I wander the town, terrified to eat, confused, lost, unhappy. Wouldn’t it be nice to be someone else? Isn’t this the reason we welcome others into our lives? So that, for a time, in their presence we might be someone else, someone enlivened, made whole by their proximity. What am I like this? A ghost? It’s all the same, don’t we just cease to exist in isolation, just drifting into void and absence?
A couple argues. From a distance a bag is kicked, then shortly collected and cradled, somewhat shamefully. She loves him, she says as much, but she needs him to come with her. She wants to leave, perhaps this display, this argument isn’t even about them, but some terror manifesting, expressed in the crudities of a couple’s spat. There is a deeper need. She wishes to escape Folkestone, escape this shit hole. Don’t we all. Movement, the traversal of space, a journey to somewhere new, a pilgrimage to whatever promised land of dreams might quench that thirst, numb the aching nothingness that threatens to consume. On my return, they can be seen playing with a dog, joyfully, abandoned. Lost as the present wipes history away, obviating the past.
The sea laps against a peculiar rock, the sun is setting. I’ll find somewhere to drink.