Originally Published by Selcouth Station Press in the UK 2020, unfortunately no longer online.

The Telephone

It depends. The type of telephone. If it’s a phone in the street and its ringing? It depends. Is it daytime or night time? It depends. Are you on your own, is it a busy street corner or is it a train station or is it an empty street? The city. In the city. I mean the city in the city. Have you been there when business is done? Long streets with large blank faced buildings, buildings that look in on themselves, the places to meet and eat are illusions once business is done. So if you are there, on that street, after dark, after business is done then you are alone. If the phone rings, do you answer? It depends

Listening for, waiting for, expectation. What if expectation is the overwhelming feeling, except you are still there on your own and passing this phone at this moment while it is ringing or in fact you realize it began to ring just as you were passing and yet expectation, or the fulfillment of an expectation is what this feels like, like you now know that you knew that sometime this would happen. You were expecting a call you never knew was coming and this is the call, and yet do you answer? It depends

Who? You’ve been expecting this call though you didn’t know it until now, until it happened so who… who do you think is calling? Who did you want it to be all those times you didn’t think about it but somewhere you thought it might happen? In all those moments when you knew you were waiting, no matter what you were doing, actually doing, seeming to do, some part of you knew you were waiting, what you were actually doing was waiting, waiting for the call, knowing that there was something out there or in, in there sometimes it might have been in, but in in a way that is as strainséir as anything out there, like you know the language was never right, was always a bit off, like you understood, but you understood it wasn’t just, it wasn’t, it was, there was something, like every day was your part in someone else’s and you were waiting, waiting what had to be, what would be, because what was the point of you if you weren’t, if you couldn’t be, you. You know there is a point to you, its there in those moments when it happens, like lightning, something reaching out and something reaches back, in the inbetween, it’s there in those moments and jolts you, and time moves on as you feel the residue the fizz slowly ease out of the tips and know there’s a you in there, in here… so who, who is going to call?

And what? What are they going to say?

Like you’re in the house and the kids are in the house and you sort of met over lunch or you put together something for lunch and in different ways they drifted through at different times and ate but you didn’t see them eat and when you sit down to eat they’re gone again and you know they’re in the house and if you stopped to think about it you’d guess at what they’re doing but you don’t stop you’re just aware, aware that they’re there somewhere and they’re doing something and briefly, briefly, you wonder what are they thinking what are they doing, how do they spend their time like that, with thoughts that aren’t your thoughts and needs and and maybe that’s all that’s on the other end of that phone, something you know about but just don’t take the time to look for, in here, off doing its own thing, that you, that you who doesn’t just fit enough to stay out here all the time or, or wanders off and leaves you, or, or maybe

If you’re droving, moving animals from one place to another, it might be short, a few metres, twenty or thirty, it might be a few minutes, it might be a few hundred yards, it might be a mile, an hour, a morning, but if you are, then there’s an attention you need, to the animals and to the space through which they’re moving, its an anticipation as much as a watching, to anticipate the animal’s movement now and now, its movement now and how it might move in another space, so space moves in that sense, it’s the space that needs to be anticipated as much as the animal, its about speed and distance but also will, if the will to do changes then the space is different space as the speed and the distance are no longer what was anticipated, a gap for instance exists at one speed but no longer exists at another speed, and indeed a gap may exist for the first animal, it is a potential, a possibility, a measurement of futurity but once the first animal has passed or if the speed of the first animal changes then the gap may or may not disappear for any other animals and the animals coming behind are in the future for the gap of the first animal so the first animal changes the future of those who come behind, changes the future of the gap, its existence, and it’s not about seeing the gaps but realizing that you may be in a gap and not realize it, it is a future you may not be aware of even as you inhabit it but you might be able to anticipate it, something that can only be seen from somewhere else, somewhen else, this call has been anticipated.

If its night where you are and its day where the other end of the call is, think about that, it’s like time travel or it’s an impossible condition. A phone call, from light into dark, can disturb the natural order of things or the natural order of things was never what you thought it was, you can’t set out to say something new, there is no place from which to set out from where that is possible, you follow a thread, a path, a word, looking, feeling, touching, stumble into a clearing and turn around and you’re in the midst of something you could never have gotten to any other way, a sentence you would never have said, a thought you would never have had, that is the lit moment of a phone call on an empty street in that slightly acidic glare, that is the glimpse on the bus off the bus of a face going somewhere you aren’t going, where does that moment exist, out in the world or in?

How connected are we, its not clear, if you answer this phone will it be intimate, what does that mean, does intimacy involve physical closeness or emotional closeness or both or is it about connection, this phone is connection, looking into someone’s eyes, fleeting, as they pass, off the bus on the bus, from the car in a queue one moving one still both moving looking in the eyes of another from yourself, really from you and meeting them there without the need to justify to explain, even to yourself, because you both know even in the instant that the bus, the car, the train, is moving, the instant lasts beyond itself. How connected are we? Have we lost the understanding of connectedness or did it never really exist, a sentimentality, or is it just impossible to hold onto, is it a place we go to briefly out of ourselves where we are strangers together, stranger together, strange togetherness, will it be intimate?

I spoke to her briefly, I said I like vanilla ice cream with coffee poured over it in the shade of a café with the air off the sea away beyond myself anonymous in the lives of others, passing, or on a moped going somewhere, anywhere for no reason, not knowing when to stop, where to stop, why to stop before the reason to stop presents itself like the end of a long long breath. Not knowing or needing to know, not doing or needing to do or doing without needing to do, in the midst of doing, like doing sitting, in the midst, air off the sea, in the midst of hours without the need to know, in the midst

How many times have you called the wrong number and gotten a telephone box? You haven’t, have you? How many times have you called and someone has answered it? No? This isn’t an accident then. This call is meant. Is there anyone else around? No! Then you are the one this call is meant for. Ridiculous? Why… because we think we can explain everything and that what we can’t explain has an explanation it’s just that we don’t know what it is yet? Our inability to see, and to speak to what we see, is a lack of imagination. We no longer question because we know so much. We know there are things we can’t know unless we have expert knowledge, unless we have knowledge, unless we know. How does a bird survive the winter? How does it know that spring will come? Why does a crow understand the logic of machines? Why would we ever think that an animal has any less feelings than ourselves? Why do people kill each other, not in rage but with calm collected intentional decision? Why do we accept that this is okay? We know how long it takes for the light from the sun to reach us and we can see the radiation back to almost the beginning of time but we cannot measure the distance inside ourselves or the constituents of wonder.

That the sun comes up, sometimes, just sometimes, makes me wonder. That the moon in the sky is a massive body of rock hanging in space and that my feet are in contact with another ball of rock hanging in the same space, hanging in an endless depth, endless endless endless depth, hanging… sometimes, just sometimes… I can explain it, I can research the physics of it and even create experiments that prove its possibility but the proof, the explanation, the knowledge, cannot explain the connected, the connectedness, the connection, the haptic, the empathy of objects, the vast between and the moon and vertigo, the under, the under under and the fear of not, of not feeling this

So the phone rings in the street, just as you are passing, it is dark, there is no one but you and a street lamp and the moon and the phone ringing   ringing   ringing, the phone call is from the moon. What is it you are afraid of? It depends