It's Still Life

21.09.23 (563 words: reading time 3 minutes)

09:57
Cows find their way on to fields where they shouldn’t. It is life beyond language.

10:00
Hay stacked in blocks of henges. The next farm, rolls ambered disks. Like fallen moons. Grounded on a field. With cows. Wind haunts the air.

10:20
Birch. Curvaceous green in the wind. Air is dry. Heated and strangled. It crawls on my skin, and leaves too many questions. No need for this jacket, he says, and leaves it and me behind. 25°c. It’s warmer than Madrid.

11:26 (Svendborg DK)
He’s off chumming with old school mates. 53rd school reunion. I’m waiting in the hotel lobby for our room to be ready. I have a map, and know where there’s an antique shop. It’s Thursday; everything’s open today.

12:35
I’m still sitting in the lobby with a growing pile of other people’s luggage. I text him: Is there anything of value in your backpack? He says, cash and passports. It seems that I’m stuck in lobby, behaving like a hawk.

12:36
I must find another muse for the day. One who can spin storms in the ocean. Carry clouds for luck. I need an outdoor café.

13:12
Lunch includes his backpack, his brown bag with our cash and passports, his suitcase, my suitcase, my handbag, laptop, and a plate of fried plaice and a generous amount of mayonnaise. The latter will make someone I know retch.

13:13
A man is seated at a table outside. His socks match his shoes. His hat matches his shirt. Sun strikes the back of his neck. His conversation requires a flourishing hand.

13:42
Pythagoras must have seen what I’m seeing. Earth moves. The man whose socks match his shoes now sits in shade; the sun’s moved off his neck. And there are 2 wasps floating in his beer glass.

14:07
A woman sits at a nearby table, wears a flowery cotton dress, and chatters endlessly on her phone, forgetting to eat. A wasp drops into her wine glass. Is it dead, she asks the waiter. It is a very pretty dress though.

14:30
There’s a couple over there arguing in a foreign language, other than Danish. Its unfamiliarity bends my ear, except for when the woman shouts Dickhead and the man shouts back Shitface.

15:50
Time to meet Lene for coffee, a chat, and then dinner. We’ve known each other since the mid-80s. I was there when her first child was born; her husband was at sea. I wonder if she’ll recognise me; it’s been 30-plus years.

20:00
My friend. Lene. A widow. A mother. A grandmother. Her memory is a perforation. Faces are un-drawn. Names translucent. A mirror stares at her.

20:20
We walk around the village. She grew up here. Knows every inch of it. That used to be the bank, she says, and that was the post office. Do you recall years ago, I say, when that shoe shop used to sell hamburgers? She beams as if a light switches on, Yes, I do, she says.

20:35
She wants to show me the fountain in the square. We’ve seen it three times but I say, Oh yes, let’s! I will not remind her of what her memory can’t hold.

20:45
I will fall asleep tonight with the memory of her. In the morning, we leave Denmark for Germany.

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