On the train to Bristol, the clouds are rolling and heavy.  A dark gray low over the muted browns and greens.  I stare through the window through my left eye, looking through my own reflection until the doubled ghosts meet and become more solid.  In front of me, hovering alone over the landscape, are two sullen eyes staring straight back.  I think of the projected eye in Boorman’s silly film Zardoz, or how in one Talking Heads video a large, blinking eye is projected onto the side of a suburban house.  My two left eyes seem dull, unnaturally still but with an imposing presence in their corporeal appearance.  I quickly shake my head and let the illusion pass.

The queue for the post office at the back of the shop is surprisingly short today.  In a few minutes I am at the window.

‘I just need to send this to the U.S.,’ placing the yellow envelope on the scale on the counter.  It weighs 0.333g.

‘That’ll be one pound twenty.’

‘How much is it to register the envelope?  Is it even worth it to the States?’

‘Well, what’s inside?  How important is it?’

‘It’s a ballot, just something I want to definitely get there.’

‘It’s three pounds twenty extra.  It means someone will sign for it when it arrives.’

‘Alright.’

He walks away, stamps the postage on a large, square box, lifts it and places it on the floor, and walks further back.  He gets a new packet, presumably full of the small forms for registered packages.  He comes back towards the window a few minutes later.

‘Pass the letter through to me.’

I slip it in the narrow window underpass.

He puts his left index finger on the envelope address and begins typing.  I watch his finger, thinking at first he’s entering the final part of the address: DeKalb.  But that doesn’t fit.  He starts another word: M-E-M-orial.

‘It’s a really tight race between those two guys isn’t it?’

The envelope does say ‘Election Mail’ on it quite large.

‘Yeah it is close, it’s crazy.’

‘But it’s not like in previous years, neither of them are someone you can tell will definitely be a strong leader.  You don’t know who will come forward.’

I shrug self-consciously, it doesn’t feel like me.  ‘What about a few years ago?  Bush and Gore were more of two bad choices, both very boring.’

‘Yes, yes, but before that, there was always one person you could tell it strong, who will win.  It’s not like then, the American people have….no choice.’ He laughs at his own little ironic turn of phrase.

‘Yeah, it’s a funny one,’ I add lamely.  That’s been my stock ‘anyway’ phrase recently.  I don’t feel up for committing who I voted for, that I think either way it will be a change, and despite all the hype and rhetoric I guess I do believe Obama will be a good step.  He continues in silence, then doesn’t even look me in the eyes when he hands my receipt through.  I thank him and leave.

Wind and rain swirl the house, we decide it’s a day to watch a video.  By the time I cycle out it is only overcast and blustering, and I enjoy being on my bike for those fifteen minutes.  Coming up to the film shop, though, I remember where I left my lock key.  I pull up all the same, and ponder just leaving my bike out the front.  People do it in Dublin even all the time, I know I’ve seen it here, and I half trust Stoke Newington.  But I know I’d try to keep one eye out the window in vain – just to see it roll off- while I go through the trial of video hunting.

Two guys pull up on bikes.

‘Are you going in there for a minute?’  I jerk my thumb towards the video shop, holding a heavy U-lock in my other hand.

‘Yeah.’

‘Any chance I could lock my bike to yours?  I just realized I forgot my keys.’

‘Sure no problem.’

‘You’d like to trust the neighborhood, but you never know.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

Their two bikes lean against the black shop front, and the taller guy starts wrapping a thick chain around their frames.  Just as he almost locks the two he remembers, and lets me put my own bike on top of theirs.

‘Thanks a million.’

I pause to go in the shop for a second, waiting for them to finish as the second guy adds his own lock to the trio.  I feel we’re on a mutual expedition now, maybe I should ask what we’re all going to watch.  I follow one of them in, mumbling my thanks again.

Once inside, I have a list.  I had prepared for the inertia of searching by narrowing it down beforehand: spy films, and failing that, anything else on the list.  Of course, the shop is organized by country, then director.  I know little or none of these facts about the films I’m looking for.  Our Man Flint…no.  Torn Curtain…no.  I remember we had talked about seeing the original Solaris; all of his films but.  The two guys are still there, casually browsing the ‘Comedy’ section, then ‘American Indie.’  I look in ‘British classics’, then in the TV section for the Gilmore Girls.  I start to panic, returning to places I had looked already to see if I had missed anything, constantly re-checking my list.

I hear one of the guys say, ‘Let’s just go with this.  We’ll be here all day.’

They begin to leave, I start to follow them out.

‘You make a choice?’

‘No didn’t find anything I was looking for.  I’ll just call it quits, I’ll be here forever otherwise.’

They say nothing, once I get my bike I thank them again and turn around quickly to hop on the road.  I am intending to go home, get my key, and come back.  I make it home and stay there; we end up watching Born on the Fourth of July.

We are sitting around the sink in a kitchen.  My friend is explaining the benefits of a newly acquired job, selling sausages at a market.  I helped put him in touch with its owner, and he introduces it as, ‘This job Chris got me…’  I smile at the thought, as if I had hired him, or rather smirk quietly to myself.  One of guys living in the house, someone I had met years ago during college, I can see from the corner of my eye looks over to me and, seeing me smile, shares a similar smile.  I don’t look directly at him, but instead look down at my shoes.

Several days earlier, I had traveled down to see an abandoned apartment in Southwark that had been turned into a sort of crystal grotto.  The set of apartments is signposted, with an arrow pointing to one row, while a queue of people stand outside a door on the opposite end.  An open door nearest me bears a piece of paper saying, ‘Information Room, Coffee and Tea Available 50p.’  No one is inside, just some newspaper clippings, flyers, and a few bags, and another sign saying, ‘Only a limited number of visitors are allowed inside the apartment at any one time.’  I go outside and silently join the queue, hoping it leads to the installation, but don’t ask.  Opposite, is another open door, into which one member of the queue had recently disappeared.  I turn around to walk inside, but am stopped by a, ‘Hey.’

A tall, sallow-faced man in a black bomber jacket saunters up.  He looks me up and down in a side glance.

‘You…here to see the exhibition?’

‘Yea.’  I hold back the temptation to be a smart ass.  Why else would I be here?

‘We advise you wear boots into the exhibition,’ he says in a nonchalant almost-whisper. ‘But you don’t have to.’

‘Why is it “advised”?’

‘You don’t have to.  You can wear your normal shoes, you know, if you’re in a rush. ‘ He looks around, still talking. ‘You might get blue stuff on your shoes, but you know, it’s your choice, it’s all part of the experience.’

‘Where can I get the boots?’

‘Just over there.’ He points to the door I had been heading towards. ‘You can leave all your bags and such in there too,’ waving as if he had been just about to tell me bags weren’t allowed inside.

I walk over to find another empty room, this one with a dozen sets of wellies along one wall.  Back outside all booted up, the man is leaning against the wall near the entrance to the apartment, casually listing off the places he has been.  ‘I’ve been to Dublin been to Galway…’

Two people exit the darkened doorway.  ‘Alright,’ he says, waving a hand, ‘go on in.  Only three of you.’  The next three people shuffle in, and he resumes his talk. ‘You know Temple Bar Gallery?  Right in Dublin city centre, they feature it on the Art Trail.  I been there as well.’

Eventually I get inside, and when I emerge five minuted later, he is talking to a new set of people who have queued up.  ‘I’ve been to Cairo, Morocco….

It rains in my dreams.

I am walking through a low ceiling hospital’s countless corridors, searching unnoticed but knowing I’m not allowed to walk so freely.  I spot several key chains, then a flat, hexagonal shaped disc that when handled properly acts as a fingertip massage.  I think, this is perfect for Katie’s birthday, for her editing and trumpet playing, but I am dragged out into the wet trees.

Later, I am traversing a large barren landscape to come to a hollowed out wreck of a building, hanging seaweed like some sort of ghost ship.  I have been sent to find the crow-being’s god, and in a room on the second floor I know the disparate parts of this god are kept.  The peeling wallpaper holds several pictures in simple wooden frames, and I lean out the window to give the signal.  ‘Ah! ‘ I shout out into the mist, ‘Ah!’  In response, hundred of crows arrive to pick at and carry together this found deity, working at the eyes int he picture frames and bearing them back.

I wander on down a field, to stumble upon a small festival going on, only to find my friend Christian dancing hazily in the crowd, and our friend Martin singing for this skill-less but energetic punk band.  He used to drum, I think it’s a good suprise to find him out front, leading with voice.

In the library, there is a large, central cube, a monolith of stacked books rising from the ground floor to the 3rd floor.  I am eating an apple, walking around the small walkway on the top floor.  An older woman is squinting through a digital camera to the court below the stairs.  I walk around three sides of the cube, and each part of the way she is there, taking a photo of its rise.

Later, four film directors sit in chairs accross the front of a screening room that is entirely red.  After much reluctant but well meaning talk, they have opened to the floor for questions.  The man immediately to my left begins, ‘Why do you even use the word cinema?  It strikes me, from these films that it is more a question of, and I hate to use this word, anti-cinema, a sort of denial of…’  He holds his wire frame glasses in his left hand, sticking its end in to his mouth between pauses.  He goes on for several minutes, seemingly intelligently, but all I can notice is his slender fingers.  Long, thin, held together delicately but shaking uncontrollably each time he makes a point, sweeping them in a casual aside as if to hide their tremor.

The first support act starts.  It’s a low ceilinged and bare-walled, and as the drones and waves begin from his consoles all I can see is a tense elbow jutting out occasionally from the column in front of me.  It is incessant, a sore already grown, and my right ear reacts: I can feel the changing pressure of its tissue-rattling, but it mingles so closely with the music I don’t know what’s what.

Around in a semi-circle, the audience is silent, still faced, I think they must mostly be musicians why else could they stand this with such intense nullity.  What is this music for?  It is a cinema soundtrack, and I try to make corresponding images in my head: large, godzilla-like feet trample irregularly over a barren tree landscape.  It’s not for dancing, or nodding.  I wonder whether it’s even for live performance, the way it stuns the audience into sat reception, its energy hanging near the naked dimmed bulbs.  It must be the spaces, in my mind I unravel several of the day’s thoughts, begin the opening for an essay I’ve been thinking of, and then I realize I haven’t been listening to the music at all.

It has changed slightly, a sort of watery slashing that sounds like a tiger savagely trying to swim.  Katie leans over, saying it sounds like Cookie Monster on too much acid.  The struggle continues, swelling but not moving, and the slow shifts are not revealing in their movements.

My flatmate lights up her face with her phone, then after pressing several keys shows us the screen: ‘This guy has exactly 30 min of ideas.  I’ve calculated it.’

The checkout counter is full- bottled water, toilet roll, washing up liquid.  A basket remains at the edge of the conveyor belt.  As I stand there, the woman looks my way and attempts to put the basket down with the other discarded, empty stack, and starts to remove the cucumber and pack of toilet roll remaining inside in what seems to be an attempt to give me some space to place my own, full basket on the ledge.  Her eyes are small, heavily make-upped.  She has some difficulty, so with my free hand I lift the basket back up to its edge perch so that she can more easily remove the goods.  Instead, she turns back to her shopping already rolling down the belt.  I think, maybe this was here when she came along then.  Or maybe the person went to pick up one last frozen pizza, rushing back.

Someone else comes up behind me, and the growing gap on the checkout belt becomes bold.

I ask, ‘Is this your stuff?  Do you need this?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I need to see…,’  trailing off into a mumble that turns to an intent look at the counter in front of her.

As the bulk of her shop is rung off, the basket remains on the far side of the counter.  I begin to place my own things on the belt.  She is packing, having trouble opening each plastic bag, glancing up at the ongoing price.

Her total is made. ‘Do you want these?’  I hold up the basket.

‘Yes, hold on.’  She inspects the screen with a quick glare, then gets out several 5 pound coupons to pay.  I put the basket down below, with the cucumber and toilet roll still inside.  She leaves.

I pack my own purchases, attempting to be quick about it.

‘22.61 please.’ I get out a 2 pount discount voucher, hand it to the checkout lady, who after scrutinizing it scans it in.

‘22.61 please.’

‘Is that with the voucher?’

‘Yes, it’s taken off, it’s 22.61.’

I give her 30 pounds, then ask, ‘Wasn’t it that before?’

She gets out the receipt, looks it over talking to herself all the while.  Then she turns to the till and begins to look at every voucher she’s received.

‘I can’t find it now.  That’s strange.’

Eventually she locates it.

‘Well, it must be in there if the machine has it,’ she resigns. ‘I’ll give you ten instead of eight I guess.’

She walks into the bank, sauntering slowly towards the desk at the back of the low ceiling room.

‘Do you know where Ally bank is?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Ally bank, is it nearby?’

The man behind the desk is bored.  Round-headed, ‘No, sorry don’t know.’

The man in front of me speaks up, ‘I think it’s down there, just further down Wood Green.’

She leaves.

‘You don’t know the nearby banks?’ the man in front asks like a light punch on the arm.  The man at the desk is more serious.

‘No no, I know, but I ain’t gonna tell her how to get to another bank.’

I don’t follow the shift, but the man in front of me begins to ask how he can make a deposit to a charity so that they know it’s his.  The man behind the desk tells him in elaborate detail, where to put his name, how it’ll appear on their statements, waving his hands around.  One carries a large gold ring, inset as if a wax seal.  The clerk sitting next to him behind the desk has so far said nothing, but look intently up at the man receiving the instructions as if he is contributing to this communication, nodding with his mouth slightly ajar.

‘