Purple

And now for something slightly different…musings from underneath a bridge in Pyrmont a long time ago

 

Standing still.

Watching her from across the narrow, desolate street under a low overpass bridge. She pushes all of her belongings not in a trolley as has come to be expected but rather in a baby’s pram.

Did she once have a child who’s imprint surely remains in the pram or did she find the pram discarded on the curb by parents when their child outgrew the seat with feet dragging on the ground? The pram comfortably holds what it is designed to hold. It holds a life.

Her life contained in small ripped plastic bags.

She pushes the pram to the pylon holding up the bridge, holding up the highway. Seeing support. Looking for the softest patch of the inhospitable concrete which she finds and claims by laying down a bright purple sleeping bag extracted from a dark grey bag. How the colours work together make no sense.

Living a grey life in a purple bag. The contrast must be excruciating and contradictory. But maybe she needs the purple so the grey isn’t so bleak and all consuming. Maybe the purple saves her. Maybe it is just a purple sleeping bag she found or was given or stole and nothing more.

It’s the middle of the afternoon but she is settling down for the night. It is a life so hard and every necessity so rare only sleep could provide a momentary escape. There are no signs of the green bottles in brown paper bags. Sleep appears to be the only way to cope without having. And I open the car door, get in, and drive away knowing that nothing, nothing would ever allow me to cope with living in that purple sleeping bag on the grey street.

 

And with that I shall leave you with a thought from somebody else and a photograph from me.

“Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness”  – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Insomnia

3:06AM

The insomnia hours are by far the strangest – fast, break-neck fast and chronically slow at the same time. If time is indeed relative then it makes sense that these hours wizz and trickle by in equal cruelty. The house of night, of sleep, at least when all the world sleeps – slips through your fingers as you try to chase the last hours of rest. These hours until the morning, of sunrise, of another day, possibly a better day, remain out of reach. Covered by the mist of burning eyes, slow movements and infomercials. Waiting for the moment when the biological need for sleeps trumps the endless stream of thoughts flowing through the body. Is it these thoughts that keep the body awake – min over matter but decidedly not the way the idiom envisions. The mind steps me from sleeping – it is the start and the end of all my problems, of all that I am, ever was or ever could be. The mind holds my greatest achievements, all the potential and every downfall. Isn’t that thought both liberating and terrifying – how do people sleep at all?

What keeps me awake? My driving emotions of guilt, inadequacy, ambition, fear, loneliness, worry (especially about the aforementioned emotions). I’ve told myself stories as long as I can remember. Especially falling asleep – short stories where things are happy or at least stories where the complications were solvable and the crippling fear not my own. Little scenes that make be believe or at least trick my brain into thinking that, if even only in a dream, things can be safe and warm – understandable.

Stories are comforting; a beginning, a middle and an end. Neatly and with a bow. Life doesn’t always happen like that. In fact it almost never is. A middle can transition into a beginning almost without notice. Three beginnings and collide with a separate cohort of ends – in an infinite series of changes, moments, beats.

Stories are comforting; a collective conscious moment. A moment in time or space or even memory when two things touch. When two minds converge – when a memory of a story changes a current interpretation.

Stories are comforting; they can show you how common your feelings are. Seeing your life encapsulated in thoughts or words can bolster your courage to face the world.

Stories are comforting; they can take you away from the complications of life. From time, from earth, from all the certainties of physics.

Stories are comforting for as long as we allow them to reside in our imagination. I hope the day never comes when I wish them away in the hope of fleeting sleep.

4:37AM

And with that I shall leave you with a thought from somebody else and a photograph from me.

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” – Ernest Hemingway

Words

Today I was rummaging through stacks of old papers and files in an attempt to find some inspiration for the umpteenth cover letter I have to write. I’m not sure what made me think that I find inspiration in old papers and long forgotten files but that part of my psyche has never made sense to me. Maybe I’d written the perfect descriptor of my work ethic, skills and personality on a scrap of paper and for some utterly unknown reason stuck it in a file marked “2007 Tax Return”. But alas no such luck. What I did find was a printout of a poem by Langston Hughes and it made me think.

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun

Or fester like a sore –

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten mean?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I first heard of Langston Hughes when I was in 7^th grade when my English teacher gave us a new poem or quotation each week that we had to memorize and recite. I’m not entirely sure why she did that but nearly 15 years later I still remember Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players/The have their exits and their entrances/And one man in his time plays many parts” from As You Like It as clearly as I remember Langston Hughes “Dreams”. I don’t know anybody else who was in that class with me all those years ago so I’m not sure if it’s just me who held on to these quotes. But for me it was the beginning of collecting words from others and I haven’t stopped since. I have notebooks on my bookshelf filled with quotes that I find ranging from inspiration to downright stupid.

Not too long ago I came across a quote that encompassed my reasons for collecting words and expressed it infinitely more eloquently that I could ever hope. I collect words because words survive. I collect words because I never know when I am going to be at a loss for them. I collect words because I am comforted that people have stood where I am standing now. I collect words because it is more space efficient than collecting vinyl records and less creepy than collecting dead bugs. But mostly I collect words because “Words are sacred…if you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little” (Tom Stoppard).

I like to think that was what my English teacher was trying to teach us – at least that’s what I learned.

For me what I take away from finding this poem again is that dreams are necessary. Goals are great and realistic but its dreams that can make life exciting – try to walk in the footsteps of giants. You never know if you can get there unless you give it a go. And that’s something that I have to constantly remind myself. I will never know the depth of my abilities unless I have the dream and the persistence to keep trying. That is by no means suggesting that picking myself up and dusting myself off to start all over again is easy because of course it isn’t. Giving up on a dream may seem like a good option justified as mature realism but for me I think it would just sag like a heavy load.

And with that I shall leave you with a thought from somebody else and a photograph from me.

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Second Hand News”

The obvious question is – what the hell does second hand news have to do with anything. I’d like to say that it’s something exciting, cryptic or esoteric but really it’s because the song playing on my iTunes now is “Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac. So as it turns out I am not exciting, cryptic or esoteric. At least not yet…

And now that I have clearly drawn you in with that exciting, cryptic and oddly esoteric enticement (sensing at theme here?) it really does occur to me that maybe this will be predominantly second hand news. I have a really odd habit of reading newspapers, blogs, websites, nutritional information tables & all those little leaflets inside medication boxes and then relating the information to people who are unlucky enough to cross my path. Occasionally I gather all this information, sort it thematically in my brain and gear up for a good old rant. And since soapboxes are so rare these days and blogs so ubiquitous you can guess which I went for. I was quite happy to stick to sporadic ranting at the pub but my friends encouraged (read: insisted) that I share my insanity with the internet people. I’m pretty sure it’s because they would rather skim read than have to actually listen.

So that’s basically it – maybe someone will read this, maybe someone won’t. I’m not emailing the link to my mother so that already puts my readership in the red but such is life.

And with that I shall leave you with a thought from somebody else and a photograph from me.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker