I dream and Louise is not there either

I dream of a house, once again. I dream of the neighbouring house that is most similar. They share a wall, these houses. They are intimate with each other, these houses. Sometimes I don’t know whether I am in my house or my neighbour’s house. He looks like Ginsberg or Alan Watts. I surface swimming in a churning sea with a strange curving dividing black hulk. I swim around to where I can haul myself up just before I drown. I hang on to the edge I can finally reach with one arm, and fish flail about in the sea frothing around me for soaked black fur. My dog is here somewhere if he is not dead. As my hand finds and grasps his heavy wetness, my other hand is grasped and heaved upwards by the neighbour, kneeling on the rim of the black hulk. The camera pulls back and I see this tableau of dripping creatures, hand-joined. In my house it turns into his house and he has company and I find them ill-mannered when it turns back to my house again and they have sampled jars of baby food – opened them and left them all over the kitchen – on bench tops and tabletops – the opened jars collect, with one spoonful removed. I find these depredations, these leavings of spoilt wilful child-adults disturbing. These are my jars of baby food but I have never seen them before. Old-fashioned glass jars with silver metal lids, the kind that pop up in a way that is meant to satisfy one and generally does. More delightful is the trifled whimsical concoction in each jar. Three elements that shine and gleam and wobble and sing of balance. Baby doll skin colours and fake cherries, the colours of Japanese artificial food plates arranged in restaurant windows instead of menus. Food that is made of the colours of food that is not food but could be your food if it was real and now is. How dare they waste such achievements. In my house. I disappear them and reach for a teaspoon.

xi

Dear Bloss,

I dreamt about you last night. Looking for you in a row of houses. Under a washing basket, in loamy soil were hidden pups I dug up with anxious fingers - mahogany, blue and some tawnies. And somebody asked another, 'Why don't you keep the wood in here?'

The man from France said he knew a dog raised on Sauvignon.

It bothered both of us.

So much love,
Me
X

x

Dear Me,

There is no d in pigeon.

There never was.

X

ix

Dear Sack Posset,

Below the library red date stamp saying 13 JUN 1985, someone has written in neat cursive above the author bio of Richard Brautigan - ‘Nail cutting scissors.’ They have written this in lead pencil with a full stop and a lush curl on the tail of the g. This is the only addition they, or anyone, have made to In Watermelon Sugar.

I feel something about this, about the exactitude of the three words, about their irrelevance and oddness, about the object described, about what it meant – was it a shopping list for one of one – I don’t know what it is I feel; I start to crest a vague crossness but then I think, the narrator, unnamed, may appreciate the precision in this one, and I remain uncrested, short of miffed.

Sea greetings,
Paeony
X

viii

Dear Louise-across-the-world,

It has been a whale day again. The sea has been holding itself hard blue and reckless, tight against the sky. A cold bear blue and polar caps. I woke from dreams of searching stark rooms and lay looking out and over. As gulls were blown about and pelicans imponderably did their thing. Drifting and wondering if they were hypnopompic humps once more but lo, those extraordinary tails exist in crisp seconds that do my head in. That I am here in a life, in a world where one wakes to whales out one's window. Propped on an elbow I play the game - where next? Whitecap or whale? And Huxley pushes his head through the arm triangle - always worthier.

Even in the kitchen, along that front - more whales and tails until disconcertingly I want them to be done, to go - the risk seems too great to be showing off such capacities for joy and life in plain sight.

Lemur nights and moss dreams dearheart.

Love,
Paeony
X

Reach

He reaches through fear to me. And while I wish I could banish the fear forever, no matter how I look under I never find the terror mice - I would kill them for him, let him watch and be sure - for me, he reaches through that fear every time and all I can do is marvel and reach back,

P.S.

Sack Posset!

Whales and possets all in one day. Oh you did give me a thrill stopping by. I have this bizarre (in that never happened with a writer before way) crush on you. Yes, yes, I get in big trouble not separating writers from their writing and it is some terrible literary faux pas but they can stuff it up their jumpers.

It is a lovely bee to see you here.

Much love,
P