A Kind of
Pornography, or I Understand Family Can Be A Complicated Thing
The fog
rises in the morning and descends in the evening. It has a sine wave
arrangement with the earth, in time with revolutions and so on. Whatever the
day is doing, that is what I see first, for I am without curtains. The fog is
so thick it clouds the railway lines; only the sound is strong enough to push
through, one imagines the trains smashswirling the grey moisture up around away.
Who knows what causes the fog to lift, but it does so before my coffee has cooled
enough to drink. The sky, even at noon, was dark. How terrible to be on this latitude
in December! There was nothing to see. All was miserable. The field trenches of
tractor tyres reflected the heaven’s dimness back on itself. A cawing crow swum
past large baubles of mistletoe, and the rain made not a sound.
Because I
bought my own apartment, I began to seek inspiration in the living spaces of
others. It became addictive, a kind of pornography. There was style and
recurring themes. Living rooms and bedrooms that stood out were saved for
reference at a later date. I might be able to do something like that, I thought
to myself. Most were purely aesthetic, the owners expressing themselves
artistically in their environment, carefully curated and organised. Everything
was neat. Everything had a place. I trod carefully; do not grow to be fixated
on an unattainable lifestyle or the putrid exuberance of wealth. No, it was all
quite modest, at least, and not once did I feel bad about myself or my
situation, which is something one must be wary of when indulging in the
exhibition of other peoples’ lives.
It was Monday
evening when I came to hang my photographs. They are all photographs taken by
myself, otherwise there is one my niece took when I loaded the film for her,
and one of me as a toddler hugging my dog taken by my father. It is important
the photographs are through my eyes, as unskillful as they might be. After
work, I opened a beer, lit some candles – scent of the season, moving-in gifts –
and gave each frame a polish. The wall adjacent to my desk would be best. A Tom
Waits record in the background, the sound of empty trains coming back from
London. For inspiration, I thought I might look at all the living rooms of
others to see how they had hung photographs. To my surprise, none of them had any
photographs of family! I flicked through one after the other, and no, not a
single one had a single photograph. I peered in, stared, zoomed, pinched out,
squinted; nothing! It could not be, I thought. Each beautiful apartment was void
of family photographs or memories. Nor were there photographs of loved ones or
pets, holiday scenes or special occasions, nothing. How odd! They had prints,
yes, but nothing personal, nothing that had anything to do with them, as though
they had never existed, as though there was no history or experience.
Once the
photographs were all hung, I stood back with my second can of beer and checked
that they were all straight. I was quite happy with how they had turned out. It
had been so long since they had hung on my living room wall. I peered at them,
stared, I moved closer, turning my head in the light, squinting. They will do
quite nicely.
At the weekend, one of my brothers was in the midst of a nervous breakdown with his family, and the other was keeping his omicrom’d girlfriend company elsewhere, so I visited my parents. Now I was only an hour away, it was much easier to catch a train for no reason but to visit them. My mother had been cleaning all day and my father was wiring—‘Fuckin heating’s gone again!’ We sat there at drank and talked. Where my desk used to be was now a white plastic Christmas tree, surrounded with polar bear cuddly toys. I did not miss my desk being there at all. It was a wonderful evening, just the three of us. That I had to leave eventually and catch the train back weighed heavy on my mind, neither making me sad nor anxious, but just a very different feeling, one I had not felt in my life before.
On my walk back, I attempted imagining it was on my way to work. The fog had descended again. ‘Fuck me, it’s grim out there.’ Everything was damp. Puddles had formed from only a fine mist that came down all day. Headlights appeared faintly in the distance and bubbled towards me. There were figures moving in the distance, silhouettes that rippled and fell. The car was empty but for me, and a puddle of spilled booze that tacked to my shoes, a misshapen puddle that had wandered with the inertia of the previous journey.
At the weekend, one of my brothers was in the midst of a nervous breakdown with his family, and the other was keeping his omicrom’d girlfriend company elsewhere, so I visited my parents. Now I was only an hour away, it was much easier to catch a train for no reason but to visit them. My mother had been cleaning all day and my father was wiring—‘Fuckin heating’s gone again!’ We sat there at drank and talked. Where my desk used to be was now a white plastic Christmas tree, surrounded with polar bear cuddly toys. I did not miss my desk being there at all. It was a wonderful evening, just the three of us. That I had to leave eventually and catch the train back weighed heavy on my mind, neither making me sad nor anxious, but just a very different feeling, one I had not felt in my life before.
On my walk back, I attempted imagining it was on my way to work. The fog had descended again. ‘Fuck me, it’s grim out there.’ Everything was damp. Puddles had formed from only a fine mist that came down all day. Headlights appeared faintly in the distance and bubbled towards me. There were figures moving in the distance, silhouettes that rippled and fell. The car was empty but for me, and a puddle of spilled booze that tacked to my shoes, a misshapen puddle that had wandered with the inertia of the previous journey.