Dear Penny,
This is a story I wrote for you over the weekend. It’s about your three words and something I found over 3 days that reminded me of you. I hope you love your clumsy dance as much as I love watch your light and beautiful dance. To me they are the same thing.
Loyal
Impulsive
Restrained
I go for walks every morning in the increasingly less lettuce crisp air. As it warms up I cool down. My pace is slowing. My gaze as I wind through these same suburban streets, stares too long at people rise who generally rush too hard. I’m rushing myself these days. A haul into the day head first and kicking too fast against increasing torrents that pull my tired bones. It turns to a frenzy by around 10 so I make sure I wake early, and take this time. The last few days I have thought about my new friend Penny and her three words. I try to use them in my walk.
On Friday I find a tattered note, wrenched or fallen from a mother’s diary with two pages. They have 2 blurred, tattered polaroids of her toddling daughter, stuck randomlyroughly scrawled notes, writing whispers of what she sees as she sees her child grow up.
She’s methodical, controlled and yes, restrained in what she writes. She has an invisible shoulder over her and is making sure her impulses are kept in check as she writes. I place the note in the umbrella stand of the table on the street and hope she finds those words again. I hope she gives them to her daughter one day.
Saturday is the second to best early morning. Less people, less noise and I listen to the business of China and dream for a walking too fast window into my future and all it may, or may not hold. I think about Penny and her view of 3 posters. I wonder if she’s put up Space Odyssey 2001 yet? Is it too big to place for one person ? Did she stay swing dancing too long last night and watch the dawn with her friends ? Is she wrapped like a tinned kipper in bed? I turn and hurry to my note. Greedily wanting it to be there, hoping it went home to the writer. Wanting to keep it for myself. Wanting it for Penny.
It’s there! Is someone playing a game? A different table and a different spot. I relent and move it to another table. Ok.. I’ll play. And I’ll take a photo for me and for Penny. That says all three of her words. I’m loyal to the game. I’m restrained as I don’t pocket the note. I’m impulsive as I take those words and bring them into my phone to share.
I spend the day with friends and forget about it until the next morning. It’s my favourite early morning walk. I don’t always do it. Too much pain. Too many feverish nights and too many things to build and make.
Too much to make the next parts of my life make sense. I’m swift this morning. I only have one thing on my mind. Henley Beach road , the shitty Indian place. Where the fuck is that note.
Gone!
Day three of Penny’s three things and it will remain a mystery. I take a photo of restraint, my loyalty to the unknown and out of the silk sheer stocking of impulsive emptiness that clings to me.
This, a story. This is for my new friend Penny.
With Love,
Your friend like it or not, Heidi.