Amy Liptrot - The Instant

Also by Amy Liptrot

The Outrun

First published in Great Britain in 2022
by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2022 by Canongate Books

Copyright Amy Liptrot, 2022

The right of Amy Liptrot to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 83885 426 3
Export isbn 978 1 83885 427 0
eISBN 978 1 83885 428 7

For the Heartsick

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

February
Hunger Moon

I VE BEEN GETTING TEXT MESSAGES from the moon. A note flashes on my phone, asking if the moon can track my location, and I consent.

I have moved to a new city but the moon is following me around. It texts to tell me when it will be out. Through the windows of my flat in Kreuzberg, there is just a parallelogram of sky at the top of the courtyard, only a small space to catch the passing moon on certain clear nights.

B said that people move here just so they can tell their friends back home that theyre living in Berlin. B said that people moving here often feel like theyve dropped several years, that they can extend their youth.

The app uses my location to tell me the moons phase, direction, distance at all times. Right now, the moon is 384,012 miles away from my hand, which is holding my phone close to my heart, as I sit at the table in the narrow kitchen of this flat with tall windows in an old-style apartment block, stinging nettles by the front door. Im just home from work, vibrating with tiredness. The moon is waxing gibbous and is 25.2 degrees above the horizon, almost due east. It rose just after midday and will set around 3 a.m.

I run a bath, consult my digital charts, then wait for the moon. My bath is next to the window and I open it wide to the cool air. I hear stray cats mewing in the stairwell, magpies rattling in the bare trees and the indistinct rumble of the city that reminds me of the wind back home. My first sight of the moon is its reflection in my opposite neighbours window: a bulbous glow in a double-glazed mirror. Over the evening, it passes like a distant ship. I keep going back to the window and am thrilled to catch its oblivious light.

In the stairwell there are political graffiti and signs: anti-gentrification, pro-refugee, anarchist. The building used to be squatted and there are some communal elements between the flats: shared Wi-Fi and handyman. I hear the neighbours around the courtyard, sex and arguments in various languages, someone playing the flute, a baby crying. Every 1 May, there is a big techno party in the courtyard. Its electric around here.

The internet is hectic and I go to the moon to relax, opening new browser tabs for the moons Wikipedia page and Google Maps of its surface. I follow new lunar developments from NASA. I learn that the moon was probably once part of the earth, sheared off by an asteroid. B, who moved from Scotland to Tasmania, tells me that there is a different moon in the southern hemisphere: it waxes and wanes in the opposite direction. I learn that the moon is slowing down the earths rotation. The moon is holding on to us.

I grew more aware of the moon and, in particular, its effect on the tides when I was back home on the island. Low tide at new moon is the time to dig for shellfish called spoots on the beach, and after a full moon is the time to go looking for things washed up driftwood and treasure at the high-water line.

* * *

My street and the few surrounding are a mix between different eras of Kreuzberg: corner shops, Turkish bakeries, a garage selling revolution equipment, next to a sushi place, high-concept coffee shops and designer boutiques. There are clothes piled on the pavement for anyone to take for free and there are also places selling dresses for a thousand euros.

People on the internet ask questions. What is the moon made of? Why can I see the moon during the day? Why is the moon red? Can the moon be destroyed?

Ive been wearing long skirts and fingerless gloves, painting my nails like I used to. Ive been going to parties. In the English-language bookshop, I read aloud from The Odyssey while two Norwegians played synth.

Ive run away but I find the moon everywhere I go. I found a tiny pink plastic crescent in Tempelhofer Feld a huge park in the middle of the city right there on the footpath. In my first week in the city I found a beautiful lunar calendar in a bookshop and have it Blu-tacked to my wall. Twice a month at new and full moon I await Syzygy: the instant when moon, earth and sun are aligned. The lunar cycles are almost all I have in my diary for the year. My future is blank but I know what the moon will be doing.

There will be thirteen full moons in the coming solar calendar year. The full moons of each month and season have different traditional names. Februarys full moon is the Hunger Moon and Marchs is known as the Lenten, Worm or Sap Moon. The names come to us from various cultures Native American, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon but are all tied to the seasons and agricultural year.

The moon has now passed over the courtyard and behind the buildings but Im looking at photographs of it online. I close Twitter, the dating app, the eBay listings. Lunar mosaics are created by hundreds of different image frames taken through a telescopic camera, added together to create a highly detailed picture of the moons surface: textured craters, mountains and cliffs. They are magnified, monochrome and glowing. Its February, and the city is dim but Im madly seeking moonlight.

Ive been in Berlin for four months and have lived in five houses. Ive been cycling over cobbles. Ive been keeping my devices charged, wearing shorts I found on the pavement. Ive been sitting outside Sptis corner-shops, smoking roll-ups, drinking Club-Mate, watching attractive and strange people on the street. I had a love affair that lasted for two nights and two afternoons.

People in this town cant commit to anything, but the moon is always orbiting and the months pass relentlessly. I dont speak the language but I know der Mond.

My attachment to the moon grew during the years Ive been lonely and so did the moons attachment to me. The moon, I tell B, is my boyfriend.

HOW TO SWIM THROUGH WAVES

July
Thunder Moon

L AST SUMMER I RENTED A little flat on the island, in the small harbour town, close enough to the pier to hear the passenger announcements on the ferry, which arrived twice a day, its horn setting a slow rhythm to the days.

I had ripped up a redundant London AZ and used the pages as wallpaper. My shower was full of sand and seaweed.

Outside the back door, where I went to smoke, chittering sparrows filled the ivy. I was picking up bits of work, considering another season with my old employers, waiting for something to happen.

Although I had this place now, with a bookshelf and broadband, I often found myself standing in the kitchen awash with loneliness. Id been living alone for a few years and it was getting to me.

Often Id walk to the top of the hill and watch the moon rise. Id look down over the town and out across the bay to the other islands and, beyond, to mainland Scotland and out west where the Atlantic stretches.