Beautiful Silence

The room is too hot. I open a window. It's raining. Beautiful. The room becomes too cold and the sound of birdsong disturbs me. I close the window. The cats look perplexed. They look at each other and I read their thoughts; 'what's the human doing?' Anastasia is here for company too but she seems so fake I flick a button and she disappears as the tv dives into darkness. The best way for a tv to be. I get back into bed and pick up the last night of the earth poems. There is something there for every day, something that eases my fears as I realise daily that I'm increasingly less able to relate to conventional society.

Yesterday I walked outside to dispose of some rubbish and the neighbour was standing in his garden. Of course, he had to talk... he just had to talk. He began to tell me that there would soon be building work done to their home. Then I saw his wife standing in the doorway. She asked me how long I was planning to continue living next door. I assumed she'd rather have a family next door so she could speak about babies while their babies played together and the men spoke about insurance and the economy and house extensions. It was cold and wet and grey and I was standing outside in my shorts and flip flops feeling very bored. I wanted to go back inside and read about people who travelled and wrote and drank and sang and owned nothing but dreams and ideas.

I pick up my phone and check the newsfeed on a social networking site. Nothing. There are lots of updates but they all say nothing. Everyone is happy. Everything is great. Everyone is cool. Everyone has had a night out with a group of friends and is looking forward to today’s social interactions. Everyone will be gathering with lovers and friends and family. I put my phone down and the face of one of the cats appears above the covers and it seems she is trying to sniff my nose. She says something to me but I cannot understand what it is. I assume she is telling me to get out of bed and prepare something for her to eat. I turn over. She turns, sprints to the edge of the bed, leaps into the air, and begins to attack her scratch-pad. Sheer delight as she becomes aware that I will soon give in and get up to perform the morning ritual for which she waits in great expectation.

With a groan I fling back the covers and walk with some pain in my feet to the bathroom. The mirror shows me the image of an ageing man. A man who is happy to know that Sunday stretches out ahead of him and that he can spend it doing as he pleases. I walk downstairs and, having collected the cat’s bowls from their preferred eating places, shakily shake biscuits into them before adding half a sachet of grilled fish in Jelly to each. One cat sits eagerly in the corner... the very same corner in which she awaits every single morning as I prepare the food. The other cat leaves me guessing as to where it may be that she will want to eat today. She likes to play the guessing game and, at the last minute, as I walk to the stable corner carrying the bowls, she will scream out and run either to the same step on the stairs or to the same spot in the living room, those are her two eating places but why she varies and when she will vary remains a mystery.

Once the cats are happily eating, I turn on the computer. I log in. I launch itunes and begin to play music. A smile forms upon my lips as I consider the potential laziness of this day. Bukowski’s poetry has inspired me and I begin to tap away at the keyboard, adding words to something I had written on my phone in the middle of one insomnia fuelled night a few nights before. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it doesn’t. It isn’t coming. The key is to continue and see where it takes you. Never the less, I need a break.

I open the door and walk outside into the rain. I get into my car, start it, and travel through to see you. You are always home. The door is always open. I walk in. Through the smoky room I see your silhouette sat seductively behind the typewriter. You flick your hair to the side and roll your eyes with that way you have of looking so disgusted with a world in which convention is the overriding force. Slowly sliding your head towards the desk you raise a cigarette to your full lips and suck on it as if hoping to derive the last puffs of freedom from life itself. You’d rather live self destructively and taste life than live a clean and orderly life of family and home and children… and this I find irresistible. Chaos is your art. You part your legs as if to tempt and promise… a promise unfulfilled as you fold one leg over the other. You utter a few words of greeting and your French accent croaks from a smoky throat sending vibrations of pleasure through my body. I want to reach out and touch and kiss as you raise a glass to your lips and sip whiskey. I long to be that glass. I long to be the whiskey and the glass, to simultaneously touch your lips and be inside of you. The smoke is a fragrance of delight and makes me feel light headed with desire. All I can do is lie down and pick up this lonely book whilst I listen to your fingers tapping the keys to add words, written in a language that I cannot read, to the virgin page.

An unknown period of time passes and the tapping ends. I put down the book as you walk into the room, pausing in the doorway to smile through a small cloud of smoke. Then you bend to put out the cigarette in a dirty ashtray and reach out to put your arms around me as you lie down. Embracing, we kiss and allow ourselves to fall asleep in the beautiful silence.