PAUSE
So, she's back: our omniscient narrator.
I don't know who she thinks she is, this self-appointed interventionist. But I recognise her.
The last time I saw her she was sitting on a wall, a dry-stone wall in Yorkshire. She had insisted I come for a walk. A stomp and talk, she called it. Stretch the legs. Blow away the cobwebs. She was full of the latest book she'd just read: Wanderlust. As with all her enthusiasms, she had now turned her attention fully, comprehensively, to walking - as a consequence of her reading - with renewed and exasperating vigour. (Although, to be fair, it wasn't only a fair-weather occupation of hers, this walking, this stomping, the stretching of the legs. She had always walked when she was pre-occupied. When asked, as a child, what she'd like to become she answered with naive sincerity 'a bag-lady'.)
It was a glorious day, the season shifting into autumn: crisp and fresh. She began by telling me how she loved the touch of the breeze on her forearms and face - 'like a gentle embrace', she said. But, then she began talking of scopic regimes, launched into the fact that photographs aren't ever what they seem. A photograph is one-dimensional and static. To live is to be fully sensate, fully embodied. She turned her face to me and said, 'I'm scared that for me, all that's too late'.
I stopped in my tracks, not knowing what I'd heard, except that it was bad. And she turned and looked at me, and laughed.
We ate our sandwiches in the shelter of a wall. A dry-stone wall in Yorkshire. And when we had finished she hoisted herself up and sat on it, letting the breeze caress her face and blow away the cobwebs, as she drank from the water bottle.
As children we used to play this game. We called it the pause game. These were the rules: you had to describe the scenario in which you'd like to die.
In retrospect, I suppose it was a morbid game for children to play.
As she sat on the wall she said, 'let's play the pause game'. I shook my head as I lit a cigarette, and refused to look her in the eye.
'Come on,' she said, slightly goading. 'Give me that, at least.'
But, I said nothing.
The day didn't end there, but I have no memory of what followed. We would've continued to walk, to stomp and talk. We would have reached town and continued, passed the Co-op and the Inn on the Bridge, on to the station. We would have laughed as we waited for the train, and kissed before I embarked. But I cannot picture any of that.
So, my sweet sister, let's play the pause game now.
I would stop it all there, with you, fully embodied and fully sensate. Provocative, over-dramatic and irritating, as usual. Pre-occupied and scared and, as usual, pretending not to care.
Really, I would stop it all there.
I don't know who she thinks she is, this self-appointed interventionist. But I recognise her.
The last time I saw her she was sitting on a wall, a dry-stone wall in Yorkshire. She had insisted I come for a walk. A stomp and talk, she called it. Stretch the legs. Blow away the cobwebs. She was full of the latest book she'd just read: Wanderlust. As with all her enthusiasms, she had now turned her attention fully, comprehensively, to walking - as a consequence of her reading - with renewed and exasperating vigour. (Although, to be fair, it wasn't only a fair-weather occupation of hers, this walking, this stomping, the stretching of the legs. She had always walked when she was pre-occupied. When asked, as a child, what she'd like to become she answered with naive sincerity 'a bag-lady'.)
It was a glorious day, the season shifting into autumn: crisp and fresh. She began by telling me how she loved the touch of the breeze on her forearms and face - 'like a gentle embrace', she said. But, then she began talking of scopic regimes, launched into the fact that photographs aren't ever what they seem. A photograph is one-dimensional and static. To live is to be fully sensate, fully embodied. She turned her face to me and said, 'I'm scared that for me, all that's too late'.
I stopped in my tracks, not knowing what I'd heard, except that it was bad. And she turned and looked at me, and laughed.
We ate our sandwiches in the shelter of a wall. A dry-stone wall in Yorkshire. And when we had finished she hoisted herself up and sat on it, letting the breeze caress her face and blow away the cobwebs, as she drank from the water bottle.
As children we used to play this game. We called it the pause game. These were the rules: you had to describe the scenario in which you'd like to die.
In retrospect, I suppose it was a morbid game for children to play.
As she sat on the wall she said, 'let's play the pause game'. I shook my head as I lit a cigarette, and refused to look her in the eye.
'Come on,' she said, slightly goading. 'Give me that, at least.'
But, I said nothing.
The day didn't end there, but I have no memory of what followed. We would've continued to walk, to stomp and talk. We would have reached town and continued, passed the Co-op and the Inn on the Bridge, on to the station. We would have laughed as we waited for the train, and kissed before I embarked. But I cannot picture any of that.
So, my sweet sister, let's play the pause game now.
I would stop it all there, with you, fully embodied and fully sensate. Provocative, over-dramatic and irritating, as usual. Pre-occupied and scared and, as usual, pretending not to care.
Really, I would stop it all there.
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