I’m at Heathrow airport – running through a vast liminal space at 5am. I’m in a bed in Oslo – hungover and fighting the impending doom of it all. I’m at a dinner party – wondering if I brought the correct wine and calculating how many calories in one square of lasagna. There’s nothing more crucial […]
The anaesthetic nurse, with her calmbedside manner, talks me throughthe panic of having to stay in linefor the oncoming whiteout.Seven engines rev up in a metallic choir.I breathe, two inhales at a time, syncedwith the arctic blizzard hummingagainst the glass.From the backseat, she whispersencouragements, sedating mewith an artificial confidence.Soothing, recognisedlike the preschool teacher when I
Some people make writing look so sexy, especially when advertising their tortured-poet-personas online. But writing, when you’re in the trenches of duty, when you’re watching golden hours slip by, when you’re awaiting a dreaded phone call, is nothing more than one pained hour of resistance after another. It goes against every structure of obligation. It’s
Scent is prime and primitive. A form of time travelling.I used to be a teenager, prime and proper, sweat-fearing,rule-abiding, God-loving. Without a will. Belonging tothem. The most radical discovery: the butler in DinnerFor One dabbing the whisky he’s serving onto his neck.Hot, warm, drunken, macho. Or the vanilla and tobacco-scented hair oil in the cabinet,
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I woke up to seven missed calls at 1pm. This is how I usually operate, minus the calls. I fell asleep late, or rather, collapsed into sleep like I’d been sedated by an entity. Something had a hold of me last night. I was possessed by an opportunist, a monk, and a hungry spider. The
It’s in here – this dark cavity of my palm,where invisible Venus is suspendedin a perceptive night. Wrapped in skin.Not her own, but her own too sitscloser to her sobs, her heart-throbs.Among us, peaking in, we have weaponsof earthly materials, ready to dashtowards the next bellow from a God.We seek new platforms, beyond the skinthat
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in a spotlight on the dock divinity through cloudsI’ve stood and watchedher fumbling to steerthe boat ashore my voice –the thunder keeps her stillas if she’s not even tryingto get away from over there way over thereshe trips overboardswims through the coldsea of indecision she floatsin limbo and disappearsI can’t help but notice how it’s
When you call your mother, what should we do? you’re not looking for the meaning itselfbut for what there’s left without it. You’ve finished Camus and the chamomile tea –you feel a revolution or a metaphorical suicide. When you go for a walk, there’s wind to notice –which you do. A book is torn to
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A small boy on a gigantic blue bicycle rush past us. I spot him from the woods, where my two younger cousins and I have been sent to fill buckets with cloudberries – summers have become laboursome, after we became adults. The boy’s legs are stretched, and his toes strain to push the weight of