(let's unravel the edge of) TIME

a) oeuf a la coque from coquelicot
b) a tarte aux fraises avec sa creme vanille from gerard muller
c) the last french fries from the carnival in the tuilleries

1. a man stands at the top of a ladder, spinning the hands of the clock. "il est cinq heures douze, i got tha blues!" he laughs at himself and to his friend down below.

2. she opened her eyes and rubbed my inner forearm with her fingers, fervently. it was the middle of the night, the new middle of our night i mean - around four o'clock in the morning. she said, rushed and serious, "where are we? harriet! where are we?" i replied, confused but alert, "alice, alice we are here, in the bed, laying in the bed in cannes."

she mumbled her apologies, she mumbled something about how her dreams take her in the bed as a boat through the inky-black sky; she was stuck in a sub-layer of a dream web, talking in her sleep about being awake, & didn't remember any of it in the morning.

3. from outside the cinemas on rue champollion we could hear the soft flapping of the movie reels, the faded flicker of old light as the whir rolled down the alley. suddenly we were in a train station, feeling the breeze of the carriages & wondering where people have been & where they are going with all the time in the world.

4. we sat in my attic room, hiding from the capricious afternoon rains with cups of lukewarm tea & enough piles of books to distract the open silences. it is time that creates these things: they accumulate weight (meaning) according to the time that we give them.

you, well i just don't want you occupying my only measurement, my meaning. (you, on the other hand, this hope is painful and i can't get you out of my head.) like a revelation repeatedly remembered, like the perfect ending to a good book, the gelatinous interlude was needed for the satisfaction of the close of the moment.

4.5 during a brief aberration from a vague dream, i stumble out of my bedroom at eight o'clock in the morning - when regular people, such as my neighbour who works in a bank, are already awake, fed and clocked in. i am fuzzy with sleep and have nudged my eye-mask high onto my forehead. i was walking, more like toppling, in the direction of the bathroom when he opens his door, briefcase in hand, and looks at me in the hallway, a sweet tenderness and pity on his face: "ohh, coucou!"

5. but with regards to time, that robber, that omnipotent and ultimate judge, it sometimes seems unnatural to break off this Prime-Meridian time, this life that i've spent such a time (oh what a time) creating & moulding with the passing of the days. i have to remember that people don't stop, time isn't broken: we just collect all the sea-shells, breakfast crumbs, stolen moments & mid-sleep speech & it becomes a part of the people we are, the people we carry with us every day, all the time. we grow bigger, we swell with all of the passing of the past & the comfortable hopes of the too-near-future: we encompass it all.