Femmes: Nauds Marins

I'm in the sun room on a good hash high I am.  There's a consistent waving breeze rushing through the leaves and the garden and the trees in the back on the neighbor's property, over the quaint property wall and across a field of what used to be.  Wild orchids are growing off the walk, growing thick, in the thick of it.  Out of arms reach.  Wild and free.  Free from the march of time we're all slowly marching to.  Matthew said (or was it Tom) that the poppies were the first things to start growing again after the war.  There they were after the shelling stopped and the thousands muddied by death again, growing among the dead in the war fields.

Red poppies.

I've only ever seen orange ones before, in California.

There's a frame in which holds a number of knots with white rope, nautical knots you know, like for sailing.  Each has a different name that sounds quite nautical and French, and above all of them in the frame is a title for the piece: Nauds Marins.

"Nauds marin, hmm. Oh right, knots. Quite right. Those are some knots."  Tom's British.  The way he says things sounds like they should be in an encyclopedia or a Charles Dickens novel. Someone's probably said that before about the British, but it's true.  He had a point that guy.  Anyways, Tom's a wicked sport.  Fucking excellent roommate he is, with a Manchester accent.  He's got a country way about him too, not rough or cockney, but rural and in the way that someone would be if they talked to animals a lot, which he does, his two weimaraners, Buckley, and oh hell, I don't remember her name,  the other one, the new young terror apparently.  Tortures old Buckley day and night he tells me, a true terror.  Bit his friend, bit the postman, bites anyone he's never met before, needs constant attention, bullies poor old Buckley, but what can you do.  He's a rescue.

Tom takes the two for a walk most days.  Tom used to live in London, big on the club scene, knew where to dance all night, knew who had the best uppers, the best acid, the best MDMA.  Now he lives in the north near Nottingham in a small town called Derbyshire.  I stayed by there with Claire when we went to England in the winter.  When he walks the weimaraners it's through the woods, past streams and up ancient sheep's paths, rocky green hills and old castles, and he forages for magic mushrooms.  It's a lush, sleepy timeworn land.

What a life.  He loves it, takes a comfort in the solitude.

We talk, Tom, Matthew and I like old men as we doddle through the trimmed grass and the cherry trees in the dabbled light as Tom calls it.  Good strong word, dabbled.  How very British, Tom.


Now Matthew, he's a Panamanian.

[stop]