2019 (ongoing) → Lauren Böhm
In 2018 I found over 200 colour positive slides from the 1970s abandoned in a car park in Vienna. They mostly depicted the same woman, the muse of a individual hidden behind the camera lens.
The woman inspired a series of stories which traverse time, space and protagonists - I imagine her soul and her observers being inseparable throughout space & time a nod to the enchanting notion of destiny. These images set into motion an ongoing written piece entitled “Your Lifeline Has Many Forks” at the bottom of this page you will find more.
Your Lifeline Has Many Forks
I.
It’s a sublime afternoon, the sun is shining over the balmiest day of the while. I’m sitting in our backyard watching her try her hat(s) at gardening. Our garden is a good size, filled with potted plants and higgled stone paths albeit not quite higgled enough. An hour ago her hands cautiously caressed the damp soil - she is planting carrots, 13 of them, she has no fear of superstition, but who she thinks will eat all these carrots I don’t know. Her fingernails are now broken, the summits of her knuckles stand out like the age-naming-circles within a tree. Stained dunklerot by the Earth, she punches the roots into darkness.
We live at the edge of town. Beyond our low wire fence, nature lollops as far as one can see. The land glistens amber, green, cultivated, intertwined, ragged, pristine then yellow, blue all the way to the sea. We see majestic deer sometimes wandering the foot of our garden. I often tell Lauren if she were an animal she would be a doe. Both nimble and elegant yet skittish like a follie. She has a permanent fear of the jack-in-the-box, suddenness does not cooperate with her. Her hair is doe. Today she is wearing a headscarf of intricate design and neutral tones, but the tentacles have sought escape. A warm and gentle breeze blows through the air. I watch as it entangles the soft curls of her head, it lifts them up and down as if it were twirling the follicular extensions by hand, preserving the longevity of her curl. Nature’s very own hair rollers. I take a drag of my King’s cigarette, all the way from Denmark it has travelled. Yet it plonks me back in my chair, my support, form, reality, space, space-time directly before the arrow of time.
I should really be enjoying this lovely afternoon and I was before the weight of excessive tar pulled me down-present like a led balloon. I’m expecting the monthly call from mother, and until she does telephone expectation lingers rather like clockwork oh she and I. When she telephones, when she’s in person, or penned by her hand she’s always riling about something. For the past few weeks she has been vexed at Papa for dying, she seems to think he had some sort of choice in the matter. I’m not being overtly insensitive either he passed five years ago and it’s only recently she has acquired this accusatory attitude. A stubborn cow who thinks she is going to cheat death by choice. The telephone rings. Lauren looks at me, mischievous eyes, she finds my contempt rather amusing
So here I am on the phone to my mother. It’s one of those conversations one can um and ah and oh-yes their way through for the noise is not seeking quip. It surges through the wires and for a whole ten minutes I stare at myself in the mirror at the end of the hallway, phone press-balanced between my ear and shoulder. I trace the contours of my breast bone and the curve of my lofting belly, it seems the angularity of men diminishes to softness with age. And I have concluded: age has been terribly unkind to me.
Eventually mother said goodbye - good riddance. I pour two bourbons, one ice cube in mine and three in hers. I’m back in the garden, but Lauren isn’t there, she must have gone inside. Her shoes are discarded carelessly, the trowel upright like a monolith for the ants piercing the reddened earth. I sit down and - but she would have walked past me - sip my drink - the car is still here - I light up another cigarette - she must be in the garage.
-
My eyesight lingers lazily on the garden-horizon, it certainly isn’t what it used to be. I stare at the hedge lost in a reverie of vision, foresight, knowledge and age, at least that’s what I tell myself. I’m sharp again as I cast my eyes into the view but something catches me, a nagging in the corner of my left on the other side of the hedge-fence. I lift myself from my seat and take the second higgled path from the right to the bottom of the garden. It is her scarf, caught by a rose in the breeze. Reaching forward I disentangle the delicate material from the grasp of the roses’ fine claws. Holding it close to my eyes I inspect its delicately decorated surface. The colours shine like a doe’s coat who gorged on sweet-ripe fruit the previous morning.
II.
I drive up the long road. It is a blah driveway for a beautiful home. The late afternoon sunshine glistens the wet road with blinding diamonds. The trees all but clutch onto the last of their leaves. Side by side against the dramatic rain clouds billowing above, the orange hues of autumn never looked so orange. Winter is on the horizon.
I am in, on, at the end of the driveway. Tyres crack on the gravel, the car stopped. I gaze in the review mirror, catching only the crows feet that have accumulated around the corners of my eyes. I can’t help thinking how unkind age has been to me but self loathing thoughts aside, she is already here, perched like a robin by the front door. She is pretty, adorned with ivy. Most of the house has also given refuge to the plant. When I get close I see she is wearing a golden necklace. It dances like a mirror ball in the light. For the life of me, I struggle on her name, I’ve always been terrible with names, she greets me with a big smile - on second thoughts perhaps too big. The house is old and needs work but its brutal state lingers in my comprehension. The ivy winds its way around the outside like a cocoon. Protected. I will be safe here - the current owners are about to fill the basement, she tells me.
Through the door she takes off her red shoes - high heels so I assume she’s uncomfortable but she says the owners insist. I don’t want to, I have holes in my socks perfectly inscribed above the middle toes, the toe vision of a finger flip off. I wonder if they are taking their carpets with them. There are bees inside the house, unusual because it’s cold. Shelley will make me kill them.
I like bees - nature wouldn’t be as we knew it without them. Little bits of yellow and black zoom past my ears. There are even more in the kitchen, she stays in the corridor claiming an allergy to their sting. Not that I can particularly enter the room either, the kitchen sits above the basement, a gaping hole in the floor with thin wooden beams - for tightrope riders only. She explains that the hive is nearby - the owners are neutralising them.I guess one less job for me.
The property sits alone on top of a hill overlooking the town. Its isolation acts like the do not disturb sign on a hotel room door or the loosely strung sock, hat, underpant, amulet, necklace the universals signs of intimacy. I want this house. I want this town, a new town, new people, new asphalt, new atmosphere. Shelley and I can truly be together here, quality time. I can see Lola and Ryan making havoc amongst the trees; at the bottom of the garden if I squint my crows feet tighter and tighter, there is a gnarly tree apt for a treehouse. We’ve never spoken about having children but that’s probably because we have never been truly alone.
Before the front door once more, I slowly reattached my shoes to my feet, she stands perfectly poised with her slip ons, was that...did I discern the smallest of foot taps? She locks the door, we say goodbye. I walk back to my car, the sunshine has ceased, the evening is upon and the sky all a-gray. I get in the car and as I put the car in reverse I watch her through the rearview mirror kick her shoes off and go back inside the house once more.
III.
Dreaming of the celestial, spherical daylight twangs at the corner of my eyes, falling, soaring I land on a soft pillow, beep beep beep beep beep. Velvet tentacles wrap themselves around my ankles and tug at my legs, harder and harder. Next thing I’m being dragged from the bed by my feet and she’s screaming at me for waking her up. I dosily explain to her that I had to sleep somewhere, I’m not a couch guy. Morning haze, sleepy dust, blocked nose, dry eyes but somehow I end dressed, sat in the front seat of the car, phone pressed to my ear - she’s watching me from the front door, I watch her through the rearview mirror kick her shoes off and go back inside the house once more - on the phone, another day, another body.
I’m sitting at the drive thru waiting. It ain’t even open yet, it’s too damn early for this shit. It’s cold this morning, the coldest day so far, my breath gathers into temporal bursts of cloud in the low light, my hands are stuffed under my armpits and I’m gently shaking to the beat of the cold.
I order two coffees and a muffin. It takes too long. This is supposed to be fast food.
I drive up the road to the outskirts of town, the others are already here. I get out the car, the place is an icy mess. I sip my second and still steaming coffee and pass under the tape. Morning, morning. There used to be a big house here, it’s still here just in bits and pieces. When I was a kid an old couple lived here, my mum used to buy her soap: Shelley’s Homemade Lavender and Honey Soap. For a moment I swear I can smell lavender and honey, but the memory fades. The house has been empty for years, since they died. From what I heard a Mr. Money Pots recently bought the land. He’s probably building a doomsday bunker, all the rage these days.
Over here chief, I carefully pick my way through the rubble, a door handle, a lintel, a power socket, the shattered memories of all the souls who lived here. I look up, God never let me live long enough to see my own home demolished. And there it is, there she is. Exactly as described on the tendrils of that ungodly telephone call that I have no recollection of answering this disgusting morning. Amongst the disintegrating boulders of elephant grey cement, there she is. Her mangled bones splayed in a shroud of dusty red. Only her clothes and bones remain, the flesh long absorbed by inanimate concrete. I get the strangest feeling, she is finally free watching us, thanking us for this release. I get closer, and hanging between her ribs, where her heart once sat is a golden necklace with a ‘H’ inscribed on the back. That’s her, we have been looking, everyone has been looking. Mr Money Pots won’t be building his bunker for some time.