The No Name Diary

11th of October

What I read that evening in the first pages of the No Name Diary rung around my head all week. As each line appeared on the page, the previous one just disappeared and in that way the strange manuscript was at once full of words yet completely blank.

There was this sort of prologue before the first chapter;

We are many yet also one,

One planet with a voice,

A voice that now echoes out beyond our days,

Here lies a key to our civilisation,

We, perhaps the only ones, who have made it past the total obliteration of a solar system,

This has been our way,

For billions of years we have quietly grown back from no more than a spark thrown out into the vastness,

Know this; life does not search to survive; it is already forever. No; it searches to be, and it is that searching essence which will bring us back to where we began.

I reread those final lines, and then sat back, only to be confronted by Ice (our cat), staring straight at me with that look of his.

“What are you reading?” He said. His piercing, unblinking fixed gaze upon me.

“Just this book Mbaye gave me,”

“Any good?”

“I think so. I just started reading it.” I looked back down at the now blank pages. Ice walked off into the kitchen, huffed into his near empty bowl of food, paused and came back into the living room.

“You get my catnip?”

I drew a little green bag out of my left pocket and threw it to him.

“Cheers,” He said and slinked back off into the kitchen.

I had a quick look at my watch, the Swiss army watch my father had given me when I was fourteen. I considered whether I should stop reading and take in the clothes that had been hanging out in the patio for a couple of days, or even just go to bed. It was late, and it had been another eventful day. After work we’d been to the supermarket with the kids and Maia had torn open a pack of twelve toilet rolls just as we’d paid for them. The memory of crossing the busy main road, with Ian throwing himself off his toy motorbike frustrated because he couldn’t get any more juice out of one of those pouches he loves so much, the green woman turning to red on the traffic light, then simultaneously all of the toilet rolls falling off from the back of the shopping trolley as Aleja pulled it onto the little island in the middle of the crossing. Each of my limbs moving in a different direction, one herding Maia to that little patch of safety, whilst another arm lifted Ian from the floor as I cursed and kicked his motorbike onto the island, finally jerking out my other foot but just missing one of the toilet rolls which disappeared off under the moving traffic. Being trapped there a moment with Maia crying across the road to her mum who had somehow made it the whole way, Ian refusing to get up from the ground.

Once we were on the other side I remember Aleja, with loo rolls under her arms, some back on the trolley, and others stuffed in a shopping bag, observing that Ian had a bit of a runny nose and asking me if I had a bit of tissue to clean him… A look from me, and then laughs, laughs and laughs that washed away the whole drama.