I had the thought for the first time when I was a child. That summer I was about six or so, I was the daughter of two frowning adults, I still hadn’t learned to read and I had developed a habit of coercing other kids into kissing behind the school oval. On one of these days, I was sitting with Emily who was either the child of a distant family friend or a cousin, I’m not sure. We were getting each other to feel specific sections of our hair in a toss between whose hair was the silkiest. I was very busy proving my point when suddenly I had a thought and stopped to think of the thought. Emily was seeing, just as I was seeing, maybe she was even living a life as vivid and complicated as mine. I tried to imagine it but as quick as the thought came to me, it had to go.
***
I was walking down Nicholson Street yesterday with Leonard and I thought about how he was feeling the ground differently to me as he was wearing slides and I was wearing boots and then I started to think about how we both ate the same type of vegan sausage rolls with tomato sauce, but he ate it slower than me and so he probably tasted it differently to me and then I thought about how his skin is tougher and covered in more hair and maybe that makes him feel less or more and then I thought about how he exists in this world so similarly to me but we can never feel the same slight stomach pain that one of us might, or experience the same random flash of emotions and the way he thinks inside his brain is totally different to mine and the fact that he is breathing right now without even really thinking about it but maybe he had started to because I’d stopped talking and my eyes were burning from the lens that was pushing itself further and further into my mind and then Leonard had said to me – “Wanna get a coffee?” – and I stopped thinking about his slides and we walked to the café and he ordered a flat white and I got a latte.
***
I Wonder How Many People in This City
I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.
– Leonard Cohen
What frames our connection? If I put my hands out, are they held?