Do you remember when we watched Bicycle Thieves? When the last frame – of a man walking away, his back turned, a second ago surrounded by an angry crowd, now alone in a deserted street – faded to black, we turned to look at each other as if to say, ‘what just happened?’ There was [...]

The new method of time-keeping
Called unemployment

They wore ripped jeans and teal blazers and all-black, they listened to Bob Dylan and Evanescence and Tim McGraw, they drew and wrote and shoed horses and dug ditches. But let us be clear that girlhood in southeastern West Virginia has profound challenges specific to its mountainous geography.

Cut to a scene in a park, it’s about three years later, and my headspace is filled with new Japanese junk.

Legally I was now considered an object, a not-enough-earning object.

When the war ends, and things balance themselves out and there is food to buy once again, I will buy brown bread, a kilo of gingerbread and half a litre of cottonseed oil. I will mix bread and gingerbread crumbs together, pour a lot of oil over them, carefully mix it into a smooth paste, take a soup spoon and enjoy it until I am utterly full.

Had dreams got tatters you?
Had tatters got crumbs.

Painstaking hand painted gestures form the clusters of his gleaming white curls. Which partially divert attention from the deep fractions now marking the landscape of what in my child mind’s eye will always be his cheerful disposition.

There is only ever one thing. And there it is, the thing.
Then there are two things. One thing and the other thing.
Then there are a few more. One in between the other thing and the thing.

The room where we sleep looks out over London. It’s on the fifth floor – not very high but enough to get a view of the skyline.