some nostalgia
Google Earth
Kay sat on the white chair she had bought for €5 in a charity shop despite the fact that the Blue Gamp Gallery presently held an exhibition of beautifully crafted furniture made from bog-oak; thunderously silent, possessing hundreds of years of solidity and loved by the artist until inexpressibly smooth and justifiably expensive. The creaking white chair was hard, of the kind one found in sour waiting rooms fifty years ago, before plastic, MDF or design were considered appropriate for clients or patients, but to Kay it was a throne. When the memories had returned, inasmuch as they ever had, and her father, Douglas and the dwarf were permanently detained in prison or psychiatric institution, she had decided that she had to remake her world: she was the Queen and recreator; hence the throne and the art.
Christmas was coming but she had nothing important to do. There was an optimistic quantity of Douglas elves, 288 in fact, standing on a table in Trisha’s house ready for sale and there would be no customers until the mothers and grandmothers of Listowel had respectively recovered from the school run or finished an eleven o’clock cappuccino. Kay spun the planet on the laptop until she estimated London to be at the centre of the window. She zoomed in slowly, respecting her anxiety and the microcircuits under her fingertips. The generalised green haze shifted towards urban grey and the blue worm of Thames likewise greened and greyed. Now buildings, vehicles and street furniture could be observed. This was an image built yesterday afternoon; if it were from earlier today the streets would be jammed with red buses and the pavements thronged with commuters. She selected points of interest and little markers indicated galleries and municipal buildings. There was Southwark Cathedral and Tate Modern, casting shadows Eastwards over the sluggish water of the river. She stilled her heart and clicked in again. Here were individuals and newspapers motionless on the pavements that led to The Clink and what had been Frank’s Café.
Although the images could not represent movement she felt herself leave the backdoor of the ancient pile, pushing the heavy plastic bin to the end of the paved area and then dragging it over the earth path that led to the stream. It tipped and she was by now adept at balancing the weight and fixing the wheels as it disgorged the bones and viscera into the black stream. She knew every nettle and twist of barbed wire in that vile cul de sac. Once she had dared to send a bottle loaded with a dismal plea for rescue into the water, imagining it bobbing through the filth to some estuary where a man with a metal detector or a child seeking crabs would find it and alert the authorities.
She zoomed out and felt the gallery close about her. She followed the Thames under bridges and as it slipped by the horizontal vertebrae of the flood barrier, Barking, new estates on reclaimed marsh, fields and mudflats to that wide estuary. Here was the spot where she imagined her bottle still lay under a decade of detritus. The Ford cars and trade vans squatted discretely separate in the semicircular space between the track and the slime. The lower classes of Essex were unknowingly frozen within their vehicles, trading their drugs, making calls they could not make at home or attempting sex while her satellite eye hovered.
She jabbed the mouse pad and the planet fled; momentarily atomised before adopting its waiting position. She thought about time and work and calling Trisha, but only out of a faint sense of duty to her constructed sanity, because what she really needed to do was go see her father. The planet turned about nine degrees to the East and she stabbed the zoom button into the heart of the secure wing of the psychiatric hospital. Frank had ruled here, and had even tried to lock her away here forever once he had sensed his plans beginning the unravelling. She knew her father was here, imprisoned physically and mentally, able to only rock, moan and shit. She could never visit him; it would be far too dangerous, but this way she could get close. This way she could almost stare into his empty eyes and smell his emptying bowels.
Something caught her attention and she tried to get in closer, but Ballinasloe was not London and the satellites were nowhere near as generous with their pixels here. A white dot shimmered on dark green inside the high wall surrounding the secure wing. She touched the screen of the laptop, stroked the dot with immense tenderness. At that moment, some time last evening, a white cat could see her father in his abysmal padded nowhere. Her smile guided the tear between her lips. Frank didn’t matter any more.
Kay sat on the white chair she had bought for €5 in a charity shop despite the fact that the Blue Gamp Gallery presently held an exhibition of beautifully crafted furniture made from bog-oak; thunderously silent, possessing hundreds of years of solidity and loved by the artist until inexpressibly smooth and justifiably expensive. The creaking white chair was hard, of the kind one found in sour waiting rooms fifty years ago, before plastic, MDF or design were considered appropriate for clients or patients, but to Kay it was a throne. When the memories had returned, inasmuch as they ever had, and her father, Douglas and the dwarf were permanently detained in prison or psychiatric institution, she had decided that she had to remake her world: she was the Queen and recreator; hence the throne and the art.
Christmas was coming but she had nothing important to do. There was an optimistic quantity of Douglas elves, 288 in fact, standing on a table in Trisha’s house ready for sale and there would be no customers until the mothers and grandmothers of Listowel had respectively recovered from the school run or finished an eleven o’clock cappuccino. Kay spun the planet on the laptop until she estimated London to be at the centre of the window. She zoomed in slowly, respecting her anxiety and the microcircuits under her fingertips. The generalised green haze shifted towards urban grey and the blue worm of Thames likewise greened and greyed. Now buildings, vehicles and street furniture could be observed. This was an image built yesterday afternoon; if it were from earlier today the streets would be jammed with red buses and the pavements thronged with commuters. She selected points of interest and little markers indicated galleries and municipal buildings. There was Southwark Cathedral and Tate Modern, casting shadows Eastwards over the sluggish water of the river. She stilled her heart and clicked in again. Here were individuals and newspapers motionless on the pavements that led to The Clink and what had been Frank’s Café.
Although the images could not represent movement she felt herself leave the backdoor of the ancient pile, pushing the heavy plastic bin to the end of the paved area and then dragging it over the earth path that led to the stream. It tipped and she was by now adept at balancing the weight and fixing the wheels as it disgorged the bones and viscera into the black stream. She knew every nettle and twist of barbed wire in that vile cul de sac. Once she had dared to send a bottle loaded with a dismal plea for rescue into the water, imagining it bobbing through the filth to some estuary where a man with a metal detector or a child seeking crabs would find it and alert the authorities.
She zoomed out and felt the gallery close about her. She followed the Thames under bridges and as it slipped by the horizontal vertebrae of the flood barrier, Barking, new estates on reclaimed marsh, fields and mudflats to that wide estuary. Here was the spot where she imagined her bottle still lay under a decade of detritus. The Ford cars and trade vans squatted discretely separate in the semicircular space between the track and the slime. The lower classes of Essex were unknowingly frozen within their vehicles, trading their drugs, making calls they could not make at home or attempting sex while her satellite eye hovered.
She jabbed the mouse pad and the planet fled; momentarily atomised before adopting its waiting position. She thought about time and work and calling Trisha, but only out of a faint sense of duty to her constructed sanity, because what she really needed to do was go see her father. The planet turned about nine degrees to the East and she stabbed the zoom button into the heart of the secure wing of the psychiatric hospital. Frank had ruled here, and had even tried to lock her away here forever once he had sensed his plans beginning the unravelling. She knew her father was here, imprisoned physically and mentally, able to only rock, moan and shit. She could never visit him; it would be far too dangerous, but this way she could get close. This way she could almost stare into his empty eyes and smell his emptying bowels.
Something caught her attention and she tried to get in closer, but Ballinasloe was not London and the satellites were nowhere near as generous with their pixels here. A white dot shimmered on dark green inside the high wall surrounding the secure wing. She touched the screen of the laptop, stroked the dot with immense tenderness. At that moment, some time last evening, a white cat could see her father in his abysmal padded nowhere. Her smile guided the tear between her lips. Frank didn’t matter any more.
