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    The Evening Party
    The Evening Party
    The Evening Party
    Ebook188 pages1 hour

    The Evening Party

    By Hannah Cao

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The strangers attend an evening party.
    The strangers don't know each other.
    The strangers hardly know themselves.

    The Evening Party is a series of prose and poems, unveiling hidden stories of strangers brought together for the same rooftop party in London.

    They are each riddled with the anxieties of modern age, the complexities of love, the challenges of dysfunctional families and other intricate relationships, and a pervasive sense of being trapped in their own existence.

    This collection reveals a poignant tapestry of human connection and isolation. The Evening Party unveils the extraordinary in the mundane, breathing life into the passage of time and the memories that define us. The Evening Party is a mirror, an usher, and a reminder to savour moments that otherwise slip through our fingers unnoticed.

    *

    Ah, we're an ungrateful race! When I look at my hand upon the window sill and think what pleasure I've had in it, how it's touched silk and pottery and hot walls, laid itself flat upon wet grass or sun-baked, let the atlantic spurt through its fingers, snapped blue bells and daffodils, plucked ripe plums, never for a second since I was born ceased to tell me of hot and cold, damp or dryness, I'm amazed that I should use this wonderful composition of flesh and nerve to write the abuse of life. Yet that's what we do. Come to think of it, literature is the record of our discontent.
    — The Evening Party, Virginia Woolf

    'Just imagine', he began, 'and it always happens like this. Today, as I was going downstairs to take a short walk before the evening party, I couldn't help being surprised by the way my hands were dangling about in my cuffs, and they were doing it so gaily. Which promptly made me think: Just wait, something's going to happen today. And it did, too.'
    — Description of a struggle, Franz Kafka

    *

    REVIEWS

    The poems feel like sitting on the edge of a sofa on New Year's Eve, drink in hand, laughter in your mouth and inner turmoil in your heart. – Sallie Lundh, Apricity

    The Evening Party beautifully captures the many ways that people weave in and out of each
    other's lives, leaving behind memories and questions that linger with us. You will pick up threads throughout the book of people living their separate lives, and how their paths have crossed over the years. Cao paints vivid pictures of life's mundanities in poems and prose that bubble with youth and wonder, yet ache with the memory of long-abandoned flames. The Evening Party invites you to revisit the past beneath tipsy moonlight and discover almost-forgotten stories that are both complex and tender. – Jasmine S. Higgins, Mermaid lungs

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHannah Cao
    Release dateSep 5, 2024
    ISBN9798227838186
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      Book preview

      The Evening Party - Hannah Cao

      Ah, we’re an ungrateful race! When I look at my hand upon the window sill and think what pleasure I’ve had in it, how it’s touched silk and pottery and hot walls, laid itself flat upon wet grass or sun-baked, let the Atlantic spurt through its fingers, snapped bluebells and daffodils, plucked ripe plums, never for a second since I was born ceased to tell me of hot and cold, damp or dryness, I’m amazed that I should use this wonderful composition of flesh and nerve to write the abuse of life. Yet that’s what we do. Come to think of it, literature is the record of our discontent.

      — ‘The Evening Party’, Virginia Woolf

      ––––––––

      ‘Just imagine,’ he began, ‘and it always happens like this. Today, as I was going downstairs to take a short walk before the evening party, I couldn’t help being surprised by the way my hands were dangling about in my cuffs, and they were doing it so gaily. Which promptly made me think: Just wait, something’s going to happen today. And it did, too.’

      — ‘Description of a Struggle’, Franz Kafka

      ––––––––

      The Host

      It always starts with admission. An honest, embarrassing fact. The abyss in the ground opens right below your feet, its mouth agape and wide. There it is. That bead of sweat on your forehead that I was expecting. When we were children and senseless, we used to take leaps and take bruises head-on. When did we get so scared of each other?

      It will only hurt the first time you admit it: you don’t know where this is going. 

      We can figure it out now or later, but if you’re thinking of running, you might as well save yourself some breath. To be fair, it’s not really that fair at all. You see, it’s a disease. Really sorry. We must start from somewhere, though. Do you know where you are now?  

      We can hear the storm rage around us. We’re in the middle of it, stuck watching it like cinema. We can believe the one thing true about storms: they pass. The disease here is not knowing where we find ourselves at end of the film.

      It doesn’t matter why you showed up here to this party with no one but strangers around you and why you chose this very day. There is no way of knowing whether this is a good or a bad thing. What’s enough is enough for now. At least you’re not stuck forever. At last, you’re headed somewhere.

      The Evening Party

      Welcome To The World, Darling

      I’ll tell you something: since your day of birth last Thursday six years ago

      I lost my keys, a tenner and socks

      that were in the bottom of my drawer

      I’ll never be quite the same boy that I was,  

      waiting for you to come around, ears perched listening to the sound of your kicking

      Welcome to the world, darling,

      Where you swim through the city when it rains

      And get arrested climbing over Midnight shut gates,

      still clueless with step-accurate directions on your phone

      My room might be completely empty when you’re a little older

      I have a job in the city, then I lose it and head out altogether

      Leave for an island, learn Italian perhaps, or pick up my French

      Maybe I’ll work with my mate Angelica 

      I believe you’re already friendly with her

      Everything will be so new, even at twenty-two

      You’ll make the day a year wherever you go

      if you take all your heart with you

      Keep watering the plants,

      perseverance will be your greatest friend

      I’ll read your book or listen to your piece or watch your theatre play,

      or none of it which is not to say

      I wouldn’t be a proud brother either way

      Until you move out and venture on your own

      I’ll be at the base of our rain-wretched creased up tree house, shouting up

      Holding you close for my lonely little life

      Look out for you like the rest of the world is in the dark and you’re the most radiant burst of light 

      Everything, to you and to me, was, is and will be a big surprise

      The Dying Swan

      One day I will think myself out of headspace hotel into peaceful numbness. I tend to dive headfirst into everlasting tough luck. It is my way of being selfish, though I don’t quite understand how I can be that, passing like water under skipping stones. 

      I plunge so hard as though I’m trying to rid myself of my heart. I’m a haunted house rather than a functional body part, thin ankles, long limbs and arched feet. Like crying without making noise is getting through things as best as I know how. 

      I grow beautiful wonders in less familiar places, near Ivy House by Hampstead Heath. I’ll come back when that is done. Like all the things that approach. I know I belong to the living. I go on living without a skin. I let you in. 

      When you hold me in your arms and I breathe into your neck and drift off to sleep, do you feel my body calming? What do I look like to you? A grown woman, or a tall child? 

      Like someone who's trying. Do I look terrified? Like someone who’s dying.

      Even when I am dreaming, I want to hear your voice. Am I good am I good am I good? I want to hear your answer until my ears fall off, until I go off looking for them. That's when I’ll believe it.

      Textbook

      You remember when you said how we met at that party? Well, that wasn't true we really met the week before at the pub when your eyes seized up on me over the counter and you said you hope you’ll get to see me again and I said not over my dead body, I find you rather appalling, actually. Just pass me my drink. I guess I do attract what I can't stand. Like insects or rats in my Southern flat and the moistest of winds sifting through my bangs and nights void of sleep and lukewarm tap water up my sleeves. Of course, with my luck I’d hear you say my name in the rabid crowd of course with my luck I’d let you in my room with my flatmate sleeping in the next room of course I’d learn from it of course I’d ask my friends to go out with me for another Thursday night because I don't actually care for the lesson at all, of course.

      Cigarette butts

      What good is holding onto something that is meant to be free? There is an ashtray on top of that cupboard, but it doesn’t mean you have to get the lighter. You think you need someone until you realise you only need them because to yourself you are a stranger. 

      So strange once so young, a kid tucked underneath the covers. Now carefree by choice, by rebellion, taking the trains after midnight with earphones in, volume plump. Even in rejection, everything about her feels tender and familiar. When she is tired like today, she is in a clutch of steady hands, separating them from the rest of the deemed. Like that time on the swings, intoxicated by the moon, bickering over the things that matter not at all. 

      The vases are filled with every sensation thought aloud; she’s the wordsmith of her feelings. There is so much room, leading out into the garden, but she is past screaming. She’s got friends, but they’re footloose beings. Like her, tethered by choice, not responsibility nor history. She knows herself better than anyone, even when her grandmother yells otherwise. This was true in the past and it will stay true in the future. There is an ashtray on top of that table, and the pack is left at home.  

      Wilted Windows

      Sainted homes,

      daring doorsteps, 

      wilted windows

      Somebody I know has a story that starts with an arm of pinned strikes

      Muzzy baths, 

      thumbs in deep pockets, 

      Is hardly reported by the eager mouth 

      Tangerine tables,

      sealed cups,

      lilac linen,

      Somebody I know drowsily hits Snooze the first time

      Awashed fields,

      bereaved grid,

      Until they stand

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