everything in the sky

I like to think I’m a simple person - that I don’t require much from the world. I suppose, in time, that I’d like to occupy a nice girl. Someone who laughs at my bad jokes, who has green eyes and is smarter than me. Someone who knows the things that matter. Maybe, in time, we’d occupy a few kids. A daughter first, and then later a son. We’d occupy a small flat together first for a while - a year or two. No point rushing into things. I’m not sure we’d ever occupy a marriage. I just can’t see the point. I’d have to occupy a job. Her too, of course. Something that made us each happy. We wouldn’t have to occupy much money - as long as we could cook simple meals in the evenings, taking turns to chop the onions and dice the carrots, and afford a small fold-out couch for friends to occupy when they come around. I don’t think we’d occupy a TV, though she might have a favourite cooking program or weekly sporting event she liked to watch. I wouldn’t mind. I’d watch with her.
Assuming we had just that, I like to think we could occupy a little happiness.

These are an excerpt taken from a list a German girl has been keeping in an effort to expand her English vocabulary while she’s been travelling. She has kept the list since May and so far it spans 30+ pages.

• shuttlecock
• gutted
• tweasers
• wagtail
• stagefright
• total service contractor
• “moreish”
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• lanyard
• tread
• to look like a brick shit-house
• to worm your way
• to waffle
• wrist band
• it’s a doddle
• bonkers
• shale
• sherbert

I like washing dishes. I run the hot water first, plug out, leaving it to heat up. I use the time to undo the strap of watch and place it in my left pocket.
At first, as with anything, I can concentrate only on the mechanics of the task, but after a while it becomes automatic and my mind empties. My life seems to quieten down. Problems are pushed gently away. There are dishes to be washed.
It’s easy, then, to watch my hands move, seemingly of their volition, warm and clean and white and soft, and to watch the dishes move from the left of the sink (dirty) to the right (clean), either onto a drying rack or, as I prefer, onto a simple, clean dishcloth lain out for them.
Encrusted pans or dishes are scrubbed a little first, tested and quietly considered, before being left to soak.
The water may be changed a few times in the course of the cleaning and fresh washing-up liquid squirted in, causing a fresh, warm waft of artificial lemon to rise from the hot, hot water.
The plates are washed first, then the pots and pans, and then I swish my hands slowly along the bottom, beneath the bubbles, searching for and dredging up the cutlery.
The washing complete and the dishes all on the the right, I empty the sink, taking care to check the bottom for missed forks and spoons. It gurgles empty.
I wash the sink itself then - grease rings wiped away, vegetable pieces removed from the drain. The plug on its chain is draped back around the tap. I run some cold water, wipe it all down with a damp cloth.
I dry my hands on the drying-up cloth, the first thing I use it for. I begin drying then, slowly, moving every piece to its place in the kitchen as soon as it’s done. It’s a stately dance around the kitchen - 3 steps to this cupboard, 4 to that shelf, 1 to the left for a drawer. After the still, warm, mechanical task of the washing up, the movement is a way to gently start my brain back up.
I wipe all dishes clockwise (the top first) before flipping them; shift my hand up a little to dry the spot I was holding them in; and then perform a swift dance step to place them, warm still, in their cupboard or on their shelf.
Again, the cutlery is last, spoon heads rubbed by holding them between my thumb and forefinger, the coarse cloth between them. The last of the knives in place, I dry my hands again on the same cloth (damp now, but no matter.)
I check my fingers to see if they’re still wrinkly.
I slowly put my watch back on, taking care with the wide strap.
Then I step back out into the world.

We’ve left the horse university and are now in a national park, right in the shadow of the recently exploded volcano. Ash coats everything. While it’s no longer being spurted out into the air, the remains still rest on the grass and in the buildings and on plains around us. I can feel it right now, a fine grit, in my teeth and in my eyes and on my keyboard as I type this. When the sun dries it out and the wind picks up, the dust is kicked into the air and we can see dust devils (ash devils?) move and twist out near the glacier in the late afternoon. The glaciers themselves, usually bright blue and white, are black from the ash and are almost indistinguishable from the sandy plains that surround them. I found a single spoon sat on a bench, abandoned when everyone evacuated, a half-inch of ash sat in its head. 
Some of us look a little nervous now when we cough.

The day is punctuated by the sound of zippers: the long growl of them in the morning as tents are opened; the short snort of them as coats are adjusted; the long, soft drawl of them at night as people snuggle into their sleeping bags.
I sleep in a small two-man tent, nested between my guitar case and my hiking bag. It feels safe, even when the biting winds push down the canvas above so it’s inches from my face. Especially then.
Tomorrow the real work starts - days spent clearing out invasive plants and surveying hiking trails and rebuilding walkways. I’m looking forward to it.

There are only 300 000 people in the country of Iceland. The city I grew up in has over 3 times that. That it’s so few makes meeting an genuine Icelandic person seem like collecting a particularly rare Pokemon. (Not like, say, meeting an Australian, a nationality that seems to be absolutely bloody everywhere, to the extent it sometimes seems like you can’t open your fridge without an angry voice from the salad drawer saying something like, “Could you close the fucken door, mate? Some of us are tryin’ to kip, here.”)
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There is a kind of freckle you find on pale-skinned girls that have been in the sun that always reminds of the speckles you sometimes see on fresh farm eggs - delicate and light brown and bunched. I always want to kiss them (the freckles, I mean. (And I guess by extension the girls.)) (Do I talk about girls too much? Probably.)
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The thing that really struck me on the ride in from the airport is that Iceland has terrain. Other places have a “landscape” or “rolling hills” or “plains” or “fields”, but the Icelandic country (or at least what I’ve seen of it so far) seems like the type that the authors of Westerns would have a Navajo Indian track a man over. It’s ragged and jagged and rocky and with no plants beyond various kinds of scrub and it’s, well, “terrain.” Possibly even “rough terrain.”

I’m staying in a friend’s spare room in an artist’s residence, right under the word ‘Paris’ on Google Maps. The residence, a large group of buildings over 600 years old, houses just over 300 artists, all of whom are either studying or working on projects approved by an arts council set up by the government. They do so in return for cheap rent and minor funding.
The buildings are quieter are than you’d expect buildings full of the dangerously creative to be. Sometimes as you walk around you can hear the piano being played quietly in the distance, and a few times while walking up the 6 flights of uneven steps to my little room I’ve heard the faint sounds of a harmonium from a nearby flat.
I’ve been introduced to a few of the other residents but otherwise I rarely see them as I walk around - a figure in paint-spattered jeans smoking on their balcony; someone painting, glimpsed covertly through a large, open studio door; a broad, shirtless, dreadlocked guy who stepped out of a dark corridor holding 3 large trash bags who whispered a soft “Bonjour” before meandering in the direction of the laundry. They seem to lead quiet lives in their own flats.
The residence’s laundry room is small but neat, though the washing machines tend to eat the washing tokens. There are a few books that have been left on a shelf nearby, presumably for the artists to browse while their dirty overalls chug slowly in circles. Between ‘The Science of Yoga’ and the ‘100 Vegetarian Recipes’ sits a copy of Stephen King’s ‘The Rage’.
I go for runs along the Seine on most days. The tourists are a nuisance, taking every opportunity to step out into the path for photographs or to stop suddenly to look at the terrible art being sold along the roadside (I will be burning the next poster of ‘Chat Noir’ I see). According to Wikipedia, Paris has the most tourists per year of any city in the world.
These last few days seem to be the first of a long summer. The sun throws sparkles off the river and casts sinuous light beams along the undersides of bridges along the route. Homeless men, their tents set up in odd nooks under bridges and in sewer tunnels only visible through barred holes along the river’s banks, sit on the side of the river, fishing and cooking bacon and drinking. They seem happy enough, from what I can tell, and make no serious effort to beg.
There are a lot of house-boats along the river. (Who seriously names their houseboat ‘The Don Juan’?) Some have bikes or dogs onboard, or even whole luxury cars if they’re big enough. I like the ones with one or two lone pot-plants on top the most.
The Eiffel Tower has a large rotating light right on the very top of it, the beam circling the night-sky every few minutes just like a lighthouse. I didn’t know about it until, out one night just walking, I saw it slowly swing across the clouds overhead. It is probably my favourite thing about Paris.

Old letters, written in ink or type, are composed in a fundamentally differently manner to emails. Writing a letter is a flow of words, one sentence leading to another. A letter, written in pen or pencil, represents the slow presentation of an idea, if it’s written with one in mind, like a painting. Emails (or any kind of digital creation, I suppose) are more like collages - it’s easy to pick and cut and move ideas or concepts around to better suit the final whole product, whereupon you can send it. This also happens, I think, with typing in an IM client like Skype, where you can tailor your words, within a socially acceptable time-limit, before presenting them whole to someone, though generally in a shorter form. Unlike, say, the real-time chat that used to be in Wave, whereby every letter or misspelling is shown to the other party, forcing there to be a moment of thought to compose what you want to say before you type, unedited. Twitter, I guess (especially for the Birdhouse/humour crowd) is again a limited size of content but with an endless draft / edit time (and is also more of a broadcast medium).
I wonder how this digital editing approach has changed writing - books, letters or otherwise - and whether there’s any way to measure or gauge its impact.

Shaving at night. That’s another thing I like. There’s no rush, or need to free the bathroom for someone else. I like that I can shave shirtless and don’t have to worry about getting foam on something I would wear to work. I like filling the sink with hot, hot water and wetting my face until the bristles soften a little. I like having the time to do so.
Hot, hot water. That’s part of the secret to a good shave.
I like smoothly applying shaving cream, having to stare at myself as I do. (I still find what I look like, who I am in a mirror, a little surprising and a little strange, so I like that I have to re-examine myself to do this.)
What I think about as I shave is the biggest difference. In the mornings my mind is on the day ahead, the work I’ll be tasked with. In the evenings, if it’s late enough, I find I do the opposite - think through what happened, how I handled it. It’s contemplative, rather than an exercise in bracing myself for the day.
Perhaps at night I may think about what’s to come, too, but only in a half-formed way. Distant tasks, rather than immediate ones. The kind you can comfortably feel optimistic about.
Oddly, I don’t like listening to music when I shave.
I like getting the tricky patches - the middle of the top lip, the corners of the mouth, and the bit under the jawline by the ears - before splashing all the foam off with the hot, hot water. I like using a washcloth to get any patches of foam I missed, and rubbing a simple, cheap moisturising cream into my hands to warm it before I apply it to my face.
I kinda like the guy that emerges afterwards when I wipe down the mirror, but not always. Most of the time.
I like shaving at night. 

• It’s fair and bright
• Handouts grow on bushes
• The boxcars are all empty
• The sun shines every day
• There are cigarette trees and lemonade springs
•  All the cops have wooden legs
• The bulldogs all have rubber teeth
• The hens lay soft-boiled eggs
•  There’s no snow, rain or wind
• You never change your socks
• Little streams of alcohol trickle down the rocks
• The brakemen have to tip their hats 
• The railway bulls are blind
• There’s a lake of stew and a lake of whiskey, both of which allow for paddling around
• The jails are made of tin and are easily escapable
• There are no short-handled shovels, axes, saws or picks
• They hung the person that invented work

The plinking sounds some lights make when they turn on and warm up.  That half-awake moment when you remember someone’s sleeping next to you. Cutlery with heavy handles, forks with thin tines. Good whiskey, a solid whiskey glass, clean ice. Quiet, empty, warm offices. Girls who read. The phrase ‘to turn a phrase’. Turning a phrase. The people you meet when you’re both hiking a long trail. Red onion, in look and taste. Flirting with waitresses in foreign countries. Brussels sprouts. Girls who sing softly to themselves when they’re listening to music, especially on buses. Talking with people who have a passion, and seeing them get swept up in their excitement, especially when it’s something I think is boring. Wandering down to my local corner-shop just to buy milk. Tales of valour and honour and other inherently stupid acts. Kids and their enthusiasm for anything and everything. Waking up early on Sundays. Sleeping in a sleeping bag. White fairy-lights hung in trees, especially outdoors. New tennis-balls. Cats. Long train journeys.