I have no snap. Again
I offer this to be continued piece of prose invoking the etc in our title
L
*
The first time she saw him, he was squatting at the far side of a half-lit
room, fussing with his suitcase; and she thought of a fire-damaged sofa.
There wasn’t any furniture near him; the room was almost empty; but she
thought of him that way, a severely fire-damaged sofa.
As she entered, so he stood, attempting to straighten himself; and, as he
stood, some of the flame-blackening left him, seen now as abandoned
shadow.
Jutting springs and crumbling timber explained themselves visually; and he
began to become a bipedal figure. Now she thought of him as a large baby
with a beard.
He walked towards her with a gawky expression, an extensive hand forward,
ready to shake any hand she dare proffer. He seemed for a tick to have a
multitude of limbs, but that was perhaps the way he lolloped as he walked.
Maybe, she thought, he isn’t that tall.
If she imagined herself ascended to a great height, far above the tallest
building, then he might seem to be less abnormal. Go higher still and all
was fine though much of him might seem mountainous when seen in the
context of mountains. That was his shape.
Accept the shape and the image of a baby returned. It was hard not to see
him that way. He was after all smiling or something like it. It might be
the best that he could do.
He needs a cat, she thought. It was an opinion that she formed whenever
she met someone who seemed not to own a cat.
There was no loose fallen fur visible on the jacket as that enormity came
close. He moved quickly, not quite jerkily, but everything about him had a
form of suddenness. He was furniture; and then he was rising; and the
briefcase hanging from his left hand seemed to be no larger than a
teaspoon in comparison; but that was because he had crossed the room so
rapidly.
It would have to be a psychotic cat, or a cat reconciled to developing
psychosis, if he did not change his demeanour.
-----
Lawrence Upton
Visiting Fellow, Music Dept,
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW
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