WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

He knocked on the door and there was no answer, so he walked into his friend's slim room with the concluding bathroom. The clothes, they were slumped about, heavy potions were pretending to be aperitifs, a stereo whispered Fleetwood Mac from the empty park. Upon the round table was a journal, he read an entry from a month before. His friend had been writing some sort of review on Lynne Ramsay, he compared her to Alfred Hitchcock, that cold clarity, the outsider's insight into a seemingly steady world, images cackling with a tough, dark humour. He knew that he was right and yet he decided to set fire to the notebook, watch paper disintegrate while a Left Bank brass band smuggled up and cried out from the window. Yes, he heard the call, and then all was silent.

The evidence was gone.

THE TREE OF LIFE

The seal sat on a rock looking at the sea. He was afraid of the waves, he slowly embarked upon the stones. I went up to him, to check there was no blood. Slightly fearful, I asked him what did he think of The Tree of Life? Well, he said, when I was at the cinema, people laughed at the end. They mentioned David Attenborough. Guess they were nervous, I replied. You know, modern folks become nervous when they are brought so close to nature, so close to our existence, the fug of childhood and it's pain and beauty, those half-glimpses of revelation, maybe they want to reject it. They may recoil from dinosaurs, sweet talk and Christianity, but for me there was nothing else like it; immense, perturbing your very soul.

The seal nodded, then he set off swimming, lapping up all that water, never saw him again, never did. But I can still recall his black eyes. Sleepy hopeless but warm, the summer ended with roll-up's and stares at the broken horizon. Today it was the army, tomorrow revolution.