Every morning begins the same way at the moment. I wake up at 6am, without reason. The body clock is set now, for the moment. Radio Three plays strange piano music. There are softly spoken words inbetween, I only listen to a few of them. I choose what to wear based on looking outside. Cloudy at 8am so a cool day. Maybe rain later, but we’ve had a shortage of angry summer stormy rain.
Today is an anniversary of Hiroshima being bombed. I once read a detailed clinical description of the immediate after-effects, people and buildings vapourised. It is hard to comprehend a disaster on that scale. We may be in the midst of a different kind of human disaster, a very slow paced one, a pace so slow which gives us time to think about it, to hypothesise on outcomes, to fool ourselves it is good, or bad, depending on one’s disposition at the time. That unknown shell-shocked feeling is certainly real, and hard to reconcile to, or escape from. It has set in permanently now. Every day must be an anniversary of something. People publish books based on “On this day in history” type of trivia fact finding research. They’re interesting for a limited time, passing a few minutes whilst waiting for other thoughts to enter the mind.
I’m going somewhere today, I don’t know where, I’ll decide soon. The mist seems to be hanging in close, giving greyness and a damp viscosity to the air. It makes even the cheap terraces on the way to Plumstead look slightly less squalid. Sitting on the platform in the stillness was calming. I don’t want to be around here though. I’m less obsessive about monitoring the train movements now. I seem out of touch with places, and the notion of belonging to them.
When will this phase end? I want to learn to enjoy it but I can’t. I want to know what will come next, and no one knows, so thinking about it just creates pain. That’s the trouble.
Andrew Stevenson 