Tuesday, April 29, 2014

returns

I had to sleep in my granddad's room. I hadn't lived in the house for a long time but much of my old stuff was still there. I was trying to figure out the tv set, which had archaic looking connectors I'd never seen, so I couldn't connect my laptop to it. There were several TV sets in the room, all old glass CRTs. Also, there was something odd about the stations they were tuned to. I tried to scan the channels, it had a sort of dual band thing like the old UHF-VHF and some of the channels came up on several of the frequencies -but none was clear, they all had a heavy snow of static or the pixelling break-down of more recent, digital equipment. I had to sleep on that bed? There was a lot of stuff in there, on and by the side of it. A blanket that smelled rather funny. Pick it up (rather gingerly) and put it to that side over there. A sort of wooden bucket. Various other bits and pieces that I couldn't identify what they were or their purpose. Then I had the thought -nobody'd told me what'd happened to my granddad. I had the absolutely certain thought that he was in hospital in a bad way with something very serious. Went downstairs to ask my dad, even though I knew he and the granddad (my mum's father) weren't in speaking terms. Why didn't he tell me. He didn't seem to be in the house, a group of men were. The tenants, I thought. They were renting half the house, the door was open and they seemed to have a party of sorts. My friend Sam (who never has been to Caracas in the real world) was with them, I asked her and she said my dad had been and gone out, he'd taken my granddad to hospital. Did she know where he went? She shrugged. No idea. The day was drawing to an end, there were yellow lights outside in the fog...