BOLD UNWISE. It had to be done.

A young man leaps into a shopping trolley under a motorway flyover, two others nearby, a petrol station behind.

BU-022He launches from the trolley as if the underpass were a stadium that forgot to fill its seats, and neither of the others watches the jump. She works her gum by the graffitied pillar, he studies the far wall; the leap is his to witness alone. The jump answers a dare that no one remembers making. The petrol sign counts its prices, the puddles carry his double, the concrete keeps score of nothing.

Three figures stand in a foggy pasture, a pink bucket hanging above them.

BU-025The bucket hangs in the fog a body's length above them, and none of the three looks up. They stand the way people stand when a thing has been decided and no one remembers deciding it, as if attention were a debt the morning cannot collect. The morning keeps its appointments in silence, letting the pasture hold whatever needs holding. The plastic stays pink against all that gray.

A woman leans against a washing machine in a laundromat at night.

BU-026Between cycles she leans on the machine, a detergent pod going soft in her hand. The drum turns its small weather and she watches the room instead, as if patience were something you could outlast, as if the evening owed her a result it keeps rinsing away. At that age every hour has a coin slot. The tiles hold their pink light and say nothing.

A woman lies in a kiddie pool in a suburban backyard at dusk, eyes closed.

BU-029She lies back in the milky water as if the pool had been drawn for her in particular, headphones in, eyes closed against the last of the light. The yard goes on with its ordinary evidence — tracksuits on the line, toys the grass is slowly claiming — while she practices being elsewhere. Boredom, held carefully enough, becomes a ceremony. The water cools around the printed cotton.

BU-034She leans her weight into the rusted rail and lets the harbor do the looking, eyeliner sharp against a face turned all the way from the cameras nobody is holding. The cranes stand down for the evening; the water goes matte. There is an age when being unobserved is the last privacy left, and she spends it here. The rust flakes under her arm, cold and particular.

Three young people with a corded telephone at a floodlit pond at night.

BU-038The receiver has been passed to the boy in the chair, and she stands in the shallow water holding the cord up as if the line must not touch the pond. Nobody speaks; the call, if it is one, is mostly waiting. At nineteen you can spend a whole night keeping a connection open just to prove it can be kept. The floodlights hum, the water holds their doubles, the coil drips.

BU-038Story.

A woman sits in a dry bathtub in a garden shed, holding a garden gnome.

BU-040She sits in the dry tub with the gnome upright on her knee, chin lifted, as if the shed had been promised a hearing and she intends to wait for it. The notes on the wall say what notes always say; she gives them nothing. Style is mostly a seat chosen against all advice and kept. The enamel stays cold, and the lamp minds its small circle of light.

Three people inflate a large pink flamingo at the foot of a wind turbine.

BU-041They work on the flamingo where it fell, one pumping, one listening at the beak for air the way you listen for a pulse, as if a roadside ritual could mend more than one leaking body. The soil comes up in handfuls and goes back down. Care does not ask whether the patient is plastic. Under the turbine the field keeps its long lines, and the pink rises slowly between them.
It had to be done.

A man sits on a wooden chair between wrapped silage bales on a floodlit pitch at dusk.

BU-045He has carried the chair out to the chalk line and sits there sideways among the wrapped bales, as if the pitch were still keeping score and someone had to be present for it. The floodlights are on for no fixture anyone remembers. Waiting, done with enough posture, starts to resemble a position. The mud takes the chair's legs one millimeter at a time.

Three young men carry a glowing green EXIT sign along a farm track at dusk.

BU-046They carry the lit EXIT sign along the track between the machines, cable trailing, cows breathing in the fog behind them. Nobody says where the exit leads; the word itself seems to be enough, a green sentence they have decided to own. Youth invents its directions out of whatever glows. The puddles take the letters and give them back greener.

A young couple iron a white shirt in a barn, a cow in the pasture beyond the doorway.

BU-047They press the same shirt together, one guiding the iron, one flattening the sleeve, as if a single garment could be shared like an alias between them. The cow keeps to its square of pasture beyond the door; the cold fog gathers in the doorway. Tending a thing this exactly is a way of rehearsing a life that has not begun. The clover lies scattered, the seam goes flat, the light stays violet.

Three young people place plastic swans at a round concrete basin in morning fog.

BU-048One swan is carried and one is set down at the rim, steadied by the neck, while a boy on the grate holds a mirror up as if the decoy should know what it has become. The basin water is dark and patient under the fog. There is a tenderness that only makes sense between a person and a thing that cannot use it. Plastic feathers, real cold.

A woman with a parrot on her shoulder arranges apples in a bus shelter in fog.

BU-050She kneels on the bench arranging apples along the ledge, one by one, as if the shelter had asked to be provisioned before the fog lifts. The bird on her shoulder supervises without comment. Certain mornings demand an order that no timetable provides, and youth supplies it from what carries. Behind the glass, the letters written in condensation are already closing.

A woman pressure-washes a man sitting on a floral sofa in a car wash at night.

BU-052He holds still under the clear umbrella while she washes the night off him, sofa and all, the lance moving with the concentration of someone tending rather than cleaning. The radio sits wrapped against the water like a thing that must survive this. Care, at that hour, takes whatever form is nearest. Foam maps the concrete and drains away at its own pace.
It had to be done.

A group under a foil blanket in a dune shelter, a small tree burning in the sand outside.

BU-056They hold the foil sheet against the wind in the birdwatching shelter, one arm raised with a small star of light, while the tree burns in its hollow like a season being formally closed. Nobody moves toward the fire or away from it. There is a way of ending a year that refuses both celebration and regret, and they seem to have found it. The blanket rattles; the smoke leans; the dunes accept.

Three young people crowd into a phone booth at night, one threading wire into the keypad.

BU-057Three of them fold into the phone booth after hours, one threading copper wire into the keypad while the others hold their printed slips against the glass. Whatever number this is meant to reach, the dialing is the point and not the answer. A booth survives by being used for something it was never wired to do. The mesh glass holds its grid over all of it.

Six young men crouch around a long gutter in a service tunnel, holding spoons.

BU-061They crouch the length of the gutter with spoons raised, waiting for the drip from the vent to give the downbeat. The tunnel light is the kind that makes every rehearsal look like a confession, and still nobody laughs. An instrument is anything you agree to listen to; at that age the agreement is the music. Water lands on zinc, and six heads bow to it.

BU-061Story.

Two people kneel at a canal lock, holding a test strip to an inflatable dragon.

BU-064They kneel on the grating with the dragon between them, holding a test strip to its flank as if the canal required proof that the animal can bear it. The procedure has no name and both of them observe it completely. Exactness is a kind of loyalty; the discovery is finding out to what. The dragon keeps its painted smile; the lock water keeps moving.

Three young people carry a full-size pool table along a sandy field track at dusk.

BU-066They carry the pool table down the sand track like pallbearers who have mislaid the occasion, chalk stripes under their eyes, the cap pulled low. Nobody explains where a full-size table needs to be at this hour. Effort, shared and unquestioned, turns into its own kind of belonging. The hedges hold their line; the felt stays impossibly green in the failing light.
It had to be done.

A woman eats a burger in the rain beside a no-service departure board at a rail crossing.

BU-071She eats standing up in the rain, wrapper folded back only as far as necessary, while the board above her lists departures that are not coming. Behind her someone rights a bicycle in the wet grass without hurry. Hunger is a schedule the evening cannot cancel, and she keeps it with both hands. Rain beads the paper; the letters go on glowing their orange no.

A woman tapes a silver foil balloon to a reflector post beside a canal at dusk.

BU-078She tapes the silver balloon to the reflector post with the attention of someone fastening a thing that has asked to stay. The canal behind her carries its oil rainbow flat and still. Some objects get a second post, a second duty, a second chance at mattering, and no one is told why this one qualified. The foil turns in the last light, signaling nothing, kept anyway.

A person kneels in a frosted field, holding an inflatable green alien.

BU-084He kneels in the frost with the alien held against his shoulder, upright, like something he has agreed to answer for. The field offers its long white silence and he adds nothing to it. Whatever the visit means has not been discussed and will not be. Green vinyl, white ground, breath going up like a slow answer.

A young man inflates a beach ball at the mouth of a concrete slipway at blue hour.

BU-089He fills the beach ball breath by breath at the mouth of the slipway, the two arms of concrete running out behind him to a sea gone the color of slate. The task is slow and he refuses to hurry it. The evening has handed him one small volume to fill and asked for nothing else. The clouds bank, the ramp narrows to its vanishing point, the plastic warms in his hands.

BU-089Story.

A woman drags a wrapped, deflated inflatable through a flooded ditch in a storm.

BU-100She hauls the folded unicorn through the ditch water wrapped in its plastic, both hands full, makeup surviving in streaks. The storm has made every route provisional; she has chosen the direct one. What must be carried gets carried — youth learns the sentence early and keeps testing how much it can hold. The reeds bend, the water climbs her jeans, the bundle stays above it.

A woman kneels on a gravel track below a wind turbine, drawing a green glow-stick line.

BU-101She kneels on the wet gravel and drags the broken glow stick into a green line no one will read, the turbine standing over her like a witness with no testimony. Her plastic bag waits at her knee. Marking a place is sometimes the only sign of having been there. The blade turns once against the cloud; the light bleeds slowly into the stones.

BU-101Story.

A man pushes a large inflatable duck into a culvert at dusk.

BU-111He braces at the culvert mouth and feeds the duck into the dark, hands flat on the yellow as if the opening simply must accept it. The estate windows are lighting up behind him one kitchen at a time. Nobody appointed him to this; not asking is the whole appointment. The vinyl squeaks against the concrete, giving centimeter by centimeter.
It had to be done.

A man presses a soaked cardboard box against a carport roof.

BU-116He presses the soaked box flat to the carport roof and holds it there, arm long, eyes already elsewhere, as if adhesion were a matter of conviction. The umbrella hangs from the corner like a counterweight nobody calculated. Some structures exist only for as long as someone keeps believing in them. The cardboard darkens; the evening blues everything else.

A man crosses a wet pier, drawing a line of water with a toy pistol.

BU-122He walks the pier drawing a slow line out of the pistol, water on wet stone, a mark that will not outlast the minute. The man at the rail does not turn; the harbor has seen more durable projects. Some afternoons ask only to be traced, gone over once, and released. The nozzle drips its last meter and the circle closes on its own.

BU-122Story.

A man hides a tiara behind a wheelie bin at a wet street corner.

BU-126He tucks the tiara into the gap behind the bin with two fingers, careful as a burglar in reverse, while its smaller twin lies given up on the pavement. What gets hidden is rarely the valuable thing; it is the thing that would require an explanation. He moves like someone resolved to owe nobody one. The rhinestones take the gray light and keep it.

A woman bites a purple paper crown in a rain-soaked allotment garden, boots in the mud.

BU-131She bites down on the paper crown in the allotment mud, rain flattening her hair, boots sunk past their laces, and refuses to give the weather the last word. The sheds behind her keep their small allegiances of tools and tarps. At a certain age even ruin can be worn on purpose, held in the teeth until it reads as choice. The purple bleeds in the wet; the plots go on drinking.

BU-131Story.

A man with a beanbag stands before a closed farm gate in fog.

BU-133He arrives at the gate with the beanbag dragged the last field's length, and the gate is closed, and he stands there in the silver jacket looking back the way he came. The fog has erased the argument for hurrying. A destination, at that age, is mostly the excuse the walking needed. The vinyl settles into its own shape and waits with him.

A man wrings out a soaked plush frog at a ferry shelter.

BU-139He wrings the frog out over the concrete, slowly, both hands, the way you do a thing properly when it is the only thing left to do properly. The ferry has gone or never came; the tickets on the ground are past caring. Tenderness survives on strange rations. Water runs from the plush in a thin line and keeps its own time.
It had to be done.

A young man leans back against a collapsed wire fence at a marsh edge, holding a small star sticker.

BU-141He leans back until the wire fence remembers his exact weight, a star sticker in his hand, the marsh spread flat behind him. A vending machine glows pink across the reeds for no customer in sight. He tests what will take his weight before he leans his whole self on it. The wire gives under him and springs back, patient as the water behind.

BU-141Story.

A woman stands at a pond's edge, holding the trunk of an inflatable palm island.

BU-142She stands at the pond's edge with one hand on the palm's trunk, not pulling, not letting go, as if the island had run aground precisely here to test her patience. The crate in the shallows has already surrendered its cargo to the temperature. Between going in and going home there is a long, exact pause that nobody times. The fronds hold their green; the water holds everything else.

BU-142Story.

A woman pulls an inflatable silver palm from algae-covered water, wading hip-deep.

BU-144She hauls the inflatable palm out of the algae by its trunk, hip-deep in the green water, the whole false island dripping weed back into the pond it came from. Nothing about the rescue makes practical sense and she finishes it regardless. Some things get saved only because leaving them would be worse. The reeds stand off; the water closes its green skin behind her.
It had to be done.

BU-144Story.

A man raises a hand toward a sticky toy hand stuck on a motorway noise barrier.

BU-146The sticky hand holds to the glass long after the throw, a small green verdict against the blue hour. He keeps his own hand raised toward it, not touching, as if patience were a property of plastic rather than of people, as if the barrier had been built for exactly this kind of audience. The motorway files past behind the pane. The rain does the rest.

It had to be done.Selected records.

It had to be done.
Selected records.