The (more-or-less) imminent meeting of L and I has, understandably, been occupying the thoughts of the two of us in recent days and weeks.
We spoke the other night about the possible scenarios which might unfold when she alights the train, and I mentioned that it was a not dissimilar enumeration to Raymond Queneau's diversionary - yet profound - Exercises In Style, where the same scene is described in 99 different ways. In this instance, though, the two of us were finding 99 ways to punctuate the same scene with subtle differences, graduating towards infinitely different.
You can never step twice into the same river. On this occasion, the train doors open half-a-second earlier than they would have done in previous copies of our scenario, thus taking me completely by surprise, and meaning that the first impression L ever has is a look of powerless astonishment.
I earlier described to her how she might be sworn at by a team of jugglers who spit out their irritation at one of their group falling over her and spilling their consignment of balls, as I rush naked down the platform with an array of irrelevant signs written on pieces of card: one reading 'BLANCMANGE!' another 'IT'S RAINING CHIPBOARD!'
Somewhere between the banal and the absurd lies the one true description of the moment L alights from the train. I ask myself tonight how well-prepared the human mind is for the separating-out of a billion possibilities, or a trillion, and the realisation of one and only one.
I contend that we are adept at dreaming, or at dealing with reality, but we struggle at the discontinuity where that which is dreamed of becomes real. It takes time for the brain to process that its dream-states are now its real ones. This is the machine that I alluded to before, carrying out calculations outside of itself. They are met with incredulity.
For months, I have thought of L. Now, as the days to her arrival tick down, I don't know what to do with myself. The calculator observes itself with a detached wonder.
