Bags of sorts

jeudi, le 10 septembre 2009

When I was at university we went through a riddle phase, as wanna be intellectuals do. Tonight I recalled: ‘A man lies in a field with a bag of sorts next to him. The man is dead. What happened to him?’

Tonight I feel out of sorts. I cannot actually recall when last in my life I felt this out of sorts. It’s a very different feeling to feeling happy or unhappy, to hurting or not hurting

It’s not an emotion, it’s a feeling that runs through my body with nowhere to settle. It doesn’t stop in the pit of my stomach or get a hold on my heart and none of the paths in my brain leads to a place it can nestle.

Even The Princess was out of sorts tonight. She barked at the parking attendant when we arrived at the shop, she barked and ran after a dog that walked went past in the street, she barked at people walking by on the pavement and she even barked at the odd customer that came into the shop. This is not like her at all. She usually lies regally on her Ottoman, fast asleep.

Did she sense that I was out of sorts or did I pick up from her to be out of sorts?

Tonight was the last night that I put an appearance in at my shop. I don’t go over weekends and on Sunday I hand over the keys. My friend, the World Traveler, came by for a drink or more. In the days when we opened the shop, he always joked that he would drink the shop profitable. In those days he drank more Long Island Iced Teas than his body could hold. Now he drinks more whiskeys than his body can hold. In a strange way it was befitting that he was there.

His presence was neither comforting nor uncomfortable. There was a strange assortment of people in the shop. None that I cared for. None that impacted on my decision.

But now The Princess and I are back home. And I feel strangely unsettled and I do not know why.

(Even I will admit that I got a bit carried away shopping in New York. But there really wasn’t much else to do. And sitting naked surrounded by bags of sorts, all I managed was to incur the wrath of L’homme. And after all these years I still do not know what to do to gain his acceptance.)