The Pure Life of Dreams

May 4, 2024October 14, 2025

My Holiday was Better Than Your Holiday

It is a thin man, a DJ, who shows Leif and his escort onto a thin embroidered grey carpet that follows the length of the tent across the grey sand.

Leif and his escort walk along the carpet, her arm hooked under his, to the entrance at the near side end of the tent. His escort is demure, her dark Thai eyes turned down to avoid my look. She wears a tight silver skirt and she holds by his side until they reach the entrance, where the DJ parts the curtain to show them to their table.

Each table is long, it fills the length of each tent, and each tent is dedicated to an individual party. Leif and the Thai woman are invited through their entrance.

A gold ornament shaped like a netted leaf provides privacy from the rest of the table. I’m not clear what the other end of the table is for when only a couple are sitting at it. Maybe it is a place to put the courses that follow the usual Harira starter.

The tents are lined up in rows, our tent next to Leif’s, and we wait at our entrance for the DJ, for our escort.

Once Leif and his escort is settled, our own escort shows up at the far end of our own tent, at the beginning of the runner. She too looks Thai, but she is old and her brown thinning hair is plastered across her forehead. She smiles at me in greeting, but her teeth are also brown and she is missing two of her top teeth; only three of her teeth, on the right side of her mouth, remain.

At first I think she may be OK, and though we make not be able to communicate, that too may be OK.

But then, “This will not do!” I tell the DJ.

I think I am with Siobhan, I cannot tell, but we will complain, I think.

We enter the tent, leaving the DJ behind with the old Thai woman, and we push past our table and past the gold leaf ornament, until we we find a back room that must belong to the manager.

On the wall are rare framed pictures of gold and platinum LPs. The wall is maroon and shielded top to bottom by a thin glass wall which protects the mementoes behind it. There is a brown electric guitar, a Stratocaster I notice, behind the glass.

Guitars are propped on stands in front of the manager’s desk and, of course the desk is big and mahogany in the dim lit tent, but the manager is not there.

“This will not do!” I repeat, and I push on the glass wall. I am not sure whether I am trying to break it, but when it cracks unexpectedly, I want to go for it, we want to go for it. I kick at the glass wall, then I take one of the guitars from its stand and wield it at the glass to shatter it.

The whole glass wall falls towards us, and with it, the gold and platinum LPs, and the encased Stratocaster. They fall altogether, towards the desk and the glass smashes satisfactorily into splintered pieces, and spreads around us, across the carpet.

Photo from our trip to Morocco, April 2024.
No relation, but this dream occurred on the first day of my (early) retirement. Or was it?

May 25, 2023July 26, 2025

Getting to the Party on Time (via the Angels)

We are going to a party at Siobhan’s friend’s apartment on the south side of the Embankment and are taking the train. So we get on at the Angel and take the lift, an old wooden box, down into the Underground.

The platforms we walk through are dark and grimy, brown muddied walls and hidden tunnels, and the service is running slow.

We wait on Platform 2 of the Central line, it seems like for an age, before a train finally arrives, but when it comes to a stop it is already full, people crushed together, all the way up to the ceiling.

The bodies are pressed flat against the glass and there is no way we are getting on. We will wait for the next one.

The next train is a flat bed, cargo only, with a thick plain white rectangular box which covers the deck. It speeds through the tunnel, and we continue to wait.

And the next train will be a passenger train but it will be a long time coming. We wait in anticipation but by the time it arrives the train is ill-lit from the inside and it speeds through the tunnel and disappears the other side without stopping.

It seems we’ll never get there.

“We’ll take the Circle or the District line,” I suggest. Only you have to exit the station and cross the road to the other side of the roundabout to get to the platform.

So we leave, ascending once more with the lift and cross over to the entrance of the Circle and District.

“We can take either line,” I say as we enter down into a dark corridor, intersecting rail line tracks to our left, cavernous walls dark and dripping with sweat. We have to hurry as the District line carriages clank across the lines and past us, towards their stop.

But when we arrive at the platform the problem is the same; though at the start, there were only a few passengers waiting, the crowd begins to pile up. People in dark clothing, faces barely discernible.

“We are meeting at The Kestrel,” says Siobhan. She means Reed’s place.

“But that is nowhere near the Embankment,” I say. “That is in Hammersmith.” I pull out a piece of paper to work out the directions, but it is too small to write on.

“I need something bigger,” and I turn back to her. “Have you got something?”

But Siobhan is distracted, she doesn’t reply and I have to repeat it. And only then does she pull out a larger piece of paper, the size of my hand, that I can use.

“We should go back to the Central line,” I continue. I am getting frustrated that we wasted all this time waiting for the wrong train.

We are exiting the station, onto the road that leads away from both stations, when I suggest we can take an Uber. The greying light of dusk is in the distance.

“Why didn’t you suggest that in the first place?” she says, spitting the words at me, but it was her who got us lost in the first place.

“I’m not going,” I respond, “I’ve had it!”

And I walk away, to the right of me a chain link fence, a construction site behind the fence, both stations further behind me.

“I’m not going,” I reiterate. I walk slowly.

And she follows me, she too is going the wrong way.

But this is it. Where we will really part.

I circle even slower back round the roundabout, time and fear crawls, me slightly ahead of her, until we are back on the Angel side.

I am practically at a stop when Siobhan comes up alongside, to my left. She has thick pale blonde hair and a slightly pudgy face, thick lips like Becky Farmer, unvarnished, and she is attractive at that very moment; it is eating me up.

“I want to fly around naked,” she says and she smiles.

We cannot do it. Part. I don’t want to.

“Will you do that for me?” I ask her. And then I kiss her full on the lips.

Photo via Wallpaper Flare

March 2, 2023July 26, 2025

No Longer Fit for the Party

I am in Paris in the banlieues and I am going to a party. Or at least I think I was invited. And I am parking my car on a deserted dusty brown and ill-lit side street. There are no other cars at first but when I park I find myself trying to squeeze in between a white van and a blue car. I have to shift my car back and forth to maneuver it into the space.

Once I am satisfied I get out, but my car is bumpered up against the blue car behind me.

The definition of curb and road is poorly defined as if it is a construction site and the dust of the concrete has blurred the partition.

It will do, I think, as I walk away, even though I see that I am a good two feet from the curb.

So I walk to the party, somebody’s house, and there are students there, a younger crowd, different nationalities, and they are having a good time. In one room, a few are lying on the floor under a beige duvet, laughing as they throw pillows on top of each other.

I go to another room, I think the kitchen, and a woman in a black dress, loose-fitting, says something to me about her phone but I am not paying attention. I see her breasts pop out from her dress, they are small and pert, with dark brown nipples. Her breasts are too small for her dress, and she looks annoyed or uncomfortable that I saw that. She pulls up the strap of her dress and walks away.

I lean out the window, look out at the houses opposite. Each balcony is brightly colored with sheets and shirts hung up on clotheslines. It looks homely, but happy, with an ease, the same ease as the people at the party.

Then it dawns on me, I don’t love my life. ~~Wife.~~

I return to the room where they are throwing the pillows, but I don’t fit in, I need to leave and I pull out my phone to see the way. Only it is not my phone, it is square with a blue screen and it has a different provider so I take it back to the woman with the black dress.

Black dress thinks that I took it from her, I can tell. She has an Irish accent. As she steps away I see she has a black wart on her back, just above her left shoulder blade.

These people are having fun, they love each other, or are comfortable, and I know I don’t belong. I sour the party. So I pull out my own phone this time and pull up the map. And the map’s locations are in French with some Arabic but the phone has only 1% battery and I need to hurry.

Back outside I am looking for my car and the streets are filled with life, new stalls brightly lit, people heading somewhere, or browsing, or with dinner plans, or rendezvous, or other parties to go to. I walk past them to my car only it is not where I thought it would be. There is a different line of cars, even on the dark street where I thought I’d parked.

I return to the main street, then back again to double check, but my car is not to be found. And I go up to a stall decorated with purple and white awnings advertising medical options or a pharmacy, I cannot tell. A white mortar and pestle are painted on the awning.

The owner is closing up but I duck under the awning to get some light on my phone. As I pull up the map I realize that I cannot get home without it. I’ve never been to this part of Paris before and I won’t be able to intuit my way back.

And the phone now indicates 0%.

I don’t want to, but my only choice is to return to the party to charge it even a little.

Photo by Viktor Solomonik on Pexels

February 1, 2023July 26, 2025

Bookstore Encounter

We are browsing a bookstore in Cleveland Park. Liam and I, and Lizzie and Siobhan, wandering the crowded store. And we are on the second floor on a balcony surround that overlooks the level below, when one of the assistants comes up to Liam and I. The two of us are sitting at a barstool table and she takes the third stool and sits with us.

She has straight black greying hair fashioned into a bob and a pale chinless face, and she is young, maybe twenty-five. She wears an oversized jumper, green with white flecks, and she looks like a big bear in the jumper. And she is explaining to us how the shop gets us to buy more books.

Then suddenly, “You have the same pullover as me!”

And it is true because I have a similar jumper, dark green with little white bits. She pulls one of the white flecks on her jumper to illustrate the point.

“You want to take me out?” she asks, directing her question at me.

I am taken aback. I’ve never had an affair and I don’t know what to say or where to start. And I can’t think of where we would go. Somewhere where Siobhan wouldn’t bump into us, but something nice, like a walk. Like in Dupont Circle, for the restaurants? Or Cleveland Park itself? A place where there are more interesting shops.

I am trying to think of something to say when she walks away to help a customer.

Then Siobhan walks by. She takes the ladder down to the first floor.. And I peer over the edge to look where she went but the ladder she took drops straight down. I would follow her but it looks dangerous. The rungs are painted an orangey brown and it does not look like something for the shop visitors to use.

“You’re not supposed to go down there,” I hear someone complain.

I peer again over the edge of the balcony, and sure enough, the lower floor looks like a backroom warehouse. A tall thin man who could be the manager is down there, and is handing someone a book. Then he adjusts the ladder at an angle, and bounds up the rungs, his spider legs wheeling, taking the rungs two or three at a time, before he jumps over the gate at the top, onto our level.

I have to find the shop assistant. There is an argument upstairs, and perhaps she is there to deal with it, but when I get there, I see that she is the source of the commotion. She is surrounded by visitors to the shop. It looks like they are trying to calm her down, but she bursts through them and takes the stairs up to the next floor. And I follow her, pushing past the crowd and up the stairs, and once I arrive there I find myself outside, on the roof. The assistant is even higher, sitting on her knees on a dark grey awning that partially covers the rooftop area.

She is wailing. “What about Daniel, what about him?” she cries, as she flops back against the awning.

I think Daniel must be an ex, or a fired store assistant and I think it best to leave her alone and return downstairs to meet up with the others. Besides, I cannot think of places we would go or things we would do. Even though I really want to do something with her.

Back on the ground floor, the four of us exit the bookstore together. We walk up the road a few steps until I pause.

“Hang on,” I say to Lizzie, Liam, and Siobhan, “I will just be a minute.”

I pop back into the store to find the assistant. I am holding a flyer advertising books, but it has too much writing on it for a space to write my number, and tear off for her. And if I give her my number, maybe she won’t even call.

Instead, she can tell me her number and I will remember it, or will write it down on the back of my hand.

Photo provided by Pixnio

December 15, 2022July 26, 2025

How to Make Chi Flow in the Room

I am at the Tai Chi beginners class because I know that some of the advanced students will be there and I have forgotten the sequence to the sixth. I sit to the side as the class concludes.

Then as I leave, a man walks with me into an adjacent Victorian style room. The room is empty but sun filled. It has brilliant white walls, with white crown mouldings, tall open stash windows and pine wood flooring.

The man throws his hand back in a sweeping motion, over his head but I don’t recall that move.

I try to mimic him. “I don’t remember that anywhere.”

“Try it again,” he says, and again he throws his hands up carelessly and bends backwards, pushing forward his pelvis.

The class is fully wrapping up now and people are flooding into the room. I stand over to the side.

Some men, young and lithe in black bicycle pants and bronzed naked chests are being flirted with by the women.

I see a different woman through the crowd, her back to me. Her skin is pale on a silk ivory dress with thin shoulder straps. Her legs are thick and also the color of ivory. I prefer her coloring, though I confess I am a little jealous of the ripped bodies of the younger men and women.

Then another woman in a simple white dress and wavy blonde hair enters through the doorway. She is being toasted for her presentation. She has been somewhere exotic and has just gotten back.

“I had to do that because they wouldn’t let me go on to Guatemala,” she says to the crowd.

The projector shines her slides up on to a white screen at the front of the room. It shows an architectural drawing with lines and points mapping the intersections of buildings of what may be an archaeological dig. I want to call out to her that I’ve been to Guatemala but it was so long ago and it would sound pompous.

Instead she comes towards me. She stands to my left against the window while the others in front admire her presentation.

I am aware of her presence, the whiteness of her plain cotton dress lit by the sun, her white skin. The blonde waves of her hair frames and partially hides her face as she tilts her head forward.

She holds up her right hand directly in front of her, as if to reach out to something. I reach out too, brushing the palm of my own right hand across the back of her hand. Suddenly I am overcome with a fear that my palm might be clammy, but she turns to me at a slight angle, her face still in shadow from her hair.

In the shade, I can feel her breath on mine as our lips part slightly to meet.

Leaves and Insects series by Qi Baishi, via WikiMedia Commons.
The name of the Yang Style 108 movement is Retreat to Ride the Tiger.