[fiction]
Do you believe that we are reincarnated when we die? That I could come back as a caterpillar that would metamorphosis into a butterfly and you a baby lamb to be lead to the slaughter? Do you believe in the fiery eternalness of hell and the heavenly highs of God’s good grace? Do you believe in Karma or an oasis where seven virgins wait? Do you believe when they put you into the earth you stay there, trapped, while the earth slowly tries to reclaim what humanity has stupidly locked in a wooden box, chaining it to an in between world? Or do you believe when your ashes are thrown into the sea, you’ll become part of the fish and coral, hidden in sharks and shells? Do you believe that your soul ceases to exist but your energy flows into other living things? Do you believe in ghosts, in unfinished business and haunted buildings? Will you stay here and haunt this hayshed where we have spent so many hours, your spirit the essence of myths and urban legend? Do you think perhaps that when you stand before God, he’ll see the pure heart that no one else did and he’ll make you an angel with sweet golden wings and soft knowing eyes?
What is the beyond?
Where is it?
Is it up there behind that cloud, do those towers of vapour conceal the gateway? Or have we been eternally damned, left to cohort with the rotten and evil of this world in a prison of immortal souls? Are we sinners because I held your hand and you held mine and it meant all the world to us? Do you think perhaps the Pope is there, right next to God and Jesus and Mohammed, and Gautama is there too, with Krishna and the Rainbow Serpent and all the many creators? When you arrived did they great you with a grin that made it clear, they are in this together, they are the many faces of one great thing, so wonderfully large we cannot fathom it. Or were we, two bodies intertwined, cloud gazing together just a collection of atoms and molecules? Did bits of matter collide one day before time begun, before good and evil had even be conceived, did they build together slowly, growing as shrubs and trees and birds until we arrived at that moment in time, with the soft young grass and the racing cloud-ships? Did we even exist or is this too a virtual world? Are we just someones pawns or charcters in an obscene storybook? Do you think some power far, far bigger than us brought us together, that everything happens for a reason? Do you know how our story sits in my memory, how it possesses me and smoulders in my mind? Can you really believe that someone could so cruelly script this plot? Do you think we are we really the champions of our own destinies, the makers of our own fates? Are we really so wonderfully, so terribly alone here?
Do you see that cloud shaped like a wave from where you are? It’s a great big grey wave of despair that is about to wash over me, to drown me where I lie. I have never hated God so much. I have never doubted him more. I have never wanted, so hard and so urgently, to believe he exists.
There are many ways for a person to die, this is just one. I will lie here until I disappear. I will wait like Buddha under the Bodhi tree or Christ in his cave awaiting reincarnation, until the grass grows over me or the gates above me open. I will lie here until I disappear, until three heavenly angels lift me gently away, or the devil himself grows weary of waiting and comes up and carries me home, until I am consumed by the earth, retuned to stone and soil.
I will lie here until I disappear, or until you come back to me.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
In other worlds, in other ways I live my life, side by side with this one and yet somewhere else entirely.. this is a world of fiction, these are the tales of other lives, these are my characters, they come and they go and sometimes, in fact often, they are far more interesting than me.
Sonja felt as though she was the breeze. A happiness rose from somewhere deep inside her, it seemed to scratch at her navel and tingle behind her knees until it burst out across her face and raced down the hill away from her. On the swings the smell of the metal chain and sunscreen mingled under her nose, sending her back, way back into the vaults of her memories. Sometimes she could recall so clearly it was as if she had spent her childhood gathering tiny splinter memories in a wicker basket. The air whirred in her ears on the downward arc, her feet stretched out before her. It was strange, she thought, how her legs seemed to know to bend and tuck up underneath her on the upwards swing, an instinct that she had to actively resist just to test the theory. She wanted to let go of the chains and hold out her arms until she floated away, such was the rush of happiness inside of her, so much stronger than it had been in a long time. She didn’t understand why the park was so empty while the road screeched and growled away behind her. But she rejoiced in having the whole green expanse to herself, she was alone with the rush of the leaves in the tree’s and for that moment in time it didn’t matter at all that she was alone. She swung her legs back and forth, building the arch of her swings higher and higher each time. There was something she wanted to do, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She let go of the chain and tucked her elbows into her side and then, arms spread out wide she jumped from the swing . She was flying but, for a short time at least, it didn’t feel like falling.
Sonja felt as though she was the breeze. A happiness rose from somewhere deep inside her, it seemed to scratch at her navel and tingle behind her knees until it burst out across her face and raced down the hill away from her. On the swings the smell of the metal chain and sunscreen mingled under her nose, sending her back, way back into the vaults of her memories. Sometimes she could recall so clearly it was as if she had spent her childhood gathering tiny splinter memories in a wicker basket. The air whirred in her ears on the downward arc, her feet stretched out before her. It was strange, she thought, how her legs seemed to know to bend and tuck up underneath her on the upwards swing, an instinct that she had to actively resist just to test the theory. She wanted to let go of the chains and hold out her arms until she floated away, such was the rush of happiness inside of her, so much stronger than it had been in a long time. She didn’t understand why the park was so empty while the road screeched and growled away behind her. But she rejoiced in having the whole green expanse to herself, she was alone with the rush of the leaves in the tree’s and for that moment in time it didn’t matter at all that she was alone. She swung her legs back and forth, building the arch of her swings higher and higher each time. There was something she wanted to do, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She let go of the chain and tucked her elbows into her side and then, arms spread out wide she jumped from the swing . She was flying but, for a short time at least, it didn’t feel like falling.
***
Friday, December 25, 2009
This Christmas.
Christmas is hard work. As I’m writing this I’m full and bursting with food, my eyelids are threatening to close up shop for the evening and i can feel the snores coming on already. I should mention it’s only 4pm. We just arrived home from visiting the people you generally only see once a year at Christmas, ones you can’t decide if you only visit them at Christmas because they are so special or if there’s a reason you only see them once a year.
I know Christmas, the season of festive frivolity, can be a terrible time of year. I know that in some houses Christmases are remarkable for the absence of food and piles of wrapping paper. In so many ways we who stuff and overstuff ourselves are amazingly blessed, blessed with the opportunity to go back for seconds, to float in the pool and nap in the sunchair.
And this is not all that is bad about Christmas. Christmas sucks when you’re an adult. It’s magic gets checked out at the shop counter where you maxed out your credit card. No one can be bothered to put the tree up, tiny hands don’t tug on Dads pinkie begging to pull the decorations out anymore, the suspense has fizzled out of the month of December because you aren’t counting off the days till Santa visits. Somebody eventually puts the tree up anyway, like a priest who’s forgotten why he prays but remembers where to put his hands. Then suddenly the 23rd is upon you and so to the realisation that the tree doesn’t sparkle anymore, it’s all just plastic and that’s some terrible type of fake. You whinge about the terrible time of year, and everyone agrees, the stress, the total absence of car parks, the wait in the queue at the post office, which is the only queue longer than the one at the bank. Christmas is not only so far removed from the religious celebration of the holy myth, it’s a grand consumerist orgy. In this credit crunching cult people who already have so much have a Christmas splash out that’s more like a king tide, so devoid of meaning it feels we are adrift in a sea of plastic cups and broken toys.
And yet, and yet and yet, it’s still something so much more than this. On the beach watching my dog run here and there at a dizzying pace stealing everybody else’s ball, there are big dogs and small dogs, fat men and pretty women, children running and somebody kayaking, people are smiling and sharing drinks out of eskies, dogs are barking and prancing about with tinsel collars and the cool blue waters are a welcome respite. The narrow beach was full of people celebrating life and enjoying the very best of a summers day with family they might only see once a year, maybe because that’s about all they can handle.
Christmas is all these things at once and it only happens once a year, once a year to over indulge, once a year to put plastic tinsel on plastic trees and put up with long queues in supermarkets. Speeding along the road on the way home, past fire engines and the smoking cinders of someone’s Christmas lunch gone up in flames, I feel asleep in the car like a 5 year old, a very happy 5 year old on Christmas evening.
I know Christmas, the season of festive frivolity, can be a terrible time of year. I know that in some houses Christmases are remarkable for the absence of food and piles of wrapping paper. In so many ways we who stuff and overstuff ourselves are amazingly blessed, blessed with the opportunity to go back for seconds, to float in the pool and nap in the sunchair.
And this is not all that is bad about Christmas. Christmas sucks when you’re an adult. It’s magic gets checked out at the shop counter where you maxed out your credit card. No one can be bothered to put the tree up, tiny hands don’t tug on Dads pinkie begging to pull the decorations out anymore, the suspense has fizzled out of the month of December because you aren’t counting off the days till Santa visits. Somebody eventually puts the tree up anyway, like a priest who’s forgotten why he prays but remembers where to put his hands. Then suddenly the 23rd is upon you and so to the realisation that the tree doesn’t sparkle anymore, it’s all just plastic and that’s some terrible type of fake. You whinge about the terrible time of year, and everyone agrees, the stress, the total absence of car parks, the wait in the queue at the post office, which is the only queue longer than the one at the bank. Christmas is not only so far removed from the religious celebration of the holy myth, it’s a grand consumerist orgy. In this credit crunching cult people who already have so much have a Christmas splash out that’s more like a king tide, so devoid of meaning it feels we are adrift in a sea of plastic cups and broken toys.
And yet, and yet and yet, it’s still something so much more than this. On the beach watching my dog run here and there at a dizzying pace stealing everybody else’s ball, there are big dogs and small dogs, fat men and pretty women, children running and somebody kayaking, people are smiling and sharing drinks out of eskies, dogs are barking and prancing about with tinsel collars and the cool blue waters are a welcome respite. The narrow beach was full of people celebrating life and enjoying the very best of a summers day with family they might only see once a year, maybe because that’s about all they can handle.
Christmas is all these things at once and it only happens once a year, once a year to over indulge, once a year to put plastic tinsel on plastic trees and put up with long queues in supermarkets. Speeding along the road on the way home, past fire engines and the smoking cinders of someone’s Christmas lunch gone up in flames, I feel asleep in the car like a 5 year old, a very happy 5 year old on Christmas evening.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Summertime
It's summer on these streets. For long burning hours the sun beats down upon the path, fries the grass, tans the leaves, bleaches, drains and burns. Shoppers flock like birds to water, to air-conditioned worlds and jostle through the crowds carrying tinsel, beer and junk. In backyards kids splash in paddling pools and race under sprinklers, while Dads and uncles absentmindedly turn sausages in the tired afternoon sun. Working her way slowly up a sticky hill on a yellow bicycle in the middle of this clichéd suburban scene is a girl with a backpack full of books, with more bags of books hanging off the handle bars. It’s not particularly discernable at a first, second or even a third glance, but she is rather unhappy. Inside her mind is only a dark and dreary hole, despite, or perhaps because of the sun, the struggling breeze and the lemon-scented bush.
Welcome to the inaugural Summer edition of this bloggety-blog, summer has in fact been kicking along for at least a month now, but I think I just woke up and felt the sunburn on my nose. Inaccuracies aside, I’ve decided that this summer is not about losing weight, or eating healthy, drinking less coffee, saving the planet or any of the ho-har, but that it is absolutely necessary that I dance in my underpants more often. In so many ways I am the bane of my own existence. Henceforth, I intend to reverse this ridiculous state of affairs and go on a summer journey, a search if you will, for the good things, the positives and some deeper, hopefully not mythological, state of contentment. Hitch a ride if you like ;-)
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