Luminescent in Blue
There is wavering
of reality when one’s mobile phone, temperamentally, does not recognise the
thumbprint that smothers its sensor a hundred times a day, as though one’s
being is faded out, temporarily, abstract from earthliness, alien to what is
most familiar, to the cache of intimacy unlike any other. Perhaps they curse
and press harder, examine their own thumb for some recognition of a print, pulled
from the glass, held to the light for the smallest of patterns to be understood.
The phone doubles down, haptically—Fingerprint not recognised… Fingerprint
not recognised… Fingerprint not recognised… For additional security, enter PIN
instead. And then one summons an integer, something that means
something, not unique but sacred. Entry. The thumbprint remains. It is worn
away everyday and it is replaced, course by course, the most delicate of
spirals. The print is ours but only the mobile phone recognises it. For if it
changed tomorrow, we would not know but the phone would. As it is the phone’s wont
to deny us access to our correspondence and social strings, so we deny it access
to our dreams. Our dreams are holy lands. I put my thumb there, in my dreams,
those are my thumbs again in the holy lands and I, alone, am magnificent.
There was a thudand my body flicked awake. Public transport, a train, absolutely, the thicker portions of my skeleton perched precariously on the corner of a bench, hoping not to touch another soul. A stranger next to me, in front of me, surrounded. It was quarter-to-midnight and I had sleepily dropped my mobile phone on the carriage floor, which had its own timbre and my phone another, so they chimed up through my leg and I flicked awake. I smiled. It was an occasion, insofar as I was happy at how the evening had gone, for I had drank considerably and danced and embraced my fellow man, kissed his cheek, and balanced myself on the edge of a sunny London kerb between walls & rooftops for the heavens to ricochet down and a thunderstorm upon my eager shoulders.
There was a thudand my body flicked awake. Public transport, a train, absolutely, the thicker portions of my skeleton perched precariously on the corner of a bench, hoping not to touch another soul. A stranger next to me, in front of me, surrounded. It was quarter-to-midnight and I had sleepily dropped my mobile phone on the carriage floor, which had its own timbre and my phone another, so they chimed up through my leg and I flicked awake. I smiled. It was an occasion, insofar as I was happy at how the evening had gone, for I had drank considerably and danced and embraced my fellow man, kissed his cheek, and balanced myself on the edge of a sunny London kerb between walls & rooftops for the heavens to ricochet down and a thunderstorm upon my eager shoulders.
The night was
cool; the petrichor subsided; roads blank, streetlights dim.
She greets me when I get home, and I apologise profusely. There are only two thing I do profusely: perspire and apologise to my cat. Undoing my shoes, the laces caught up in each other, I tell her that I had a good night and stammer to catch my balance. At the bowl, she is all over me, stealing with her mouth, noisily groaning me to hurry up with the spoon. Her purrs, meows, heavy breathing; the triumvirate of dinnertime; her delicate bones and soft fur luminescent in blue. Something has happened between us, some event I was not notified of, uninvited, attended by accident: we are closer than before, this semiferal animal and I. The bond that spans our chromosome count deepens evermore. She puts her nose beneath my sleeping hand—the very same that dropped my mobile phone on the train—and I curl it preciously about her snout. Her front paws begin to massage my throat, the softness of my clavicle, the line of beard across my neck; claws caught in my skin, enflamed, sensitive and raw. She purrs and salivates until it tickles down my forearm. Opposite the rest of the world, on the scales of existence, she alone keeps me level with the horizon.
This country of mine has seen a week. It is so much horror that one is brought to tears. Three girls on every front page. The events are cast in binary and supermarket ink; one might try to imagine them, the sound of a knife, the fragility of the human body, childish innocence, summer holidays, the joy of pop music, adult teeth to replace milk, the youth of a fringe & burdenless smiles. There are things imaginable and otherwise. And then there are the fascists against the blurred capture of fire and bricks in motion. It gets so one struggles to breathe. The sight of St George’s cross pressed against the chest, not recognised, visions of 2011, the colour that white men go in summer when they do not use sun cream.
She greets me when I get home, and I apologise profusely. There are only two thing I do profusely: perspire and apologise to my cat. Undoing my shoes, the laces caught up in each other, I tell her that I had a good night and stammer to catch my balance. At the bowl, she is all over me, stealing with her mouth, noisily groaning me to hurry up with the spoon. Her purrs, meows, heavy breathing; the triumvirate of dinnertime; her delicate bones and soft fur luminescent in blue. Something has happened between us, some event I was not notified of, uninvited, attended by accident: we are closer than before, this semiferal animal and I. The bond that spans our chromosome count deepens evermore. She puts her nose beneath my sleeping hand—the very same that dropped my mobile phone on the train—and I curl it preciously about her snout. Her front paws begin to massage my throat, the softness of my clavicle, the line of beard across my neck; claws caught in my skin, enflamed, sensitive and raw. She purrs and salivates until it tickles down my forearm. Opposite the rest of the world, on the scales of existence, she alone keeps me level with the horizon.
This country of mine has seen a week. It is so much horror that one is brought to tears. Three girls on every front page. The events are cast in binary and supermarket ink; one might try to imagine them, the sound of a knife, the fragility of the human body, childish innocence, summer holidays, the joy of pop music, adult teeth to replace milk, the youth of a fringe & burdenless smiles. There are things imaginable and otherwise. And then there are the fascists against the blurred capture of fire and bricks in motion. It gets so one struggles to breathe. The sight of St George’s cross pressed against the chest, not recognised, visions of 2011, the colour that white men go in summer when they do not use sun cream.
So, I sit at my
desk in the living room and look out on Friday afternoon, weathered with a hangover,
pulling at my whiskers and biting my nails to the quick. The entire history of
time leading to one organism among many others staring out over a carpark,
capable of considering the universe but really thinking nothing at all but
regarding the colours of August. Then from the corner, a couple emerges. He is
pushing a pram and she is beside him, heavily pregnant, walking slowly, each
gaited by their load. I cannot hear what they are saying but I imagine it is
full of bestfriendlove. They approach the mechanics’ shutterdoors as she walks
with the weight of eight months. When they approach their car, parked in a
baked spot, she peels away, politely ending their leisurely conversation and
moves to the mechanic’s office as he lifts the boot to load the car-seat and secure
the child. Her dress is thin and clings to her pregnancy. A mechanic emerges
from the office, having seen her approach, to cut her journey short. The rest of
the view is sparse yet striking . There is nobody else around. There is them
and me.