‘The five inexpiable sins, the ten unvirtuous deeds, the breaking of the various vows,’ says Abs, her shirt the same colour as her fist.
I can’t tell her that I am concerned with the window; the squareness of the window; why, when they built the farmhouse, when it was always only going to be a farmhouse, it mattered that the windows were square, or all the same shape at all; the angle of the rain. I can’t say: yesterday I imagined a giant salamander, kilometres across, gliding through the sky above Austria — and not a whole one but only the top half of one, as if it had been torn at the torso, if salamanders have torsos — with triangle teeth, the shape of corn chips, buzzing like sequins in a video of a belly dancer on fast-forward, and black, light-sucking eyes, furiously winking, and out its mouth a swollen scooter muffler, presumably for show. That would be good for nothing at the symbolic level. I will say: today I imagined gravity being turned off.
My greatest fear: that someone will turn the gravity off.
I’m looking for: someone in mismatched bra and knickers to stand on the bank of the river and to give an excuse, to tell me I’m not allowed out, to keep me there, in the current, smiling, as my precious body is run over with pre-Alpine water until it is eroded into nothing, like a stone.
Together we could: provide counterexamples.
Abs, pressing the flat back of a fork into a cucumber until it splits, says: ‘Better stay inside then.’
I am a fool, I can only handle one thing at a time. The fan in the bathroom runs for four minutes before switching itself off. The King of Spain is missing.
2020-08-09 coup d'œil