The Pure Life of Dreams

December 3, 2025December 4, 2025

Squeezed In and Unable to Move

At the back of the house on Coring Road, Siobhan found a long green and black snake with a thick body. It looked dangerous at first until I told her to stab it with her knife so that it could not bite us.

The first cut she made was three inches of its tail.

February 16, 2024March 20, 2024

The Shops by Hammersmith and Main

Mao Senior and I had an argument. It was nothing new. I left the house although it was already dark and took the Hammersmith Road back to the main street.

And I wasn’t familiar with the area, the houses bound tight together, like where the Jovanović‘s lived. At the end of the road, I turned right onto Main where the shops too, were packed side by side.

They were closing up, I noticed, when I got there. I went into the first one despite its dim light only to find out that it was a laundromat.

So I went to the next one. I peered in through the glass door, opening it just a little to get a clearer view, and I saw that it was the dryer shop, where I assumed you would go after you’d washed your clothes at the laundromat.

The third shop looked promising but just as I arrived, someone inside sharply pulled down the grey metal barrier until it was halfway.

My baby was getting antsy by now though I jogged her up and down against my shoulder. I wouldn’t be able to find cigarettes anywhere. So I turned back and just then, there appeared a Chinese woman pushing a pram. She too was trying to find an open newsagent.

“How about the other side?” I said to her and we walked together, back to the Hammersmith Road to go left on Main instead of right.

The pram was pink and plastic but it looked unwieldy against her small frame. Her black hair was cut in a bob, she had a round, somewhat plain face and I thought she would chide me for wanting cigarettes.

We crossed the Hammersmith Road and the first building, on the other side, was just a row of houses. But the entrance to the following building, hidden somewhat by being on a corner, had a shop light dimly projecting from the door. It was located on the diagonal of the next intersection.

I pushed open the glass door and inside were the familiar rows of newsagent goods.

And I was about to step in when I thought to call my dad, to see if he wanted anything, when the Chinese woman suggested I take her number. Or was it the other way around?

Anyway I was juggling the baby and my phone, while holding the door open, my back to the shop. I tried to enter dad’s number, it would be a reconciliation thing; and the same time I was looking at the woman and wondering whether I needed another child in my life when she said:

“I’ll call your mobile. That way I’ll have your number.”

Then she started to dial.

Photo by Alt-x cropped, via Flickr.

June 29, 2023March 20, 2024

Campsite Reconciliation with the Cold Cousin

Mao Sr. aka Dad and I were camping by the river, a grassy area out in the open. Our tents were already pitched, plain white Boy Scout V shaped tents, one for us and another for a friend of his.

Geri, a cousin, was there too; she showed up unexpectedly, and I thought to bring up some of the past grievances that kept our two families apart. She came by bike and she stood propped against it using the angle of the bike to lean back. And she was wearing a white chemise with plain dark trousers, and talking random stuff.

I too was sitting on my bike, only I was backwards on the seat.

Then I asked over to Dad.

“Might as well,” he replied.

And I told her. “When you came over to Coring Road all those years ago, one of you, I can’t remember who, said, ‘Is there a TV in this joint?’ as you walked in.”

I paused and thought about telling her about the cucumber sandwiches, how lousy the cousins thought them, and also the card game. Instead, I looked past Geri towards Dad again, but he was unpacking large bales of tobacco by the river. I wanted to tell her that Dad was playing cards with her, she was all of twelve or thirteen, and she was F’ing and blinding as she kept losing with each hand.

Then I thought not.

Geri needed to get some cigarettes from in town and we started walking, or rather she walked while pushing me on my bike, with me still backwards on the seat, and I thought we would veer off and I would fall but she held the back wheel and the handlebars and kept pushing firmly.

I was conscious of her white shirt close up, her breasts ample beneath. I wanted her to stop but then suddenly Geri stood back and pulled out a cigarette, ready to light it.

Dad was still behind her, him and his friend shaking the leaves from their clear plastic wrap. The leaves fell, wrinkled and brown, large and loose, from the wrapping into the water. And I thought I would be cool, because I too smoked the occasional cigarette, that I’d do the same.

I looked in my bicycle pouch and there was only one cigarette left, it was one of the long ones, the 100’s, and it was slightly bent and cracked. I took it out and held it to my lips then I leant towards Geri to light hers first, but hers was even more cracked than mine, and the paper barely held in the tobacco, I could see the brown of it poking through the slits.

And I could not see how to light it without the thing falling apart.

Cucumber image by Kai Reschke from Pixabay
Bikes by Barry MacHale via Flickr

March 22, 2023March 20, 2024

Dad is Alive and Well and Living in Costa Rica

It is getting late and my camera is running out of battery. I am in the valley of dark orange clay mountainsides in Costa Rica. And on the road, as dusk hits, I come across a stall by the roadside. It sells various bric-a-brac, luggage, assorted stuff piled up on old white bookshelves. And on the top shelf, I see a row of secondhand cameras.

“Do you sell batteries?” I ask the shopkeeper.

He says he does, and I pull out my old SLR and show him, pulling out the battery from its encasement. It is one of the old-fashioned brick ION batteries. Sure enough, he pulls out a battery from under his counter that matches.

“That’s great! I should get a battery for the other one too.”

Only I cannot remember the type of battery my other camera takes. I will have to get back to the hostel to pick it up. But then he pulls out a mini DV battery.

“Is it this one?”, he asks, but I cannot be sure.

“No, I’ll have to get back and get it. Then I can pay for both.”

“You sure?” He says again.

And so he tells me how to get back to the hostel and it seems quite close by. I need to stay on the base of the valley, he says, but once I set off, somehow I take a turn that rises up into the hills.

I am on a winding deserted road that overlooks the valley and now I am crying, like I should have bought the battery there and then.

The road is a dusty brown path that curves up to a large house with a tall brick wall that fences it off. I see a black sports car through the gate and it belongs to the shopkeeper’s rival so I don’t want to go there.

And next to the house is a post office which is still open.

It has an old man who can perhaps help me. In broken Spanish, I ask him for the phone number of the shopkeeper with the camera and luggage stall, and he writes the number on a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad.

“You can go in there to make a call,” and he points to a narrow side room with big windows that front the roadside.

My dad is sitting there shuffling through some papers, like an accountant.

He’s sitting in profile, wearing his big dark green cardigan. He has his familiar look, balding, and his thin grey hair is combed back as usual, but he does not notice me so I quickly dial the number on an old rotary phone.

“Yes, I am up in the hills next to the red house,” I whisper.

“I’ll come and get you,” the shopkeeper replies quickly, to my relief.

Photo by zmachacek via Deposit Photos

March 16, 2022March 20, 2024

A Trip to the Game Provides a Detour

The four of us are off to see England play at Wembley. And this time I have also brought Mama with me. I park the car in the daily parking lot and we walk some distance to the looming grey stadium before ascending to find our seats.

We climb high up into the rafters but the view is constrained by thick mud brown walls and brick sized holes through which you must look. Otherwise, to see the game, you can leave your seat and go to the balcony to peer over.

“Neither view is good, it never is.” I explain. “You are there for the atmosphere more than anything else.”

We walk around but there is not much to see regardless of which brick hole you look through. It is difficult to view more than a small rectangular patch of green at a time. And the players don’t come into the field of vision. It was the same view the last time I came, and I wonder if I could have paid for better seats.

When the game is over we get into the elevator to return to the car, however somehow we are now separated. It is only Mama, Lizzie and I left. Siobhan and Liam are gone.

I press the button to go to the ground floor. Supporters are getting off at different floors, but we have pressed a different button, a button wider than the others; and instead of depositing us at the bottom, the elevator slides onto a rail road track, and rolls out into the open.

I recognize that we are in Boston, and still stuck in the elavator car, which is clearly taking us to its home for its regular cleaning and service. Above us, either side of the tracks, are silver grey skyscrapers and in front, the leafy green elm trees of Boston Common. When the elevator arrives at its destination, it is at a place called Waystar. I need to get back to Siobhan and Liam. Siobhan will worry about us.

The manager, a portly man with ruddy cheeks, comes out of his office to greet us. “Sorry about that. You didn’t press the wrong button did you?” The office is a wooden shed inset by the front gates to the service station.

“No we didn’t press the gold one, just the white, ground floor button,” I replied.

“Well here is a card for a free dry cleaning service,” he says, as he pulls out a large blue tag from his thick woolen jacket and hands it over.

“No, we are only in Boston for a visit, we don’t need that. We just need to get back home.”

“Ok,” he says, and he hands me a brown skinned wallet. I open it. ”Don’t worry, there is enough in there.” I see a fair number of bills in the pocket fold.

“Thanks,” I reply.

We leave through the gates and head for the metro.

“Lizzie, take care of Mama,” I tell her, as Mama wanders off like a bird, taking little bird steps, one foot in front of the other, like a metronome, without pause. Lizzie steers her down the dark grey steps of the metro, taking care that she doesn’t fall. She nudges her gently to adjust her direction on each turn down to the platform.

Finally I can call Siobhan to say we are on our way.

Picture by Alexius Horatius, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons