??/??/2010
There was a cliff, a great sandstone sheer that jutted out between swaying gums. The sky a brilliant hue, sun warm. Dry scrub cracking in the heat, dead leaves curling at my feet. I gripped the edge, ants nipping at my fingers. A worn book with yellowed pages perched on the stone to one side. A slight breeze made an ear prick, expecting the soft chime of bells. I was greeted with the slap of leaves, the clatter of a stick falling from a branch and then silence.
??/06/2012
Black as pitch. The crack of heavy tires rolling over dusted gravel sounded above my head. A flutter of glossy feathers. Head spinning in the darkness I clawed myself awake to a foreign song.
Tzet Tzet..Tzet.
I listened as they danced together above me in the light. Two chorused as one. The snap of wings battering at the air, tiny little claws scraping concrete.
Tzet Tzet Tzet.
The sound of the outside, of the cold white sun that gave no warmth, of the broken streets frightening and hostile. Swaddled in blankets I lay safely below in a room thick with must and damp.
Dust and sweaty stench pervaded, a sickly mix. Death. In the gloom I contemplated. A small grate would allow a few strands of light to peek in from above. Through there I would be able to see..
Tzet Tzet. Snap. Scratch.
A pit had formed inside me. My stomach growled and sent stabs of pain to my head. I could fix that. I chose not to. The thought of leaving the darkness that shrouded me was consuming. I listened for footsteps above. Frail scuffs over floorboards rotting in age, strained breathing and faint gibbering from a television. No dice. Weak and dizzy I closed my eyes and drifted.
In another world above the ground, I sat on the concrete and watched as they danced. Black wings tipped an iridescent blue shimmered in the harsh light. Small patches of white raced down their backs towards long tails that brushed against the pavement. Their beaks snapped at one another. Triangular while closed, they formed hollow diamonds to release an exotic sound.
It was spring, the snow had melted away but the world remained cold and unforgiving. My back was up against a chain wire fence, twisted and speckled with rust. Perching on my heels in the alleyway I turned to watch a silver truck crumble through dirt ruts. Lacking a driver, it crept down the parched road like water seeping from distant mountains.
A bus decomposed across the street, sinking into the ground under the weight of moldy carpets dripping with snow melt. An old man lived there. He had a face of crumpled cardboard with eyes black and beady, his mouth would bare a smile that lacked half his teeth. He waved from time to time. He wasn’t there in my dream though. No one was.
09/08/2016
A knife balances precariously behind my eye, a smattering of acidic colors obscure my sight like petrol on water. The scent of gasoline rich and primitive, a reminiscent aroma of summers spent perched on a dock as motorboats chugged past. Before me a white tank, crowned with a cold steel ring for the fuel.
There’s a whistling in my ears. The wind is truculent, tearing at my clothing and ripping at the clasp of my helmet in a fury. To my sides, a viridescent and black whir. Twisted stakes of charcoal dappled with spruces of green claw at the sky with withered branches. They flick past at an alarming rate. Inside the confines of my helmet is a quiet calm, the knife threatens an emotionless mind.
Faster.
I feel my fingers pull at the throttle. The roar beneath me is deafening, fighting for supremacy against the screaming wind. The vibrations intensify, the mercurial hum of the bike strengthens. It’s keening to me, more, more. I obey dutifully and the bike soars ahead. As if in flight, the vertigo engulfs me and in that moment a small elation invades the periphery of my helmet. Then it was gone. Numb once more.
The wind plucked at me and the bike coursed over gravelled road, smooth as a blade through silk. Tangled brush writhing, golden reeds swaying, ancient cycads stoic. All a blur. As my steed rounded a sharp bend the din settled and the tempest dropped away. The great burned gums of the bushland opened their green grey maw to reveal a pale blue sky. A smudge of soft clouds unveiled a kindly warm sun to comfort from the cool vapors of the canopy left behind. The road thinned out and gave way to slabs of stone carefully crafted and interlaced upon the ground. They were dusted with chits of sand that sparkled in the light, smoothed by the lashings of a thousand storms, and set into place by the feet of a thousand tourists.
A deep blue expanse loomed beyond as the sandstone ended in a precipice. The waters were calm. Gentle waves curled towards the rocky shores of a distant island that burgeoned under the weight of a mountain of bronze rockery. Its peak was adorned with an impressive lighthouse, the freshly painted red roof pierced the sky.
I had arrived at a lookout, removed from civilisation and shrouded by miles of thick volatile bushland that crawled with all manner of poisonous, stinging, biting creatures. I had come for peace and yet even here there was none. Flocks of people gathered upon lichen speckled stones speaking loudly of the mundane, throwing rocks and crunching through dead leaves to poke the tortured trees with branches and bleed their sticky sap. Children gallivanted and screeched, babies squalled and foreigners babbled. A seaplane guttered above.
Perhaps the quiet in my mind would never know the quiet that existed in the world.
The knife fell.
??/??/1997
I walked down a garden trail. Twisting and turning, blades of grass up to my nose, ominous dark trees overhead. Along my way pinwheels arose from the foliage, each stick tipped in a plethora of colourful metallic blades that spun in the gentle breeze. The sunlight played upon them and splattered a rainbow onto the greenery. Every so often the light would catch and sear into my eyes, leaving trails of aura pulsing over my retinas. They smelled of tinsel and aluminium, almost sweet against the grass.
At this fragile age I had no understanding of what it meant to see and and to smell in such a way, only that it was distressing. The pinwheels stopped spinning as the breeze died down and the scents and lights left me. Unsettling things tended to end, and as a child I told myself this was how the world worked.
13/03/2017
It’s not how the world works.