Doug.

Doug doesn't have answers but he does sometimes pose the questions that I need to ask to help me find them.

A Hazy Shade of Sunday (31st October 2010)

The typhoon has passed, leaving only puddles & metaphors.
I'm sat in the park wrapped in my autumnal tweed & scarf. My mind is a hazy shade of something & it feels like my hangover is relapsing.
It's Sunday & feels like it, in all it's Sunday best.
The Beach Boys pose "Wouldn't it be nice?" to me in Californian tones under Tokyo Skies & I watch as Japanese Rockabillies dance out of time to my own private soundtrack. I ponder the rhetoric & think about last night;

The marriage of 2 of my favourite people. A day they'll never forget, nor me neither. A day where all the rain in the world couldn't wash their love away. I know now it never will.  There are chants, toasts and speeches. There is food & drink & photos taken. There is laughter, there are tears & there is, of course, love. There is always love.
One party becomes another & another, an endless supply. Even after the happiest couple in the world tonight fall, exhausted into their first matrimonial bed, my merry band of renegades & I press on til dawn- toasting their happiness & all ours as we dance & laugh & sing & bowl.
The Bride & Groom went home to grow old together on a single pillow.
The others went home together, carrying love in differing weights.
Jpop went home heartbroken.
I went home alone... but hopeful...

Which is how I find myself now, waiting in a fading afternoon for a girl to arrive & she's already late.
An evening lies ahead that speaks of walking through the park amidst sodium lights & shadows; of talk & laughter; of drinks & home-cooked meals in pubs where no one sings Joy Division covers & we wonder why. & she'll know what nail polish Mia Wallace wears & wear it; An evening where maybe we'll kiss & maybe she'll say the sexiest thing a girl has ever said to me.

But right now I'm waiting to see if she really is worth waiting for & I can't think of a better way to be spending sunday.

Yeah, it would be nice.

"You learn a lot about a woman when you fight with her.

You learn a lot about a woman when you have sex with her.

& if you want to know how beautiful a woman can be, see her cry.

& if you want to see how beautiful a woman can be, marry her"

10.11.03----------------------------10.11.10

It's a quiet nod sort of a day. That's how my brother puts it & he couldn't have put it better.
It's only when Jpop reminds me that I'm forced to remind myself.
7 years & the chlorine lights have flickered & fizzled out; the death & disinfectant smell has faded.
7 years since I last held the hand that had so often held mine & wished in the yawning abyss between breaths that each one would be finally be her last, that she'd be free. Until finally, with ear-ringing silence, it was.
7 years & I've forgotten so much. With no present to unfurl into the future, all we have is the past accelerating away from us & dragging memory behind it; unraveling it, distorting it, pulling it thin & we forget.

We forget & it makes strangers out of mothers, lovers & friends. These are the ghosts that haunt us- the half-remembered details, the spaces we cannot fill. & they're only getting wider.


7 years & I've forgotten the sound of my mother's laugh, her smell & the way a smile broke across her lips (I wish I had a photo of her hands).  All I have are moments frozen in time, a fading photograph, a silent smile, the perfume of fixing solution & time.

But her fingerprints remain in the shape of my nose, or the way my eyes sometimes turn green & in who she taught me to be.  I hear the echo of her laughter in my brothers as we catch sight of the past & hold it for a moment & Remember.
& smile.