A plain flat tone lingers somewhere to the north, and wind pushes itself along the curved bottom of the earth. The trees shake a little, teasing the leaves, tempting them to drop. Amidst those leaves who daringly drop down and the wilting, floury skies I can’t stop thinking about the simple things, about fuzzy memories and knitted cardigans. The door to the garage had been left slightly open and now, admittedly with no mean amount of terror, had startled me as it bounced off the radiator just behind it. The wind had been picking up over some period of time, my feet were cold and birds which had momentarily alighted on the feeder were now flown, as had my interest.
Pulling the photo album out from the bottom shelf, underneath the book on German grammar and the atlas, I peruse the pictures and their scenes as though looking through a catalogue of cheap home furnishings. Those happy faces and nonchalant stares have long lost their meaning. The youthful cheeks and eyes are no longer important. Their value has been lost in their enhancement of their surroundings and their inexplicable relationship with the photographer. Why did anyone bother? That tone has now all but lost the ability to penetrate walls and fixtures but either due to the wind fluttering its dross at the windows or the mechanisms inside the clock on the wall. The distant noise is punctuated into staccato like phrases as though one were cleaning the strings on a violin, or cleaning the pipes on an organ, preparing it for some performance, as yet to be organized.
The regularity with which I lingered on each picture and moved to the next one, came perhaps as a result of the noises around me, or rather as an automatic response. It is one of those days where I feel I ought to have an itinerary made up, a battle plan readied or a score with which to play, but as is always the case it never happens. Flitting from packing books into boxes to the click of the keys under my finger, the photos ought to be a diversion. Yet the sense of timing cannot escape me and often tugs along in tow, the mixture of guilt and apathy. Why can’t I be bothered?
Amidst all of this I still can’t shake from my mind that childhood inertia, the swells of reflection, the other distant flat tone which neither emanates from the north nor has ability to be tempered by the pluck of nature or technology. It is a yearning I have not felt in some time. The yearning that the video camera still worked or that I still had some more of my precious toys and cuddly animals to look at, to touch. Yet still not to reminisce, purely to just be. To be short enough that I can’t reach the fake granite worktops in the kitchen.
