Spurious

The Post-Its

'Buy bleach'. Notes written to yourself. Notes you forgot you sent to yourself. They crossed time without you. A few days - and there they are, notes on yellow post-its, some faded, some older than a few days.

'Buy bleach' - did you remember to buy bleach? Did you remember to remember? Because you've written a second note, 'buy bleach'. A second note on a less faded post-it.

The light falls on them there, the post-its with their bottom edges curling upwards, aslant from the window above the door. Falls and fades them like the fading of memory: did you remember to remember? Did you remember to buy bleach?

The Hallway

Catch sight of yourself in the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet. Catch sight - there, the door opened and turned to the hallway, and you coming up the hallway (not far, a single step, a step and a half).

What did you see? A grey teeshirt, a face, and darkness behind. What time is it? Night, the depths of night. Night falling away within night. I can't sleep. Who is it that cannot sleep?

A teeshirt and a face, unexpectedly. I am in the corridor, it's me - it took time to see that. Coming up the corridor, one step, another - time and an interstice in time, as I forgot who it was, and who was seeing.

The Corner

In the corner of the bathroom, up to the right - the paper stripped away to plaster, and the plaster darkened from an old leak, and then the plaster too stripped away. A breeze block of some sort, and it too darkened. It'll have to be repaired. New plaster for the corner, and then painted over.

I'm being watched from that corner, that's what I imagine. Watched - from the wall, and from the other side of the wall. The mystery of the flat is concentrated there. The flat, falling through time, falling through me, speaks to me there in long, slow words that will not finish.

Apocalypse - when will you see things are they are? When will you be seen as you are? There before the corner. There, seen by the corner's eye. Seen, unseen. Seen by what forgets you, and does not see.

Erosion

No story here, write that. Nothing to begin, write that. A room - and what happens in a room? Dust floats; settles. A light shaft sometimes reaches through. Calmness. Who would disturb it by writing? Why add words to all those that have been written? To hollow them out, perhaps. To hollow them into calmness, letting them settle like motes of dust. And so will they build up a kind of reef; so will they settle the room onto the page.

Eventlessness - is that it? Or rather the sense that what has begun cannot end; that calmness is borne on the swell of an event without beginning and without end. A room adrift. Time adrift in the room. Who comes here? Who has ever lived here? Has a room ever seemed so uninhabited? No story here, write that. Nothing to tell. Untell it, then. Erode the story; hollow it out. I will not let it begin, say that. I will not let a story begin.

The Room Itself

The room itself. I am looking for it, the room inside the room. Where is it? Here; not here. Or here - and separated from this one by a single dimension. From what perspective does it watch me? From what corner of the eye will it let itself be seen?

I am falling through a room. Or is it the other way round? How long have I been here? How long has the room been unfolding through me?

I would like to cross it, the room. Would like to cross the expanse of floorboards. In a stride I could make it across. A single stride - just one, but how am I to cross?

Hollowing

The room falls into itself. Writing falls, and into itself. The monitor is on. What's it waiting for, the blank page? What aches there, the page on the screen? What focuses itself there, at the heart of the room? What does it seek, the room, by concentrating itself into whiteness?

The monitor; the keyboard. The desk top light, the table. And the window behind them, with the red blind pulled down, nearly down. The black night like a letterbox. What do I see? This room, again, against blackness. This room filled with night.

Am I here? Am I really here? A kind of absence is pushing me aside. It begins in the centre of the room, spreading out: absence, a kind of storm. That says, you are not here. Or, you cannot approach me. As though the room itself were pushing me away.

What begins there, in the middle of the room? What spreads out to fill its corners? There is another room, away, on the other side of the glass. A bedroom - I remember it, I know how to get there. But what do I know?

The room is falling through me, say that. The room is falling through time. What was I writing a year ago? What will I be trying to write a year from now? A year, another year - what is hollowing itself out here? What, in this room, is hollowing itself out? 

The Arch

A hollow space - is that a room? A hollowing, a space that falls through you. How many rooms have I lived in? Many. No: one, just one. One room, endlessly falling.

I go from room to room. How to lose yourself in your own flat? How, over the wooden floorboards? The red blind's almost pulled over the window. A strip of black. The night, outside. Darkness outside and the room falling. A box of light. A box of light, falling through time.

From room to room. Where are you going? What are you looking for? And what were you looking for then, all those other nights. How many nights have there been?

The monitor's on. The screen glowing by the desklamp. There's the work to be done, isn't there? There's something to get on with. But you've long since fallen from work. You've long been lost from what you should be doing.

How many years? They spread above me like an arch. One year, another - and all the same year. Hollowed out. Voided. And opened a room in the room, turning it upwards. A box upturned - to what? To the same night I see below the red blind.

Have I failed? Have I missed some clue? Am I lost in an eddy? Time lost itself here. A room got lost in itself. I wander; the room wanders. Am I a way a room is looking for itself? A way space has come alive and got lost in space?

Rooms

'All I do is wander from room to room' (Graham Greene in old age, from his correspondence). The evening, every evening. From room to room, lying down in there, on the other side of the bevelled glass. Reading a little. Picking a book up and putting it down. And then, leaning over the side of the bed, smoothing the wooden floor with my hand. Dust. Stray hairs.

I wander from room to room. To this room, here, by the computer, the red blind rolled down. What was it I wanted to write? What was it I wanted to say? It's winter. It's winter again. Last year, at this time, in this room, what was I writing? And the year before? All the years are here; all the years are present tonight.

A room falling through time. A room - this one, one of a series. There was a room before this one, and another before that. And there is the series of rooms that is this one; a room falling. A room falling through time. I will have been here before. I have not been here yet. How to inhabit this space, to live where I cannot live?

Red Light

Evening. The day took a strange turn, I tell myself. I came home early, I shouldn't have done that. Too early - I surprised my own absence. I shouldn't have been here. Should have let my absence thicken in the half darkness. Should have let it thicken, my absence, where the red blind, closed against light but letting it through, makes the whole room red.

But I came home early, and caught the day making its turn. Had it meant me to? Was that what it wanted? To be caught - surprised? For the day to have led me all the way into itself? It led nowhere, in one way. In one way - nowhere, the day was a dead end. But in another that dead end made way, and I pass along its ending, its eternal detour.

What happened here? What did I surprise? Red light, through the blind. The quiet flat, with no tenants above. Quiet, the wooden floors exposed and the room very big. Bigger than usual, I thought. It would take time to cross this room, I thought. To cross it would take and expand time, I thought.

The day took a strange turn. Into itself. All the way into itself. As though it were a labyrinth. As though a single straight line, a passage, was also a labyrinth. I don't like the day; I feel wary of it. I dislike the malaise of time, the way it leaves me aside.

Nothing happens here - nothing, but it thickens, nevertheless. Thickens, not ripens. A wrong growth, an aberrant one. Error leading into itself. The day took a strange turn, and took me with it.

I didn't want to go. I'd been somewhere already. I'd come home, and found - it was not home. The day had taken a strange turn here. The day had concentrated itself into itself here. Thickened. Grown - and wrongly. What had gone wrong? Should I leave? Should I go back to the office?

I opened a bottle of wine. I thought, that's it: a bottle of wine. To do combat against the day. To match its vagueness with my own. Wine! Is that enough? To meet the day's opacity with my own? To forget as the day forgets; to make a mirror for its nothingness?

The day took a strange turn, and so did I. It took a turn and I came here to write, a bottle of wine beside me. I'll meet it, I thought. I'll meet the day on its own terms, I thought. Match vagueness with vagueness, I thought. Sound the muffled bell, I thought. Write in ambush for whatever comes.

What?

Five posts, I tell myself. Squeeze them out. Write about ... what? The pigeons that visited the yard - two of them, and finding what? Pecking - at what? About the empty bird feed holder hanging from the washing line (empty because the seed I bought held insects that hatched and when the bag was opened flew out and I threw it away). About ... what? As though I could crack the egg of the day. As though I could tap it and crack it open to release - what?

I was reading just now in the other room. Reading, on the bed without covers, without sheets, on the fur of the electric blanket, about - what? Too long ago. 'Just now' is too far away. Enough the thought of 'the other room'. On the other side of the glass. The other side of the bevelled glass window someone put between living room and bedroom. Another room ... is there really another?

To cross a room, that's already enough. To have remembered it, crossing a room. Wasn't that the miracle: a completed action: to cross a room? I've forgotten the other room, and what I was doing. The fur of the electric blanket. The abandoned book. This room is all there is. This room and crossing it, to write about crossing the room.

And even that is too much. Here - at the desk, level with the yard outside. Here - what happened before getting here? Before the arrival? How did I get here? Until I reach the moment just before writing. Having forgotten everything else, the other moments separated from my life, sliced from it. Everything but ... what?

But the desire to write. To write - what? The question, what? The question that prompts writing, and that something is kept by writing. Squeeze them out, some posts, I tell myself. 5 posts, that's what the day deserved. 5 - to remember - what?

The desire to write, 5 times. The desire to come from that room into this. To cross the room. To pull up a chair. To begin - what? To write? Was that it?