Just One More Push

This morning, I woke up groggy after double-dosing on the valerian tablets I take to help me sleep. I think it’s okay to double dose because they’re herbal, but it takes an hour or so in the morning to shake off the daze.

My six-year-old son came running into the kitchen.

“Mummy, Mummy, look!”

He puts his finger in his mouth and shows me two wobbly teeth.

“Oh wow,” I say, putting him on my knee.

He wants me to feel his teeth wobble, so he takes my hand and puts it in his mouth. It feels funny, his sharp little teeth wobbling in his warm, wet mouth.

Valerian gives you the strangest dreams. Last night, I dreamt I was in this room, outnumbered by men. They looked older than me, and their faces were grey. They said I had to drink this dark brown, syrupy liquid that looked a bit like espresso, and then I had to sleep with them. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to sleep with them or drink the brown liquid, but they said it would be okay. The liquid would stop me feeling anything.

We get ready to leave the house. When we’re cycling to the park, we see the man we often see in his motorised wheelchair. Since the hot weather, he has taken to wearing just a small pair of shorts and a black bowler hat, not even any shoes. The way he is sitting in his chair makes him look completely naked. He is old and very thin, with short white hair underneath his hat. His smile is fixed on his face and he has perfect teeth that look like dentures. He stares at us in his fixed, smiley way, and I try not to look creeped out in front of the kids.

My six-year-old always stares back at him in that unabashed way that children have, fascinated. The man slowly moves on, smiling. He has a black dog which follows him.

The second time we see the man, I ask my son, “Did you see that man?” I half don’t believe what I’ve seen in my dazed stupor.

“Yes,” he says. “I want to follow him.”

Ever since my friend likened depression to a black dog following you, I have had a thing about black dogs. Whenever I see a black dog on the periphery of my vision, I think, maybe the black dog is following me?

In a couple of days, myself and a group of artists are set to install an exhibition in a space called Periphery Space. It will be interesting to see what happens. How will we balance our creative output and desires in one place? What collective mood or atmosphere will it create? Maybe there will be one, or maybe there will be several, passing from one feeling to the next.

In Heidegger’s Being and Time, he discusses how our feelings can dictate our being, how our moods shape our wider experience. This is interesting when it comes to something like an installation day because we will all be experiencing a mood and, collectively, potentially creating one, disjointed or not.

If we can change our mood, can we alter our experience? I don’t believe this is so easy. Not if a black dog paces the room. Perhaps we can enter as a blank slate and flow with the collective mood? We will see. Some voices will be louder than others, naturally. My work is done, but it has been made elsewhere, where the mood is altogether different. Quiet but necessary. I will parachute it in and see what happens. Maybe it will breed a mood of its own, independent of me and my conditions.

You take a hand and put it in a mouth.

Feel the teeth, how they wobble?

They are not your teeth, but you know how it feels.

The tender looseness, the anticipation.

One tooth whispers to another,

“Just one more push, then you can disappear.”

The tooth leans in. “Really?”

“Yes. Just one more push.”