inventory

things to do. and find. it accumulates, despite your puritan tendencies. you can't stop it. an old glass jar on the bookshelf, the label worn out: a number and some indecipherable words.probably from a hospital. books and cd's strewn over the desk (Savall's Celtic tunes, still unlistened to, Geoff Dyer and Celan, a book on fairness, Coltrane and Piazzolla, Gunter Eich, The Immortalization Commission). a camera (unused), kept in a 'Servis' shoe box. the desk drawers full of old photographs, from different times and places, mostly half-forgotten.

who gave what, when. would be another.


on the (fake) wooden floor: a camera stand back from the seventies, its legs askew like a giraffe, a rusting eiffel tower, a black and gold statue of some minor egyptian god, the black mainly just layers of dirt, you suppose, but the silence is genuine. a tattered suitcase, grinning through the silver zip. been there, done that, my friend.

make things up as you go along, to pass the time, to avoid the glaring gaps, what's missing. make a note of things. which is itself not a thing. even the thing is not it.

suede brown trousers thrown on the chair (its springs have nearly given), along with torn socks, corduroy coat (brown with the cliched elbow patches), crumpled shirts (yes, a choice selection!), a tie from the wreckage of the past. above the chair, on the wall, a cloth wall hanging, made up, like everything else, of a patchwork of slightly faded or discarded pieces. never really liked it, and doesn't really belong. next to the window, a wind chime. opposite the chair/cupboard its twin, clean and cushioned. a place to observe the chaos from all angles (but don't look inwards). above your head, three old E.S.Curtis photos, yellow and brown (Apache, and all that). Also, it now transpires, made up, fake, the unreal gestures made to please, to remember.

there will be a record of all we've said and done, somewhere. the small kindnesses, but the cruelty too. God's cross falling on who knows what. what did you know?