Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Repetition

To illustrate her theory of repetition and disaster, she described the way her walk that morning had contained several features that were a precise repetition of the day before: how she had approached all three sets of lights at the exact same moment in their cycles that she had approached those lights on the previous day - how she had passed a woman near some trees whom she had passed near those same thin trees on the previous day - and how when meeting a person she hadn't seen for a while, this person had smiled and spoken with the same bright, cheerful intonations of sarcasm that this person had used many times on many previous occasions and so, during all of the other more immediate repetitions (which actually followed on from this meeting in the course of the walk), she was unable to enjoy the repetitions for what they were and could only brace herself, as she said, for worse to come.

Suicide isn't news

As she passed me in the park, talking into her mobile, I heard only this: but suicide isn't news.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Prose couplets

She showed me photos of her tiny, purpling, premature twins in their plastic beds.
Later, I saw a woman in high stiletto heels at the doors of a flat. She was holding a baby.

As I watched him run across the road, dodging the traffic, I couldn't help noticing that his artificial leg had affected neither his stride nor his confidence.
Less than two minutes later I was jay-walking myself.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

As a friend on Facebook

At the reception a woman approached and said to my friend that she recognised her, that she had just added my friend as a friend on Facebook; my friend said she thought she recognised the other woman too, and so they began to chat.