Not from here
Dark fell, quietly. The bank of clouds that had filled the dusk sky now deepened the texture of the darkness. A body found the night before on the street just to my left, its hard not to add this to the measure of things to be nervous of with the retreat of light. The death of the old through violence seems all the more abhorent . To survive 81 years through times much tougher than these to be taken on a quiet suburban street for forty five dollars and your wedding ring. These small inequities make me sad, more sad than the death itself. I’m walking now only to escape the stifling walls of my little house. I’m trying not to think too much, these streets can bring out in me too many absences and presences, instead I look from window to window. Tracing the lives of others all too happy with the press and pull of their four walls. The soft glow of verandah lights and the flicker of tv’s through drawn blinds, the smells of lamb chops and bolognase so easily identified and of course the things only seen by outsiders, a perfect world of order and joy. A vignette of domestic bliss. The grass of times much greener, in the eyes of an interloper. Chasing shadows I am , and the blessed lack of thought gone now for comparison.
after years of waiting , there, in the corner. 8 years too late. a spectre of the genes that came before me of the time when our blood was one. here you are. have you been here all this time? waiting for me to become you, waiting for me to see you. waiting till the thing I am met the thing that you were. or are you just looking at the horizon? to the sky. to the earth thats been denied you all these years. am I just one more mass of the world that wont have you, matter slipping past spirit. I run my hands through you and still you arent real to me. its just air that I have in my hands. just an idea running through my fingers, just a dream remembered now forgotten.
my sense of smell is out of whack. somehow I seem to be able to smell the soap they use in this house on the corner. a synthetic strawberry the kind that used to make me sneeze as a kid. the best excuse I could find for trying to get out of a bath. the soap smell fits this house in its ordered disorder . the cafefully planned rustic exterior. I imagine their children all smell like strawberry shortcake dolls and have flushed cheeks from their bath. its hard not to stop and peer through the window to see if their pjamas were the same as mine, although no, this was never my house. my house had wall paper that was like pine pannelling we had a a brown and orange couch. out the back we had acres and an orchard. we had baths because we were always dirty. or at least I was. this place is further than i care to think from that place and these kids they are city kids, I would have hid from them had i met them.
I put a hand on my belly unconsciously, I have been doing this alot lately. it seems to fit better there now. especially now that the nights are warm and there are no jacket pockets to rest them in. he told me to stop walking around town so late at night. but I cant give this time up. its more my time than this city has allowed me to have with it. we understand each other a little better when the streets are dark, when people you pass are obscured and as wary as you are. the smells are intensified and the sound carries. I love this quiet space. the city seems less scornful and more a little tired and contemplative. the possums I love too. these little scurrying eyes withless fear than a little annoyance for the distruption you make to their wanderings. it is good to see the streets so inhabited. I walk this same street by day and I hurry, I make little eye contact. I scan the footpath infront and check the road for cars. if its quiet I walk a little slower, pick lavender. read the graffiti and wonder why its so quiet. daylight makes me an anxious walker, night makes these street my own.
theres a murmur of a heartbeat. a little tremor. it could be the three coffees ive had today but I can feel her breath. it has to be her. who else could it be. she leaves me be during the day but for sometimes when the clouds dont move of a morning. when its dark like dusk and the sky has narrowed collapsed to meet the ground ,sometimes she is here. in the corner of my vision making my body swoon with something cellular, memories of the flesh.
I walk around a corner and suddenly theres a man, dark shadow, standing alongside a car, leaning on it cigarrette in hand. for a moment my heart lifts, changes direction, jumps. my body all the while keeping pace with itself . but the man hasnt noticed me, in fact wont notice me. he takes long drags of his cigarette and watches the house in front of him. they are angry drags, drags that are pointed at someone. I have taken those drags before and fought the urge to blow the smoke directly into his face. Im in no danger from him, but he’s dangerous none the less. I thank my shoes for the quiet they manifest so that I can leave him to his anger.
this is another aspect to this city, well to all cities I guess. the faint trace, sometimes pungent odour of anger. walking to the supermarket I cant breathe but for it. Smith st anger floats past and fights with fear. fourteen people ask people for money forteen people say no quietly cursing the havenothings for making them guilty for the ten dollar conditioner and the expensive cheese they just bought at safeway. guilt makes people angry. because if all you have to worry about is having to say no to fourteen people then you really are doing ok. theres anger on the street on the weekend outside my window street noise a woman screaming at her boy friend, I look below and there they are him trying to passify her, her trying as hard as her drunken body permits to punch him in the head. she is more angry than I have seen a woman for some time, he more calm than I would be. everytime another person gets close he tries to pretend that nothing is happening whilst she continues to scream I wonder if this then is the end for them or if tommorrow she will wake up with a headache and a vague sense of regret.
I can feel her anger sometimes. permeating the quiet night, it seems she follows me with anger, breath drawn too quick from one who has never had breath with which to breathe. death belongs to love, not anger and life takes the love from you and leaves you dead. The dead should love the living, the banalities of daily life gone, stripped down to the bare truths. we are inherently good, we try our hardest and sometimes we fail. the dead should know this. but it seems to me that she wasnt given this chance at sage death. that life limited her to cells and space and blood and she now reeks vengengence on those of us who loved her in our ways but failed her in our lives.
on warm nights the air still and the hum and drone of airconditioners overtaking the city buzz I think that these streets are made for winter. for the quick pace of someone desperate to get home to warmer clothes and the nest of purple sheets and feather doonas. we shouldnt amble like I do down napier street wondering too loud where the birds go, where the native birds went and noticing how absent the smell of the sea is from this summer air. A girl like me in a city like this shouldnt weight her homesickness on the bouquet of the breeze. but I do. I remember a time when I walked alone through dry grass . I was five , six, eight and I thought that the furtherest place in the world was the sea. we went there sometimes and I did as I often do before the sea now, sat in awe of its endlessness, so unquantifiable so like the sky in its moods and its hues and its distance from reality. And then for a while 10, 11 12 the sea was closer and those dry hills so far and the press and pull of a small city seemed so like the world had gotten smaller and that there was less air and all the people in all the world were way to close for comfort. and now here and I have some small measure of understanding of the bigness of the world of the smallness of myself and yet this bigger city feels like life has been compacted condensed and that for all I know the globe exists in a 20km diameter with its axis fitzroy. the sky is no longer endless, it ends and it begins with the buildings to my left and the houses to my right. the sea is imagined. its a fairy story dreamt up by napolean in flat number 459 in Atherton Gardens and whenever pressed for more details he points in the way of the bay and says ‘there, surely you can see it.’ But this bowl of brown water is not the sea I once new. the roar and sigh of a thing bigger than everything else. Nostalgia should be a classified disease. Its as pervasive and uncomfortable.
The water was in end what smothered her. from inside. her going brought a shower of rain brief but hard. I watched through drugged eyes as out the window the sky wept like I couldnt. outdone for emotion by an intangible thing.
after years of waiting , there, in the corner. 8 years too late. a spectre of the genes that came before me of the time when our blood was one. here you are. have you been here all this time? waiting for me to become you, waiting for me to see you. waiting till the thing I am met the thing that you were. or are you just looking at the horizon? to the sky. to the earth thats been denied you all these years. am I just one more mass of the world that wont have you, matter slipping past spirit. I run my hands through you and still you arent real to me. its just air that I have in my hands. just an idea running through my fingers, just a dream remembered now forgotten.
my sense of smell is out of whack. somehow I seem to be able to smell the soap they use in this house on the corner. a synthetic strawberry the kind that used to make me sneeze as a kid. the best excuse I could find for trying to get out of a bath. the soap smell fits this house in its ordered disorder . the cafefully planned rustic exterior. I imagine their children all smell like strawberry shortcake dolls and have flushed cheeks from their bath. its hard not to stop and peer through the window to see if their pjamas were the same as mine, although no, this was never my house. my house had wall paper that was like pine pannelling we had a a brown and orange couch. out the back we had acres and an orchard. we had baths because we were always dirty. or at least I was. this place is further than i care to think from that place and these kids they are city kids, I would have hid from them had i met them.
I put a hand on my belly unconsciously, I have been doing this alot lately. it seems to fit better there now. especially now that the nights are warm and there are no jacket pockets to rest them in. he told me to stop walking around town so late at night. but I cant give this time up. its more my time than this city has allowed me to have with it. we understand each other a little better when the streets are dark, when people you pass are obscured and as wary as you are. the smells are intensified and the sound carries. I love this quiet space. the city seems less scornful and more a little tired and contemplative. the possums I love too. these little scurrying eyes withless fear than a little annoyance for the distruption you make to their wanderings. it is good to see the streets so inhabited. I walk this same street by day and I hurry, I make little eye contact. I scan the footpath infront and check the road for cars. if its quiet I walk a little slower, pick lavender. read the graffiti and wonder why its so quiet. daylight makes me an anxious walker, night makes these street my own.
theres a murmur of a heartbeat. a little tremor. it could be the three coffees ive had today but I can feel her breath. it has to be her. who else could it be. she leaves me be during the day but for sometimes when the clouds dont move of a morning. when its dark like dusk and the sky has narrowed collapsed to meet the ground ,sometimes she is here. in the corner of my vision making my body swoon with something cellular, memories of the flesh.
I walk around a corner and suddenly theres a man, dark shadow, standing alongside a car, leaning on it cigarrette in hand. for a moment my heart lifts, changes direction, jumps. my body all the while keeping pace with itself . but the man hasnt noticed me, in fact wont notice me. he takes long drags of his cigarette and watches the house in front of him. they are angry drags, drags that are pointed at someone. I have taken those drags before and fought the urge to blow the smoke directly into his face. Im in no danger from him, but he’s dangerous none the less. I thank my shoes for the quiet they manifest so that I can leave him to his anger.
this is another aspect to this city, well to all cities I guess. the faint trace, sometimes pungent odour of anger. walking to the supermarket I cant breathe but for it. Smith st anger floats past and fights with fear. fourteen people ask people for money forteen people say no quietly cursing the havenothings for making them guilty for the ten dollar conditioner and the expensive cheese they just bought at safeway. guilt makes people angry. because if all you have to worry about is having to say no to fourteen people then you really are doing ok. theres anger on the street on the weekend outside my window street noise a woman screaming at her boy friend, I look below and there they are him trying to passify her, her trying as hard as her drunken body permits to punch him in the head. she is more angry than I have seen a woman for some time, he more calm than I would be. everytime another person gets close he tries to pretend that nothing is happening whilst she continues to scream I wonder if this then is the end for them or if tommorrow she will wake up with a headache and a vague sense of regret.
I can feel her anger sometimes. permeating the quiet night, it seems she follows me with anger, breath drawn too quick from one who has never had breath with which to breathe. death belongs to love, not anger and life takes the love from you and leaves you dead. The dead should love the living, the banalities of daily life gone, stripped down to the bare truths. we are inherently good, we try our hardest and sometimes we fail. the dead should know this. but it seems to me that she wasnt given this chance at sage death. that life limited her to cells and space and blood and she now reeks vengengence on those of us who loved her in our ways but failed her in our lives.
on warm nights the air still and the hum and drone of airconditioners overtaking the city buzz I think that these streets are made for winter. for the quick pace of someone desperate to get home to warmer clothes and the nest of purple sheets and feather doonas. we shouldnt amble like I do down napier street wondering too loud where the birds go, where the native birds went and noticing how absent the smell of the sea is from this summer air. A girl like me in a city like this shouldnt weight her homesickness on the bouquet of the breeze. but I do. I remember a time when I walked alone through dry grass . I was five , six, eight and I thought that the furtherest place in the world was the sea. we went there sometimes and I did as I often do before the sea now, sat in awe of its endlessness, so unquantifiable so like the sky in its moods and its hues and its distance from reality. And then for a while 10, 11 12 the sea was closer and those dry hills so far and the press and pull of a small city seemed so like the world had gotten smaller and that there was less air and all the people in all the world were way to close for comfort. and now here and I have some small measure of understanding of the bigness of the world of the smallness of myself and yet this bigger city feels like life has been compacted condensed and that for all I know the globe exists in a 20km diameter with its axis fitzroy. the sky is no longer endless, it ends and it begins with the buildings to my left and the houses to my right. the sea is imagined. its a fairy story dreamt up by napolean in flat number 459 in Atherton Gardens and whenever pressed for more details he points in the way of the bay and says ‘there, surely you can see it.’ But this bowl of brown water is not the sea I once new. the roar and sigh of a thing bigger than everything else. Nostalgia should be a classified disease. Its as pervasive and uncomfortable.
The water was in end what smothered her. from inside. her going brought a shower of rain brief but hard. I watched through drugged eyes as out the window the sky wept like I couldnt. outdone for emotion by an intangible thing.
posted by kel at 5:22 PM
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