figurine
There was a glimpse today. A glimpse of something. Something which may not be, but is. Something that may never be, but was. A half-truth. A nondescript. A wisping wilderness, floating in the air like feathers, zigzaggingly thrown from a passing aeroplane, piercing the fog and the mug and the ugliness held in immortal nothing.
a leaving. a departure. sick to the bone, and sick to the skin. How does running away sit with you? Do you prefer to sit with it for a couple of minutes, read it the news from a freshly-ironed newspaper, run through a trouser press until the letters have jumped from the pages and their inks remain forever engraved in the heatpads? If this were sense, one would ask what the use is, of a piece of paper supposedly containing words but containing nothing. One might even go as far to suggest that the words which graced the page are still buried in its fibres, only to be read by the carefully attuned. But this is nonsense. We must write our own words on the paper. Or wait for the rain to acid-burn holes into each and every thin, translucent sheet, until a punctuated shell of woven lace is left. Only once the tatters remain, we shall create the curls and flicks of letters from the embers of the already destroyed.
I unfolded my plainsheet, eagerly waiting for the rain to pelt down. Spread flat upon the flagstones. The warm rays of light and humidity above chided the blanket of thick mugginess where the sun dared to pierce through. As if to pick a celestial fight, a war between nothing and nobody. The outcome - a grey swirl of confusion. No sun, no rain. Weather limbo.
Nothing and nobody. And with nothing and nobody, comes illusion. If it were possible to collect all these thoughts and words, drips and droplets of contention, from the irons and trouserpresses of the land, it might be possible to make a library of sense and nonsense. Of small shards in history. Seconds in time. Of course, the full newsprint articles would not be recovered, but with all those words and all the inky potential, a wordsmith may have a field day trying to resurrect past glories, epiphanies and ultimate failures.
A shadowed figure appeared on the crossing, as if conjured by an accidental stream of bees passing by, transfiguring and colliding their colloidal being into humanoid shape. The figure paused. Reached down for the dark cloth bag swaying to one side, and checked its contents. Plain paper. The figure walked slowly towards the traffic flow, and made a careful descent to a lower height. Hunched over the kerbside, feet outstretched into the road. Lost in thought. Laid down paper. Angry taxi drivers and careering coaches beeped and honked and yelled for the figure to move, to get out of the way. But the figure did not care. Lost in thought. Laid down paper.
Time passed, and the figure appeared to search through its bag a few more times. Once satisfied of its contents, the shape returned to the hunched silence, perilously perched on the kerb. I looked away for a second, to check the skies once more.
When my gaze returned, the dark figure slowly turned from shadow, through to sunshine bright, and then, little by little, started to become transparent. It seemed as if a flourescent lightbulb located inside the figure, was losing its power and brightness, and the hand on the dimmer switch was twitching. Maybe it was a life light. The light would temporarily fade, and then kick into a darker brightness with fits and starts as the bulb’s dying, shuddering breaths gasped once more. A few flickers. One last gasp. And then gone. Switched off, out from this dream, into another.
As if by magic…as if the figure had not even existed in the first instance. As if by thought, perhaps. My eyes diverted to the little red man, standing abruptly upright across the slabs, cobbles and concrete, burning his gaze in lamplight. Time to move.
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