Writing on Companions

I like when things feel like companions. I don’t get through things quickly. I always take something with me when I go out but often it will stay dirtying in my bag. I think it is nice to sit with things over time and I like when returning to something feels like a rediscovery of the important string and the bit that was lived without it becomes secondary. It is like you and that thing are the curtain rail and the strip holding all the hooks, and everything else is just decorative material. The hooks and the rail are the important part because you always notice when there is a hitch dragging a curtain along but I don’t think I’d mind if my curtains were a different material. I’m not attached to them. Me and my things don’t have hitches. My things pause to check in on me, it is a correspondence. We mark each other, always in a staying way even if the mark is shallow. I like having really strong reactions to new things. Good ones that make me need to bite my fist or raise my voice or flap about a bit. Very good ones I can't even talk about properly there's too much. My favourite is when I find something and suddenly all the focus is on that thing and anyone who is around to hear will hear about it. Of course it doesn’t happen too often so I know when it does happen it is true. I know I should trust the bubbles. It is a changing thing, I have my big nest of things and I get to have another one to add. I was without it and now I will never be without it again and nothing is replaced I just get to collect more and more. A new badge that I get to have in my way just my way exactly how I met it. And I know I can get it over and over again and have a different buzz and there will be depths that I didn’t notice the first time even if I liked it that much. I like reactions like this where it is visceral and sharp and uncontained. I always want to do some sort of stark movement because the thing is loud and bouncy within me. It won’t be bouncy forever. it will shimmer off but it will stay. I like going back to some old things and finding the houses that I built inside of them still intact. They reveal themselves quite quickly. They are childhood bedrooms for a scene or a feeling or a being with someone or a defined period of time. They are how I left them. My accidental building is always still there. In that moment I don’t know whether I am inside or outside the house, it is both at the same time. Sometimes it is unexpected, and it can even be quite a flat feeling. But some of the houses are so warm. I like to take trips to them knowing exactly what I’ll find. There is one where I am heel and toeing again and again down the same hometown street, there is one where I am in a hotel swaddled in having just won, there is one where I have my sword drawn but nothing there is no onslaught I am just standing there protecting preciously. I have lots. I can’t go there too often, there needs to be a period of unconscious making when the thing is current and then a long break period and then there can be lots of little rediscoveries if you space them out and let each one feel special. I like that the massive things and the little things that matter now will always matter, because sometimes they might continue and sometimes they will matter just because they used to. That way feelings are never rushed, they stay and sit beside you. A big nest of companions, all my times, all my things.

This is an essay from This is What It’s Like.Click here for more information