Sometimes, when I am really bored, I like to think about you. Mainly in the moments when not much is happening. When I am leant up against the kitchen bench waiting for the kettle to boil or sitting through commercials about incontinence pads that claim their miraculous feat of absorption my mind drifts to that familiar place. There you stake your claim, set up camp and inhabit the corner of my mind reserved especially for moments of nothingness.
As I pass by Mr Samson fastidiously trimming his white Azalea's or wait for the girl at the checkout with the lazy eye to ring up my loaf of bread and three apples I like to wonder what you're up to. I wonder where you are now and if you might also be buying a loaf of bread and three apples. We could be connected in that sense. Sort of like a parallel universe. Just as my loaf is waved along its invisible flight path before the scanner so is yours, travelling the space between another lazy-eyed attendant and her register in some other part of the world. It would be right then in that chordal moment that our loaves would chime together. The only difference being of course that my bread is white and yours is undoubtedly wholemeal.
You were funny like that. For someone who could drown their long day at work in a packet of the cheapest and nastiest lollies, a food I thought closely resembled hyper-coloured nuggets of rubber, you always insisted on buying wholemeal. "White bread is so processed," you would say. Having never expressed any other dietary concerns it always struck me as odd. Your diatribe sounded distinctly rehearsed. "It's a refined carbohydrate, Simon. They remove all traces of the husk and bran, bleach the flour then go and add gluten and raising agents to it to make sure it actually rises. By the time it reaches the shelves there is next to no nutritional value." You would tell me as if I was in desperate need of educating. But instead of being informative and interesting it reminded me more of a high school science teacher recently made redundant.
That was another thing I did between events; I liked to weigh up your contradictions. Just like each apple that made its movement from the counter to the scales I would mentally figure and balance them:
One. You would loudly claim the ridiculousness of religion given it was essentially based on stories and hearsay. Yet you did so over the crumpled edge of the Sunday paper having just read me your horoscope.
Two. Whenever you saw teenagers silently texting in each others company you would hold the technology responsible for a modern breakdown in communication. But anytime caller ID drew the eight lucky digits of your mother's number you would pretend not to be home.
Three. Despite your feminist values on marriage - "It's so archaic. It only reinforces outdated ideas of gender roles." - I can still recall the morning of Marc and Eva's wedding when I caught you stuffing your coat sleeves with extra wads of tissues.
It was in the lulls that I enjoyed itemising your inconsistencies. It brought a sense of order to something that was chaotic by nature. Sometimes I would rank them from most annoying to least or alphabetise them: Afraid of spiders, Bad breath in the morning, Cries over period dramas, Dry elbows, and so it went. Mentally picking and choosing their arrangements I created whole shopping lists of shortcomings. In the end though they were just like the apples. In the end the habit cost me. Everytime I sunk my teeth into your faults and chewed them over I was thinking of you and since you'd left. Nothing had tasted as sweet.
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