Sinister: Not actual, not lasting

[Dimitra]

You probably won’t believe it, but I actually wrote that down in hand, using
a pen and notebook, last night.

I think that once you’ve seen a 7” spin around in a dark silent room, or
better still its reflection on the record player’s lid projected on the
wall, and the next thing you know is the room isn’t silent anymore; once you
’ve seen the sound being born, or, well, reproduced, whatever it is that’s
happening to it, cds will never be okay again, and you’ll stop saying you
were born too late for vinyl.

Mid-February (not now silly, I know it’s March) and I was thinking of the
first day of spring, because it smelled vaguely like it. Where has winter
gone, I wanted to ask. I swear we used to get winter when I was little. Not
to mention there was at least one metre of snow everywhere -even everywhere
in the city- and below zero temperatures for more than a week when I was
away. I came back to tales of sliding on pavements and freezing no matter
where you were. And all I could say was ‘Glasgow was cold too’. Who cares
though, Glasgow is supposed to be cold.

Three weeks later, and most evenings it still smells this way, though spring
is not here yet. The first day of spring: the first evening when the air is
sweet, like nothing else but a Clientele song, maybe, 6am morningside, and I
know the song is about Edinburgh, and probably dawn in Edinburgh doesn’t
feel like nightfall in Thessaloniki, but who cares really? So it feels like
nothing else but a Clientele song, only a bit more passionate. It makes your
eyes water and your body ache all over and you wish with all your heart you
had someone to dream of, someone to cover with kisses; in a room with a
window overlooking the city, with the scent of flowers that have actually
grown in a garden that used to be yours fills the room, dangling. Or it
makes you wish for a boat in the sea while it’s softly raining.

-When will we have a party for spring coming?

And then comes Easter: more flowers, sunshine and rain -it’s supposed to
rain, they say the sky is crying; usually it does, sometimes it doesn’t.
Churches and churchyards and old ladies with their grandchildren -while
their parents are still at work- running around in their best clothes. The
gorgeous little girl I spotted last year with her red hair in bunches.
People who only go to church once a year, like me. And somewhere behind the
noise, the commercialism and the discourtesy, or among them (them being all
around), the joy and pain Easter’s supposed to be about.

-Will we have it on the 1st of March? Or the 21st?
-Spring doesn’t come before the 21st really. But I’ll be on a plane to
London on the 21st.
We can always have it on the 20th. Or the 6th of April?

Being away, I think I’ll miss that first day of spring. Not the 21st, of
course, just that first sweet night. But then the first day of spring for me
will be the first day I’ll be back. Travelling is just great, it makes my
world so much bigger.
Easter. Crying and happiness, though you’d think everyone has forgotten what
it is about. Or that they don’t care. Indifference and consumer goods. But
then that’s our world, I can’t remember a time without them and I refuse to
mourn its passing. If you spend your life looking behind you/ you don’t see
what’s up front etc.

And then Easter’s gone and all that’s left between you and the summer is
just time, plain boring working weeks marked by nothing in particular, which
you’ll count and then forget about. And then, oh, then it’s summer, and the
city and the air get even sweeter if that’s ever possible – and you want to
sing along with Hefner, ‘and god creates the air that floats underneath your
dress’ cause that’s how it feels. Before it gets very hot, for that while,
the air is just warm and it makes you feel free in a way you both have never
felt before and you’ve known forever, as I wrote to Ian. Every year the
same. And you want to run around and celebrate it in cafes with friends you
probably don’t have.


… but I will hope that some day the world around you improves to the point
where it fits together a little better with the world inside of you.


Every day could be like a feast. That was the opening line of a letter I
never wrote and a dream of mine. Cleaning the house while the boy was
sleeping and then lying on the sofa waiting for the floor to dry and
listening to music you’d never choose to listen to, but the flatmate had
chosen to cook to, and looking out of the window (buildings, tv aerials, the
sky) was almost as good as life can get and a celebration of it: an
expression, in acts, of your joy.

Yes, I really believe these things.

The letter was not written, but had it been, it would have been in Greek.
October 2000 was a time I only wrote in Greek. I didn’t know feast was the
right word for what I wanted to say, I looked it up in the dictionary
yesterday and it somehow was that little bit that started making things
better.
The phrase had never left my head since I first wrote it down, during a
lesson I should have been talking notes about, I think. But for some reason
I had never spoken it to anyone to this day. Not even the boy who was
sitting next to me in one of those cafes that morning, and inspired me to
it.
Especially not to the boy, we had enough trouble as it was, without my
seemingly irrelevant dreams. He has enough trouble, that is. I was quite
alright –my days could be as I wanted them to be, if only someone wanted to
live in them and share them.
What can I say, my trouble was he didn’t want to.

And yes, it’s the same boy who has been asking about spring parties. No, we’
re not together now. Yes, we’re friends. No, no, it’s so much more than
being civilised… I guess I can explain it, but all you’ll get from me is an
‘either you understand it or don’t bother’ look.

The same boy, that, would it rain on that first day of spring, he’d long to
stand underneath it and be a boy in a Go-Betweens song. Though I doubt he
knows the Go-Betweens really. Or that he likes them. He knows the Smiths,
though. And he totally adores them. And sometimes he just so much looks like
it. This probably means something else in the part of the world you are, but
where you from here, you’d know exactly what I mean.
I don’t know if he would, though. Stand underneath that rain, that is.
(Sometimes he is that true to himself, sometimes he’s not.)

Is there a Smiths song about standing underneath a soft sweet rain? Or rain
isn’t really all that sweet and soft in Manchester?

I think I once had a book about a little girl who wanted to stand underneath
the first spring rain to get taller. I was quite young, and she must have
been a bit younger.

Is that all? No, but after all this all feels sweet, so I’ll stop.


Love and rainfall,
zoziepop
xx

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