The other night I was at a dinner party, reeling between boredom and pain (Schopenhauer’s pendulum) when at last I sat down next to a very big man who had had many very interesting times with animals. I was telling him the stuff I knew about sharks and then we were talking about how sometimes it was easy to get out into the sea, but then hard to get back to the beach, and how sometimes on the South Coast, you can get repeatedly lacerated by rocks, especially ones with oysters and mussels also clinging on to them.
Then he told me about how once, early one morning, he was just innocently walking on the beach and a huge huge eagle swooped down and tried to lift him up by his head – from behind. Blood was dripping down his neck from the scrapey talons and so he went to the hospital. There they first asked if he had medical aid, and then said what happened to you and he had to say an eagle had tried to capture him. And the doctors could see it was true from the marks. And they shook their heads and said sorry for their initial disbelief, but they were used to getting knives out of people’s necks rather than treating them for eagle wounds.
And so I was just thinking I should tell my friend Ben, who I haven’t heard from for about two years, about this, when he in fact texted me to say, Hi Jess I was thinking of you because people kept talking about South Africa at work. And so I said, that is really remarkable because I was thinking about you at the very same time, because I met a man who was attacked by an eagle from behind.
The first night I met Ben we told each other about all the bad accidents we had gotten into out of stupidity. Like that we had both tried to make Plaster of Paris masks of our own faces at art school and not paid attention to how hot it gets in there. And how once Ben had tied a piece of rope to his own ankle and then thrown the rope over the high branch on a tree and then pulled very hard in an attempt to hoist himself upside-down. And once, riding his bicycle in the calm quiet of evening, a bat flew into his face by mistake. And once a scared kitten ran up his body and just stayed on his head, gripping on with its claws. And I told him about how a parrot that was walking around on the floor attached itself to a long grey woollen dress I was wearing and climbed up to my throat and then just pecked me again and again. Without my having agitated it at all that I knew of.
So of course Ben and I became very good friends and I used to sleep on his sofa and then we lived together for quite a few years. And once when I came back from Heathrow after saying goodbye to my mum, he was waiting for me because he said he thought I might be sad. So he decided not to go to the pub. Sometimes when I was particularly poor and needed a new dress for example, he would get me extra work at Bonhams on a Sunday. I would have to wear a neat white buttoned shirt, and a black skirt and brush my hair. Then when the people came to look at what was about to be auctioned, I would have the key to the big cases and unlock them and let the people look at them. And then lock them away again.
Once there was a sale of war memorabilia and people were coming in with like only one eye and their legs shot off and spending ages looking at medals and old guns. It was very interesting. Then Ben became the head of contemporary ceramics and I learned so much about pots that later on I tried to make some myself. And that also made me very calm and happy. And when I do stories about artists I can phone Ben and he tells me what is going on in London and Tokyo.
Anyway, then Ben texted to say, so what are you doing, and I said I had been looking on google to see if swallows ever fly upside down, because of a story I am researching about magical thinking. And about how on the very same day, yesterday, I had been sent two tickets to Mysteries: a magic show, which I am very excited about going to see tonight. For the second time. Because there were some things I missed the first time. The magician said it was mainly about cards. But with 52 cards in a pack it is also about which ones Turn Up, given there are more combinations possible than stars we can see in the night sky (cloudy). And it is about cheating. And about liars and tricksters: when the Joker meets the Queen of Hearts. Whether there is more beauty in chaos and randomness or more beauty in order. And that the King of Clubs and the King of Diamonds always kiss in the middle of a newly opened pack. Called the Kissing Kings.