Furious Horses

>Her method, her mechanism, was to catalogue all that was left behind. A catalogue, thorough, springing up through her mind’s eye like a typewritten crisp clean note. She did the washing for this reason, and this reason only. She found, and remembered, and treasured, whatever fell from pockets, from cuffs and creases. Buttons in all sizes, from teddy’s eye to moon plate; coins, foreign and familiar, bearing profiles of far-off kings; hair clips, tiny screws, bee’s bonnets, spider trophies. And she had, to thank, whatever force in the world hid the most important things in the most unimportant places.

>1. Language
2. English
3. The

>The one thing, to be supposed, about snow:
it evens us out.
One scene becoming much like another.
A street from here becoming a street
from over there.
So bright, really,
that nothing else matters.

>She had him up against the door, crying as a piece of skin slipped off his cheek and stayed stuck to the wood veneer. It was the last part of him abandoned. The very last part of him to die.

>Because of certain factors, Henry had wanted to triangulate something for such a long time. At least to hatch a plan, that was enough. A scheme, a ruse, a brilliant brainwave. To set something in motion, to set off a chain reaction, be a catalyst. He wanted oh so badly to be the difference in one point in the world.

>I went to the shop that sold signs, and the sign in their window said they were open. And you, I’m sure, can guess the rest.

>In the morning, when you’re only half awake, and your fist won’t even give itself the power to clench. This is your heart. Lost, adrift, all those awful seafaring words: useless because you’re stuck plainly to land. No soaring, no gliding, no wind through your hair, just the lurching casino clatter of one hope falling, landing, falling. And what’s left is that strange moan coming from your throat that means nothing like anything else in this world.

>Jason remembers the ground but not the street. He always used to walk with his head down anyway. Maybe that says something about him. Maybe it doesn’t.

Regardless, it’s hot. Hot for nine at night at least. He wonders whether it’s always been this temperature, or whether his body has become used to a different climate. He hasn’t lost his accent.

Apart from the cars on the wrong side, it could be any new Straße in Berlin. It’s the same modern street that springs up in every city. The sort with shiny chrome handles and upstairs clubs and spelt-out numbers above the doors. He’s seen them many times in many places, but never while walking through his past.

As he looks around, he remembers that shops used to be closed at this time of night. Now the street has, he supposes, a real night life.

All the young hopefuls mill past him, trying to look so different, appearing exactly the same. All hopes of sweat and sex and losing control. Animals waiting for their cages.

He was their age when he left. Somehow it’s all passed him by. The times when you were meant to slip your mind in a back pocket and bounce around a crowded room. Maybe he regrets it. Maybe there are more important things to regret.

It’s been six years since he’s walked this way. Now he can hardly connect to what’s around him. Still, there are little things that can’t be changed, that will stay the same whatever happens. The sky is still a deep mauve. It’s never really night.

He would be happy just to see one shop unchanged, one post box in the same spot, but the whole thing’s a half-gleaned memory. Jason knows it’s the same street, but it looks as if it can’t be.

He finds himself outside what used to be a fruit shop. Now it’s a bistro, a brasserie. A Blue Bar. With the kind of lights they use in train stations so you can’t see your veins. It’s all bathed in blue: the swinging gas heaters, the fat leather stools, the thick tall bottles. Jason feels the need to be inside this place. Not because he wants to be, but because he thinks he should be. Just a coffee, he thinks. Things to do tomorrow.

He orders a large whisky and drinks it. The ice hits his teeth and as the thick liquid descends he feels his landing wheels finally touching down. He reaches into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, except they aren’t there. It’s a habit he has travelled out of. It surprises him that the instinct remains.

He orders another drink and sits at an empty table in the corner. His mind goes through the people he will visit tomorrow. He imagines their faces, tries to age them. Maybe they’ll look the same. Maybe they won’t.

As his eyes swing around the Blue Bar, he can’t understand where he fits in. Is there still a place for him here?

He will find out soon enough.

>I watched him write a long long letter to Noam Chomsky and then fold away his writing table and slide it under his bed. He stood up too quickly, or at least that’s what it looked like, as he had quickly bought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, squeezing.

“Anything the matter?”

“Not that I can recall.”

He sat back down on the bed and picked up a magazine. As he flipped through it, a single tear made a loud wet snap on a page where there was an ad for jeans, or perfume, or whatever black-and-white pictures of a Parisian window are supposed to sell.

>When the rain came down, like a bad memory or cut-off fat fingers falling, Taloula was creeping quietly across a roof. She had her hair swept back, clipped in with a complex Gordian knot of stolen mousse and clothes pegs, and kept tasting carnival floss sweetness in the spaces between her teeth. It hurt her, almost, to feel the wetness on her neck, the rain finding its way into her clothes. And then the eventual cold, a startling persistent sensation which made its way strangely to her knees and elbows, in that way of hinges and oil and creaking machines. She was partially worried for her metal parts, but more that the moisture was threatening what, so far, had been a very enjoyable evening.