beautiful world. It’s a shame, what will happen.
It’s rare, though, to spend an hour watching the morning arrive like that. People don’t. It’s rare for people to even spend a moment enjoying their first piss of the day, the way he does. People are so busy. They’ll brush their teeth sitting on the toilet to save a few minutes. Eat breakfast standing up. They don’t have the time to watch the colour bleed into the world each day. They have meetings, schedules, documents. They don’t have time to listen to each other, to be patient with the difficulties of expression. They haven’t got the time to stand and watch a man say nothing except: I can’t explain, or: I don’t know how to say it. There are important things to be done, and a man who will spend a day standing at a window is not a man who can fit into such functional and fulfilling lives.
These are not people with ears to hear or eyes to see. These are not people who will understand, when it comes.
They will say they understand. They will say they know it might take a while to come to terms. But one day there will be shouting, there will be a cracked voice saying: I don’t have time to deal with all this. There will be the banging of objects against hard surfaces, a waving of arms, children standing and crying.
They don’t have time. They have busy and important things to do. They need somebody who can be there for them. They need somebody who can go back to work, even after that. Silence and stillness and contemplation aren’t going to pay the bills.
This is how his days begin, now. He asked me to tell you. He wakes up, he walks across the rough wooden floor, he holds on to the doorframe and he pisses on to the stony ground.
He looks at the height of the river and the colour of the sky. He looks up at the half-built treehouse, and the raft, and he plans his work for the day.
Soon it will rain. And people won’t understand. They’ll just put on their hats and coats, open their umbrellas, and rush out into the middle of whatever it is they need to do. Their busy days. Their successful and important lives.
He thought you should know.
Fleeing Complexity
Irby in the Marsh
The fire spread quicker than the little bastard was expecting.
Vessel
Halton Holegate
She took the tulips from his hands. Let me find something to put those in, she said. His hands were cold. She was surprised that he’d come and she wanted to cover her surprise. She laid the tulips on the kitchen counter and looked around for a pair of scissors. The flower-heads were still tightly closed. The petals were red, with a rim of yellow at the lips. The stems arched, the way that tulip stems always did. She would need a vase tall enough to bear their weight. She picked them up and put them down. She didn’t know where the scissors were. She opened a drawer. She stopped; she’d forgotten to invite him in. He must still be standing on the doorstep, in the snow. She felt the cold air blowing through from the hallway. By the time she got back to him he’d stepped forward as far as the runner and was standing with the door half-closed behind him. Oh come in, of course, come in, she said. You weren’t waiting to be asked were you? He smiled, and shrugged, and snow fell from his shoulders as he crooked up a leg to wrestle off a shoe. She watched. She wanted to brush the snow from him and take his coat, put a hand against his cold cheek. She waited.
She lit the burner and put the kettle on. She wondered what he was doing here. They had a conversation, of sorts, standing there in the kitchen.
‘You didn’t walk, in this weather?’
‘I got the bus. I walked from the end of the village. Where the bus turns.’
‘I’m surprised the bus was running.’
‘I wasn’t sure it would.’
‘And you didn’t think of calling first, to check I’d be here?’
‘I felt like taking a chance. I had the afternoon free.’
‘Well. It is nice to see you. It’s a nice surprise. Tea?’
‘Please. Milk, if you have any.’
She poured the boiling water into a pot and the milk into a jug. She put them on a tray with cups and saucers and the sugar bowl. She carried the tray through to the front room and they sat across from each other while the snow fell past the bright window and the tea steeped and swirled inside the pot.
‘These are nice cups.’
‘Aren’t they? We’ve had them a long time. They were a wedding present.’
‘Really? I don’t remember seeing them before.’
‘Well, no. James never really liked them.’
‘Ah.’