Sweeping is the first thing I do – after getting out of bed, going downstairs, putting the kettle on, emptying the top shelf of the dishwasher, scalding the teapot, putting four teaspoons of tea in, pouring on the hot water, pouring hot water into two mugs, emptying the bottom shelf of the dishwasher (with interruptions to stir the tea), emptying the mugs, pouring the milk, pouring out the tea, taking the mugs upstairs – hopefully without spilling – to Leigh and then to the desk. Sweep, sweep-sweep and, if necessary, SWEEP, all with the palm of my left hand because if I do it with the palm of my right it might pick up crumbs of rubber or shreds of pencil lead, which might then drop onto the page I’m about to start. Until I wrote this, I hadn’t consciously known I did this. Sometimes, I now realize, if I know the hardboard is likely to be gritty, I got at it with a paper napkin kept from a café trip. Depending on how dirty this gets, it’s either dropped in the wastepaper bin or returned to the scrunch pile in the postcard box. After which, all of which I can do semi-somnambulant, I will reach for a pen from the pen-pot and the diary from the notebook pile, find the next day, the next new page, and – not necessarily awake, nor always intent on conscious production – puzzled, ambitious, tactile, intent, ecstatic, nihilistic, truthful – dull, empty, stupid, pathetic, arrogant, impatient, regretful – hating my handwriting but accepting its legibility – already far far too late for the kind of thing to which I aspire, but perhaps also a little or a lot too early for whatever would replace that ambition, for someone like me – with an ache in my spine, blurry eyes and feathery breathing –
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