That grouchy, dislocated feeling must be hunger, I decide. I leave the house in search of food. Crossing over the road, I stare at the cardboard cut-out of the woman in the shop window, pink and white top, a flower in her hand. Then she looks up at me. I’m definitely a bit spaced out.
I walk along the side street. Everything has edges, exists in two and a half dimensions. The sky is overcast, but the world is slightly too bright. My vision looks like stop-motion photography. A woman walks past me, pink top and white skirt. She’s out of place, like an exotic flower in a skip.
At the pedestrian crossing, I wait for green. Normally I might manage a mad inter-car sprint, but today I don’t trust myself. Over the street, another woman walks past dressed in pink from head to toe. Something odd is happening today, this can’t just be perceptual vigilance.
I skulk across the road, grey and blue. The supermarket is a sensory assault of fluorescent light, merchandising and seething crowds. I feel like I’m wandering blindfolded into No Man’s Land, hands tied behind my back. The self-service till is an agony of grating beeps and sequential coins.
I don’t know why this is my way of being today. The world is a film set, even though I can’t quite see the director, producer and cameras. We’re all playing our parts, waiting for someone to shout “Cut” so the pretence can be dropped, the script abandoned and real life resumed.
Cardboard Cut-Out
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Stuff I noticed reading this through a few times:
You noticed that the three women were wearing pink. You (or the road) are grey and blue and supermarket is all neon white light. Perhaps a new pair of sunnies are needed.
The phrase ‘like an exotic flower in a skip’ reminds me a bit of the: ‘What’s a nice girl like you …’
Which dimension is missing half of itself?
Everyday life like a film set; I remember in adolescence thinking that my life (perhaps everyone’s) had a ‘soundtrack’, that would play whilst I went through my ordinary life each day. Can’t recall when I stopped subconsciously thinking that that was the case, but seeing your last paragraph reminded me of it.
Ta
Heh, yeah, could be the shades, definitely. I left my “good” pair (i.e. the £10 ones rather than the £5 ones) at a friend’s house and the backup pair definitely do strange things to the light.
Also over-tiredness and the excessive use of coffee to get me through to the weekend (when I then slept 12 hours) was probably making me a bit wired. So wired that I thought my own top was grey and blue, whereas on reflection it’s actually grey and black.
The dimension that was half-missing was depth. Everything seemed a bit (but not entirely) two-dimensional, like the cardboard cut-out woman (who turned out not to be).
Fluorescent light’s never good though… however much sleep you’ve had.
hey HG, been reading/admiring your website here. very interesting stuff, like this esp. i guess we all have days like this. theres a line in one of my poems that goes “we’re all dislocated here on this globe, eventually trying to find a niche to call home”
x
Thanks Dorian. It’s been a bit quiet round these parts recently for various reasons, one of which is that these dislocated days have been a recurring experience. I’m one of those ‘seasonally affected’ people and this month of wind, rain and thunder is doing me no favours. But there’s plenty of Summer left yet – fingers crossed…