Bagatelle

They're playing bagatelle, it's a made up game about making up stories;

Who are the characters ? She says.
You make one up and I'll make one up, he says.
A man with a gun, says she.
Okay, I choose a person who's come in disguise as a tree, says he.
No way ! says she - choose something like another man with another gun.
Why ? he asks.
Because it's war, she replies.
I choose a person who's wearing a tree costume, he says.
Why ? she questions.
Ingenuity, he says.
Ingenuity won't win your character this game, she says. My character's got a gun.
Ah but there's also this character with the ability to resemble a tree.
Bullets will rip through and obliterate tree costumes she says.
Is that the kind of world you're going to make up ? he asks.

There is no point in making up a world,
she says
when there's already a real world.
There's the world and there's the truth about the world.
You mean there's the truth and there's the made-up version of it.
No, the world exists and stories are made up.
And whoever makes up the story makes up the world.

Try to welcome people into the home of your story, that is, give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you'd welcome when it comes to yourself.


A slightly adapted conversation from Autumn by Ali Smith

I am well

thank you

I am well

I am well

though some time ago I was not well

but I have got better.

One expects to get better until

until one feels the grip of Death.

You can, of course, untangle you from His taloned grasp,

you can slip, so sylph-like if you are slippery like that

and shiver away from His icy clasp,

His unwelcoming embrace, but

you have this feeling

this growing feeling like a sunset, that,

one day, he will come with a warm cloak instead,

and wrap its warm and welcoming softness around your whole being

and then,

only then,

will you sink

deep and low

into the depths

of

His

cosy nest.

More Ghosts

They stare at you sometimes don't they and you, you stare back, but blankly, not understanding. Or

maybe, not feeling the need to understand, yes, that's more like it, but perhaps holding your gazes

just slightly too long for polite conversationalist situations.

Then you're asked if you know their name and you say, no, I didn't ask ( thinking that actually would

have been impolite, it wasn't that kind of situation and what is anyway )

but

but then

but then you start thinking about that somewhere,

somewhere out in the seas of your

it's not memory

is it ?



All the thoughts, the sublimated feelings that come from your physical experience here,

here

here in this world

this life

they're not memory

are they ?