treasures by sonja berlin-jones

It's been so long since I last used my car and this morning I thought I'd better check if it still worked. I hope I will never feel like that again. So strangely free. Some slow urgh urgh urghs when I turned the key but when she realised I was serious she hotted up and sparked and we were off - oh to drive down the misery of the M27 in the -1degreesC of that English bland weekday morning. Today. I went to Chichester. Parked in the Tesco car park right by the first roundabout and that gives me three hours. Anything that takes longer than three hours is awful - it is why I have never been abroad - my dream is to visit Tokyo for 30 minutes, New York for 20 minutes, Cairo for sixteen minutes, glance out the window at India as the pilot plays good music for drunks at 40,000 feet.

There - that'd be me done - I'd be normal at last - no longer the one weirdo in the room who never holidays. Chichester was in a bad mood and it put me into a good mood, my way of retaliating. I bought a book about Wyndham Lewis in Kim's Bookshop, then went to the Pallant Gallery to see their exhibition of Art influenced by Sussex. I joined a tour. 11am. 40 minutes. Lydia was our guide. Young-ish and cheerful, she had a battle on her hands trying to inject any sign of life into the bodies before her or the art behind her.

I could see why the young hate the old - if they do - and they ought to.
Yes I like Ravilious and I like Constable more and more as he is no longer seen as naff, and I don't like Turner, and none of the modern stuff did much for me, there were a few Bloomsburies and I must admit I've always thought Vanessa Bell was a fraud, but behind Lydia's white dress and up beside Duncan Grant and Roger Fry or whoever she was beside she really did outshine them all - the "badness" no longer looked bad, it looked almost modern - a soft timid English version of modern, nothing like the harder version that was in my Wyndham Lewis book. And even he was nothing like America or Europe.

Then to Oxfam Books. Then back and into Tesco itself for gum. When I'm asked how I keep my weight down (harder than losing it in the first place) I tell them that for anyone wavering the secrets are gum and diet Coke. Eating is just a habit we have out of boredom, modern life proving so empty. Gum gives you something to turn to. Diet Coke can give a feeling of fullness.

But today I realised that I am talking out loud to myself much more than ever. But I'm not talking to myself at all. I am talking to the world - occasionally loud enough to be heard. I ask the passers which of them are truly alive - I really do - some hear me, none have so far replied - I don't know if any ever will. I am just the town's mad person, whichever town I'm in.

I am sure to get louder and more direct. Oh I do hope there are some people out there who are alive, who are thinking about what they are doing, and doing the things they love - really really love. I'm now totally baffled by who's on strike from day to day. I know the nurses will be having their strike days soon. If I was a nurse I'd be on strike already. I just don't believe there are many people who are worth saving. Why is the state trying to bring people back to life ? - when they have no life ? - when they can't even answer me as I ask them in the street if they are alive.

One of my exes, who was very worried when she saw how much weight I'd lost and thought I was dying, now accepts that I might not be so unhealthy after all - physically - but she does now worry about my supposedly "cynical" attitude to everyone around me - she thinks I'm depressed. But she thought I was ill, and I was merely in the minority of people at a healthy weight. And I am not depressed. I'm merely pained at how this country's people have allowed themselves to be defeated and depressed, becoming ruder, stupider, more impatient to get to the nowhere they feel they need to reach just because it's not here.

You know that dream/nightmare we've all always had - the one about waking up one day and finding the world totally empty of other people. Well I've woken up into a version of that world - but a brilliant version. The people haven't all vanished. Their bodes are still there, still moving, still doing all the things to keep the system going - I don't have to worry about eking out the last few tin cans till they disintegrate and finding the final car that will still start - the bodies will keep these things working till long after I am gone. But none of them are alive. They've been programmed to keep the system going. I should love them for it. But I don't love anything much. It's not depression or emptiness I feel, it's just what comes after all the exasperation calms down to these quiet days of small events.

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recorded this afternoon, photo antique shop window down West Street in Chichester this morning