Miles Davis

A child doing her thing, dad in the settee doing his. There is nothing left of the sky. The five windows are dark rectangles, not really black. Again she wonders at the difference between darkness you can't see through and black. She has looked at the sun through one of her dad's empty beer bottles. The solar eclipse was a disappointment for her part. Day didn't become night at all, not even dark really. Such a disappointment. They stood with empty beer bottles in front of one eye seeing nothing but bottoms of bottles, sticky beer running down their faces.
- Are you tired tonight, she asks.
He turns his head, smiles, at nothing.
- Do you hear that sound? That's Miles.
She nods.
- He is the Master. You must know your Masters. That's all you need.
In front of her she has got a book, a pencil, scissors and glue.
She cuts out words and glue them on to a piece of paper, picks the words she likes such as "conversation" because of the ation-sound, mouse, mix, moth, mouth, something about the m in short monosyllables. Like sweeping the kitchen floor, so wonderfully filthy and in the end smooth and shiny.
It brings luck when she finds her age on a page. Every book has a page 8. And page 18, 28, 38. But that doesn't count. 288 is pretty though, but it still has to be in the text to count as luck.
- Dad?
Something is wrong with the roof of his mouth. She has told him. His sound has changed and there is a yellow blot in there, a bit swollen.
You shouldn't listen when I sleep, he would say. You shouldn't look either. It's not nice to look at people when they sleep.
In fact he doesn't answer, so she can't ask why it's not nice.
She could cut out the name Miles, it's in the book, somebody is called Miles. She doesn't. She hates Miles. It always gives him that blurred look at his face and the same sentence comes out of his mouth: Do you hear that sound?
- Dad?
She gets up. There won't be any more answers until tomorrow. She lifts the pick-up and puts it back in the little catch, then takes the record and breaks it into two, much easier to break than she would have thought. She puts the two halves back on the disc and pushes them together.
She has stopped that sound once and for all.
Then she tidies up the table. When it's beer he drinks out of the bottle, no glasses.

Now

- Love me now, he said.
His hands were not a begging bowl, they were hands, they were his hands.
And she heard him. Forget about forever, forget about yesterday, the deceptions, the promises, last year's disappointments, once upon a time is true as well, choose a story, pick it. She did. All their judges pulled back, vanished into thin air, like a child's smile.
She loves him now.

Divorces

We had an argument. It was in the car. It was not about my husband and I don't know why I said:
"When my husband died, I left him.".
Then I left the argument.

Words (language)

I'm not in the mood and I'm not used to understand every conversation I happen to overhear in bars, cafés and restaurants, in gardens behind hedges, in trains, even on my bike. That's the difference between Danish and English for me, I suppose. I understand every-everything in Danish. So I go back to the car and sit there for a couple of minutes with the door open. I'm a little early for my appointment with an old friend. I've parked in a side street in the center of Copenhagen, I always find a free parking there. I'm safe in the old Mitsubishi, it feels good to sit there, it reminds me of my father's BMW, all the buttons, the velours, the smell, I used to fall a sleep on the back seat on the way home from his cottage in Lolland. We always left too late, and he would joke about it, finding my eyes in the rear-view mirror. I close my eyes and listen to nothing.
I suppose I get out of the car because I can't make any sense of the sound, I suddenly hear: water. Water pouring out. It's not rain, hasn't been raining all day. Behind my car is another car and behind that car a young man stands pissing. He looks at what he is doing. So do I. He finishes, zipper up, looks at me and passes with a smile. Many people smile when they are embarrassed so maybe that's what he is. Maybe he is pleased. I can't tell. Doesn't make any difference. Piss smells the same no matter what smile, what language.

Words (burglary)

I used to hear the word Burglary as Burberry and I still don't associate it with what happened that night. Not really. It makes me think of keys and doors and windows. It makes me imagine you coming out from the bedroom naked and confused, suddenly doomed to be a man. And you are! So naturally a man. But you never held a sword. Even worse: the woman and the children here act like you had, like you were an expert, we feel safe when you are at home. What a weight to put on you!
What happened that night was silent. We went to bed, we were alone, the children were supposed to come home later, we didn't lock the door, we made love, without being silent. Because we were alone, expected to be alone. We were happy while we were burgled. My iPad and some cash, that's all. We found out in the morning, the children were still asleep and we looked at each other, for a moment we shared the same thought, reconstructing our moment together, and then I continued by myself, I think, relieved that you weren't pushed to dig up a sword you have never held.

Words (shoes)

In order to understand the concept of exhaustion you must replace all the elements in your life with shoes.
You explained this to me:
You are alone in a shoe shop full of customers. Let's say you have 50 different models in the shop. Shoes have to fit. So you have got each model in let's say five sizes. We all want to try at least two different sizes before we make up our mind, so you have to go and look in the stock for every customer who seriously consider a pair of shoes. It's a bit stressful because you then have to leave the shop. You do it of course as fast as you can. But every time you open a box, it's not the right size you find in it, or it's a different model or an unexpected color. None of the shoes fit the boxes. Your customers get impatient, some of them you were just about to sell a pair of shoes leave the shop. Others get angry with you.
You made a little pause.
This is how daily life situations are perceived when we are exhausted.
You took my arm that Saturday and let me out of the shoe shop.

Words (face)

There are faces we loose and faces we never forget.
With oceans and mountains and mammoths between we still carry all the faces we lost. One day we meet our witness and find no defense. There is only one face to wear, the one we once lost. So I kindly ask: when you walk the life and a traffic light turns red, don't look for it. Even if a lost face crosses the street and find your eyes, don't look. Let it pass. Right behind you will meet a man or a woman asking what way to take.

Words (tears)

A cat spied on me today. It didn't give a damn about my tears. Kind of interesting. I wouldn't expect a cow to bother. Nor a lizard. Though the little bird that have moved in and waits for me to open the doors in the morning so it can get in and see if I left her something, I would expect signs of curiosity from her. I can't really bring my tears to a table full of people. But animals. It feels normally good to cry with animals. Some animals, I realize now. The dog has long ago left its position as animal. I never cry in front of her.

Words (sunglasses)

In the bright sun of noon we can't hide, can we? Morningtears settle as salty crystals on cheekbones, thousands and thousands of smiles turn up as fine creeks running away from eyes and it's strange because there is no water in a smile.
At noon we are all naked fish behind sunglasses showing our teeth.

Words (gesture)

With her right arm tied to the body and her right leg fixated in a splint she realized she wouldn't catch any more mosquitoes that summer. The spider upon her head could as well play in her hair and make its nest. That would be her only chance to get the small beasts. She wouldn't call for him because of a mosquito of course. Not for a strange smell in the room either. He would smell it as well if it had something to do with gas, which it hadn't, they didn't have gas cooker. So he probably wouldn't connect any smell with gas.
She focused on the spider.
How many of them had she killed over the years?
This one didn't know about that, did it? It was a fairly big one, active in its web. When she took them with the vacuum she used to imagine them building a new nest in the dust bag. They got a whole village down there. That's why she didn't like the idea of keeping the vacuum in the kitchen. At one point they had to get out of the dust bag and do the migration up through the ribbed pipe. She supposed that was what anyone in front of a pipe would do. If you saw light at the end of something, you would start wandering towards it, no?
So she kept the vacuum in the basement and asked him to get it for her twice a week.
There was no point in thinking about what it would be like in six weeks, five weeks and two days to be precise. What a rat's nest she would find. All the things she couldn't ask him to do. It didn't matter.  She kept saying that to herself. She was lucky,  so many much younger people were killed in the traffic every day.
His steps on the stairs, those big feet approaching the bedroom.
Her girlfriends would once ask what size he was. No one could compete with his ten and a half, she knew that. They would giggle.
They were five, then four and in the end they were just the two of them, her and Heather. They stuck together while waiting for life to begin. Life began the day they got married. Today they were much more independent. Or they pretended to be. Things still changed when people got married, she could tell. She didn't quite understand why they were so ashamed of that. Or why the shame had moved in at her house as well. Not a big, dark shame, certainly not, just enough to make her twist the truth a little sometimes.
He wouldn't correct her. It was like he knew they needed those small corrections. It wasn't good for anybody to hear things about oneself that wasn't true.
Hands didn't have numbers, his were just big, they used to remind her of her fathers, then her grandfather. He had a father's hands from the beginning.
She remembered her granddad's hands very well. The veins, the dark spots, the way they seemed to forget what they held on to.
In snow his boots looked too big for him. That was last year. She did her thing in the kitchen. Now and then she saw him passing between the shed and the lawn and the man was tall and held himself straight. Only the boots seemed to flap around his legs. Those boots were too old anyway.
- So there you are, he said and kissed her forehead.
- Have you seen the spider up there? It keeps dipping its feet in my hair.
He looked at the spider. She looked at it with him.  It seemed smaller now. There were probably two of them, a male and a female, she presumed.
He patted her hand.
- Do you want me to get rid of it?
- It wouldn't help, would it? There will just be another.
He sat by her side in his own thoughts for a while.
- Look, what we can do, he said.
He reached out for one of her pins. Then he took the front of her hair and put it up with the pin, gently, so gently.
- Now you don't get it into your eyes anymore. Better, no?

Words (fable)

I need a mountain.
And if you are not a mountain, you must be a bear. But then again: what do I do when you hibernate? So if you are a bear, you must be a singer as well so that you can sing me to that deep, long sleep of yours. I think I could be cool with that. Only Singing Bears belong in a circus, don't they? I might laugh and I think one should be careful with that kind of laughter.
Maybe it really is the ever so smart and courageous rat I need, while dreaming of mountains and bears. I did tell you about the rat that came into the house the other night, didn't I? I sat by the table, writing one of my pieces and something touched my food. I thought it was the dog obviously, so I bent down to stroke it. And there it was looking curiously at me. I jumbed up, yelled and hurled, as you can imagine, and slung my flip-flop after it. Then it ran off. But do you know what? It stopped at the mat, turned around and looked at me again. It wasn't the slightest upset with any of it.

To be in position for a kiss

- You are a beautiful man, I said.
You glanced at me. We were no more than a meter from each other but in the sea where distances are something else. We were swimming. Nobody swims together.
- You say that every time, we've argued, you said.
But you are beautiful and it does make you happy when I tell you.
- Do I?
Maybe I did and maybe you think it's to soften you? Maybe. Before that there is the need for finding you beautiful again.  So I look for it. Because when we argue your eyes are just eyes, even your mouth is just a mouth and I can be looked at by you, but I can't be kissed.

Words (lie)

What a sword!
As children we were caught in lies. Like thieves in robbery, dogs in mating. Parents denounced their own sons and daughters if they lied. We all lied, mainly because we didn't dare the truth. Its consequenses. After all a lie gave you a fair chance of survival. Not all lies were revealed, in fact surprisingly few. Each unrevealed lie became a little metal chip in your mind. Not devastating, just a potential disturbance. You never knew. The liar never knows, is never perfectly safe. Sometimes we forgot why the lie seemed the only way out and how many days of judgment we saved ourselves.

Words (skin, fan, fever)

I'm covered by fever, I have a blanket under my skin, it electrifies me like your tongue sometimes do when you extend me and I become my sex, or yours. I'm too heavy to move yet weightless in the thought, deliberated from everything beyond this calm downstream of skin. The fan is all the sky I need. What a breeze.

Words (passport)

We are queued up in front of the glass cages. Equal, no one can escape this line, no one who wants to enter a country. As that is why we are here, to enter a country, we are equal for a while. We carry our plastic bags, our Vuittons, our wallits and glasses, our babies, our sorrows, impatience and passports. And then, much later, it's our turn, we differ from each other, we belong to a country, or a country belongs to us, in front of some glass cages so much easier to be Danish than South African. So much more complicated to be West Indien than British in front of others. A mother is tired. I hold her child. No idea where they come from. The little girl is not quite old enough to hold her head, so we hold it for her, no one would let it fall. Would I lie for my country? Would I die for my country? Would I let a head fall before it could hold itself, for my country? Soon it's my turn. I give the baby back.

Words (shame)

Don't look at me when I'm ashamed. Leave me, follow me, without my knowing. I usually take the goat track to the top of the hill. When you find my cliff you'll see me sitting on the edge. I have taken my shoes off. Now turn your back on me like I have mine on you and squat down, meet me with your back leaning against mine. You will see that I have chosen my cliff well. You will see the opposite site of an island, the back of my eyes. Soon I close mine. I need to rest.

Words (rhombus)

Somebody came to my house today in order to destroy.
She kept saying things about my love, she read a letter aloud he once wrote her. I said, she should leave. Then she said it was her house.
I put a piece of mahogany in the vice and turned on the sander. In front of me I had a shape. It hadn't appeared yet, it was still a rectangle. Then an oval. It can make hell of a noise, my sander. When I hit the wood in a certain angle, it gets really bad. I believe it was the right thing to do. Later she leaned against the wire fence and her breasts were pressed through three rhombuses of the wire. It looked awkward. That's the last thing I saw of her before she disappeared.

Words (dinner)

We dine.
We dine with people we like and dislike, love and loved, with those who support us and those who betray us, with those we trust, those we doubt and fear and forget about. We sit around tables where ever tables are made and eat together.
We maintain the dinner.

Words (tribunal)

Words as houses, words you can't blow away, it's a country where no cheek can be kissed. Your smile will die when it falls on a face. They want your words, and only words, the truth, nothing but the truth, there is a question, therefore an answer, in this world. You tell the truth and lie, you tell a lie and lie, you tell the story and it becomes true, walled up, word by word, still no kiss, no smile. I wake up, I know it's a nightmare yet I'm not quite certain. I call it my tribunal nightmare.

Words (liberty)

The boss looked down at her hands as she counted the money. She had her back at him. The boxes were on the sack truck, ready to be delivered. She held him back with words. The customer in front of her waited for her money. I was next in line. She talked dialect to him. Then suddenly she switched and everybody understood.
- You take too many liberties, she said to the errand boy. - That's it, too many liberties. She hadn't finished with him.
He looked down for a second, maybe two, he had a long life's experience with those eyes. The white in his beard was not as familiar, but his eyes, they were the best on the dock, no doubt. There were 24 beers in each box, there were three of them. He would get his share, one or two each. The boss knew. He got more than he was entitled to, that's how it was with this hustler. He took too many liberties. They were in line to get his place. He knew that. If he thought that just because they once went to school together, he could take these libertien, he would have to thnk again. And this story about his miserable teeth, she didn't believe it. Not a word of it. He would use anything to get his liberties. She had a business to run. He had nothing. Nothing! And he would get away with his liberties.

Words (knife)

I never look for a knife in the kitchen drawer, I look for a particular knife. The one that is good in the hand when I cut carrots, the one that spreads the Philadelphia evenly, smoothly. Especially the one that do not give in to the tomatoes' elastic skin. A knife is not knives. My first Swiss Army was far better than the others I've had through the years. None of them were for example quite as pleasurable to unfold.

Words (civilization)

Controlled. Restrained. I don't like the word 'repression'. It's so full of Freud. And dadada. But I do want to know what it is I control. I had a sudden need for slapping your face. And run. I wouldn't like your face slapped. Of course it wasn't the slapping itself, I controlled, but some kind of emotion that would have led to the slapping.
- Control yourself, you said.
You expected me to.
So I did. I controlled myself.
Because you didn't prohibit what let to the impuls, only the potential act. You civilized me. Thank you.

Things I know

"It means that if you live untill you are 90 you are middle aged now". We talked about my up-coming birthday in March.
It was not a dinner conversation but an intimate moment between man and woman. I didn't laugh appropriately, I pondered on the words, honestly surprised that he was right and that I would be lucky to live that long. I'm more likely more than middle aged. Untill that moment age has been a question I asked in front of the mirror. Can it really be that the lines from the eyes to the cheekbones are mine? They get visible here in the West Indies because of the tan. So I look at them once in a while and ask. Not to find answers but to perceive.
In a month or so, I'll turn middle aged...45.
My 10 years birthday is clear in my head, being 10. It was an achievement. Because when I turned 10 I remembered being unable to imagine getting that far. I didn't feel 10, I felt more 20 than the 20 years old. And being five was decades ago.
Later I became a mother. During the first pregnancy I could picture a child at 5, not more than that. Today she is a young woman at 20. When she was 14, I stopped counting.
These are some of the things I know and they don't mean a thing.

Hard feelings

Forgiveness, to forgive, to pardon, what does it mean?
That I don't think about it anymore? That something becomes less important? That it doesn't hurt anymore? That I give up my own perception and adopt yours?
I've met very few people who want to hurt and let down on purpose. Who deliberately wanted to make somebody suffer. It exits, I recognize that, but it's so rare. When we hurt each other, it is so much more likely, that in the moment, we no longer share the same perception. We look differently at the same situation. Which happens all the time, only this time some one is hurt. And from that very moment where I'm hurt it's up to me and only me to let go of it again. If somebody kills me it's my responsibility to raise from the dead. If I'm raped it's up to me to recapture my body. The rapist can not give it back to me. Believing he could is the same as giving up myself as an individual with a will of my own.
It just seems so ufair that no matter what you do to me it's all up to me to live with it.

What I don't want to think about

What if it was a choise between love and writing? What if all the fuss has been about not putting these words together and make a sentence out of them?

Naive

I heard the word Naive yesterday, like this: he is a little naive but he is doing very well. And I remembered the rage, the injury, the shame and the need for rehabilitation. I was young then and I wanted to feel that life was no bigger than me, that we were equal in some way. If someone called me naive it was like being told, that life was cheating on me, and I was just not smart enough to see it.
If somebody called me naive today, nobody does unfortunately but if it happened, I would blossom and be so proud. I would feel that I despite everything had kept a certain innocence towards life and with this innocence I'd walk through the days as a receptive human being. Of all the ways of being here, it beats most of them.

The books I brought

I look at the books I brought here, I look at the view, from where I sit at the terasse, I only have to move my eyes a little to switch between the books and the view. Both are points and places where my eyes can rest. I've often wondered why I chose those books and not some others. Most of them I've already read. Collected short stories by Hemingway, Disgrace by Coetzee, The unbereable lightness of being by Kundera, Myths by Johannes V. Jensen, A woman in Berlin by Anonyma, Duras, Hamsun, Blixen, Shakespeare, Roth, Foucault, Zürn, Rilke, Modesty Blaise and others. It's a long way from Denmark to the West Indies to bring books you already read. Sitting here in the windy dark I have no regrets. I realize I've made myself a view apart from the one over the bay full of masts with red lights in the top and that is what makes my home: a place to stay and a place to put my eyes and my mind without being cut off.

Russian Roulette

I stopped the car to let a frog pass.
It was not a big frog, but a small one, delicate, almost transparant, the lights of the car caught it.
"What was that?", my mother asked.
"A frog", I said. "Just a frog".
I could as well have killed it and I wouldn't have had any regrets. I probably wouldn't have noticed. Frogs are soft. How many ants do I kill a week, a year, since I had my driver's license? Never noticed. I seem to accept the fact that what I don't know of does not affect me as well as I accept that the big and strong rules over the little and weaker.
I didn't kill it. I stopped the car and let it pass. Because I saw it. I was aware of its existance, we shared a moment. I saw its long hind legs stretching and contracted again, its reaching out with the arms, the little pointed face, and then gone.
"It's very unpleasant, when you hit them", my mother remarked.
I dropped her off by the hotel and turned the car around, let it free-wheel down the hill. This time the movement came from the opposite side of the road, the frog had changed its mind, it wanted to go back where it came from. Once more I stopped the car and let it by, not sure at all which perspective should be taken, from how far or how close the frog and I should be looked at.

To turn a nose

Slowly, slowly we enter the new year, no rush, no worries, we move forward, waste an hour, expand another, it's all in front of us, no backs turned on us, when I look at you in profile? Your nose is a perfectly shaped sail going downwind.