hot stream

This morning I sat for an hour in the grey dawn light, watching the rain laden clouds moving so slowly across the sky that I could barely see them change. I wanted to see the horizon clear and for the sun to rise free of mist and shade.
Eventually, when I had given up, laid down, rested again, yellow light filled my caravan, and I rolled over and said 'hello', then laughed at my welcome to the morning.
I walked outside, shivering naked and anointed the earth with a small cup of my blood.
Then I went tall and fresh into the open morning, my skin contracting all over me, my feet sinking into ice cold mud to a half barrel full of water where I filled a glass milk bottle to wash my feet.
On my walk to the computer I could see 20 miles into the distance, sunlight hitting multicoloured trees on lumps of hills.
Now I can see a clump of sheep, moving like a growth under a microscope, speeded up to where hours are seconds, spreading, colonising a hillside two miles away.

And it's only 9am. Hurray! Now I'm going to have breakfast and maybe cut some grass.

ten thousand meanings

In my cupboard in the kitchen sits a small pot. I am idly filling it with mustard seeds. There are some potatoes in the corner of the cupboard that have started to sprout pale shoots in the warm dry darkness.

It's a Wednesday afternoon and I am wearing my hair in a new style. It makes me nervous and I keep adjusting the band, pulling it straight, pushing it off my forehead - trying to keep it as good as it looked for that second of perfect pose in the mirror 3 hours earlier.

A boy comes into the thin, dimly lit room. He says hello to me but that's it. That's ok, I know he's shy. He sits down at the piano and starts to play. His fingers are long and thin and they are producing beautiful music. I am entranced. I slow my movements as I listen and half turn towards him. I've seen him a few times in the house and I kinda like him. Once I was reading a book on the stairs when he came out of the shower. He smiled really wide when he saw me. Once I saw him on the street and I winked at him cos I was in a good mood and feeling a bit cheeky - sometimes winking is a bit easier than saying hello anyway. Years of accquaintance can be distilled into a little head nod. This guy rents me the internet time that I'm typing this on - but we've never had a conversation because I know he's shy.

So I'm trying to think of what I can say about his piano playing, wondering what I'm going to say when he finishes, when suddenly he gets up and walks out of the room. That's it, he's gone; mid tune. Interaction over. How strange. I imagine a hundred different ways to interpret that scene. What if he was expressing his desire to talk to me by playing the piano. Maybe this is the start of a grand and beautiful love story, played out in the top and bottom rooms of a shabby shared house by the sea. How will we start talking? Where would we be when we first kissed? He's got nice eyes. Why did he leave so abruptly like that? Is there something he wants to say to me or is it just that I fancy him a bit? I think I fancy him a bit.

Chip fat and hope

I met my new potential landlord in the lounge of his luxury hotel and we drove over to see the property in his brand new BMW. A laptop sized screen on the dashboard invited me to control the in-car climate. The new potential landlord had stains down the front of his white t-shirt, "he'd been working in the kitchens today" he said. The smell of over fried food in old, over used oil filled the car.

He let himself into the house by reaching through the hole in the front door, "the glass got broken yesterday" he said. I waited in the hallway as he searched through a hundred keys to open up my potential new room; I could see through a doorway into a dingy lounge. A fat man with a beard sat at a wooden table in the centre of the room, no television or newspaper in front of him. "Hello" I said. He didn't answer, just stared into space, his hand was on the table and he was rubbing his thumb and fingers against each other.

"Here we go" said the potential new landlord and he opened the door. The room was small and dingy. The window faced onto a stained grey wall so there was no need for the filthy yellow net curtains to be there. The woodchip wallpaper was peeling and the furniture looked like it had been rescued from a skip. "This isn't what I'm looking for" I said, and left.

I walked down the road, wondering what the fuck I was going to do. A sign gleamed out of a steamy window in front of me - Acommodation. A dented brass doorknob opened the door to the glass porch; peeling blue paint and full of plants and large pieces of tree tied to the walls. No answer from the doorbell so I pressed up against the glass panel in the front door and looked into the gloom. I could see an old painting at the back of the hall, a portrait in oils of a pale woman, more plants and a box of records shoved under a wooden bureau. I felt that if I walked into the house there would probably be a clock ticking somewhere in the background and all the rooms would be filled with books I've never read. This is a place I could be comfortable.