Boxing day 2017
A quote to reflect the emotion, a story of cleansing
It is Boxing Day here in the UK. I am not sure if they call it that anywhere else in the world.
I found myself sorting through my boxes stashed in the bottom of my wardrobe. Wardrobes are places of magic.
I came across two pieces of writings that I am going to share. The first I thought came from Karl Ove Knausgrad. I feel in tune with his writing even though I haven’t read a lot of it. I have checked the books I have and it doesn’t correspond with them.
Anyway the quote,
“However, there are other kinds of memories. Those which are not fixed and cannot be evoked by will, but which at odd moments let go, as it were, and rise into my consciousness of their own accord and float around there for a while like transparent jellyfish, roused by a certain smell, a certain taste, a certain sound…..” page 11
That quote helps me understands the anticipation I experience leading up to Christmas and then the anti-climax I feel on the day itself.
The other piece I wrote prior to attending a writing Masterclass with the author Kate Mosse, over two years ago.
He was awakened, as he was most mornings with her singing. The two slept separately, he snored and she didn’t, she liked darkness, he liked to sleep knowing that the stars were looking down on him. He had taken the couch some years ago; it was a big couch so it gave him a good night’s sleep.
Just as the birds had their rituals so had they. She would come into the room in which he was sleeping and be of a certain volume either by voice or feet that would awake him.
If it were a weekday he would gather up his bed and move into the bedroom until his mobile told him it was time for his second resurrection.
Today was Sunday so need for a resurrection it was taken care off two thousand years ago.
He had gone asleep leaving an oven pan to collect the thawed ice from the freezer. How often did he defrost the freezer? In his mind, it was a significant event. He often spoke to his clients of ‘frozen emotions’ that lurked in the forgotten part of the freezer. Now he wondered whether he was experiencing his own emotions defrosting.
He rose like a leaf caught by the wind with his duvet in his hands. Some rituals remain whatever the day so he pulled as he did every day a pair of trousers from his wardrobe and went to expect his oven dish. It was, as he hoped not so much water as he had emptied the pan before he slept.
Inside was as new with only some water on the bottom surface. He cleaned the drawers of stray sweet corn and green peas and as had made something anew he found himself saying aloud, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
He often thought their home was like a stage, he acted out his life and she acted out her’s. He wondered whether the audience would see one play or two one-act plays.
He was aware that she was behind him; she enjoyed cooking and often resembled a TV chef as she talked out to herself each action, “A little bit of salt and a pinch of coriander.”
Coriander came to mind but he did not pay attention to the detail.
The freezer held stored memories they had it since moving in 18 years ago was this act of cleansing the freezer also an act of cleansing him.
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