I (sometimes) call myself Mr. Pondersome. I'm a rather wordy, weirdy person. I say hullo a lot. I write a lot more. While you're here, why not give some of it a read?

Friday 14 February 2014

SLATE HEART PLACE MAT (a.k.a. An Un-Love Letter)

            I suppose getting better from doing nothing for a while is still getting better. I wouldn't call this healing, that's such an extravagant word, but I suppose that shares the same properties with what's just been happening in my head.
            I saw you in a dream last night. It was a long and elaborate dream, the sort where I'm in an auditorium or lecture theatre tucked away in one of the rows near the top but somehow manning the spotlights at the same time. The dream was populated with faces that didn't become faces until I wanted them to be but you were definitely you from the start. As I remember you, that is: hair slightly shorter, voice an octave lower. You were as clear as the acts on the stage below, they buzzed and blurred past in their own excessive sweat. I was watching but you were whispering in my ear.
            I didn't hear anything until you put your hand in my trousers. There were two empty seats to either side of us but I wasn't so sure about the row behind. Of course, I didn't check. You asked me if I was in the neighbourhood again and I was tempted to ask you about that woman you were going out with last time we talked, the one who made slate heart place mats. I imagine she probably made more than that but it's what I took away from that last conversation we had, after you took what you took away from me.
            In the dream I didn't dwell on it which, quite frankly, expresses the fact that it was a dream. I just agreed in a rather tired, perhaps subdued voice. I didn't even turn to you. About a year earlier I would have turned to you, I would have kept you in sight at all times as you entered me and then maybe I entered you. But I haven't really thought about you for months now.
            You still come with the midnight urges, as a last ditch attempt at getting a calm sleep. I just don't get those urges as frequently anymore. It's been years since I saw you and I just don't know what you might look like anymore, I don't know if I would like it. You moved on a long time ago, you got those early bouts of lust out of the way by other means. You seemed settled with that stone mason girl and, as I'm sure you clearly remember, you told me to back off. So I did, I backed away so much that I eventually found myself going in another direction. It's still fairly uneventful but it's a direction and I have no hard feelings. Anyway those things probably didn't count as hard feelings, they were just ungratified youth really.
            So that's that. I'm still alone and lonely but I'm not longing for you. Even my subconscious is shifting focus. It's an affirming feeling but, of course, you'll never know.  
            I suppose I should have ended the dream with some grand symbolic act like taking a slate heart place mat - I saw some in a supermarket once, they might have been her work - and doing something dramatic with it. I didn't break anything, I didn't scrub anything clean. I just woke up and stopped feeling guilty.

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