Guilt is a hunter. Love is a warrior. Sorrow is a stranger. Solitude is a face glimpsed in a crowd and then gone forever. Knowledge is a ray of light in the darkness. Confusion is a twat.
I stand at the edge of the sea. I feel sad. At the edge of the sea, where the water meets the land, where the land meets the water, I stand, and experience the emotion of sadness. I listen to the gentle roar and rush of the sea, the quiet but persistent rush and roar that is the sea’s roaring rush, its rushing roar. Now I know sadness and now I know the sea. The sea, the sound, the sadness, the pebbles on the beach. How many pebbles? Impossible to count them, but I know – I know – it must be more than twelve.
“Sarah”, it seems to say, “Sarah. Sarah.” But my name is Sara. I hate that, when people get my name wrong. I tell them, it’s Sara, but they still say, “Sarah”. Really annoying. I mean, it’s not difficult, is it, to get someone’s name right? And now even the sea’s getting it wrong. Stupid sea. Perhaps, though, the fault is mine. Perhaps I do not speak the language of the sea. And it’s probably too late to learn it now. Remember how badly I did in GCSE Spanish? “Exactamundo,” as they say in Spainland.
My head throbs with the timeless conundrums of philosophy. Such as: which came first: the chicken, or the egg? The chicken. You can’t have an egg without a chicken, can you? I mean, come on, this is basic.
I close my copy of Philosophy for Dummies (my favourite book) and throw it into the sea. This act of defiance, this defiant act, this act imbued with defiance, this defiance-imbued act, it feels somehow … defiant.
So many choices to make, so many decisions. I could resign from my job, and become … what? A farmer? Why not? But what do farmers actually do? Well, obviously, they farm, hence the name. But what do they farm? Cows? Yes, yes, cows, who give us their milk, willingly. And their beef, a bit less willingly.
To farm the land, to return to first principles, to be primitive and basic, to be at the very essence of life, elemental, digging with spade and hoe, ploughing with plough and a different hoe, or the same hoe, planting seeds, shooting llamas, talking in a strange accent with a bit of grass sticking out of my mouth, or perhaps a bit of hay. Or straw. What’s the difference between hay and straw? They look exactly the same, but no doubt a true farmer knows the difference. To know the difference, to be unable to imagine a time when one did not know the difference… the difference between hay, and straw.
To know the feel of soil under one’s fingernails. Horrible, probably. To know the smell of dirt and mud and cow poo. To instinctively know the difference between cow poo and sheep poo and chicken poo and pig poo and worm poo. But to know that they are all poo. To be at one with nature. Or maybe ten past one. To know the names of trees and bushes and puddles. To be able to spot a leaf at a thousand paces. To be able to produce sustenance (food, drink, clothing, podcasts) from the very earth itself. To farm.
Or perhaps I could retire, and finally get around to writing that novel. What novel? The Philosophical Quiddity of Human Tears. One of those nice slim hardback novels with a quote on the front in big letters from someone famous saying, “Heart-achingly poignant, funny, and wise … what a wonderful book!” And on the back, there’ll be lots more quotes, from all the best people (and The Mail on Sunday). The book will feel heavy in the hand, but not too heavy, and the first paragraph will be in italics. That’s how you know the author means business.
A brief synopsis: the heroine is a philosopher, in 1953, in Cambridge. No, for God’s sake, not Cambridge. Cambridge is such a cliché. Too obvious. So, the heroine is a philosopher, in 1953, in Oxford. That’s better. At the beginning of the book, our heroine is standing on a beach, in Oxford, on the Oxford coast, looking out to sea. She’s looking out to sea but she’s also looking into herself, and she’s also looking back at the events that brought her to this point in her life and she’s looking ahead to the future and wondering if she even has a future, and whether the events of her past will shape her future – is she doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again, like mixing up “diffuse” and “defuse” or can she put her past behind her and move on, into a bright future, if she even has a future, and if she ever really ever even had a past? Or what?
Or perhaps I could go “off the grid” – just vanish, disappear, become a completely different person, maybe even get some new shoes? How wonderful, to discard forever the trivial, the meaningless, the flotsam and Jetsons, to rise above the common herd, the wretched of the earth, the kind of people who’ve never been in a Gail’s bakery, and wouldn’t know a Daunt Books tote bag if it punched them in the face. God, they make me sick. Sorry. Got a bit carried away.
There’s someone on the beach. A man with a dog. A dog with a man. Big and white and panting (the dog). The man looks at me, and then at his dog, and then at me again. The dog looks at me, and then at him, and then at me again. I look at the sky, the grey sky, hanging above me like a ceiling painted grey to look like the sky, which now hangs above me like a grey ceiling.
I hope the man and the dog go away. But what if the man goes away and leaves the dog behind? Then I will get to keep the dog. I will call it Rex. Oh, God, another cliché. No, I will not call it “Rex”. What an obvious name for a dog. Instead, I will call it “Wrecks”. That’s better. When people hear me calling for it, they will think I am saying “Rex” but I’ll actually be saying “Wrecks”. And only I will know the difference. It will be my little secret.
Eventually, the dog and the man go away, and I am left bereft. Bereft, I am left. I walk towards the pier. The old pier burned down many years ago. The new pier is due to burn down next week. Burning the Pier is an ancient British seaside tradition, celebrated throughout the land, but mainly in places that have a pier.
Now I walk the streets of this benighted seaside town. I wonder what “benighted” means. Is it the same as “bereft”? There are people everywhere, coming and going, moving hither and thither, thither and hither, wither and heather, feather and leather, at the end of their tether, to and fro, three and four, people of all shapes and sizes. Well, not all shapes. There are no triangular people. No star-shaped people. No people in the shape of Costa Rica. And not all sizes, either. There are no nine-foot-tall people. There are no people as wide as Marble Arch. But I digress. I deviate. I diverge. I drift.
There’s a homeless man begging outside Waitrose. Such a depressing sight. Why can’t he go and beg outside Aldi instead? He has a cardboard sign on which is scrawled – HOMELESS AND HUNGRY, PLEASE HELP, OR I WILL STARVE AND DIE AND IT WILL ALL BE YOUR FAULT (NO PRESSURE). I give him a pound coin, and then I have to clear my throat for ages before he gives me my change.
The sun is setting in the west, as usual. A creature of habit, the sun. It’s beginning to get cold. It’s beginning to get dark. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I find myself back at the beach. Now I remember everything, like an epiphany at the end of a short story: I am standing on a beach, I am at a crossroads, my copy of Philosophy for Dummies is somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Sadness grips me like [insert something heart-achingly poignant]. My eyes fill inexorably with the philosophical quiddity of human tears.
What is the cause of this sadness? So many things: the river of my sadness (good title for a sequel) has many tributaries. The tree of my sadness has many branches. The cutlery drawer of my sadness has many potato-peelers.
So, lots of things are making me sad, but the main thing is I’ve just remembered that in my copy of Philosophy for Dummies, my favourite book, which is now at the bottom of the sea, I was using a twenty-pound-note as a bookmark.
(c) Sally Wild, 2023Patsy Prince trained at RADA and KCL and is currently the face of National Rail but don't hold that against her. Recent film includes: The Bad Nun, Mummy Reborn and Culture Shock. Theatre includes Misfits at the Space Theatre (nominated at The Asian Media Awards) Voices from September 11th (Old Vic) and Swallows (OFS Theatre Oxford). She also co-hosted 'Open', a podcast on The Women's Radio Station. An ex-lawyer, ex-parliamentary candidate and ex-hotelier, Patsy is now excelling at being a bad wife, drinking too much gin and expanding her collection of millinery.
Sally Wild has been writing for a while, and this is the second of her stories that's had a public airing at Liars' League. She really hopes you enjoy it.
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