The fabric of water hangs like a molecular curtain, suspended in disbelief. Simple pleasures light catches. Droplets murmurate and moisture condenses on my face. I sit, immobile, buried up to my shoulders, like an Easter island head, looking out. Warm water is drawn in the distance. Drops climb atop the surface like souls liberated from their entrenchment. I try to clear my throat, one nostril rasps in protest, while my tongue paws at the scratchy lump in the back of my throat, trying to turn it over and
‘Is that the hill you want to die on? Really?
The voice rings with an upending urgency. Echoing, igneous. I laugh to myself, but out loud.
‘Is that it? Is that what your going to choose?’
God. I hope I don’t drop my phone. I grip it deliberately, with both hands. My eyes move down to the next line. Someone on Reddit is berating, a middling white conservative. At least that’s how I imagine them, opinions set in stone about something post-modern and mutable. They cling on to a hillside while the winds of change whip around them. The expression is new to me and I’m enthralled. Its not —
‘Curry or Christmas food?’ I am texting ‘…Curry I think’ What time will I be coming over? ‘Between 6 and 7’.
…just about choosing your battles. Or when to surrender and when to retreat. What would you live in order to die for? A family of toes peer back across the water. This little piggy… Is this how it happens? I bet it is.
Get out of the bath.
An ever dwindling conscription of hours pile up on the shore of Saturday like messages in so many bottles. Swapping London, for the novelty of solitude in Berlin. There is no seaweed between the bedroom and the kitchen. 2 eggs fried in olive oil, each on its own rye and sunflower raft. The plate, with its 70’s flower print is still warm from its time as an improvised pan lid smiles back with all the optimism of the 20th Century. Trains rattle by every few minutes and the radio tower blinks in the distance.
Perhaps this was the weekend I realised that simple is enough. It has been a small and constant comfort over the years to read for hours, in a long long bath. Suddenly I am swept. I am welling with a warm pink flush, a slight tearful bruise. I’m dreaming of being read to, red too, being born, unborn and warm and safe. A kind of ‘Diving bell and butterfly’. Locked in and free. Saturday night is a kind of afterthought waiting for me as I emerge from the water. Its already dark. Quite by surprise the story finished with characters raised out their subsuming misery into a kind of clear light of bliss. That’s how I like to see it too. So I’m happy.
