1001 Nights Cast

Let me let you into a secret, something to hold onto like it was the truth. Sometimes I know that there are holes and I’m not really there, it’s a shadow that operates from the hip, like a western movie where the hero can shoot and kill before the hand moves.

The barndoor opens with a gliding action that tells of care. Our hero is moving through with a stride so long it comes from the waist, threatening to dislocate and thwart any idea of conquest. The ease and the dust make good companions though, and time stands still just long enough to gauge the possibilities. The road leads straight, but the buildings offer camouflage for a thousand bandits and a thousand and one friendly beds.

Hero feels like a thread that waits to be pulled, lying on the outskirts of town hoping to pick up a daydream or a sun so warm the night remembers. Shifting from one foot to another with thick white laces that feel friendly like the summer will go on forever. The skin was part of it all this melting feeling that buzzes and completes you in the picture with dry clay that promises to stick in sweaty patches and remind you of change. Intruders aren’t allowed: here the silence is too great and hums like the earth like a buzz that filters in through nostrils, sticks to the roof of the mouth and seeps down the back of the throat like a story stolen or forced.

The crunch of gravel and collapse of dirt as sneakers hit the ground are sensations as satisfying as the motion itself…Movement, evidence of movement, in between breathing, both, as there, as they become one. Our striding hero, who has, with the kicking in of the clock, realised the stupidity of overstepping her stride, now moves in steps that pay attention to the shadows. And rightly so, for her mission allows no margin for mishap, there are no rewind repeats for error here. But what of a target? That too is unclear but the movement suffices for the moment until a challenge more fitting presents itself. The silence is thick with promise though, and the sound of leather on dirt forebodes more than is dared mentioned. Fifty paces and the counting begins, somewhat erratically. A hundred and fifty-three and it starts again at the end of the street. We’re moving into no-one’s land now and maps become useless and the counting must stop, and the shadow-watching takes on a new challenge.

Moving with a step pummelled into her body like a mission unsaid, each step a reminder of history, a past too thick or complex, too overlain with context or mappings to remain simple: a fork appears in the road ahead. Again simple, not death defying, but an event nonetheless. Environment may be an event, scenery may be the only deciding factor for something that resembles choice in the dark. We step, slowly or fast, toward or away from possibility. Forks are not the only indication that something has changed/happened. A dull look in the eye or heaviness of step should be noticed but is quick to be dismissed when the going is too much of an effort.

What to do about the fork, about choice. This had to be checked.

Our striding hero sits by the side of the road. The day heading towards its midpoint and sun strikes everything with a savagery that inspires respect. The heat builds on her hair, hot to touch like an unmarked electric fence. Surface is full of surprises here, but this is only a distraction from the task at hand.

I woke up and something was missing, a hole was left in my heart. Bereft, I searched the crannies to discover what, who. I went through a list without conviction: familiar faces seemed far away but that still wasn’t it. It came slowly, the realisation, not convincing, but there nonetheless, was it me? I wondered and still do. It was the only thing that fitted or matched the hole like a child’s IQ test, an Alfred Binet test of life, of reality. It wasn’t really appropriate. You can’t test operating in the real world without testing conviction or happiness. The lack of either leaves a standard deviation too big to ignore.