How did I get here from there?

Scan, copy, encase in plastic to be everlasting. If they can do 3D printing to such details, can they do us? Would I leave behind a laminated presence in a descendant’s home? Who would pass me down generations? But the story here is with me – this could be what April’s novel is about – a relic of the 21^st century. Reminds me of Robin Williams and the Millennial Man film. If I worked a novel in April it might be a tale 50yrs in the future and the 3D personage had been separated from family. A young descendant meets it in a cat café where it sits in a corner with at least one cat somewhere about its person. How did they discover the copy of their great grandmother? Would have to look very like someone they know and love… and after some questions to the owner, it’s mentioned that there’s a label engraved into the sole of its feet, which are encased in crocheted slippers. The model isn’t of an elderly woman but her 30yrs earlier; she’d been involved in a photo-session for a new concept. Also on the walls, high up and on the ceiling of the café, there are birds who captivate the cats at times… a cuckoo clock, and tiny fairy doors in the skirting boards.

This morning I was given such a compliment… that I was Lovely, always so co-ordinated, by a woman who must have a routine on a Tuesday morning. She had a beautifully friendly face that sparkled with reflections of traffic on her glasses. My age perhaps, and also merry in this perplexing racist time where war is ever hovering. It’s that nod, the recognition – I’ll name that song in two notes… the movement into its rhythm (unless we’re talking punk rock, though why would you?) until you’re carried away through the meaning of life from that time and counting down the years to those days when the world was full of your choices. You could dance on and on, putting care in a drawer to be read and managed later. Now is later and the music is still working, catching you napping but pushing an action down your pipes to blow you away. A new band called Arcade Fire sent me back with The Kinks, a flit, flutterby into purple velvet bellbottoms.

Sunshine has pushed itself to the front and breakfast is settling nicely. Two cats are well into their Sunday grooming in the shade; they can’t see their parts in my opera. My head is rambling, searching for stories I heard last night but the threads are slipping out of mind, out of time. Something gold catches my eye; it’s flying, snatching notice, paying attention; see the scales reflect the light? I’m ordered – Don’t forget to choose, look left, right before the current pulls you down its path. The kitchen hums, lies back in its own kind of silence, all doors open, the only traffic are languorous cats passing through, unmindful of me.

Dallying with digital manipulation, gambling with art and magical effects to feel the rush of satisfaction at free tools to stimulate tone, display feathers like a peacock. Look what I did to turn a brick wall into an artefact worth a gasp!