Ego: November 2003 Archives

We used to scramble down to the water’s edge in swimming trunks and cheap t-shirts, grab handfuls of wet sand, and then try to blind each other. When the novelty faded, we’d drop onto our backsides at the point where the swash and backwash of the breaking waves heaved to and fro over the gentle slope of powder-fine sand, to dig our feet into its wetness, and feel the weird sucking sensation of the tiny grains being drawn out from under the soles of our feet by the rushing current.

We’d lie back, scooping handfuls of gloop onto our stomachs and limbs, smearing it all over until we were hideous creatures unrecognisable, or innocents made suddenly, shockingly aware of our terrible, advanced states of untreated leprosy; cue much vile retching and groaning, rolling over onto stomachs, rotating ourselves back toward the waves, and then dragging our disintegrating selves into the water – a panacea, don’t you know – to recover.

Being one of the shallowest seas on the planet, equatorial no less, the waters of the South China Sea are warm, and where the coastal drop-off of the east peninsula labours for hundreds of metres, to plunge merely a foot, they are as good as hot. Here, bellies down, ankles and heads protruding, we’d creep around exploratorily on the new found strength in our arms, determined, like Acanthostega, to conquer first the shallows, and then the beach beyond. We always succeeded. And so we live.

I've been staring at the outside. It's dark, and though she hasn't yet risen above the horizon, what light there is allows me to see the rain; at least, the staccato-like spattering of its numerous, pin-point splashes over the glassy surface of the many puddles that orientate themselves about the unevenness of the road. The breeze that blows through my open window is warm, but am I too, even more so; my hair stands on edge. Comfy, yeah, but I am on the wrong side of the glass.

My predilection for being wet, rather, drenched to the bone, is well documented. I haven't been able to run for weeks, and my energies aren't venting, but they sure as hell have to now; whoah, positively sexual. I guess that today is as good a day as any. I've stretched the offender as best I can, and have only to take it slow, to know what it is my body is telling me, and to watch for that one pain. And I will get wet, flick my hair around like a l'Oreal idiot, and probably grin orgasmically, like a maniac, all the while.

I wish a fond goodbye to my sister today. Her stay in London is, for the time being, over, but unlike the last time, it won’t be an age before I see her again; between this visit and the last, we hadn’t seen one another in over a year, and for someone to whom I feel so close, this wasn’t an ideal state of affairs.

I’ve never been in any doubt over how much affection I have for her, but there have been times when I have wondered whether the two of us really know each other anymore; she has been living in California for nearly a decade, and for much of that time most of our interaction has been by telephone, and not really all that often. The result was that when we did speak, our respective situations had always shifted; one didn’t know exactly what to be asking the other, not that our conversations were ever based on formula, but it felt less than natural than I, perhaps either of us, would have liked.

Us and our trivial insecurities. Having her here has been refreshing; we’ve re-established a measure of something long since diminished between us. I like knowing that I can interrupt her while she works, to find out this, to offer that, to make baser, biological noises across the analogue void, or to be bugged, in return, when I really can’t afford the time to talk, covered, as I can be, in biohazardous waste.

There is no reason to justify our need to communicate; as brother and sister, we owe each other nothing. It’s reassuring to know that little has really changed. Like, d‘uh.

With a smile, she gamely offers to help remove items from the boot of the car; heaving a large bag from within, I smile in turn as I look back to see her trying to do the same. Little imp, barely waist-high by my side; the bag is far too big for her, but with that insurmountable determination that so many kids possess, she goes at it anyway. I'm making my second trip by the time she has it in the door, but no sooner has she set it down when she's off to the car again, yammering on about something that I can't quite make out.

I used to resent this one; we have one parent in common, and there was a time when I looked upon her as the embodiment of the relationship that tore my family in two. At that age, it was all I could do not to think of her in any other way, yet the time soon came, though perhaps not as quickly as it might have, when I was won over by her brutal innocence, my stubborn rationality, the fact that she and I shared something that ran deeper than my resentment of the afflication that was our forced association. It can be a difficult thing to ignore the real beauty within one's circumstances, particularly where blinding hate isn't on the menu; there isn't any of that here, it doesn't suit me.

Her accent makes me smile; I used to talk like this all the time; we even have a name for it. Nowadays, I carry the accent of the Home Counties, but slipping back into my demented pastiche of a mother tongue comes easily; I didn't know anything else until the Queen's English was laid gently upon me, discretely hacking off idioms here and there, and smoothing over my many -isms until I was as regular as Oscar. What is it they say, a monkey never forgets how to scratch his balls?

As I walk toward the car, she is handed a steel box of fishing tackle, small but heavy, requiring two hands to manage. Taking a few steps, she stumbles heavily; uncertain of herself in the urgency of the instant, she lets go so that she might catch her balance, and the box falls. As it hits the ground, the catches fail, the lid flies open, and an assortment of colourful spinners and glinting shot spills onto the metalled surface of the road. She wears a look of dismay as some of them race down the hillside, well beyond any means of recovery, and turns imploringly toward the man in charge.

She has barely turned to register him when he is upon her, two decisive strides, a raised hand; he slaps her so hard across the face with the back of his hand that she is thrown to the ground with a weak, involuntary cry of shock. A wave of nausea passes through me at the dull thud of his knuckles against the side of her pretty head, the sound of her body hitting the road; I feel it in the pit of my stomach; it makes my eyes burn; I quiver on the spot, paralysed somewhere between a rush of fear and some brand of rage and disgust.

As he walks away, she looks up from the road, her lower lip trembling, brown eyes full of hurt but too confused to cry, then towards me. My vision wavers as my own eyes threaten to fill, and I can't move; in her young face I see the slow death of a happy spirit, a crushed vitality, and recognise that once, not so long ago, this was me.

There are days when a bit of blue sky and radiant, morning sun are all it takes for me to feel like nothing in the Universe is unachievable. Naive as the sentiment may be, in the face of my own pragmatic realism, it feels wonderful to be on so irrational a high when really, between this morning and the last, little has changed in the world that I know; so this is what it is to ride the crest of a wave.

Here's to the death of remarkably violent states of ill humour.

The day has been rather pleasant, pretty much amounting to an extension, of sorts, to the action-packed weekend that has just passed. Though I spent much of it working on a presentation that I am to give at some stage or another, I was able to do so at my leisure, taking occasional - if sometimes extended - breaks to chat to loved ones, to eat, or carefully map the finer details of the thin coat of paint that covers the plasterboard wall against which my desk rests.

That the week starts in earnest come the morning is no hardship; it's not often that I get the chance to spend time with my sister, living, as she does, 5441 miles from our family home. It's nice to be reminded, even if infrequently, of how it feels to be a complete family, whether all of the traditional posts are filled or not; ours aren't, we were broken fifteen years ago, but that doesn't matter now; the pieces at the core of it all were never really pulled apart, bound, as they were, by that one, best-defined gravity.

There were fireworks, real ones, the dazzling radiance of an artificial sun and its duotone landscape, snow angels where there were none, and the strengthening of those ties that I like best to wear; you make for the finest company, Matt; that's not common. Leggy Swedish women with strong hands, amusing conversations with humourously depraved homelanders, and tonight's long and crazy dinner, with far too much port, sherry and claret for a non-drinker.

And freezing fogs; we stop dead as we step into the cold of the night, sending the torpid air swirling visibly outward, the smell of coffee and log fire in tow. Everything is cast into soft relief; built as it is, Cambridge goes over the top in lending herself to my perception of otherworldliness.

There are times when I wish that I could capture moments.