Posts Tagged ‘English’

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The spring in your steps

4 novembre 2010

Sometime, you think you've reached the end. The end of the road, the end of your will. You don't understand how you go on but you do, because there is no other way, because you won't know of different paths than your own. Because the unthinkable does not exist in your world and values, and so there it is, there is no solution but to walk forward in the darkness.

After all, it is your own road on which you walk through life, or rather, you belong to it, you've lost yourself in its hills, somewhere along the way, bend after bend, obstacle after another, you've shed bits of yourself and can't remember being something else than what you are today. There's been happy moments, shiny memories filled with carefree joy and light, and maybe that's where your energy comes from nowadays.

Most days you feel grey and unseen and unimportant. You're the tallest girl I know, and also the thinnest, yet you feel petite and obese. You're trapped in your life, you're trapped in your body, in your unfulfilling job, in the unseen pain of the everyday details and futilities. 

Every detail is so important and failed. 

You feel invisible, like, no one sees you, no one really needs you even though you're indispensable and so demanded upon that you never seem to have time for yourself. You manage a team of eight in a marketing firm and you can't remember having time on your own, just you and the silence and the wind in the leafs. You'd walk down the river and lie on the grass under an old tree, and you'd watch the sky and the sun through the branches, and you'd listen and be heard. 

How horrifying… To be alone with yourself once more and face the truth of what you think you've become. You've put the bar so high for yourself that you're bound to fail.

Sometime though, you forget that you hate your life and yourself and the choices you've made. You had reasons for them, they were probably sound ones but now that you look back everything seems wrong. Yes, somedays you let go of what you think you should be, your soul takes a break and puts its personal cross aside. For a while your body relaxes, your face becomes appeased and the shadow of a smile that I've sadly become used to gives light to a true laugh. You tilt your head gracefully, (unbeknownst to yourself you are a truly graceful and beautiful person…), your eyes look upon the world with happiness for a short while. It is not easy for you, to be happy, to be carefree.

I see you. From afar I close my eyes and I see your chestnut hair, your grey eyes that always reminded me of a painting of the ocean. There are storms and stories behind your eyes, unspoken tales that even I don't know.

You could never be invisible to me, I could never not need you in my life. And I could never ask anything of you other than what you would want to give me. It's like that. We met in the crib, our mothers had the same nanny, we went to the same schools, the same library and bell-ringing club, we fought over opinions and candy and sometimes dated the same boys. We helped each other with acne cream, college choices, husband decisions and anti-wrinkle cream shopping. You're my kin. I saw you grow up and make choices, I gave you my opinion and sometimes we fought and I gave up, but even I can't quite say when the corners of your mouth took a sad turn.

Strangely enough, I've seen a new spring in your step lately. Something that looks a lot like hope and will. The determination to be who you are and nothing else, as if you were in your car and turned left instead of going on the same old boring road. Your path seems rockier and harder, and yet new and exciting and scary and perhaps fulfilling. 

I think it's called being yourself again. 

You could never be careless but you seem carefree, or at least carefully free… I can't put my finger on it, and it doesn't matter. I think I can trust you to make your own path, I'll worry for sure, I'll wake you up in the middle of the night and ask you silly questions, and, well, maybe next Saturday we could go to the pub and get drunk like old times, and you'll tell me the story behind this new smile haunting your lips.

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scrumptious Jack is coming soon

30 septembre 2010

Announcement – Father Jack is currently at the Sherlock Holmes. Due to a chain of soon to be revealed events, he is stuck under a table, his hand not too far from Father John’s face. Kofi, owner of the town’s best curry and Buddist leader is sitting on the floor, his legs crossed and laughing his head off.

Andrew the pub owner is not happy…

The town’s gossip will get back to you as soon as possible on this matter. Thank you for your patience.

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Andrew James

12 septembre 2010

Sherlock

 

Ophelia Bernicle didn’t always have fat fingers. She used to be simply Ophelia Clark, a blithe young thing filled with beauty and nonsense, and Andrew James was deeply in love with her. Their last names had brought them together in their first years of school, fancy that, theirs could have been first names, how silly was that… 

They grew from carefree children to careless teenagers, and then light headed young adults. Life was easy and in front of them, they owned it, they had yet no regrets nor ghosts crossing their paths as they looked back on their short existence.

She already had a heavy hand on peroxide regarding her hair and a taste for flashy jewelry, but she was beautiful and spirited and she could get away with it. Andrew loved everything about her, and that was that.  

He had it all planned out in his head, and one day he even had the courage to talk to her about it. About owning a pub and spending a life together. Ophelia wasn’t against the former, but the pub was a deal-breaker. Come on love, a pub, really? We’d have no life, we’d be tied every lunch and dinner and night. She tried to persuade him otherwise but Andrew had set out this path for himself and he was as pig headed as she was… 

They tried to reach out to one another for several months to no avail, and then Thomas Bernicle intruded in their lives. From the moment he set his eyes on Ophelia Clark, she wasn’t Andrew’s anymore. Thomas was unreliable and exiting and handsome and the last one leaving the pub after the call for the last drink rang. He would never look at anyone exactly in the eyes and Andrew found that unsettling. He knew he was wrong for Ophelia, but after all these days of yelling and pulling weight and being angry with one another, Andrew had given up. He didn’t put up a fight, he let Ophelia go and pretended he didn’t care anymore.

Within days, twenty year old Ophelia was out of Andrew’s life. She was soon married and pregnant with little Tom. It wouldn’t be until Melissa, her second born, and Andrew’s son Matt went to school together that they would see each other again. Life and Thomas Bernicle had taken away her joy and laughter. She had become heavy and sad, with a bitter mouth and suspicious marks on her arms that she tried to conceal with tired lifeless clothes.

Happiness doesn’t always find you, you have to make your own happiness. Andrew  firmly believed that. So Ophelia was gone. So he was left on the curb. It didn’t mean he didn’t have the right to go on and build a different kind of life for himself. And Rose and himself were very happy. She worked as an accountant in a small firm downtown, and took care of Andrew’s paperwork after he was granted both his business and his liquor license. 

He opened his own pub, like he’d set out to do. They called it the Sherlock Holmes in homage to Rose’s passion with the stories. She was good with the customers and the staff, and once nature granted them their wish, she was a very loving mother to their two children, Matt and Violet. 

Rose was a petite yet strong woman, with a very white creamy skin, dark hair and navy blue eyes. How quickly pneumonia had snatched her seven years ago and left Andrew a widower took everyone by surprise. Matt was twenty-three and Violet twenty. Both helped their father with the aftermath with sadness yet efficiency. Rose had taught them well. Yes, it was sad, but life would go on and time would soothe their pain.

It was ironic how both Andrew and Ophelia had became widowers. Though Thomas Bernicle’s death had happened much earlier in their lives and had left Andrew with a sour guilty taste in his mouth… If he hadn’t been so strict on his car key policy towards drinkers, Thomas wouldn’t have walked home… And yet, who knows, had he taken the wheel, someone else might have ended up dead in the gutter like he did. Thomas Bernicle seldom came into Andrew’s pub, probably because of Andrew’s stern management of drunks and fools. Andrew suspected he’d been thrown out of a couple pubs before trying his luck at the Sherlock Holmes. He had let him in that night, had taken his car keys in exchange for a pint, and then had sent him away for his last walk home before a car hit him and left him for dead, his head and feet in the gutter.

Little Tom Bernicle was an agitated thirteen year old when the tragedy occurred, and Melissa was but eight… She was a quiet reserved girl that one… Not anything like her parents, whereas Tom seemed set on following his father’s foot paths. 

When Melissa was eighteen, she applied for a job as a waitress at the Sherlock Holmes with a timid yet determined voice. She was capable and discreet and Andrew was soon glad he’d hired her. He never told her the confrontation he’d had with her brother Tom, though he suspected she knew. The useless Tom Bernicle had dared walk into his pub one morning and ask for half of Melissa’s wages. « It’s for our mother, Ophelia, I think you know her… Mel’s to give her half her earnings to keep us going, it’s only fair that she pays her share now that she’ old enough to work, right mate…« . 

Andrew had replied very coldly that he would come for tea at Ophelia’s and discuss the matter with her. Tom wasn’t all too happy about it. He’d raised his voice and tried to throw a punch. He was obviously inebriated early in the day, and it didn’t take much to throw him out. 

Later on that very day, Andrew knocked on Ophelia’s door. She was surprised to see him, she said, but why don’t he come in. They drank tea and he didn’t stay long as Rose wouldn’t appreciate the gossip that would inevitably occur. He didn’t need to stay long anyhow to reach an understanding. « It would be nice to see more of you at the Sherlock Holmes, » he said, « you could perhaps come in every Thursday and have a glass of sherry, and if by any chance Melissa has decided to contribute to the expenses in your household, I could give you what’s to be yours then. It would be handled discreetly between friends, would it not? »

And thus Ophelia came into the habit of coming on Thursday nights for a while. The pub was lively though not too crowded and she would often meet old friends and chat with them. The sad lines under her eyes became somewhat lighter weeks after weeks, and she continued to come in after Rose’s death, and after Melissa was long gone to London. 

Andrew was glad. Sometimes, though not all that often, Ophelia would laugh or tilt her head in a way that reminded Andrew that they’d been young fools once. But it was such a long time away… Too long away…

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Sunny Rain

9 septembre 2010
Sunnyrainorg-r

They were unexpected

These few drops there and there

That from one became ten

As the sun held its light

* * *

The water unannounced

Pounced, beat, sang

As we ran in vain

Under the sunny rain

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Mrs Bernicle

10 août 2010

P250710_00

 

Mrs Benicle sat on her stool moodily  while staring at her glass of sherry. Andrew, the pub owner had been quite charming when serving her, yet she always felt uncomfortable under his frank, direct, piercing eyes. As if he could see things in her, the very things she so meticulously hid that even she had forgotten all about them. 

Melissa was late again. Five minutes, but still. Her daughter was so unreliable, so carefree and happy. It wasn’t normal. She was probably going to burst in, all charming and lively, smelling like fresh Ivy and with a funny anecdote to share. It was so annoying, the way she always became the centre of attention…

Mrs Bernicle checked her sad blond hair with her fat little fingers, putting everything properly back in place in her bun with small pins. Each finger on her hand adorned a ring with big semi-precious stones. They were heavy flashy rings, and she liked the statement she made while waving her hand.

– And what statement would that me Mum, had laughed Melissa one day.

Yes, her daughter was so different from her, and from her precious son. Tom. Tom was only two years older than Melissa, but he was definitely made from another kind of wood, or timber, whatever the expression was. Tom was so talented, yet he had been as unlucky in love as he’s been with his jobs. Girlfriends would never stay  long and employers just didn’t understand how Tom was different from others. More sensitive, with an artistic soul… The first few weeks always went well. Tom would come home enthusiastic.

– Mum, it’s the best job ever, he would say.

Mrs Bernicle’s heart would swell in pride. 

– Maybe he can move out then, she would think, somewhat hopeful. 

Even in his own flat, Tom would always need her. There would be the everyday details to oversee. Maybe he would settle down, have a proper girlfriend. They would sit for tea on Sunday afternoons, everything would be so lovely… But after these first few weeks, Tom would come home looking sombre and preoccupied. Problems would differ from one job to the other. Once it had been a jealous co-worker, then a new unforgiving boss, or Tom had had the flue, there would always be something… Until the one evening when she would sit in her kitchen, waiting for her son to come home drunk and angry.

– I’ve been given the sack again Mum!

Mrs Bernicle would be brave and loving then. She would pat Tom’s arm, assuring him that he was her wonderful boy, that things would work out. Next time… She would brush aside the bitter sadness in her fat little heart, her son should come first, and he needed her.

That’s what was wrong with Melissa : Mrs Bernicle’s daughter didn’t need her. Early on in school, she was one of the brightest student, always top of her class, and with ambitions. She did her homework eagerly and sat for hours in front of the kitchen table, learning her tables and lessons. She did so well with her A-Levels, the church’s educational fund committee had been impressed and had granted her a scholarship so that she could go on to Uni. And she had, the ungrateful thing! She’s left her mother and brother, she’d gone to the other side of the country to pursue her studies. Mrs Bernicle never bothered to ask her what it was that she was learning. Today, Melissa worked for a big American firm in London, probably doing important things and earning loads. She came back now and then, but never stayed home. 

– I don’t want to be a burden Mum, and besides, staying in a B&B is so much fun.

Fun. Melissa had fun. She was independent and pretty and successful, and she had fun. She didn’t have a drunk for a husband, who would eventually die in a gutter, thrown by a car in the dead of the night. She didn’t have to worry about her jobless son who moped home all day and asked for pub money in the evening. Melissa had it easy, didn’t she. 

Where was she, anyway? She was ten minutes late now. She was probably busy taking her time parking her car, or having a lively chat with some blokes. 

Mrs Bernicle took a sip of sherry. Better drink it now, Melissa was sure bound to laugh when she arrived :

– You always drink pink Mum, c’mon, let’s have a proper pint, and why sit at the bar? There’s a nice corner over there, we can sit on the couch and chat. We have so much catching up to do. 

What’s a mother to do? Mrs Bernicle will probably begrudgingly oblige and have a Hoegaarden. After all, what’s the point in fighting, better be polite. Besides, Melissa always buys the drinks… After a pint of two, she will probably laugh at Melissa’s jokes and even be chatty with Andrew the pub owner. Yes, maybe it will be fun after all, to have a carefree evening with her daughter. To forget her worries and her burdens, just for one night…

Fifteen minutes now… And there she is, all dressed up for her mother. Ah, my daughter, she is a pretty thing, isn’t she?

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Grey

4 juin 2010

P1000700

 

Your mother looks like nothing. Her hair hangs like her stained clothes, she doesn’t notice, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t see herself in the mirror anymore, she feels invisible and doesn’t think the world sees her either. Of the reasons of her sadness, her refusal to be, to interact and get involved, you do not have the key. You are old enough to know that this is not right, other mothers do not act like this, other mothers laugh and hug and growl and scream, other mothers have voices that sing and a spring in their steps you have never seen in yours. 

You mother is stuck in winter.

You are ten. You are old enough to know the difference, and yet too young to learn that this is not your fault, that there is nothing that you can do that would change her, wake her up. 

You have pictures of her, before. She looks good and confident. She holds her chin high, in a playful and defiant way, she has sparkles in her eyes and people around her do see her. Immobile on the glossy photos, people’s eyes are drawn towards her, her shinny black hair, her white skin and very green eyes. On these pictures, your mother is strong and powerful and eager. She is like someone that you could want to become, someone alive and dancing her own way through life. You do not recognise this person as your mother. She is a stranger, she is an explanation as to why your father fell in love with her in the first place. She is someone you wish you had in your life. 

She doesn’t get up easily these days, your mother. You hear her clock ring, you hear her hand searching for the snooze button. She finally hits it and rolls in the blankets to face the blank wall. Your father is already at the office, it is you who gets up, checks on the weather, chooses your eight years old brother’s clothes. It is you who takes the bowls and cereals and milk out. You work the coffee machine and bring a mug to your mother. She sighs and struggles to open her eyes on you. Sometimes her face is wet, as if she’s been crying, her face away from the world, her face hiding under a pillow and her hands clenched. She gives you a smile, her sad and tired stare fills with light long enough to let you know that she loves you, she loves you so much. She props herself up and takes the mug and wispers. 

– Thanks hon’, that’s very sweet. I’ll be down in a minute.

You know that she’ll get up and turn the shower on. You know that sometimes she gets in the shower and stays there a long time, letting the water remind her of the existence of her body and making you late for school. You know that other times, she stays on the side and watches the water glide on the white tiles : you know that sometimes she doesn’t shower. She picks up whatever clothes is laying around, comes down and walks you to school. 

You make sure she has clean clothes piled up on her shelves, you work the machines, you don’t iron but you fold and put away. There is a semblance of normalcy in these clothes even though the colors are faded and there are a few buttons missing there and there.

You make sure your brother and you have snacks and that all your notebooks are in your back pack. You imitate your mother’s handwriting and signature well enough now that your teachers don’t know that your mother never reads or knows of anything regarding school. Even your father cannot tell the difference. 

Your father comes home at night and the house is almost tidy, there is a somewhat cooked dinner waiting for him. His wife is already upstairs, in bed, his kids are watching cartoons on TV. There is not a sound, everything is falsely peaceful and quiet. He has a lady come every week to clean the flat and iron his shirts, he goes to the supermarket on Saturday mornings and gets the things his daughter wrote on the shopping list with his wife’s handwriting. 

Your father used to hold the arm of a beautiful glamourous lady. He fell in love with this successful lawyer he’d never managed to beat in court, he courted her consistently, they married, after a while they moved to the suburbs and had children. Nowadays, he forgets who she used to be, how his heart used to beat a little faster, how air would become scarce all of a sudden when she was around. She started to scream, at first, and yell and be unhappy, and then one day she stopped. She gradually faded away, she became quiet and grey and he didn’t notice the change. 

He hasn’t realized his wife is stuck in winter, he doesn’t know of the dormant volcano hiding in her, he doesn’t know of the quiet tears and the sadness. Most of all, he doesn’t know of the suitcases she almost used a few years ago, her mind was set and ready, she couldn’t breathe anymore, she felt like she was going to die of boredom or of a mental breakdown, she didn’t know why she was unhappy, she didn’t have the words, she only had this grounded certainty that something wasn’t right. Your mother had her suitcases ready and by the door, she was writing a note. Then her little girl, you, came running with grass in her hair and mud on her shoes, you came running to her and threw yourself against her, your small arms circling her neck, holding her tight.

– Youzare my prizoner, I lovez you mummy. 

Yes, your mother loves you, too. She’s quiet and looks like nothing, she’s stuck in winter, it is not your fault, she made her own choices.  But who knows, winter cannot lasts forever you hope, spring might be around the corner… Life doesn’t have to be grey forever. 

In the meantime, you hear her clock ring, her hand searching for the snooze button. It is time to get up.

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Blank slate

22 Mai 2010

You’re looking at a blank page. On your screen, the cursor’s blinking unrelentlessly, and the words won’t come. Like your life, the cursor is at a standstill.

 

A blank page, a blank slate, God knows you need one…

 

They hurt, the words that refuse to come to the light, the story in your head which won’t exist. The words of you and the pain you have in your heart and in your mind. The sentences which you are required to give birth to by pen, and then by voice. 

 

« Pfff… », you utter, « bloody twelve steps… »

 

Life was nothing but kind to you. It is you that turned your back on it.

 

Because there is nothing that has happened to you that you haven’t brought onto yourself, because everything that your life is today is and was a direct result of your own and sole choices. You decided to turn right instead of left*, you decided to ignore the signs. You decided, too, to run straight ahead when you should have stopped and sat and thought.

Because when it was time to choose, you never went for the harder choice, did you, but for the easiest. Instead of looking ahead, you looked at right now. Instead of accepting hardship, you looked for comfort and oblivion. And now, now that you’re sober and that you’re standing on the fuming ashes of what your life once was, you know that you have nothing to blame, and no one else but you.

 

If only you could have a drink, writing would be a lot easier… 

That’s exactly the point, isn’t it…

 

I see you sitting on a stool in front of my computer. I see your childish and stubborn eyes grow from light grey to black. It is something that you have to do, it is something that you can do, but that you won’t. These words, if they exist… then everything becomes true, your last hiding place will dissolve in ink, the salt you brought in our lives, the tears of rage and desperation, the tears of fright and worry we shed on your behalf will turn into a dark rain of words and ink.

 

I could help you I guess. I could come out of the hallway into the light and sit on the empty stool next to yours. I could offer you tea and a chat and my presence. But like you, I’m at a standstill. I cannot move forward, and it is too painful to look back. It is too painful, the damage on your children, the rift I feel today between you and me. Your husband only lets you see your daughters in my home, in the safe presence of my husband and I. As I see you struggling and fighting against a blank screen, I see you disrupting our mother’s funeral, I see you forgetting your children in a train station, I see you rolling out of a taxi cab comatose and beaten up. 

 

I see you and I don’t understand. We were raised right, as the saying goes. We were raised the same. In joyful grey, our parents didn’t have much, but everything they had they gave it to us. I don’t understand how for you this could not be enough… I don’t understand but I know that I will have to. Because in spite of everything, you are still my sister. 

 

Because in spite of everything, I see that you are struggling, which means that you are trying. You’re doing the steps, you’re trying your damnedest to get your life back to something close to order. Because I see the immense love and sadness in your eyes when you hold your girls. 

 

Maybe it’s not so hard after all, maybe I can take a small step towards you. I am still standing in my hallway and the light is still scarce. But my voice somehow finds its way towards you. 

 

« You should start with our cat », I hear myself say « God knows that piece of meat was mean and ugly ».

 

You’re startled and you look up. This look, your eyes, I could cry. You manage a thin smile as you say : « Boy did we hate that cat! That’s a good start, thanks. » 

 

 

* sorry, private joke :)

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Rainy days

11 Mai 2010
Car4

You're not looking for comfort but for numbness.

You're sitting in your car, it is cold outside and raining, the engine is shut down but you won't get out. You watched your child struggle with asthma for the whole night, you just lost your job for a younger hungrier woman, your husband moved out after months of endless violent rows, your cancer's back, it is invisible as you won't loose your hair. You are 30, you are 35, you are 40 and you are 45, you are at a crossroad in your life and you realise you don't know where it is leading you, where you are leading yourself. 

Are the choices you made the rights ones, should you turn right, or left, or keep going (for there is no going back), why is your future ahead of you so clogged and fogged up, do you have a future.

Your car is parked on the street right before yours, your car is parked in front of the supermarket, your car is on the side of a country road, you drove so far you don't know where you are, you kept going until you ran out of gas, until you ran into a ditch. It is not moving, you are not moving, you stay there and you wait until it is all-right to step outside.

First you listened to the radio, the first times, the first years. The first bends on the road you didn't quite know how to handle. You sat in your car with the radio on, you arrived home and parked in the driveway and stayed there until a random neighbour walked by and shot you a strange stare. As the years went by, as the bends got more violent, you turned the sound up more and more and you parked further away from home, until this one day when you turned it off, the sound, and let the hard violent tapping from the rain reach your ears. The reminder that there is a world outside, that it may not be waiting for you but that you are nevertheless a part of it.

It is something you do when it is cold and raining, these are your five minutes of nothingness that keep you going. When it is warm and sunny, when your life is good and cheerful and filled with hope and laughter, you don't need your car, you walk places, you take the bus or the train. You co-exist with others. 

Nowadays it is getting harder to stay inside, your hands grow colder than they used to and it hurts, but you have nowhere else to go, nowhere that will offer you oblivion from your inner demons and life's cruel surprises. You don't drink, you used to smoke but quite years ago, you never did drugs and you don't like sugar.

You have this one thing that keeps you sane, this one habit of yours of staying in your car and do nothing. You wait. You wait until something clicks within you and you know that you can keep on going, that you can get out of your vehicle and back into your life. Some people would call you crazy, most of them wouldn't understand, and if you used to care now you don't. You know what is good for you and what isn't, you know the difference between what you should do and what you want to do. 

There will be other rainy days, there will be others days inside you car, your hands clenched and your face devoid of tears or feeling or thoughts. How many, you don't know, what is important is that you do get out, that you do start your engine. You're not looking for comfort but for numbness, and you find strength. Hello life, I'm back. Let's go.

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rewrite

9 Mai 2010
P1000618-3

She doesn't want to be here. On these rocks. Sitting still and letting the harsh wind slap her face. Tasting the salt on her lips, from her tears, or the sea, she doesn't know, it doesn't matter.

She doesn't care.

Her face betrays nothing. Never. She's there and she smiles and she lets her dry laugh out, people are around and yet they see nothing, she's there and she hurts, inside, somewhere, it's gotta hurt. but she can't feel a thing. Her mind hurts. Her body doesn't, and somehow that's unsettling. She doesn't like pain, who does really, but if only she could feel this sharp unbearable pain on her body, if she could localise where she needs repair, then she would feel sane. It's all in her mind, it's all a virtual game that she played and lost.

She's there. She watches the deep blue see grow dark under the dying sun. Soon there will be the night and the moon and the stars, and she will be at home. She IS at home here, on these rocks watching over the sea. They've been here forever, they watched the sea as they watched her grow while she came years after years, while she grew up climbing them, collecting the animals and insects that elected to live upon them. 

She comes back here and she's 5, she's 15, she's 25, she's 50 and she's 65. She was just born and she'll die soon. She never comes when she's happy. When she's happy, she's chasing butterflies, she's in love. She's getting married, she's a mother, a grand-mother, she's alive and in life. When she's happy the rocks exist in a part of her mind, she knows they are there and that suffices. It is when life is cruel to her, when life is unfair, when things are too hard to cope with that she comes. She comes and she used to cry, to shout, to scream. Alone, in the wind and lost in the sky as it joigned the sea. 

Nowadays she just sits. For hours. She doesn't move, because maybe, maybe if she sits still, maybe if she's quiet enough, she's disappear into the rocks, she'll become a cold silent thing watching over the sea. Watching over the time. 

Of course, there comes always the moment when she has to go home. She gets up and stretches, it's becoming harder over the years, her body doesn't cope with cold granite as well as it used to. With very slow and cautious steps, she walks the path in the ferns and ramble leading to the concrete road, and takes her time going back home. She will be back tomorrow, with her sadness and her life gone by. She will be back, hoping that it will be the last day that she has to, that life will finally choose between granting her happiness or complete peace.

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Rocks

8 Mai 2010
P1000618

They've witnessed countless tempests, these rocks. They've been hit by constant waves since the beginning of time, letting the water shape them slowly, letting it take away and change their roughness into smooth round surfaces.

She sits there in the harsh wind and the falling night, she tastes the salt on her lips, but it is allright as it is not hers. Her own tears have dried up long ago, she can't remember the last time she cried. Even her laugh is dry nowadays as it shoots out like a bullet. She doesn't feel that old even if her face and body say otherwise.

It is alright this salt from the sea, the dark moving water. This place is left alone by the common tourists, you have to live here to know where it is. First there is a road, then a small path between ferns and brambles. You cannot bathe here, and you cannot come by boat. It is a place for contemplation and rock climbing.

She used to come here even when she was little. These are her rocks. She knows all of them, she climbed and played and watched spiders crawl for hours. 

Nowadays she sits. 

There was a time when she stopped coming. She lived away and she came less and less to the village, and there was never enough time. Her children prefered regular beaches with sand and shells, and she didn't want to fight yet on another subject. So she gave in. Her children grew up, moved away… and she moved back here. Her house is modest, but welcoming and warm. An every day she comes here, after her work is done, she sit in silence and watches the sea. She works with numbers, she sorts out taxes and VAT for small companies and can do most of it online. 

She watches the sea, the sky, and listens to the waves crashing on the rocks. Her face tells nothing, she doesn't move, but she's focused on the waves and the noise. She looks peaceful, and yet, these waves, they are like her mind shouting her anger and frustrations after years of saying nothing. Her fists are never clenched (but her teeth are), to most friends and neighbours, she is a placid and almost boring woman. 

They simply don't know, do they…

A long as she can come back to these rocks she will be allright. One day, she might simply lay there, and close her eyes, and wait. And maybe the noise will stop, maybe everything will stop. And things will be allright, still.

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