Penny Leach: Fragments #1: Sunday afternoon

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:15:05 +0000

Sunday afternoon. You're walking home after getting off the train from Zürich, and you're carrying your bag in your hand instead of over your shoulder, because you're carrying all your stress in your back right now and the weight of the bag is killing you. In your left hand, you're holding the small potted cactus that you made your boyfriend buy you yesterday for your desk, which you're almost dizzy with the significance of, because your parents used to say that your sister was like a delicate flower, and you, tough, proud and stubborn, were like a prickly cactus.

Smiling, you remember how you told your friend Chris about this, and he insisted that you were more like a hedgehog, you suspect because under their spikes, they're actually quite cute, and you remember being infuriated by this because you didn't want anyone to actually see past the spikes. Secretly though, you harboured a hope that Chris might buy you a small hedgehog for your keyring, because you are always amused by the significance, real or imposed, of inanimate objects. He never did of course, because it didn't occur to him, and asking him to would have ruined the gesture.

An old man is sitting drinking a beer on the steps leading up to a storefront, and he's noticed you, walking down the street with your cactus, smiling to yourself, and he's looking at you expectantly. Not staring, just slightly puzzled, wondering what your story is. The woman sitting beside him is talking animatedly, but you can tell he's not paying attention to her anymore, because he's looking at you, and you feel guilty about this so you smile at him. Satisfied, perhaps because he expected you, this girl dressed in black with huge sunglasses, tattoos, and a cactus, to glare at him, and you smiled instead, he looks back at his companion, and you leave them behind as you cross the street to Rue de Lausanne.

Because it's a warm Sunday afternoon and you're not ready to go inside and work, you wonder if you'll see anyone you know, perhaps sitting having a beer in the sun, but then you remember that Rue de Lausanne is not Cuba Street, and the chance of this happening is extremely low, and you close your eyes for a moment, feel the warmth from the sun on your skin and try to mentally place yourself walking down Cuba Street instead in the sun on the weekend. In your mind, you're walking past the entrance to the Matterhorn, past the statue by the bucket fountain which nobody can ever agree on, as to if it's a frog or a tuatara, which is quite bizarre, you realise now, considering how utterly different they are. Walking on, passing Plum's outside tables, in this block of Cuba Street, you are sure you would have met someone you know to have a beer with.

But the people around you are speaking French and you realise how misguided it is to walk down the street, even a pedestrian street like Rue de Lausanne, or Cuba Street, with your eyes closed, especially when you're carrying a potted cactus in one hand, because if you fell over dirt would go everywhere, and you would draw attention to yourself. And here in this foreign city where you hardly know anyone, you don't like people to notice you, really. So you open your eyes.

You're thinking about the word Solitude a lot at the moment, which is odd because juxtaposed with daydreaming about bumping into friends on Cuba Street, it's a concept that you feel strangely calm about. But you find that when you go home after work in the evenings, and sit by yourself in your garden, drink a beer, and read your book, you do feel calm, and for some reason this reminds you of the title of the essay by Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, which you bought but never read and didn't survive the move to Switzerland. You always had the idea that A Room of One's Own has something to do with Solitude, but struggling to recall a conversation you had about it with your friend Michelle, who is a writer, you think she might have told you that it's actually about the necessity of writers having the means to be independent, so that they are able to just concentrate on writing. You suppose Solitude is a subset of that.

As you walk past the cathedral, you ponder the relationship between Solitude and being driven, or able, to work all the time, and even though you're on your way home right now, to turn on your laptop and work, you feel almost no motivation to do so at all, and since you're thinking about Michelle, who is a writer, you decide instead to turn on your laptop and write......

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Penny Leach: Fragments #1: Sunday afternoon