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Garden Post-Dusk, Birds Above, In Another Life

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 10:37:17

Wed, 11 Nov 2025 21:12:41

hello reader,

...

He was cast as the guy who gets picked up and thrown out of the poker game to set the scene before the main characters arrive. Out of Real London and into real London, a discarded prop, at this party, chatting to me.

you know who you are. no more time, not like

1

it holds me to something (you, now). I love editing!

I'm sat out the front of a cafe in Hatton Garden. I've just eaten a brie and bacon panini, and I'm rolling a cigarette. Feeling very London. An old man comes up to me and asks for a roll-up. I oblige.

Actual born-Londoners aren't LARPing like this, they sold their shite family home for a million pounds and moved to Malaga years ago. They have their culture and they've taken it elsewhere.

Rain, starting

Above and in front two birds are darting in and out of a tree. Sometimes they collide to fight or maybe mate, but I can't really make it out in the low light. It's just after

dusk

Like the tide, it comes in and it washes over the beach. It's beautiful. But like the tide it goes out, sometimes it goes out further than it ever has, it recedes back across the beach and further out beyond the horizon. The bare seabed opens up in front of you and all you can do is look at it.

not their contents

1. Lift and confinement – The crowded, immovable lift represents feeling trapped or constrained in real life, either by social expectations, relationships, or internal emotions. The inability to speak in front of others suggests suppressed feelings or fear of judgment.
2. Unexpected confession – The girl saying “I think I might love you” could symbolize longing for connection or recognition. It may reflect unacknowledged desires, vulnerability, or anxiety about intimacy.
3. Forest and snow – The transition to a snowy forest signals escape into the subconscious, a place of solitude, reflection, and emotional processing. Snow often represents purity, stillness, or emotional coldness, while dusk points to transition or uncertainty.
4. The fox – Foxes are traditionally symbols of cunning, intuition, and guidance, but here it’s more ethereal: its bites are gentle yet noticeable, suggesting a confrontation with subtle truths, small regrets, or lessons that must be acknowledged. The unspoken apology indicates things left unresolved or feelings that cannot be expressed.
5. Death or dissolution – Dying in the dream often doesn’t mean literal death; it represents transformation, the end of a phase, or surrendering control. It can indicate letting go of fear, old habits, or emotional blockages.

After I get away from the old racist failed actor, I go to see my Korean colleague. He's just arrived in London and I want to see how he's handling the party. We'd been invited as fresh meat for some of the older, gayer attendees. We aren't aware of that.

As we're stood there I notice a middle-aged woman staring at us across the room. I'm trying to catch her gaze, but its kind of vacant. I guess she sees me looking and considers it to be an invitation. She floats over to us in this strange dazed way, and on the approach I realise she's staring at (through?) my Korean colleague / fresh meat. She's saying wow, wow, wow. She seems genuinely so delighted, so shocked, so elated.

i hadn't considered this pedagogically or as a kind of personal knowledge management system (puke) at all but i suppose it is both of those things

I'm getting bored and he can tell, so he shifts the topic towards me. He tells me he'd spotted me chatting to a girl earlier, a black girl, and asks what I thought of her, if I liked her. I mimed affirmatively.

I catch him on his way to the bar, telling him about this old racist failed actor that I'm avoiding. That I'm failing to confront. I get the sense he's avoiding people too. We get our drinks and find a corner. We chat for a bit. He's managing just fine.