MORNING
This morning I woke up late. It was murky light outside and there was a rhythmic sound that was the sound of rain hitting the railings below. I got up and pulled the curtain and noticed that it was not only rain but that there were curls of soft sleet in it, like pieces of ash floating from a fire. I looked out over the back squares of garden and watched as tiny coloured half circles passed along the line of the far wall at the end of the gardens; then an umbrella. The hats of children moving towards school. I looked out at the front street from the other side of my flat and saw a small girl with a briefcase also heading that way.The sleet was increasing in small white marks. In the buildings across the back, in the top flat, a young man and woman are moving about the kitchen in white towelling dressing gowns, going about the motions of filling a kettle, opening a fridge. Last night, a man in the same flat sat at a different window, writing at a desk. His figure was dark and precise in a rectangle of a beautiful warm orange. I wanted to hold it, photograph it. I wondered what it would be like to take a photograph with a long lens. But then I thought that I would never be able to stop taking photographs of the windows; and perhaps it was better just to watch and pay attention.
The sleet keeps falling now soft and white. The wet back gardens are a sharp dark green. School has begun. When I woke up this morning I remembered fear. The emptiness and blackness of fear. The feeling of having lost all bearings. The dream I had been having was a familiar one involving a long coast line and strange shopping centres and built up concrete structures on it, and a need to escape from familiar but sinister surroundings. But I was too tired to wake up from it. When I woke I remembered fear and I remembered the time when this had been my every day waking feeling. I was appalled that it should have been so bad, so relentless, and me so young. I was relieved that now, mostly, I only need carry the memory, the shadow of fear. I put on a grey t shirt, grey woollen tights, slippers, an old skirt and a mossy coloured tank top, my carapace, and start work.
Glasgow, May 2011
This morning I woke up late. It was murky light outside and there was a rhythmic sound that was the sound of rain hitting the railings below. I got up and pulled the curtain and noticed that it was not only rain but that there were curls of soft sleet in it, like pieces of ash floating from a fire. I looked out over the back squares of garden and watched as tiny coloured half circles passed along the line of the far wall at the end of the gardens; then an umbrella. The hats of children moving towards school. I looked out at the front street from the other side of my flat and saw a small girl with a briefcase also heading that way.The sleet was increasing in small white marks. In the buildings across the back, in the top flat, a young man and woman are moving about the kitchen in white towelling dressing gowns, going about the motions of filling a kettle, opening a fridge. Last night, a man in the same flat sat at a different window, writing at a desk. His figure was dark and precise in a rectangle of a beautiful warm orange. I wanted to hold it, photograph it. I wondered what it would be like to take a photograph with a long lens. But then I thought that I would never be able to stop taking photographs of the windows; and perhaps it was better just to watch and pay attention.
The sleet keeps falling now soft and white. The wet back gardens are a sharp dark green. School has begun. When I woke up this morning I remembered fear. The emptiness and blackness of fear. The feeling of having lost all bearings. The dream I had been having was a familiar one involving a long coast line and strange shopping centres and built up concrete structures on it, and a need to escape from familiar but sinister surroundings. But I was too tired to wake up from it. When I woke I remembered fear and I remembered the time when this had been my every day waking feeling. I was appalled that it should have been so bad, so relentless, and me so young. I was relieved that now, mostly, I only need carry the memory, the shadow of fear. I put on a grey t shirt, grey woollen tights, slippers, an old skirt and a mossy coloured tank top, my carapace, and start work.
Glasgow, May 2011
