A day of fleeting impressions. | A coat hanging from a peg in the hall. A rope of orange polythene spilling from the left-hand pocket; bags for collecting the dog’s shit at the beginning and end of each day. | A phone conversation on the bus between father and son about a broken zip on a wallet. | A plane, heard overhead, but hidden by a blanket of cloud. | A tree, bare against a white sky, like a bony arm with a palm of twenty or so fingers sprawled open; leaves stripped and long ago scattered. | Two coils of frost-bitten mooring rope, unravelled on the towpath. | A tap left running; an even, constant flow of water, hitting the steel sink almost without noise. Untrammelled: if left alone, it would run like this for the next hour, week, year. | A memory of lying in the bathtub as a child, the water long since warm, the room bitter, two kneecaps almost blue above the surface: frozen by the indecision of whether to stay submerged in the almost cold or exit, painfully, into the total cold. | Evening on the street: a row of rectangular greys burned brown by amber-lozenged street lamps. Further along the road, the muted dying headlights of a stationary car: life fading as a battery drains. | Recording things: the business of memory, the accumulation of age, the agony and ecstasy of reflection, moments of fulfilment, pieces and peaces of mind, a contrail of the small, a spluttered collection of that which feels tangibly close, within reach, that which could almost go unnoticed, that which risks being lost.
‘Friday Fragment’ is an additional weekly instalment to my A Thousand Fragments monthly newsletter.
We are all our days
On some days all the insignificant details stand and sparkle, the unremarkable, become remarkably limned. Like the first time I got eyeglasses. I was thirteen and wandered around, transfixed, able to see each separate leaf on a tree. My world had changed --I could see. Your lovely observances here re-awakened forgotten feelings in me, Matt. Thank you