The Self-Correcting Flood

The morning starts with a list. I'm walking down the high street and the list is the walk.

There's the post office. No - the post box first, the red one by the bus stop, and then the post office. The post box is the one I always get wrong because I pass it before the post office and my mind puts them in the wrong order, as if the smaller thing should come second. The post box is round-shouldered and has a slot that's been widened by sixty years of letters. The post office has a counter and the counter has a woman who asks what I want to send and I say nothing today and she nods.

The cat is in the window of the flat above the charity shop. The cat is grey - no, the cat is brown. I said grey because the light made it grey and the light was wrong. The light does that. The cat is brown and the window is peeling and the lease - I don't know about the lease. I'm guessing about the lease because the window is peeling and peeling means something and the something might be the lease. I correct the guess and the guess stays in the sentence because the guessing is part of the walk.

The planes - no, they're planes, I checked - are in leaf. I called them sycamores earlier, to myself, walking, and then I checked and they're planes. The mottled bark. The bark that looks like a painting of bark. The leaf is a kind of hand and the hand belongs to nobody and nobody is a word I use when I mean everyone I know. I don't correct this. This one is right.

I pass the shop that was a shop. It's a flat now. The door was green - no, blue. I said green to myself last week and I'm saying blue now and the green is still in my head because the wrong version is part of the truth. I can see the green under the blue. The paint doesn't cover things. The paint adds to things. The correction doesn't erase the earlier attempt. This is the thing I learned from the street: the correction is not neat. The correction is the door with both colours showing.

The kitchen tap drips. The border - the one in the news, the one that closed - the border closed. The kitchen tap drips and the border closed and I can't tell you which fact is more important because the telling would be a sermon and I don't preach. The list doesn't preach. The list puts things in a row and the row is the argument and the argument is that everything is at the same level and the level is the level of the kitchen tap and the border and the cat and the planes and the door and the post office.

The pie is in the oven. I can smell it from here, or I think I can, or I'm adding the pie to the list because the list needs a pie and the policy needs to be on the table next to the pie and the table is the same table and the pie and the policy are at the same level. I can't tell you which one matters more. I can tell you the pie is in the oven and the policy is on the table and the oven is in the kitchen and the kitchen is in the flat and the flat is on the street and the street is the list.

I keep walking. The list keeps coming. I get things wrong and I fix them and the fixing is not neat and the wrong version stays and both of them are in the sentence and the sentence doesn't end because the flood doesn't end. The flood just accumulates. The accumulation is not a river. It's a mind putting things in a row and getting the row slightly wrong and correcting the row and the correction is the row with the wrong thing still in it.