The Pure Life of Dreams

February 16, 2022October 22, 2022

Mad But Trying to Make Up in Copenhagen

Siobhan is mad at me and has gone off in a huff.

I leave to go into a student pub. It is early evening, in Copenhagen, young people crowding the bar.

At the back are the toilets, three stalls and when one comes free I check it out. Surprisingly it has clean white walls, and enough toilet roll, though the paper is grey. Then another comes free so I check to see if it is better. More rolls, white paper this time, also clean. And the last comes free so I check it too… I’ve been in student bars before. I need to be clean before facing the music and toilet dreams never end well.

Back at the first stall, I lift my travel pack and suit jacket onto a hook. The space is huge. Paper lines the bowl, thoughtfully. There is room to set everything down but when I start to sit, the liner slides off. A bright red foot tray is under the paper, follows the rim of the seat, in case you want to squat, feet balanced on the bowl. It is clean too, so I forget about the liner, remove the foot tray and sit directly on cold ceramic.

Outside it is bright enough for sunglasses, a beach town with a whitewashed glare; I haven’t been to Copenhagen, but I swear I am there. 1920s cars with gold headlamps on stalks gently meander and squawk, but the taxis are the black London cabs, they honk and are in a hurry. When I cross the road the old fashioned cars are the ones to stop, even when I am not at a cross road.

I climb a road curving up and to the left, past T-shirt stores, buckets of ice cream and Threshers, souvenirs stands selling rubber rings and air filled dolphin floats.

Across the road, Siobhan is eating at a restaurant, a covered terrace, balcony enclosed by a white picket fence. She is by the pavement’s edge and sees me, so I cut across the road and step through the gate, squeeze towards her table. A waitress carves the route, through tables crammed with people shoulder to shoulder.

Once I am by her side I ask Siobhan, What are you eating? but she is not talking to me. I tell the waitress, I will have French fries, Siobhan, the house salad.

Just as I am settling down, two young women also take their seats. We are packed tight, elbows touching, two round white tables pressed together, jostling for space, neither big enough for lunch.

The closest woman is blonde, short spiky hair, heavy black mascara traces her eyes.

Our plates arrive. She pulls out a deck of cards and deals a hand to her friend. She fans her cards, holds them up and away from my gaze.

“Stop shaking your carbs,” she says, only half amusingly, and I am at a loss for words.

“I can itch them instead,” I reply. But my joke falls flat.

She and her friend turn their noses up at at me, and Siobhan looks away.

Postcard by Hagens World via Flickr

January 27, 2022July 29, 2022

Escaping from a Tsunami

(I)

We were on vacation, in a cafeteria, waiting to get on board a plane to one of the islands. It was pouring down outside. A group sat at a long plastic table, but there wasn’t room for us, so Siobhan dragged a second table and aligned it next to theirs. Still it was too small to fit all of us, so I added another table, aligning it next to Siobhan’s.

A woman was sitting at the long table. She was thin, a blue dress, with thin wispy blonde hair, neatly crossed her legs.

December 23, 2021July 26, 2025

Venturing Out From a Hotel in Afghanistan

Fabulous vignettes in Afghanistan. I am in a bland western hotel in the desert, white tiles, travelers milling about but I am bored, so I leave to walk around outside.

The landscape opens up with fantastic open spaces, green brush, Native American like cave dwellings below, inset in rock formations. The walls are carved with Arabic tooling, like the decorations seen on the window treatments of an ornate vizier’s home; an arch outlined with five half circles. Black and white dots fill the space between the outlines; each arch small with respect to the caves, but repeated horizontally, in sets of three, along light brown walls at floor level.

Miniature entrances to another world.

A bus comes by and I get on it. And it leads me further along the desert road, and down a slope before arriving suddenly into a town where the locals are.

The town bustles with tented market stalls, noise and dust, black robed people and kids running around. It scares me slightly that I am far from the hotel, a lone westerner in a crowd, in a town clearly unvisited by the hotel.

But it is the real deal.

Kids, shirtless, are laughing at me. I realize how exposed I am by myself, but the commotion and the press of people are exhilarating. And now I am out of the bus, climbing high and looking down on the street scenes. And below, I see the same Middle Eastern arches in the walls of the market.

Later I am in a tunnel. I think it is for cars, but I cannot be sure. It is dark, and kids further along the pathway, the same side of the tunnel, are pointing at me. It feels a little threatening, with only a single green metal guardrail separating me from the cars, the space very narrow between guardrail and wall. My big western body can barely fit through the space.

The kids yell over to a group coming up behind me, signal my presence. I push my hands against the wall, back flat against the rail, trying to stretch the path wider. At first the rail will not yield, and though the group is ignoring the kids I want to move on. Then on my next attempt, the green metal bends, the gap for the path widens, and the iron buckles and stretches into thin molten strands as it is pushed away from the wall.

I am back in the open, squatting down by the side of a street, at floor level, watching people walking, legs coming down the steps. I briefly glimpse another lone westerner in the crowd, he must have taken the same bus. It is comforting that I am not the only one to have ventured from the hotel. And another, a woman this time, a brief glimpse of long curly yellow hair, she reminds me of Carol B, thick ankles, seen from my low vantage point. She is also walking down the narrow street market steps, but she disappears as soon as I see her.

Then I am really high up and out in the open sun, on the platform of a temple, I could be on the top of a Hindu dais. A narrow ledge leads me across the front. I look down below, see the same market streets, and more of the cave dwelling, Arabic tooled, curlicues. Kids to my right, sit on a separate platform, further along the ledge. They stand at the top of a series of steps that include a red metal guardrail leading safely down to the market street. It is very narrow between my platform and the kids’.

Separating us is the same very narrow guardrail that was in the tunnel. I won’t make it through but this time I do not think it will stretch with my weight. And so I decide against trying.

Main photo by Zeledi via Wikimedia Commons
Arch photo by Maite Elorza via Flickr (Picture fewer circles, gold trim and in miniature)

October 30, 2021June 9, 2025

Sailing Away in a Golden Rowing Boat in Libya

“I just got fed up,” I explained to two women I had bumped into in the street. I had landed in Libya . “I am going to travel around Africa,” I continued. “I’ve done it before…” I pictured my route, westbound from Libya then down towards the equator. “Upped and left.”

My company had given me a new phone just before I departed, bright orange cover, large and rectangular, not like the iPhone I was used to, or like the flip phones the business women were carrying.

Perhaps I could go with them, even join their company?

October 8, 2021October 22, 2022

A Butterfly and a Baby in Kuala Lumpur

We arrive into Kuala Lumpur by night train. Ahead of us a different train, blue with a Wild West chimney stack, is blocking our arrival, unloading first. Then once emptied of passengers, our own train finally pulls forward, gently hits the dusty posts of the railway bumper.

We step down onto the tracks. A couple, with baby, step down behind us. The young woman unpacks a well-worn suitcase, also from a bygone era, misty camera view of a small case neatly packed on muslin sheets.