When I was a child there was an old wood-framed rectangular mirror in my home that had found its way here from the native place. It was small and light enough to be carried by a child, but large enough to frame her face and a bit of background. She would walk about looking down deep into it, stumbling on the ceiling, vaulting over doorways stubbing toes on empty bulb holders, crunching tube lights carouselling on fans. Many desolate light filled summer holiday afternoons were spent pleasantly this way in an altered vertiginous state.

Instructions:

[I] To do the following exercises you will need:
Yourself
A mirror (animate or inanimate)
A still afternoon
A cosy spot to sit in

[II] To do the following exercises, you will:
Face the mirror
Read the exercises out aloud
Sing them if you wish

Exercises:

Exercise (i)
i watch myself being watched by you.
you see me. but can you really.
who is it you watch?
who do you want to see?
who do i see?
and who are you?

Exercise (ii)
i project what i want you to see.
you watch me. but can you, really?
what do i show to you?
what should i hide?
whom do you see?
and, who am i?

Exercise (iii)

i sees itself as i watches you
you see i. you watch i.
what does i show to you?
what does i hide?
what do you see?
and what is i?

Exercise (iv)
you can see through me.
you are perceptive that way..
you see what they want us to be
but i see that in you too.
why don’t you tell me what you see?
i wish you’d show me what i ought to see.

Exercise (v)
i watch you hide from me.
they watch us hide.
i hide the pain i feel i
can see why you’d want to hide.
you are me and i am i
it’s alright, we’re not alone at least, you and i.

Exercise (vi) — Cooldown
Breathe deeply.
Say Aaaah.
Touch your face.
Feel its contours.

***

Terroir

When I last saw you is when I came alive, is where I come from. It was grey granite and marble there in large cuts solid and square, façades of red clinker sable brown tile; terra-cotta sienna stucco classical balconies; composition. Tall windows grey blue painted clean-mannered iron grills on glass, proportion. Lines were sharp, streets were canyons, shadows lean, voices and eyes seduced. Bread. Hidden courtyards, enclaves of light. It was light pink and dark pink nerium on balconies that nobody used. Do they only ever use these balconies when no one is watching? Where do they take their morning coffee?

Terrain

We are algorithms of topology, moving to the rhythm of habit at the speed of the lightest thought, mapping star charts, notating probabilities and prospecting for favourable geometries in chance. Explorers of the explicit, cartographers of networks of need, want, convenience, desire. We strategise nearness risking minimal openness. Our fingertips glide on skin in search of clues to the terrain beneath, lingering on contours of hopes of connection of fingers on keyboards on phones to make sense of the façade; to allow ourselves be haunted by echoes by coaxing neurons into grooves that grasp the moment wishing for its abyss to last forever.

Territory

There will be a tomato. It will be slightly rotting, there must be a green black fissure on its skin. It will sit on a tabletop with no table cloth. No, have a table cloth handy you never know. Make it a rose and poppy one. The tabletop is to be wood, unpolished cypress. There will be a dead hornet. Go outside to find one if you have to, I don’t care, but there will be a dead hornet.

Angle the tomato against the light. Wait, as the sun slants, to show off its rotten side. Mark spaces on the wood with chains of cherry pits. Place the hornet an inch away from the tomato, not upside down but with dignity, it is dead show it some respect. It must not face any portion that is not yet rotten. Watch the sun sink.

Now hear my story

Gesture remains on desire paths by force of habit in muscle memory.

When motor memory turns autonomous, there’s nowhere left to drift, delve, dérive.

No drive, only driven—roots float, seas have risen, they have drowned us.

Memories constructed, distance an exponentially expanding shift, but history always alive.

Time

These bells are two minutes late. They will always be a minute here or there as I discover through yet another day of counting hours backwards.

The bells repeat four notes at indefinite intervals. Four pullers of ropes in lively conversation that distracts them from their job, ropes coming in the way of gesturing animatedly. There is a kind of coherence through the sounds because of how few the notes are and how pleasant their timbre. It is mid-day, so we will be treated to a ragged quartet piece in four voices. I wait for the finale. They must come together, my ear begs for it and they must tell us the time. They seem to be coming together in unison now. But they inexplicably fade away as though the church steeple were a passing ambulance. I never get to hear the end of piece —a garbage lorry obscures it — whether they stay together to tell us the time, whether they tell us the time. The bell rope-pullers have tired and they have decided today that this time will be ten o’clock. They couldn’t be bothered to finish their piece or no I am wrong, they have much to say and they are saying it—the piece is entitled “unfinished”. How stuck up am I that I need an exact number of chimes in perfect unison? Loosen up, live a little. I will have a tense twenty-four hours in anticipation of the next concert.

A single thin bell chimes twelve times at exactly half past noon. The thermostat says that it is half past eleven.