48: Toed

The Councillor is ever present; up first, ladling water onto the hot coals in the kitchen that doubles as a sauna. The other within that house, on entering, crouches down sipping coffee, eyes level with the melamine counter top. The ladler’s gaze darts to them expectantly with their ‘you must thank me for creating the hot pore expanding cloud’ look, and the other, wanting their pores to sink deep below as opposed to swell to gaping orifices, will nod, though only mouthing thanks. That this exposition is anything other than an interpretation, a pulling together of disparate rhythms and actions and certainly not the intentions of any of the shadows apprehended (myself of course being one) for what happens if this particular gnomon is broken off and replaced instead with a chrome coloured inflatable duck? Could I truly tell you with any precision the time of day? Well, we are sitting together here now, discarded gnomons briefly at the top of the ever increasing heap, with a tiny window of opportunity to elaborate on some of what we see. Then on to walk the ground that stretches out to town until the one wanting skin without holes can begin to run. “This me is vibrant,” will be repeated over and over and over and over. The councillor is still present alongside on their moped, handing cooking water that has been recycled once through pan washing, then collected in bottles screwed below the plug for the running one’s refreshment. A high front circling in the wings of the day drawn into play, who will be milling the seconds of life and stuff it in to an accidental sequence? Us. But in the labyrinths of good fortune, the waves begin flailing blindly through passages overturning all obstacles; that watery voice, it’s laughter swimming under the building’s floors, soaks up through the walls, while sinking everything also appearing to hold it all together. That fluid morning was replaced by an ‘I wouldn’t dare to’ afternoon, this time with a father figure present. The opening salvo: A pasty papped biscuit cornering the mouth is fingered into a handkerchief preempting paternal reflections. Father: You see, when I was a tiny littler, dainty toed, a fella called. Knocked, pointed to a laughing thing on the sand, beyond the doorway backing away into air, wrists held together, the back of it disappearing, becoming the surface of the surface. I lunged through the door frame, made out I as though I was falling, so the skewed destructive weight of my body would roll itself on to the beach. The figure hiding in the surface lunged forward, and I saw it was Perry Pierre the otter, and he was dragging me by the hands while the fella who’d knocked pulled at my legs. Now you have to understand these characters were experts in breaking down things into them selves … they called themselves vehicles for transformation. I knew they would only get so far then they’d end up holding the bits up and going, “What is all this? Did they believe this could do something?” Sometimes when this occurs the physical machinery is still functioning in their ritual, but the indivisible invisible binding that is needed is already lost in the pulling apart