Blue in the Face

This is written to be read: impatiently, doggedly, altogether, in parts, out loud and in your head.

A Nest: cords of straw matted into a bowl, crooked into a chalk cliff. Frayed white sinews on the sea, a rush of salt in the air. Eggs, unhatched, with mud, freckles and a bird on top. A Gull.

We studied infinities and their different sizes, do you remember? Me and you, we were more mathematical and more confused.

A mother makes steps in the sand, a child next to her, a dog, and an ant. Once, twice, thrice, four-times as much to keep up. The ant is frantic keeping apace. One of a mother’s steps, is two of her child’s. Is there an infinity in each step? This all makes a certain kind of sense, don’t you think? A different kind of sense to, for example, the infinite difference between me and you. Between the way I am now, and the way we were then.

I lie down, and the cannula aches so oddly. It’s outsides inside my elbow, where my veins bulge. My bad-pants-bum pokes out of my hospital gown. A nurse calms me. And then headphones and a squeezy ball; “If you need help then squeeze”, they honk the air. A raised eyebrow inside of me wonders: What if I want to clench my fist in self-soothing but don’t want any help from you. I’m down one fist because of a cannula-ed arm – thumb, fore finger, and all else below my elbow, incapacitated.

Meanwhile an old man walks, a bit bowed, with a stick and a cap. They don’t make them like this nowadays. But here he is and he’s walking slowly with a cup of wine and drippy dry bread for dipping. He is very slow but he’ll walk you to death. That’s exactly what he’s doing in fact. He’s you but close to death, walking.

There’s a young man sitting too, writing, and elsewhere there he is with a rose in his arms. He’s watching himself, the writer studying himself crying with the rose in an embrace, and else-wise the cuddler knowing this moment is one that will be mined, mind mined, like an ore, like iron-ore, or other awes.

There’s a beach, a vast apron out to sea; there’s all that sand. And there is a line drawn vertically, from reedy dune to sea. Who drew it? People are always drawing lines in the sand; I needn’t justify this particular line to you. So dotted, approaching from the right, was that old man walking … dotted by virtue of his cane perforating the sand at each step. Approaching from the left was a young man with a buggy, talking, carving a mess in the sand, and in that buggy another man was sat, hugging some flowers, sleeping. And then way up, looking down on it all, is the gull, gulling, floating.

Do you remember reciprocity? Approaching the same point from opposite directions. How it can take you to two infinitely different places, or maybe to two differently placed infinities.

The Young Man walks closer to the dune-sea line from the left and the closer he gets the more he seems to veer off dune ward. The Old Man approaches from the right, getting closer to the line his path takes him ever more in the direction, upwards, of the grueling sea. So in approaching, these two men disperse. And then there’s a seagul, hanging out, yanging out, watching up high.

The clunk of the MRI became fevered, the controlled breathing was what bothered me, I had to hold my breath for 10 to 20 seconds at a time. All the while, ck, ck, ck, ck, ck, a little tug on my intestines, ck, ck, ck, surely I wouldn’t actually feel it, ck, ck, ck, I sure as hell feel something and it’s fucking weird, ck, ck, ck, ck, I would never actually squeeze the ball, ck, ck, ck soothe yourself kid, think of something, ck, ck, ck. I see, even as I’m sitting here writing, a blue sky, and light air with sun in it, and white hues, there’s a bird, a gul floating up high, floating there, hanging in the sky. Ck ck ck, Tap Tap Tap, Cluck Cluck Cluck, Stick Stick Stick. Little guls cooing, Old man sticking, young man crying, me here typing, MRI scanning. Time stops for a moment whilst I steady myself. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Josh x