#AM READING CHRIS CLEAVE’S LITTLE BEE. OMENS AND FINDING GRIEF.

OMENS. They say that in the hour before an earthquake the clouds hang leaden in the sky, the wind slows to a hot breath, and the birds fall quiet in the trees of the town square.   – No, real disaster will announce itself by hardly moving its lips.

POLICE MEN. Nice lips. Quite full, and rather juicy –looking. He wasn’t beautiful, but I was  transfixed by the way he stood and cast his eyes down deferentially when he spoke.  And of course there’s always something about a uniform. You wonder if the protocol will peel off with the jacket, I suppose.

DAWN. The orange glow of the night [cast by the distant city] faded, and I started to see the fields and the hedges around us.  Everything was gray at first by then the colors began to come into the land – blue and green, but very soft, as if the colors did not have any happiness in them.

FINDING GRIEF. I am drilling down through the memories, searching for the capstone, the memory which when cracked would release some symptom of anguish…It was exhausting prospecting for grief like this, unsure if grief was even there to be found.

OFFICIALS. The men seemed limp, half-garroted by their ties. Everyone stooped, or scuttled, or nervously ticked. They carried themselves like weather presenters preparing to lower expectations for the bank holiday weekend.

AN AFFAIR COMING ON: It became a possibility, albeit in a relatively controlled form that both of us could still step back from. Here it was, if we wanted it, hanging from a taut umbilicus between us: an affair between adults, minute yet fully formed, with all its forbidden trysts and muffled paroxysms and shattering betrayals already present, like the buds of fingers and toes.

THE LOOK OF GASOLINE. The hose went right inside the fuel tank, so that the transfer of the fluid was hidden. I still do not know what gasoline truly looks like. If it looks like the way it smells, it must flash like the most brilliant happiness, so intense that you would go blind or crazy if you even looked at it.  Maybe that is why they do not let us see gasoline.

DISAPPEARING IN THE CROWD IN LONDON.  I was inside the crowd, getting pushed this way and that way. I did not mind and I did not look back. I let myself be taken along by this river of human souls that flowed beside the water. I was happy. I smelled the mud on the banks of the river and the dust of the gray pigeons’ wings and the flat dry smell of the ancient stone buildings and the hot breath of cigarettes and chewing gum that floated through the crowed.