Shubnum Khan's Blog, page 14

A Moment (on the floor)

Laying on a yoga mat, my ear to the floor I can feel the rattle of the metro underground below me, making its way to the river to get to Pudong, rushing through the darkness, rushing under the water, carrying people waiting to get where they need to go, I see them in my mind's eye as I lay on the mat. 

Y Suis Jamais Allé is playing. I close my eyes. The world has stopped.
As always my orchids shudder for a a moment as the train passes.

A moment on the floor

Laying on a yoga mat, my ear to the floor I can feel the rattle of the metro underground below me, making its way to the river to get to Pudong, rushing through the darkness, rushing under the water, carrying people waiting to get where they need to go, I see them in my mind's eye as I lay on the mat. 

Y Suis Jamais Allé is playing. I close my eyes. The world has stopped.
As always my orchids shudder for a a moment as the train passes.

The jade

My pain is a smooth block of jade
How wonderful,How marvelousTo remove suchAThing from within the cavityOf one's chest
And find a gem Where one thought one would Find a lump of coal

Public Reading Shanghai

I will be reading from my novel Onion Tears and discussing some of my new work in Shanghai this week.

Flash fiction on a Friday night

So maybe you walk across a bridge and maybe as you walk you see the leaves floating along the water and there are trees on the other side. And maybe you linger on the bridge, throw small stones off the edge, watch them skid across the water. And perhaps it starts to rain and your coat begins to get wet and the leaves in the trees, they move ever so slightly and you stamp your boots to keep your legs warm and then perhaps you slip your hands into your coat and drop your neck into the collar of your coat and you remember another moment, perhaps a moment on the street when the rains also came down like this ever so slightly and you wanted to say something, there were words collecting at the back of your throat and you were thinking, if I can just get them out I will say them. And then the rain begins to come down harder and you can hear it in the trees and you think, I wonder what should I eat when I go home, what is in the fridge, is there milk? Perhaps you can make a white sauce with some spaghetti and if you stop by the little corner shop on the street near you you can get those big brown mushrooms and braise them in butter and you if you get some spring onions you can chop them up too. And now the rain is coming down harder and you are still standing on the bridge and the edges have become more blurred and you can't see any outlines and everything is as your memory is; standing still amongst trees. And you can feel the water touch your skin through your clothes now and you think of your little apartment and how if you were there now you would take out your clothes and turn the hot water on and stand underneath and forget everything except the water on your skin. There's cold water dripping down your face now and you're still standing there and it feels like you might never move again. You are as still as stone, as part of the landscape around you as the grass.

And then the sound of the rain in the trees suddenly dies down and you can see sunlight coming in through the leaves, in that living way it does after a downpour. And all of a sudden it is quite silent and you're standing there on the bridge and there's light everywhere and you can smell the earth and a sparrow lands on a branch, turns its head quizzically, calls out and you finally move a little; shuffle your feet, lift your head up, pick your hands out of your pockets. You walk then slowly step by step and the water in the river is still as if it had never been touched and except for your wet coat you wonder if it had ever rained at all. You make your way across, slipping off your wet coat and placing it over your arm as you step off the bridge.

Conversations

'I am disappearing.'
'Don't worry, as long as you have us, we will never let you disappear.'

The threads in the water

I see it better now. The threads. Not so simple. Stodgy. The voices run, make patterns in the paper, I see the shadows, the parts where dark deepens and light comes through. I feel more. My sincerity is sincere, the water is in everything now. Half drowned. How can you know true happiness without pain? The shape emerges, the answers mean more if you listen. I hesitate. Tell you my truth. We're not walking on the surface anymore. We're wading in it. Not too deep. Not yet. Can you hear the birds in the trees? The sound of the horn on the river? Some days, the best days, the water turns to ice and the cold makes me shiver. I felt nothing for weeks you know. Nothing. And now this stream of light. I see the ghostly patterns. I have different answers. We have different questions. Sometimes the same dreams. On bad days. But on good days we are swimming. I taste the joy. It's always light and dark, no? It's a battle, a constant battle. Life. But to see the threads, to stand under the umbrella and watch the rain run over you, to pull out what is good, what is scared, to know and understand and separate and stay still a moment in reflection returns one to one self. 

A moment (in my room)

Standing before a mirror in the wet bathroom something in the music playing makes me recall how I was before. Remembering the past differently now, I no longer recoil at myself, shy away from it, I remember it, embrace it all; how I was, how I gave and I was light, you know? Tender, fierce, all things. I didn't know it for years. I take the tears I find at the end of my face, run them along the path in my hair. This is good, I say. This returning to the self, the acknowledgement of good inside one self. The return of respect. I run the water over my eyes. Close them. Outside it is getting warmer, the sound of the street filling up rises to my window.

The crack in the chest

Last night we nearly missed the train. I ran so hard up all those stairs that I could not breathe. Something deep inside my chest shifted, I thought like a clock, I had broken some spring inside. I could not run anymore. Slowed down. It was a long day. A long day of holding on. Let me lose the train. Even if there's no other. Maybe I will have to stay here. Find a place. No. It cannot happen. Where? I refuse to go back. I want my room. I pump my legs, run through security. Drop my bag, my books come tumbling out. I skid. Pack them back in. S is far ahead. We find the gate, run down the stairs. I am breathing so hard it feels like my chest is scraping something in my heart. It's 10 15pm. We may not get another train. I'm running down the stairs. We make it. The train was delayed by 5 minutes. We make it. I am breathing. I am alive. The night skids by my window as I sip water. Breathe. Give thanks. The land moves silently. Someone comes to sweep the floor below my seat with an improvised broom. I wasn't scared. Not scared. Stuck perhaps. Exhausted. My breathing slows down. I blow my nose and blood comes out. Something in my chest opens. I sit quietly. Talk of the past. Listen to the sounds of people sleeping. The sound of the tracks. I close my eyes. At the station we have missed the metro, the buses do not go to Nanjing Dong Lu. We ride on the back of a bike towards the river. I wrap my scarf around my head for the cold. We're home before 12. We laugh, smile. The fear retreating.

Quote (Pain)

And finally these pictures go and these dry little questions just sit there without any answers and you're left with this large heavy pain in you that you try to numb by reading, or you try to ease by getting into public places where there will be people around you, but no matter how good you are at pushing that pain away, just when you think you're going to be all right for a while, that you're safe, you're kind of holding it off with all your strength and you're staying in some little bare numb spot of ground, then suddenly it will all come back, you'll hear a noise, maybe it's a cat crying or a baby, or something else like her cry, you hear it and make that connection in a part of you you have no control over and the pain comes back so hard that you're afraid, afraid of how you're falling back into it again and you wonder, no you're terrified to ask how you're ever going to climb out of it.

Lydia Davis - Break It Down