A Small Wooden Teardrop
My sticky notes from Black Bag, by Luke Kennard:
A boy in a girl's bathroom:
Her soap appears to have been carved raw out of the side of a cliff; shampoo and conditioner in two enormous apothecary bottles I cannot imagine transporting for refills. Perhaps they are left outside the front door and refilled by an attendant with a horse-drawn vat. I pick up a wooden toothbrush and scan around for toothpaste until I notice a little black glass caviar jar marked Oral Care. The unguent inside is jet-black and is applied to the brush with a small wooden teardrop attached to the side of the jar by on length of twine.
It tastes like the sea at night.
My preference is for personal grooming products that look and smell like power toilet cleaners, but I am willing to concede, as I pick a literal piece of heather out of my eye after washing my face, that I have been following the wrong metaphors.
On a job:
I don't want to do this forever he says ... Too many people feel like they own a little bit of me -- it's like I accidentally sold 500 per cent of the shares in my soul. And I'm getting deeply sick of people and their bullshit. It's not a good feeling.
A retired man speaks:
Retirement feels rather like being expelled from a cult ... Everything you measured your life by is proved to be utterly senseless and haphazard. You went along with a set of precepts because you had little choice in the matter once you'd signed up, and then it's suddenly over and the prevailing feeling is, Well, what was all that in aid of? It's curious.