She's moving
the furniture around the room, all the time. Like some piece of
dancing animation where the couches, tables, lamps and variety of
soft furnishings waltz across the lounge as if choreographed by Busby
Berkeley. Sometimes they settle, as if to take breath, to review and
ponder their latest arrangement then of they go again. Responding
like the particles set into a kaleidoscope lens, never ending and
unreliable combatants that argue with themselves in terms of function
and aesthetic balance. She watches this in her head as if it was a
movie, light entertainment, a reality TV show that is only real in
her imagination. The thrum of the rolling table, the swish of the
twisting carpet, the clatter of chair and table legs and the jazzy
canvases that attach and move across the walls looking like a vista from passing by suburbia through a train carriage window.
Then, abruptly into the room steps her
future self. Older, respected, strange, as if seen in a dirty mirror
glass. All the moves are over now. The furniture is stock still, the
cushions are steady, the painting hang with no swinging. There she
is moving amongst the furniture like she was at a party. She's
holding a wine glass, giggling, perhaps flirting but there is no one
else there. Popping a canapé into her mouth and savouring it. She
looks confident and successful, she looks happy but she's had too
much to drink. So it seems. She has the hint of knowing smirk that
her younger self doesn't recognise. She comes across to her, she's
going to talk to her younger self.
“You do know that ghosts live before
death as well as after death.” She says. “Time for us isn't
fixed, we have our peculiar freedom, we have our ways, we have our
ideas.”
“I don't believe we've been
introduced.”
“I don't believe we need to do that
you stuck up, confused, bitch. You know fine well who I am.”
“Ahem, I'm not getting any of this,
you are clearly a figment of my imagination and you're interfering
with my plans and daydreams. Simple as that...and what's more if I'm
seeing you and therefore going mad I'll just simplify things and
swallow a few more pills and gins and...blot you out...and don't call
me a bitch you...ghost.”
“Your lazy mind can hardly blot out
something that doesn't exist. You can't even arrange furniture
without getting stuck in a loop and you can't even see that being
civil and communicating with me might actually help you...oh and I'm
enjoying myself because, well you can't see it but we are having a
party here. Right now.”
“You can't hold a party here without
my permission, particularly while I'm rearranging the house. I hereby
dismiss you. Please allow me to return to my own imagination.”
“I think you'll find that this is
your imagination. You're just so far up yourself you've forgotten how
to use it properly. You used to, God knows. Now all you do is fuck
about with this junk playing yourself, as if the position of a couch
or a lamp improved the quality of your life.”
“You can hardly talk about the
quality of life, you're a ghost.”
“I'm a ghost but I'm also you. How
does that sound? Perhaps you're seeing a bit of an opportunity here?
Some constructive dialogue, some advice from my angle, something from
outside of time itself, wouldn't that be attractive? I'm prepared to
dip out of the party for few moments.”
The two women sat on the couch and
faced one another. They talked for some time. To the viewer, had
there been one, all that they would have seen was a woman sitting on
a sofa, looking ahead and talking to herself. As the light failed the
conversation seemed to slow and then the woman flopped back onto the
couch and fell asleep. The sleep was a dark, cleansing and anonymous
one. An hour later she was woken by the room light coming on and a
man entering the room. “Hello darling” said her husband, “how's
your day been? Have you been having a nap?” “No, no, yes...but
I'm fine, I had a friend round.” “Anybody I know?” “She's an
old acquaintance from the past, she was in town and dropped by, a
nice surprise really.” He didn't answer but just nodded, kissed
her temple and went upstairs to change out of his business suit. She
patted her lap and stood up. She thought to herself that the room
arrangement looked rather good.
Later they ate together. It was a
simple meal, salad, some meats, a crisp cold white wine. They chatted
but he was tired and the conversation was wandered and aimless. She
also found concentration difficult, it had been an unusual afternoon.
As they cleared their plates she sat back. She looked at him, then
she seemed to look through him and she spoke but it was not really to
him. It was to nobody in particular or perhaps just herself. “You
know, I've just realised, death isn't an event in life at all.”
Sometimes you can get yourself so far
into things that it's just impossible to get yourself back out.
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