Waiting for the Flood (Spires, #2)

by Alexis Hall

I wonder, sometimes, if it’s a strange occupation, this semi-obsessive preservation of the transitory. But whereas for some people history is a few loud voices declaiming art and making war across the centuries, for me it’s a whispering chorus of laundry day and grocer’s bills, dress patterns and crop rotations. The price of tallow.

In other words, history - like the present - is made up not of Big Things but of many, many tiny, personal, everyday things. And how better to understand the past but to look closely at the tiny things of the past.

If I tried to talk to them, or ask for help, they might laugh at me. And my words would stick to my tongue, fighting their way to freedom clumsily, if at all.

I totally get this. Social anxiety causes a verbal traffic jam, which causes anxiety, which causes... 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🔄🔄🔄

“Thank you,” I said bravely, dropping the syllables cleanly, like marbles, and secretly full of the most pathetic pride imaginable. I had spoken to strangers.

A small (but, really, huge) achievement

the velvet-rough edge of laughter. The sort of laughter I like best, laugher that isn’t really at anyone.

Said like someone who has been hurt by being on the receiving end of laughter, and not the good kind

“Thank you.” More marbles. P had once rebelled against me, so please was dangerous, but I was good at thank you.

The linguistic logic of a stammerer

Sometimes I just wanted to fucking punch myself in the fucking face.

Been there, buddy

Damn the careless power of strangers.

Having social anxiety, I totally get this. Why do we give strangers the power to hurt us?

I recognised most of my neighbours, some of them I even knew by name, but I did not know them. Tonight there was something different. Something both deeper and shallower than friendship. Familiarity, perhaps, the sudden realisation that we lived our sealed-up little lives in closeness to each other. That we had something to share and something to lose. Something to protect together.

And all I wanted, in that moment, was to say something to him. Something that wasn’t yes, or no, or thank you, or some forced-out half-thought that wasn’t what I meant at all.

Relate relate relate relate relate relate relate

I’m everyday, and in some very small way he was making me feel like Sunday best.

“Oh . . . um-uh-uh . . .” I closed my mouth before I unspooled into strings of unfinished syllables.

Been there too

plosives were lined up ahead of me like landmines. I was already struggling with pirate. Bribe would surely be unconquerable. I’d sink into my speaking as if it were quicksand,

This is exactly what happens... you get so in your own head you start hearing yourself speak before you say anything and start second guessing and editing before it even comes out and everything spirals. Your tangled words get more and more tangled until you almost wanna give up speaking altogether

stuff is pretty much my public enemy number one. A sibilant, fricative nightmare, with that uh-uh-uh in the middle to pratfall over.

Taking one spoon doesn’t hurt anyone, unless everybody does it. The problem is everybody does do it.”

I love that philosophy creeps into their discussion. How often do you get to read about Kant’s categorical imperative?

I stared at him. This man who would make a rational choice not to be annoyed with his colleagues, where I would simply marinate in bitter quiet and sip my inadequately brewed tea.

I relate to Edwin here. A cynic who thinks “people suck” but who also admires the far more generous and understanding optimist.

You just have to teach people to value someone else’s access to spoons as much as they value their own.”

Ha! Too many Ayn Rand disciples in this world for that to happen. (Says the cynic.)

How did someone like this just . . . happen? Random act of atoms? Or was there a god somewhere who, thirty years or so ago, had woken up one morning and thought, What the universe needs right now is someone to think deeply about teaspoons.

It’s why we don’t live in what Hobbes called the state of nature. People don’t want to hurt each other; it’s just sometimes they forget. That’s what community is. It reminds us we’re all connected. You take a spoon for yourself because you know there’s never any spoons. But then you only have to think for a second about everybody else, and you put it right back.”

More philosophy. More rational optimism.

I simply wasn’t ready to feel these things again. To gather up the dust of my heart and scatter it again on the winds of hope.

Well that’s just plain beautiful

I hesitated a moment on the pavement, wondering how deep the water was. This is the story of my life: standing on the edges of things and worrying,

I feel you Edwin

“At—” I ran at it like a wild horse at a too-high fence, “—piggyback?”

He nailed it! 👏🏼 So proud

“Oh yes. I’m a—” I wanted to say badass, but I didn’t trust myself with a b and a d so close to each other, “—maverick.

“Th-th—” Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. I practiced. I didn’t deserve to have thank you messing with me.

it shows you the smallness and the nearness of history. The w-way a society reflects its preoccupations and prejudices in its minutiae.”

Ephemera. One of the coolest and most personal aspects of history. And what is history if not the personal and the everyday?

And that was when I realised he’d focused the conversation on me, and on my passions, so adroitly and so naturally that I’d barely noticed. I’d thought myself such an expert at listening, at fading, at creating space for others. It was power of a kind. But here I was, all overthrown by a sandbag philosopher who listened because he wanted to listen, not because he was afraid to speak.

Oh, why was it so easy to believe Marius didn’t want me, and so impossible to accept that Adam might?

It’s hard to grow self-worth from nothing

“Thank you. I’ll be fine.” I sounded a little hoarse, but I was proud of the delivery.

I knew how to be a friend, a lover, a partner. I knew how to make someone feel cherished and seen and listened to—everything I had myself always so desperately wanted and been afraid I might never have because I was so used to being overlooked.

I smiled at him, wondering if it was acceptable practice in suburban Oxford to climb a man like rampant honeysuckle.

Yes, yes it is

This . . .” oh my, too many sibilants, but I was with Adam, so I risked them “s-silent, s-s-silver world.”

“I want . . .” I began, dreading the w and so surprised by its surrender I almost forgot what I was saying. “I want you s-so much.”