I have had my piano restored. Now comes the confrontation with the passing of time: did I really know how to play this twenty years ago? I sit here looking at the notes and feeling like an entirely different person. I am somehow trying to inhabit the mind and body of a wild and passionate […]
more“But what does empathy actually mean,” he asks. He is being serious. His question is serious. Oh for chrissake. “Well. It means the ability to feel what someone else must be feeling,” she says. She then adds, “I think.” She lays down on the floor, stares at the ceiling. “You’re right. What does it actually […]
more“Thank you,” she says. She says it beneath her breath as I’ve told her many times not to thank me. Please. Do Not Thank Me. I beg you. Don’t. She has gained a lot of weight, but she has never looked more wonderful. Her children are finally with her. She hadn’t seen them in eight […]
moreAnother perfect stranger comes crashing into my home, boisterous and loud. A buff Italian man who has a little ponytail. He’s here to fix up the piano and he doesn’t waste a second. While speaking he’s sticking newspapers to the floor. He glues all his words together and they come out of his mouth as […]
moreIt’s interesting isn’t it? How you can run around life thinking “I can do this, yes I can” and these thoughts intermix with feelings of worthlessness and you can believe both at the same time. You can feel happy and sad, you can feel excited but nervous, passionate and angry and mellow yet agitated and […]
moreThe sea was the colour of the sand. Hazy shades of browns. I had never seen it that way. Sometimes the sea disappears into the sky. But not into the sand. There was so much wind that all sound was whisked away. The sea-gulls were mute, the waves broke in silence. I leaned against the […]
moreD.H. Lawrence. Peculiarly, I always remember one thing about his Sons & Lovers. It’s the scene with the swing. And how in our literature class my teacher told us that scene was a symbol of budding sexuality. What of the slide? Somehow, my son had managed to persuade me to endeavour a 20 meter climb […]
moreThe next day she wasn’t so afraid of other people’s dreams anymore. She often had dreams herself. None of them were particularly comforting, but on contemplating this she soon realized dreams never were. Dreams were always unsettling. For example, she had never, ever, dreamed of making daisy-chains and drinking a cocktails on a sailing boat. […]
moreHer husband woke up saying he couldn’t sleep. He had nightmares. One of them being that she had fallen off a balcony into the neighbour’s garden. She hadn’t really landed in their garden, but on a sun- roof of some sort. She lay on her back like a turtle. She wasn’t really doing much, he […]
more… the next question being: is there a way of actually proving a woman is faking it? This – once again highly intellectual question – was what a colleague writer and I felt we needed to find an answer to. She had just finished giving a workshop to writers, and I had been on a […]
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