A day in the life (January 2024)

 

My body is currently engaging in politics, so naturally, I must rest.  I wake up slowly, the January morning already there, paused as if waiting. I make coffee, grind, click, wait, pour, wait then at my desk arrange my drinks, coffee, a pot of tea and water. I write, hastily, right now my mind is scattered, and the politics always involves blood, the currency of life or the excess of death- sleep creeps longingly,  begging me to be languid, but I push through. I play Billie Holiday while I cook Katsu curry from sauce cubes and roast chicken. I fry onions, roast cabbage, here, here is my life laid out before me like shortcut pastry, and it is up to me how I place the fruit soft and wet-

What makes up my life is those filler moments- playing with Chibi while listening to a podcast. What makes a writer, is it writing? Is it publication? Is it payment? Maybe my surprise cry at the maternity ward was my first monologue, expressing the anguish of being excluded from the palace of the child.

I  cut words out like a seamstress and add words like a painter and go back and forth these two occupations for a while until sleep overpowers me, so I lay down. Now the politics gives way to a course in biology, or anatomy or more likely, the memory of pleasure and that grows for a while, like the fragrance of lilies at night, I go to my bedroom to cut these flowers.

 However, looking at photographs of a near stranger (only known by sight) it evokes some kind of embarrassment, and I can’t do it. You cannot conduct a poorly written melody, no matter how nifty the violinists’ fingers. So, I go back to the living room, and read some Mary Oliver, which makes me regret not taking my 2pm walk, the sun was bright and rare, jubilant as if it had remembered its purpose.

Read some pages of ‘The Lying Life of Adults’ by Elena Ferrante, it makes me cringe at the mention of sex, sucking, licking, the brazen word ‘fuck’ evokes the same shame of seeing a muddy pair of knickers on the side of the road.

I shudder at the thought of my mother reading this, no wonder she said it was a terrible, terrible book and I shouldn’t waste my time, but I asked why she finished it, which is rarer for her than smoking a cigarette and she said well what else was I supposed to do?

 When a lady has her painters around, red, obsessions occur and in that moment my obsession was something sweet. My mother was to come over later, so again, Ms. Holiday accompanied me- I had a roll of shortcrust pastry in the fridge and various fruits; peach, strawberries, pear, I cut them up quickly but not without grace, these belonged to a tree once before and they didn’t grow just for me – you risk thinking like that, that the sun shines only for you but the sun fruit and birdsong, these things just stumble upon being like the most natural thing in the world and we are blessed to have the senses that perceive them, we were created with such design.

I arrange the fruit like a zen priest making a mandala but he also wants to have a shower soon, quickly at first then I catch myself, slow my pace down into a trot rather than a gallop and thus with purpose I sprinkle cinnamon over and squeeze honey and wrap the pastry around the mandala fruit and paint egg wash on the edges, using a paintbrush I washed, the act feels familiar, I decide I should paint more, I only paint when I can’t play guitar and I only play guitar when I can’t write and I only write when I can't sing, so it goes.

The fruit pastry comes hot, steaming, slightly sweet but tart, a balance that satisfies me like water after sleep.

Chibi sleeps either on the blanket, the pillow, or the Persian futon or even the carpet by the fake fire. Here, writing again to Klezmer music 1909-1927, the Yiddish sounds familiar, Central Asian, its musicality not unfamiliar. 

I will go to the couch and read again.