You've Got Today

It’s a cliché these days that Pixar films make people cry. Don’t know what a Pixar film is? That just means you are not intimately attuned to the viewing habits of small children. For that, you should be quietly relieved. Like, don’t boast about it, but well done. There are these films for kids, though, and they are cartoons for heaven’s sake, but they make grown adults cry. Recently, I watched one of these films, called Coco, and I may one day stop crying, but that is by no means a certainty. The film is about the Mexican celebration, the Day of the Dead, and in it, the souls of the deceased get to visit their loved ones for the day, unseen but celebrated and remembered. A lot of the film was about the grief of the living. For me, though, I kept imagining it from the point of view of the dead. Imagine! Just one day! Reunited with the familiar and the normal and the downright complicated business of life again. Even now, with all the things happening in the world, even with the mundane and the awful and the infuriating and the depressing, even with all that, imagine getting a whole day.

Public Service Announcement: look at today. It’s amazing.

Sometimes, especially at this time of year, just the way light happens is a work of art. I walked into the kitchen the other day and I had to go and fetch someone just so two humans on planet earth had witnessed the exact way the light from the window was coming through the honey jar someone had left on the bench. Kitchen was pigsty, by the way, honey jar should have been put away in the cupboard, but that part of the mess was breathtaking. People who live with me are used to this kind of thing, but even so, I don’t mind telling you, I was thanked. If I were given a day back on earth, I reckon I’d be loving the lighting design. 

The moon does some good work, too. Huge ball of a thing one night, like a thumb print out the window taking you by surprise. Next time you look for it, leeeetle tiny fingernail hiding up a tree. 

People’s walks. The people I have loved and lost: oh to glance up and see them walking about again - to recognise someone at such a distance that nothing could identify them except for the way they hold themselves, such an expression of who they are, and of how they have lived. The fact that doing so sometimes makes you chuckle. 

Being able to sit in your favourite spot, sip your favourite hot drink from your favourite cup, and talk on the phone to someone who really makes you laugh. One of those people who makes you lighter in the world. More confident. Hearing their voice on the phone, doodling. It wouldn’t matter, would it, if you returned to earth for only a day whether you saw the people you feel like you should see. No. You’d go to the people who make you feel like that. So hey: go to the people who make you feel like that. 

You’d love the things you always loved, wouldn’t you. The warm socks on a cold night. The first mouthful of lemon pudding. Your favourite curry. Gently saying the words “sorry mate, my leg’s gone to sleep” to an animal perched on your lap whose feelings you don’t want to hurt. Telling someone how great they are. Watching a ripper TV show. Gasping at the end of a book.

You’d also, probably, be surprised at what you loved, were you given an extra day. I recently realised how much I love the shorts stepped out of, abandoned on the floor in such a way as to bring to mind the gleeful removal of same by a small child in a big hurry. The matchbox cars lined up in a neat row underneath the table. The scribbled note in a hurry reminding me of something I’d forget. In a broader sense, there’s something about the absence of people where people once were that is, especially recently, touching. How lost items are picked up by people and relocated, like flags, to the point most likely to attract attention. A baby’s hat on a post at the end of a beach track. The empty streets painted in noisy chalk. 

Public Service Announcement: you’ve got today. It’s all yours. Luckyduck.

This was published in The Big Issue. You can now support them, and the people they support, online.