charlotte street into charlotte square.. first draft…

was in no, It was on a Thursday, around noon, after noon while crossing Charlotte Street heading in the direction of Charlotte Square. We were leaving the bright green field shop and restaurant. I can see us reflected in the glass, he has taken hold of my left arm with his right hand, pulling me gently back from the edge of the road. Holding me. Then taking my hand. Forcing her, me to pay attention to the world, he says at that moment holding my hand, “pay attentn to th worl, my lov…” letters, phonemes vanishing in the urgency of his speech.The noise of the crowd, the road. “love” he repeats to me, her. She focuses, wondering why his presence means that sometimes she is so distracted that she forgets the dangers of the world. She focuses, thinking that she and they need to go to the bookshop. Thinking of the phone calls she receives at at work from strange figures who believe they are authoritative in their secularism, a secular phone call announcing meaning which is impossible from their delusory infinite. For they are never as confident and sure of themselves when they sit in front of her material gaze, only when she is invisible, are they so confident. Pay attention he says, perhaps the only person who can, it is structurally inconceivable for him to not want to protect her, to not want to be with her. Just as it is impossible for me not to want to protect him. How strange it is to know this about these people on the edge of the pavement. That he almost says the same thing multiple times is reassuring, it supplies and emphasizes the meanings that the two of them hold between them. That she knows about them, about him. What doubts there must be, we ask ourselves, you ask yourself. I ask myself. For we as secular beings have no faith, instead in the refrains of our lives we sound like the music of birds, invisible and unlabelled, perhaps more like Reich than Messian, even as the pianist sits at the piano, or the violinist takes the instrument out of its brown leather case. The musicians sigh. We are walking off towards the square, people from another world, some parts of the social quake as they walk, not quite invisible as we might wish to be on the edge of of where we remain, astonished and pleased they are not seeing us…

We are crossing, distracted we watch, the traffic is intense, where does it come from, where is it going, they are moving round and through the square avoiding being struck by buses and cars, in this area its always surprising how few accidents there are, given the lack of attention everyone pays to the world, to the social. Here just as they prepare to cross the road, signals on red, half a metre from her body a police car jumping the lights, roars past almost touching her body, then he holds her. As astonishingly in this landscape as trees standing in a field. Together they cross the road, the muted rumble of stationary traffic huuuuuummnin. On the other side. Across the road, walking on the tarmac path, she is happy with certainty. She was sure that his phrases, his words had ended with the word( s) “love”… she knew that he said that. She thought that in the first thirty years of her life nobody had ever said that to her, not even an equivalent term, a synonym, only antonyms of love had been said to her. Only here in this city had anyone said those words, had felt that about her. Did her mother love her as a baby ? by the time she was five or six of course she did not. By then she was an inhuman machine to be constructed as they needed. She takes hold of his hand and they walk across charlotte square, hooking themselves together. The phrase “love” hanging in the air between them, words not spoken by chance but deliberately. The rhythm of their walking synchronized, the swaying together that is the sign of togetherness. They breathe in synchronicity. Their gait was uniform, she threw some breadcrumbs from the bright green field shop onto the grass and pigeons descended behind them.

(no no no… imagine others watching us cross the square, past the newspaper shop on the corner, between the steep dark brick walled buildings studded with small windows, so quiet here that the noise of the city fading away to almost nothing at the midpoint of the narrow street building up again as we walk together hand in hand together, as if nobody else exists. I/she/he/it sighs at the thought. Perhaps for us nobody else does exist. The words we speak are mostly lost, i imagine us speaking unintentionally, the words said are lost in the unmonitored air, they had the appearance in our small space of musical notes that could not be thought about, gentle and tame I thought, are they laughing in their careless advance southwards? I thought about us as we walked between the buildings , how long would I write that they we have been together? Are they carrying the weight of the world or is it something else I sense in our footsteps. Who are these people, I wonder looking at us in the black plate glass window we are walking past, today I think we look look so ordinary, nearly invisible,. Here they pause between the steep brick walled buildings, pointing up at one of the windows. Looking up at a window high up on the wall, gesturing pointing, a sweeping gesture. He explains that they arrested people up there for money laundering, they tried to escape through some hidden stairs that ran ran to the floor below. We can’t help but laugh at the idea of people being chased through the building by keystone cops, We must look gentle and tamed, laughing and carefree, conscious of something that an outsider cannot know or perhaps its something that is escaping us because we don’t know enough. ]

Perhaps she thought she was unburdened by the gravity of the situation, how she has lived in the unknowable reserve where she has been subjected to the silence of people surrounded (surrendered) by other people and things that could never know about her or them. Probably these people could never know anything about our lives, and the things unsaid that followed them. It could have been different she knows, they could never have become exiles or become captives if she had been offered acceptable choices. We, she thinks could have just been born and lived within her original social apparatus. And yet here she is thinking that she has been loved for years now. And here the ghost of a memory of the first time he had said that to her, or is it the first time they went shopping together for clothes and the way he’d looked at her in the lovely grey dress. Why does she like grey ? They had had had thousands of questions to ask each other then, would they answer the questions in the same way now ? Could they even ask those questions now? Thinking and talking about things that could never asked about, merely spoken of when she could speak; her teenage boyfriends, the bodies that fell. dying or dead, the austerity of her early 20s. The things they spoke of were sometimes careless mistakes. Do our hearts break into panic if we speak of our pasts too much? Were there moments of desire so hidden in their pasts that they could not share even with each other. Secrets ? He thought that there were things that could not be spoken of because to do so might mean the end of the world. We are the ones who walking through the streets, from charlotte street to the bookshop, are really the ones who watch and wait, they are the ones who watch and understand nothing. He enjoys her holding his arm, particles are exchanged, electrons, photons, charm, love and strange exchanged. We are the ones on charlotte street, between a starting point and a destination. Words are exchanged, he lives with the love of a killer. She lives receiving his love. The alternative history in which he might not have known about this, drowned in the bay, bullet holes across his body and head, a sword cut across his throat, are mere phantasies that give him nightmares, his mouth full of water not love. He is watching , waiting for a moment, their moment, thinking of going for tea, letting her, them loose from his male gaze. Not that in the here and now he can know what will happen, what could happen. Which he will do in a few hours time when he feels a familiar touch of unavoidable fear. He will be waiting for the door opening silently behind him for the rest of his life — yes-matter-where-what-who-no run, from the unnameable gesture perhaps a sigh heard before the steel crosses the room, the name of words. He thinks there are no consecrated places, that those who believe there are such things are lost. He sits on the sofa with her, they are watching a korean drama in which the relations of social and political corruption are drawn out between capital, aristocracy, misogyny and buddhism, modest perhaps but not accidental. To see such a thing after, during their lives is something drawn out by lines of fate. Without it they would not be walking down the narrow curved road with the high brick buildings. He can see the oxford street that is at the end of this one and which they will cross.

Perhaps she thought, you said that you loved me in charlotte street by accident, it slipped out, a single statement that refers back to our history. We say these things casually, we have said them for years and years, so that now the meaning has almost vanished, the expectation gone. She thinks that the coming of the words, is like the coming of the body, uncertain, another spacetime, another planet in which millions and millions of people say these words to one another in the vain hope that they will make some exchange, that they are order-words. She almost wishes that it was the first time he had said these words, the first time he had confessed his love for her. Did the everydayness concern her ? She showed nothing of this on her face on her body. His version of this was all innocence, what his face maintained as if there was no delusion involved in the walking from charlotte street. We walk across the road, pass along the pavement. We see ourselves walking as if the street is empty, we walk and talk about something, something. What words can she say as they turn left and begin the final approach to the bookshop, if she says “my love” is that too much ? Is the love too much ? does it assume ownership ? a presumption that a killer like her can only make very cautiously, too much could frighten him. She laughs at the thought. Though he thinks that they are a ‘we’ together for love and necessity, she is, he knows someone who torments herself over this, over them. She delights in her self-torment. Is there anything else that really scares her outside of them ? A bookshop is, as Jorge Carrion said, a condensed version of the world. It’s not a flight path, but rather the corridor between bookshelves that unites their beings, me and him, she thinks, as they enter the bookshop she wants to make the declaration, to declare her ownership, or more precisely to admit that he owns her. He has not a single doubt that he knows she owns him, and smiles across the floor. Did he want to be the owner of her heart, as she owns his? It is a Thursday in autumn. All spacetime is before them. Could this be the last time they ever exchanged such a phrase? Neither of them can imagine such a thing, unless the people walking towards them are about to attack. She releases his arm and prepares. They walk past them towards the information desk. You said it earlier, perhaps you should say it again, one last time. Up the stairs in the philosophy department she leans close to him and whispers something in his ear. Her arm holding his neck. Me too he says, always and forever, I think.. She loves the space at the end of his reply “I think…” That hesitancy is their sanity in this insane world she thinks, his woman thinks. She turns and begins to search the shelves She was never afraid of any of the forms of relational violence, the violence of possession, predatory violence, the violence of becoming apart, the violence of lies whether deliberate or accidental. She looks for books on violence and love by women and ends up with books on Whitehead, sovereignty and some books on empire. He is buying strange interrogations of the law and nomadism…

Neither had betrayed the other at least since Tokyo-exe, the we had become their proper name. The becoming we of them. The collective rather than the individual, the one. Not “my love” or something else that implied singularity, but the small collective we of a war machine. A retired woman and a man always willing to carry her bag (). If she considered anything to be her host country, it is standing near him whilst he and she selected books to buy and read, being in exile was bearable, liveable because of this feeling of being wanted. Her friend had asked her what it was that kept her with him? The problem he solves, she told her, is that I have a need to talk, in order to talk i need him to be around, I can either speak with him or if I choose, I need not say anything in order to speak, nobody did that before. They carry the selection of philosophy books, some newly published some not, in a plastic carrier, they go to the fiction and literature mezzannie floor. Down the stairs. He adds a couple of displayed books on the stairwell to the carrier. Now they are passing the science fiction shelves heading towards the Z end of literature. Shelves of books that will vanish to be forgotten. He talks about the becoming forgotten of literature he’s read… The place in spacetime that is source of language, words and phrases. Could another event like them exist if one of them vanished, became dead. What would becoming dead mean ? Perhaps this would be an implausible thing if the event was not discussing books they were thinking of buying… the event of love standing close beside one another as they inspected the spines and the covers of books. (the titles and the names of books bought is irrelevant it turns out) Later he will always think of the things they said on this thursday, on this day when nothing happened but them speaking, them being alone, them eating lunch, walking and buying books. He could never speak about why he loved the memory of that day.

What then did they think of this Thursday later, much later, they are still in London, still in exile, she from her Tokyo home and family, him in voluntary exile from London with her. He can no longer be thought of as a member of the Repressive or ideological state apparatuses, she is not sure that she even remembers what it was like to be a criminal. Their alliance, their war machine, began in Tokyo, became concrete in London. She remembers hearing him say “love” she remembers replying in his ear, them pretending that they were normal people as they selected and bought, books and eventually something to drink, a piece of cake. Today later, their children have come with them to go shopping and eat cakes in soho. Laughter, questions, happiness. Ignoring the watchers who appear to watch and report. They still have people following them, they pretend they are alone. Not because of the failings of the apparatuses of memory, but because moments of paradise and happiness should be remembered and the repression that followed them should be ignored. She thinks that her memories of that early Thursday begin to be like a dream, a little fragile as their lives were back then. The bookshop is still there, all the people have changed, the books…. They still go to the bookshop, just as they go to others. They cannot lament the end of youth, instead they approach their alliance with a sense of wonder — all the signs in the world cannot make them forget how dangerous the the the first years of their life together was. Sometimes when she practices crane kicks in the garden, balancing with balletic grace on a post, on a bench, she wonders if she/he/we were always just noise disrupting the line. It is not the words but the commas, spaces and full stops that indicated the line of flight they would have to follow together. We are made of many lines she thinks. It is as if they were aliens who had to work out how to live on a planet of irrational beings, they stand upright in a crowd ears open listening to the world […] He cannot (possibly) take the risk of challenging their alliance. Others might call him fearful, but what could he do ? he cannot return to the moment when she whispered in his ear. There is no time, merely spacetime for both of them. There are different events and places. Places which they can never return to, places which they can only remember with the happiness of those who cannot believe. The places they can never return to frequently contain memories of extreme violence, bodies of others lying unmoving on the ground whilst they run. These are places which should have a great intensity of meaning, except perhaps they don’t because they have lived through every attack because of the collective ‘we’ they live within. The places they can return to have softer memories, of things they can believe in. Charlotte Street to the bookshop is an event of its own, it wants to be spoken of, and is embodied in the flesh of their daughter.

Or perhaps you can only say such things, love, we, becoming, together — in a non-place, between coastlines, near a river, in the moment before you move forward and open the door of vehicles, before you get home to the bed, the sofa, the post-exoticism of the cloth covered table in the library, that rucks beneath your… or even (perhaps)as the car moves forward you are looking at the romantic street name in a language you do not understand. Or again, its the anxious way (sure it was anxious) that he grabbed her on charlotte street to pull her back from the traffic, how would he have felt if she had fallen under the wheels of the traffic, vanished forever. Would his love have faded quickly in the emptiness as his innate responsibility kicked into gear? Not like the ending in 10.30 on a Summers Night, one of regret and boredom, but one of regret and horror, nobody could read this and find it believable for it seems unknowable, irrational. Let’s say and accept instead that he would adapt and work hard at achieving some new state of equilibrium. At that time on charlotte street she knows that his friend jess would have invaded his life and rescued him, an unstoppable invading force. This would have begun a few seconds after her death in those days. In the spacetime of a piece of punctuation in a sentence. Other people got to speak of their love for others in cafes in Seattle, or a Japanese tea room, a cafe in Seoul. Or some Japanese patisserie on the Finchley Road. Seated on sofas, side by side or across low tables whilst looking at the menus written in colored chalk on blackboards. She, he, they could think of many examples of such scenes in books, movies and images, taking place in non-places. Unlike for them where the scene takes place in very particular place. We spoke and confessed on a street, in a bookshop, that became our mantra. She thinks they walk along a path called truth, maintaining a fidelity to the truth of what was said during the events. She knows she has walked this many many times now actually and in memory, her heart holding onto him and then, them. The spacetime the comma holds.

They might imagine a few years of happiness before its withdrawn, or imagine the unimaginable length of time that being young offers you, fifty years or eighty years. Time like that is irreversible, like their exile itself, the unidirectional arrow of time plays its essential part in these things. on one side of the path they walk. over their people are running along it. So he, he is in his office struggling through some report or other, deciding whether to destroy the subject or not. The report could almost be a novel. written in a realistic style. This space is enclosed within the building, an artificial cave in the building. She imagines his feet on the desk, his feet on the floor reading, occasionally writing annotation on the lined pages. She is walking round the cave, looking in at him. She walks along the path of fidelity to their truth, unable to imagine leaving. The only support they can rely on is each other. They remain, they will remain, careful in the face of the ever present surveillance. The day will end soon, they will travel home, it’s not the end of time but a pause. a pause. Neither of them has packed a bag, neither of them is planning on vanishing into the night, a gun hidden on their body, a pen in their pocket. Instead they will eat miso soup, with udon noodles and with a fillet of halibut. Their children fed on pasta with a tomato and cheese sauce at their request. They speak of producing time, what did you do today ? Read, work, speak, record, they speak of walking. She wonders as her children watch television what it would be like to be able to see her mother. To not be in exile. Time is irreversible…