightbulb in the hallway is red, dimly glowing pouring a slender pool of orange through the gap in the door, onto the wardrobe behind it. It makes me think of the mornings he used to wake me up, so we could get washed in sunrise. 

“It’s good for you” he’d say, and we’d both squeeze up next to the wall at the corner of his bed until we had it in our eyes and on our faces, clear and golden, follow it back down the pillow, falling tumbling, back into sleep until midday.

And all the time, time was still stretching, and the echoes of love would still be jumping around in my throat, and I’d lean in closer to him, being careful not to look, being careful to keep the silence suspended, leaving the space free, into which we can project, whatever we like. 

And the smoke weaving its fingers through the beams of light, animating invisible air streams, dancing the dust. And I know that the sun is pouring into our eyes, washing them, illuminating their darkness, like milk into the whirlpool of stirred up coffee, long white tendrils dancing around each other until finally neither can take it any longer and they give in and merge. 

I think of that and then I think of the red light in the hallway, and how it’s like a different kind of sunrise - permanent but not real, and then I draw a parallel between the lightbulb and the sun and that makes me miss you, and question if anything else can possibly be real. Then I think it doesn’t really matter because it’s all just thoughts after all, and we can think anything into being the way that it is. So instead I think about the flight I will get on to Paris the next day, and how good it will be for me to learn to shrug like the French.

We just had to break it over and over again to change the shape and find the one that fits, formed along the contours of our own jagged edges. Only its not that easy, because the shape keeps changing. It’s all very well to be adaptable but you must first secure something at the core. Perhaps it was ambitious to think that we could ever understand such things to begin with.

“It’s always the same cycle” the words swim out of his mouth thick and soupy, sickly like condensed milk sliding softly thwacking with an authority that makes me want to punch him. “We starve each other of feeling and then you want to talk about it and then we wake up and have bad sex.” I feel the knives of my pride stand to attention. One of these conversations then. Hunting through the baggage vacuum packed in the back of the wardrobe, searching for a forgotten pair of dirty pants nestled between the neatly folded laundry.

“I think cycles are natural.” I say.

We orbit each other, there are points where the sun doesn’t shine.

“I don’t like them.”

Usually we just fall into each other.

“Maybe we’re just worrying how the other’s feeling …”

“I don’t care how you feel I’m worried about how I’m feeling.” A lump in my throat. Whose feelings are they anyway? “Worry about how you’re feeling stop trying to climb into my mind.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you ever spoke it.”

“You pick the best times to talk about things.” He dragged the word out like barbed wire through silk, pulling with it all the neat weaves of fabric, sending ladders streaming in every direction.

“You’re the one who tried to talk to me!” And held up our shit sex in this shitty daylight.

“Don’t make me angry before my Grandma’s funeral.”

“The black shirt looked better.”

“I don’t suit all black.” And he straightened his tie and she thought, if this were a hundred years ago, and they weren’t having shit sex, she’d have been standing in front of him with her pelvis pressed against his looping the loop of his tie while he played with her hair. The danger of ideals. As it were, he went to make coffee, and she rolled one of his cigarettes and stretched out with feigned indignance on the bed and smoked it and watched the smoke paint around the branches outside.

“Today will be cloudy” trilled the radio presenter. “Tomorrow will probably be even cloudier.” More eyeliner. More mascara. Up the contrast to beat the grey.

His eyes swimming in the the sun, at his curls that tickled my cheekbone, being careful to keep it all in in case I couldn’t rein it back again and wound up a soggy heap in a pile of crumpled bed clothes. Look at something this way, and turn it that, and change it forever.

“I have to go now.”

“I hope it goes OK.” He’s doing a reading.

“I’m going to be really funny.” And he tells her a number of funny things he’s planning on saying. And she smiles encouragingly, unsure of whether she has missed the joke or if the joke is that it doesn’t really make much sense, and neither does death, yet here we all are paying homage to life in retrospect. It didn’t matter anyway, they’d all smile encouragingly then take from it what they wanted, based on factors mostly outside of his control.

Tectonic

Seek comfort in uncertainty to build a strength that bends.

“That crack goes all the way through the wall” he said once, in the middle of a discussion, in the middle of the night, the sort of which had become regular, about whether or not we could make it work, or not. “Did you know that?”

We talk and we talk and we throw around points but we’re not really listening. It’s just filler, occupying the mind so the soul can get a better look. Dancing around ourselves, watching, feeling, and reporting back. I panicked you know. I was trying to find the balance, you intensify everything, sometimes I don't know if I can contain the scope of my feelings for you. And you so still, surrounded. Everything resting on it, erect the barriers! Activate the shields! Don’t. Move. Anything.

You said the French were the best at shrugging, I agreed, I read it as a suggestion that I should be better at shrugging. ‘Oh the world is about to collapse? Oui? Peu importe.’ A direction in disguise. Madness through metaphor. You told my dog once, that you really liked her and respected her and enjoyed her company, but that she really must stop licking your hand, and I took that to be a gentle suggestion to stop being so forthcoming in the scope of my feelings towards you. Eager to see you please you love you tell you. Let me? Always searching for guidance, helpful hints. Maybe a true lover should confuse the hell out of you, because through trying to work out what on earth is going on, you are forced to take journeys through your mind that you may never have considered otherwise. They must have something that makes the confusion worth it. You must feel that there’s hope. You must feel that they want it. Once you uncover reassurance in that respect, and accept that you’re always going to feel bemused, a lightness emerges.

The heart is a riddle and there is no certain answer, we can only make it up as we go along, and be hopeful that we’re speaking the same language.

You gave me a lift to the airport. I spent the drive pouring my insecurities into queries of my sanity, and was upset because you could not give me an answer. 

Everyone’s always two steps away from being exactly the person they want to be, and then when they are that person they need recognition for it, just a moment, a passing glance. A confirmation from another that they didn’t make it up. ‘Yes you really do exist, did you not know?’ An open door for them to interest you, then they can realise themselves as interesting creatures and will be more able to do it again without support.  

“You make me feel uncertain” I said. ‘You’re doing it all wrong’ you heard. I didn't want to take responsibility for my own doubts, I needed to be strong and self-assured or you might start to believe the things I thought you thought of me. 

“We all have to govern our own hearts.” you said, defending your own from my criticisms ‘What do you want from me?’ I heard. Echoes of the question bouncing forever forwards and backwards through what I knew of us and ourselves. Posed against every action and reaction, a cause and effect of attack and defence. An invisible screen, a filter through which everything must be passed and judged against. And all we ever really wanted was each other’s happiness, was the freedom to grow and entwine around each other.

Everything creeping in too close, the weight of love bearing down from all sides like an emotional swaddle, at her core a fire burning itself out like the sun, bringing everything around her into a chaotic orbit. Her a tiny body all packed up in the midst of it, squeezing through the capillaries between fire and clutter, like one of those saturated gigs, where the people are too many and the ceilings are too low, and the collective body heat with no place to escape creates its own atmosphere and your head’s in the cloud of it, and a foot further up it condenses on the ceiling until the droplets swell beyond their own weight, raining back down into the crowd like a micellial monsoon, and if you’re lucky and keep movement to a minimum you might avoid collecting too much foreign fluid, but you’ve been forced to strip off because it’s so hot, so you have to resort to the sickly sliding contact of hot wet skin on hot wet skin. She wondered if love is the tolerance of another body’s hot wet skin. ‘If that is the case’ she thought ‘then I don’t believe I have ever truly been in love.’

At the drop-and-go one of those terrible cigarettes, that gets so much further into your lungs because it’s seeking to satisfy more than just a craving for nicotine, that I dragged on until the drop and go police came and hovered pointedly by the window, and I realised I had to leave, and I went stiff and awkward as you came and put your arms around me. An embrace to match the tone, one that didn’t really commit to the equator, instead hanging limp and soggy on the lukewarm climate of the shoulders.

Safely through the doors I have a little breakdown, receiving a number of sideways glances in exchange. And it’s England isn’t it, anything beyond surface niceties and well kept exteriors and nobody knows what to do, searching around their feet for some imaginary lost item.

I feel hysterical. An unnerving sort, slow and brooding, that quietly and meticulously seeps through every part of your physical and emotional body with nice and reasonable suggestions of the innate lack of happiness that will become you from this point forth.

Through customs I spray myself with a combination of too much and too many perfumes and find a table at the coffee shop, where I sit looking forlorn until an Egyptian heart surgeon (which is ironic I think to myself when I learn that that is what he does) offers me a chocolate and asks if he can buy me a coffee. And I say yes he can, and he asks me if I’m from Eastern Europe and I say no I’m not but my mother is adopted so there may be roots there, and I would like it if there were.

He was telling me something about his work and family and the difficulty of getting a job over here, and I showed interest and sympathy but I wasn’t really listening. All my vehicles of compassion and concern were otherwise occupied mopping up after my own innumerable spillages of hope.

He tells me that he doesn’t like to eat and drink alone, because having something nice and no one to share it with, makes him feel very isolated. And I think to myself yes that is the same as what this is. Something nice, something magic even, but I don’t know how to share it with you.

I thank him for the coffee and accept another chocolate for my journey, and wish him luck with his problems and say I hope he has a nice time away, because this is a holiday he’s going on and not work, and that much I remember.

On the plane to her right, two old men. The first, who’s hair looked like it was all hiding round the back of his head, peeking out here and there in cowardly tendrils, was falling asleep, and looked as though he had been for a number of years. The patch of neck beneath his chin was conveniently inflated, providing built in support for an unstable head, which kept leading the rest of his body dangerously close to falling off his chair, giving him the appearance of a Mexican wave.

Paris. Early evening. No phone and no French and an unfamiliar address scribbled in a notepad. Successful exit of the railway station achieved on third attempt. Expression: aloof, assured, non-confrontational-yet-able-to-confront… anything. Beginning a series of back and forths and uncertain road-crossing up and down Rué de this and that, until the door with the appropriate number on the appropriate road arrives in front of me.

Two squirrels fighting over a nut, until they realise, there is no nut. Now what?

Paris

In a nutshell

No 

don’t be silly

Paris doesn’t fit in a nutshell.

pretty

ugly

but it [everything]

makes the best of itself

the tube stations 

have their own personalities

and the smells and the faces and the stories in the eyes because

they keep them for themselves

and the sun tickles the tops of the roofs and trickles down in uneven waterfalls.

and the pigeons are bathing in the gushing drains

and I think that I miss you but I remind myself not to.

I have decided to go looking for Dalí. Perhaps he can give me some release from this reality. Fuck reality. Dull. Moderated. Is our mind in fact not merely playing tricks on us, in order to retain a sense of normality or constant in a dynamic and ever-shifting world? Everything is moving. Everything. ‘La surrealisme, c’est moi!’ Surrealism is me.

We press our foreheads together so that our noses graze side by side the other’s cheek, my head and my heart swim amidst the soup of what it feels like and what imagination serves me.

We are suspended connected flowing between the space between our eyes.

We are on the sofa, there is a pressure on my forehead, anticipation holds a dance in my throat.

He pulls me closer, there’s an awkward falter as we try silently to share out the resulting decisions. How do we best fit together? Are we going to get tangled up? 

Ascent

It is golden light time, the one which belongs to the afternoon, the light falls on the dust gathered on the bare brick, making the side of the building look like a charcoal drawing, an etching, like they forgot to finish the dream. Bright red flowers sit in three out of the 29 open windows. Who are they calling to?

I find a long mountain of concrete steps cutting up the hill through the houses. There’s a broken mirror on the wall, and a french bulldog with a glass eye. I climb. And the smells are changing and the sounds of the city drift away as they run out of things to bounce off. Step follows step follows step, follows step, and my heart beats louder in competition.

Next set. Toes chasing heels. Heart finding the spaces between. And the light flickers through the fence as I walk, leaving a sun strobe the space to dance with my eyelashes. Another moment and… 

The entire city leaps from behind the horizon! My eyes widen, trying to find the right settings to take it all in. The scale of things, the colour of the air, everything tall and skinny and milky and blonde, eyes link up to stomach, a push and a pull, swinging together as they try to spin the sense of it all. Through the crowded market place, intercepted by people who know where they’re going. And pigeons. A pleading Charlie Chaplin, with a white balloon and a continental snarl, suggests you might exchange some euros for the privilege of a picture with him.

A boy at the back, standing awkwardly to one side, nursing a nose bleed.

A train full of tourists glides by near missing a collision with a bicycle.

*screeches and relieved laughter*

A poster for Dali -

“La surrealisme, c’est moi!”

Back out in the square. An old man with a dignified snout smokes a pipe as the young woman with him chases the last of a milkshake around with her straw. The tone is light. Laughter dances and darts behind the eyes. I tilt my head to take in the dizzying steeple, the winds are carrying us under the clouds, I feel I am on a giant concrete yacht. I squeeze up into a last sunspot on the ancient steps, and I know that the sun is pouring into my eyes, washing them, illuminating their darkness.

Your hands tracing along the line between my legs and my belly button, swirling up storm clouds becoming whirlwinds shimmering a mirage under the heat of your touch. Charging up. Sending tendrils out up and down an intricate network of veins.

I see a butterfly

for a moment it is a bird

but it does not glide

See in me in you see the potential see in me see in you see the potential see in you the potential me, see?

We are in a cloud. The clouds have descended. Everything is a haze. Lights are spread wider and dimmer. Like the whole atmosphere has been airbrushed. Softened. Cushioned. Blanketed. A three dimensional translucent film. Vapour sheets. Car lights sending geometric shapes dancing into the night. I see a man in a long black coat. He has an air about him that I know. But I don’t know from where. He walks with a distinctive beat. Two-two-three two-three-three, and his coat dances along in an unexpected jig. Flow-flow-bounce. Flow-bounce-bounce. Down underground. I always feel it is a sign of mania when limbs look like they would like to go faster than they’re capable of, like they’re pulling on the leash of allotted time.

Back underground. And everything is moving. The guy next to me, he has it worst. Searching desperately through his body parts, for the one with the right beat, but there are too many, impossible to choose. Feet follow trolley follow train follow…

Another man, with a high velocity expression, has a facial conversation with the chocolate machine. The train pulls up. I leave the poor soul to my left still nodding his head and wringing his hands and stroking his beard and rubbing his legs. His fly’s undone and he smells of urine. His eyes are open too wide for him to see coherently.

Peering over the edge I fall into you, and out the other side, left from this moderated reality that hangs over the human race, like a solid fog, freezing us at the edges, and we become separated, thousands of droplets of water contained in flimsy shells of ice, the fluid motion of our natural state of being sloshing around at our core, licking at the edges, begging for the lightness of mist.

I don’t think anybody’s ever silenced me so utterly and completely under a single touch.

Do you know how much I love you? I would do anything for you. I would walk to eternity with you. Those moments, when we just lie there, and I’ve never been anywhere else in the world, and everything that ever was slots perfectly into place around us, and we are a jigsaw piece, and we are the centre of all of it, and we are suspended in weightless space, and lights flash before my mind’s eye, and sparks fire up and down in my chest, and I feel you and I feel you.

Back at the airport

A soggy aubergine, trés garlic and with the appearance of having collapsed under the weight of its own existence, pureed squid, the entrails of some undersea creature, clinging to each other by mucusey threads, successfully escapes its fate between my makeshift chopsticks (coffee stirrers) neither sticking nor chopping. Passenger Amelie someone-or-other is about to miss her flight to Leeds. A series of screechy harmonics burrow from the speaker into the sombre spongy atmosphere. I had intended not to smoke again, but the plastic fern lined patio has drawn me in, it is eerily silent, stale, a nicotine graveyard, a gap in time, a waiting room between here and the afterlife, where smokers go to be judged on their long drawn out suicide. I leave half my cigarette still burning on the lip of an enormous ash tray and walk out to join the boarding queue. A slim chiselled face resting between elongated fingers and a dark receding hairline peers out from behind a pillar. He looks perplexed. The judge. Judge of intent. He has a streamlined quality that gives the impression he’s been caught in a permanent gust of wind.

Inhale

Exhale

Repeat

Repent

Conclude

And your eyes pour in and the air pours out, like Eureka and I am his bath water, and a part of me spills over the edge and I let her wash into you.

“Weird.”

“Can I come in?”

We sit up in your bed. Nursing coffee. Smoking cigarettes but not really smoking them. Acutely aware of each other.

“That crack goes all the way through the wall” he said “Did you know that?”

We talk and we talk and we throw around points but we’re not really listening. It’s just filler, occupying the mind so the soul can get a good look.

“So what do we…”

“Alright. I forgive myself. Do you forgive yourself?” He holds out his hand.

Do I want you to want me as much as I want you? Do I want you to want me more? Or is it more that I just want you to want me?

Cautiously we tread over shards of shattered silence, piecing back together the illusion, only to smash it up again into a thousand more pieces.

I lie perfectly still in the cold morning, so not to disturb the air around me and rouse its creeping bony fingers. The sun is pouring in, clear and golden. The dust is dancing with invisible skeletons. And your breath falls steadily on my forehead.

leaves are fallen on

lands to follow with

love to nourish the

pain and sorrow of

lives to borrow they

pray tomorrow the

leaves will carry them home

It is the song of everything and nothing. The song they played at the start of it all, that they dance to as curtains fall. Be fascinated, be enthralled, and let it all go. It’s beautiful that way. That way it remains beautiful over and over.

We fall asleep. Hand half in hand.