We drank and talked, as friends do, about stuff… stuff that cannot be altered or fixed, from long ago in fact – pre-dating said friendship by decades (and continents) – yet stuff that somehow curiously needed to surface right now, be discussed, be shared, be exorcised.
A strange thing: the talking over of stuff long past – school, upbringing, Larkin’s theory of parental error – and how this arises from a slight comment, a passing memory, taking over all conversation as each recalls significant moments, a growing crescendo of them… until two hours later the world has shrunk completely into those memories, their clarity, the sensory resurrection of emotional impact.
And we are little girls again.
For some curious reason, as I walked home – and I guess analysis will come in a dream, on waking, whatever – it put me in mind of this song by Amelia Curran, Tiny Glass Houses:
There’s a crack in my memory,
As if something has gone
And split the foundation
Of shadow, of song
And rattled the windows,
And the tiny regrets
And the tiny glasses houses
That I tried to forget
sandie zand 