If I can feel grit beneath the cover of the diary, between it and the surface of the desk, it more than irks me. I have to find it and, if possible, flick it into the bin – so that it doesn’t become annoying underfoot. The page, with a particle of stone or cat-litter or wood beneath, feels as if it’s vibrating with a flaccid resonance. Twanging. How can the words be right if they are pivoting microscopically? What I see and what I saw, it needs to come out plainly – no sandcastle, no teeter, no crunch. I am beached enough as it is, and founded upon pulp and knitted fibre. If I’m on a page where the pen hits a tiny bump, I can usually tell beneath how many pages the princess-pea lies. Under just the first page, there’s edges and a cubic sugar crystal might scape sideways. Two pages down, and the ride will be smoother over but the paper might still be left in an angular new peak. Between three and five, the thing is still a certainty – a hillock – but with different gradients and a decreasing chance of crumble. Still further down, I don’t bother counting; it’s there, it bloats a letter or kinks a line, I find it, it’s moved on. Imagine the jamjar full of them, over the years – sand from the drabbest beach, unrefined sugar, shards of graphite. Often my eyes aren’t good enough anymore to see individual grains. I find them my fingertip feel, rub them into a running ridge, and then make the money gesture over the bin.
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