Thursday 21 August 2014

Secondhand stories

There's a secondhand bookshop that sits opposite the school where I teach a few hours of English every day. This is the shop I go to when I have some spare time, and spare change. £2.99 will usually fetch you a good book.

A few days ago, I found a ZZ Packer that I'd wanted to find for a while. It also had the right cover; for no matter what they say, covers matter. Every once in a while, when I'm reading a book, I crook a finger in from the top and close its pages. My finger curves like a comma, pausing the book as I mull over a sentence, a paragraph, a thought. At that time, I like to see a cover that doesn't tell me much. A cover that doesn't drag my thoughts to closure.



This cover didn't try too hard. It just slanted it's font in gentle enquiry, and left it at that. It didn't try to show me a picture of Elsewhere. It left Elsewhere to me. I liked that. I also liked its blue; it looked like it didn't fit in.

But I'll tell you what I liked most of all. When I came back home and took the book out of my bag, something slipped out of its pages. It was a photograph of a little boy, with a date on the back. Just a date, and a summer month. No year. Not a hint of a year. As if the person who wrote the date liked to live in the present, in the now. The yearless date of a mind not weighed down by eventualities. Carefree. It's summer after all, and the sand is warm and the sea blue.



My first reaction on seeing the photograph was one of sadness; someone had lost a precious photo of their boy. I not only had their book, but also a bit of their memory. But then, I thought of how things are meant to be. And the beauty of stories that travel; of a photo shared not on social media but passed down in a good book. I also thought of how strangers' stories always find their way to my house, like our dining table - remember the initials on its underside? Only this time, the story had slipped out of a book of stories and landed softly on my carpet.
 

And so the sweet boy sits, in the August of an unknown year. And here we are, in the midst of another August. He could be five now, or he could be in University. He might live on the same street, or in a different hemisphere. Somewhere in my Elsewhere.

I want to know. I love not knowing.









Sunday 10 August 2014

Step back


It was eight o'clock in the evening. Chotto-ma was still up - it being a weekend. D and I had poured ourselves some wine and Chet Baker was wafting around the house. That's when I noticed the light. From the window, the outside looked liked a giant Monet. The sun was sinking; its last pink light was bouncing off the river like shoals of salmon.




We took the bottle of wine, our glasses, the bowl of olives, put everything into a brown paper bag and went down to the river; Chotto-ma in her pyjamas. We cut across the Common, past the the cows, the tall grass licking our ankles, sticking to my jeans, and found a bench next to a boat called Susie Q. Everything was a pinkish-bronze: people on cycles, the Labrador chasing his ball, my toes, the tips of the grass. Dying embers of a day's end. This hallowed light makes such innocents of us all.




Last week, I decided to step back from the virtual a little; I closed my Peppercorns' Facebook page. It felt like the right time. I needed to disconnect. If you followed me on Facebook, and suddenly found me gone, I'm sorry. But if you read and know this blog, I feel you'll understand the why. The whim. 



Now, before you rush headlong into your week, I'll leave you with a little more whimsy. With this music. Chet Baker, and cocktail clouds.

Have a wonderful week x