Movement Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

February 16, 2023March 30, 2023

Stuck in the Mud

Siobhan wants to take Liam shopping for clothes and new glasses. He is excited to go, but first he suggests a bike ride with me.

So we head downtown on our bikes, just me and him, and we glide through the Rock Creek underpass, taking the first corner one way through a concrete tunnel, then double backing the other way.

I take the first bend a little too fast, but slow up just in time to avoid a concrete step on the right side of the tunnel. Liam is behind me. He too, takes the bend well, but then we come out of the tunnel onto a wide, open field and hit a muddy patch.

It’s not too bad; thick dark mud, semi dry like Van Gogh splashes of paint. We can ride our bikes over them.

But the next area is wetter.

“Oh no!” Liam cries out.

It is just swampy grass and water pools and it is harder to pull the bikes through.

I navigate a long wet grass puddle to the right side of the field, but Liam takes a different path bearing leftwards and further into the center. As I come out to the edge of the field, Liam loses his footing and his bike goes under.

At first it is ok. I watch him as he looks for a place to avoid the watery grasses.

…I am high up now, and see him trying to get out of the field, same as I did.

He starts to climb one of the slopes, a slick grey mud incline that is shiny like brown plastic garbage bags.

“Why are you doing that one? It is too steep!” I cry out to him, and he slides down back into the mud.

He comes closer to where I am, though I am really high up and away from him now. And he tries a gentler slope but again he slides down, ducks under the water. And this time he swims. I can see his tall body under the brown water, a breaststroke shape with purpose, swimming, until he arrives at the water’s edge to try again.

The new slope starts at less of an angle. It rises to my left a hundred yards away from me, and is half as high as the ledge on which I stand. And when he gets to the top of the slope, he comes to a ladder which is positioned against a house that overlooks the muddy field. The house is painted red, has large high ceiling windows, and is another two hundred feet above the top of the slope.

Liam starts to climb the ladder, on and up until he is higher than I by some distance.

I can’t see how he will get off. The ladder is too straight.

And once at the top his weight pulls the ladder away from the house. Liam and the ladder fall towards me, down to the muddy edge of the field. I hear the crash onto a white concrete ledge, hundreds of feet below.

I look down to see him face up, his body and limbs at odd broken angles, like he cannot have survived the fall, so sudden was the drop.

And I am in terror; I fear the worst. My dream cannot end like this.

Then he turns onto all fours, and gets up from the ladder beneath him.

Photo by Eirian Evans via Geograph

October 11, 2022March 30, 2023

Tottenham Court Road Ain’t What it Used to Be

We had been on a plane to London with two flight attendants, blonde ladies with beige Hubert coats and a confident swagger. And when we got out of the terminal it was already night and there was a light drizzle. It must have been two or three in the morning.

A black cab pulled up and one of attendants turned back to us and said “I feel we know you already, seeing as we’ve spent the last four hours together. More, if you count the hours before the plane.”

Then they got into the cab and were whisked away.

August 4, 2021March 30, 2023

Flats, Feet and a Joy Ride

My white van is carpeted inside with dark blue pile to stop the sounds from the keyboard escaping. It is parked on a street in Camden and I am in the back, squat down and playing, my face close to the keys. Simple sounds, chords in C, then one octave arpeggios, trying not to make the sounds escape the van, or to move… Making sure no one knows I’m there.

People are walking outside going through their daily routines. Then two girls in their twenties open the back of the van. They close the door behind them and lie down next to me.