There are days that are triggered by the drafty air, the lack of light. A race into London only serves to exhaust, the trains whirring by in uncomfortable silence as I try to keep my skirt off the knee of the man next to me, as the man across from me tries to keep from fidgeting, to keep from stepping his scuffed work shoes on my naked sandaled toes. The sunshine sometimes helps, sometimes doesn't.

Tuesday it didn't.

Clad in simple clothes and with my hair laying across my cheek, over the bandage on the right side of my face, I make my way into the city. The hair may (sometimes) cover the one bandage, but the other injury slides down my leg, hidden by a thick white bandage. To further the damage, my right hand had a sort of surgery on it, which was somewhere between many shots and blinding pain. The result is that the hand looks bruised and is curled into a twisted crow-like claw, unable to open the fingers up and expose the fine lines of the palm to the light.

I am a bit bruised inside, too, but those injuries are my own to bear.

There are days when I stand in the midst of the people at Waterloo and wonder what is happening. I turn and face the sea of faces and find that they are moving in slow motion, a pause in their rush, quicksand in their run. I watch as the silver flash of a jacket zipper catches every stream of sunlight on the teeth. I see a woman push a tendril of hair out of her eyes, and it takes her minutes to reach forward, curl the fingers up, take the hair with the fingertips and push it callously to the back of her head, a lone wave rippling up in a sea of bottle blond. A woman is on a call on her mobile, and I watch as her crimson lips move and thrust and take a few minutes to slide down her teeth to form a word.

It's all in slow motion. People running, people checking their watches, a man reaching for his young son's hand. If I hold my breath I can hear the sound of a pound coin set on the counter in commerce for a thirsty water-craving businessman several stalls away. The sunlight streams through the window and clocks the dust particles in the air in front of me, erasing any sign of the train display I am trying to watch.

All I can do is stand there.

A pigeon hobbles next to me, lapping up a large piece of bread next to me. It tilts its head to regard me and finds I am moving as slowly as everyone else around me. This bubble, this celluloid goo, it just wraps us up and locks us in. I see the pigeon has only one toe on one of his feet, and a gust of wind generated from the undercarriage of an arriving train blows him off balance, his toe shortage poor compensation for the unforeseeable.

I look at my curled clawed hand and know the feeling.

Sometimes, I too am caught unaware by the gusts. There are days when I just don't have enough, when I have given all I can to him and them and him. I know that on those days when I think I have given it all I should open the lid on the barrel inside of me, look in, and reach in and give some more. I do this, but the splinters from the bottom of the barrel have buried themselves in my fingers. Infection is spreading.

Another pigeon flutters down and cheekily takes a nip of the bread. I see it has all of its toes but one of them is enormous, swollen and black. The pigeon limps and regards me, and I want to say: You too, eh? The infection is in you too?

Above me the train display shows a display for the Garden of Glass at Kew Gardens, and a ball of yellow light is emblazoned on the screen, backlighting the entire train station and targeting people with a dose of the artificial light. I watch the light bounce off the young punk with the aviator glasses. The man with a briefcase that has seen better days. The young woman in the black dress and black pumps that is trying too hard but she won't know it for another few years. I watch the light touch them but they don't pause in their slow motion ballet to crane their heads up to see this, and if they did, by the time they got their eyes to shift and follow the light would be gone.

I leave my pigeon friends to it and walk to the train platform, and I must be in slow motion too because I am not aware of getting there, I only know that I sit here and wonder about the passing stations, about my right hand, about the sunshine and about my cats. I wonder about my job and why the pace of it is nearly crippling now, about my thoughts, about the whiteness of the clouds. I wonder why it is that the one-legged pigeons go to stay at Waterloo, and what that means for the rest of us.

That's all this is, in the end. It's a slow motion, off-balance infection. It's bandages and puckered skin. It's sandals that you love and a phone full of unheard messages, it's the exhaustion of 12 hour days and too many emails. It's the balance between the happy and the sad, and the indecipherable moments in between. It's carrying home groceries to make a meal from someone that you are thinking about and hoping to proceed. It's watching the passing stations on the train

All that this is-getting through the days, trying to push down the who you were with who you could become if you could just figure out what the fuck everyone is saying.

I am so tired that I can even sleep in the sun now, and I hate sleeping in the light.

-H.

PS-We lost the dream house.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:32 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 1044 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Oh, honey! I'm so sorry. Here's a {{{{ hug }}}} -- unfortunately not the preferred type.

Posted by: Margi at June 09, 2005 09:51 AM (nwEQH)

2 I'm sorry about the wounds and the house.

Posted by: Solomon at June 09, 2005 01:20 PM (k1sTy)

3 I'm so sorry... both for the wounds and the house.

Posted by: amber at June 09, 2005 01:41 PM (VZEhb)

4 Me four Helen. Big hugs!

Posted by: justme at June 09, 2005 01:49 PM (KE4CP)

5 :::Sending you some vodka and lots of sympathy:::

Posted by: That Girl at June 09, 2005 01:55 PM (gu1Ur)

6 So sorry to hear your down...best wishes to you and the boy.

Posted by: jennifer at June 09, 2005 02:15 PM (lHvU3)

7 This is some of the most beautiful writing I've read from you. I particularly like the bit about the woman pushing her hair back, "a lone wave rippling up in a sea of bottle blond." Congratulations, you are master of the metaphor. And I'm terribly sorry about the house, but there will be another (hopefully in Whitney Houston).

Posted by: emily at June 09, 2005 02:56 PM (plXME)

8 I am so, so sorry - for all the things making you tired. The wounds, inside and out. The lost house. It is a sad day, today.

Posted by: Elizabeth at June 09, 2005 05:41 PM (l673m)

9 Oh Helen, I'm so sorry to hear you lost the house. Damn it!

Posted by: PJ at June 09, 2005 06:04 PM (PulSE)

10 I am really REALLY sorry about the house petal abs x

Posted by: fairyabs at June 09, 2005 06:50 PM (Xwb8q)

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