10,000 hours

6.30AM At the hotel since three in the morning, couldn’t sleep so we went downstairs for tea. Solid wooden furniture, as if we have phased back in time to the days of Sayers and Richardson. The midsummer theme in the breakfast version of the restaurant(?) continues with a few arcadian paintings on the walls. Strange how at this time the surroundings seem distant, We sip tea and eat some yogurt with a spoonful of muesli. It’s early enough for the deer to be wandering around the garden undisturbed. There is no noise from the outside, only the early movements of the kitchen staff preparing for the people about to appear for breakfast. She says that she wants to go up to sleep for a few hours. We hang the red sign for ‘do not disturb’ on the door, nobody will enter the room afterwards, everything is quiet, isolated, dark, strips of daylight edging the blackout curtains. Is it different reading Kluge here or at home? It makes a difference where you write, that’s certain I think ? […] We slept the morning, woke up finally around midday, we both showered and then worked through messages and information feeds, nothing important. Clean clothes. Different shoes. Gliding from one state into the next, refusing the information. It was lovely earlier, that moment of transition from sleep to rising, from sleep to waking. From the window you can see the sea, yachts and beyond them container ships, stacked high with big boxes arriving from china. The sea is covered with tourists […] The next morning she watches him dress, the sunlight from the open window on his bare legs. He pauses, hesitates, steadies himself before pulling on the trousers, on his right leg, repeats the steadying and pulls on the left leg. She has watched him pause and hesitate like this for years, decades. She is sitting on the edge of the bed in her underwear watching him dress before doing the same. Aware that she doesn’t hesitate as he does. Her sense of balance, her awareness of her body being more precise than his means that she pulls on her trousers more smoothly and without any hesitancy. He isn’t looking at her as he speaks to her about inconsequential items on the news. Thirty years? She thinks, 10,000++ times she has watched him get dressed and undressed. Over 10,000 hours, watching my oberon get dressed, I have become highly skilled in watching him get dressed, undressed, rising, sleeping, making coffee. “What are laughing at?” He asks her. As she responds, whilst doing up the buttons of the soft grey teeshirt, she tries to restrain herself from smiling too much, restraining her happiness. “We will eat Tofu stir fry with Udon noodles today, perhaps lamb hotpot tomorrow and chicken on Sunday, perhaps Imo will be at home on Sunday. “

Originally published at https://www.driftwork.work on March 11, 2021.