We watched an excellent film about the artist Francis Alys last night; the way he walks and walks reminded me of the start of a story i wrote many years ago:-
On the advice of my friend Flapjack, I closed my eyes opened my mouth and let the liquid slip coolly and darkly down my throat. I opened my eyes and opened my mouth and before any sound had the chance of escaping, Flapjack, who in fact has not been a friend for very long, was talking. Talking, except I couldn't hear what he was saying. Maybe he was speaking in one of the many languages that he made up whilst he was travelling alone, on foot, across the acres of loneliness that inhabits his heart. An hour ago I would never have imagined he could talk this much but now he was eased. Looking at me, his lips moving, his eyebrows bobbing up and down I couldn't help but laugh. He stopped. I stopped. And we starting walking. We were always walking that was what we did, just walk. It was Flapjack who inspired me to walk further than I normally did. He never wanted to go back along the same path in the opposite direction. Sometimes we'd leave by the front door of my house and come back through the the back door because even just one retraced footstep was a repeat, a familiarity. I could understand that. These days our walks lasted longer and longer. Days ran into months and I recall I have neither left by the back door nor arrived through the front door for I don't know how long now. We don't carry things with us for more than a couple of hours. Usually. But Flapjack had been carrying this phial of unidentifiable liquid with him for seven days. He'd hold it up to sunlight, dawn light, dusk light and moonlight. Each time the shade of black would be different but always, in the end, black. He didn't tell me where he'd found it and I didn't ask.
Dinda Fass 1996