Something that keeps coming back

JUNE 2 03 – 'A glimpse of something that keeps coming back.' Yes, I notice that myself. Physically, it is glancing to the side and seeing through a half open door, something going on in a room. I see this often, a reflection in glass, or something in peripheral vision, probably just a dandelion seed floating, or a piece of fluff, but I turn the head as if there was that half-open door that I'm looking through. A couple in there, arguing, bright electric lights. It's like a scene in a play, where the whole point is that you don't see everything. Maybe you never see her face, you just see the guy facing her.

Something that keeps coming back, is a road to nowhere. One day I'll see myself looking at me, and then I'll know, what these fragments mean, know what they mean again, less fleetingly perhaps, but too late now for anything else than signing out. Sometimes I do know what I am talking about too well. It's a self-contained scene, imploded with meaning. Imploded seems the right word, but it's hard to explain how that is. We are heading into an imploding collapse, and you can feel it all around. The world slows down, it is a long wait for nothing to happen, it is gambolling down a grassy hill head over heels as a child over and over and over. A starling that mimics the squeaky wheel of a wheelbarrow. The tyre-swing hanging from a frayed rope over the ditch in the wood. Brown beer bottles frozen at an angle sticking out of the iced-over canal. Frosted sparkly shirts stiff as board left out overnight on the washing line. Yellow light on a little girl's neck from a buttercup, the red cellophane fish curling up on the palm. Tadpoles squiggly in the brook. Gambolling gambolling over and over the things I have heard the things I have seen the things that have moved me the things that have instantly changed me.

There's a joy in reaching out and grabbing fleeting images. You can see connections, but ultimately what's written is breathing softly into my hand my hand resting on my face, deep in contemplation of something right next to me and I don't want to turn my head, because I know it won't disappear.

When you forget who you are you can be anybody, and sometimes you can come back through another door. You find tightrope-walking easy again, you don't quite want to engage with who you really are, because it's just a little too powerful. The number of times I have hidden my head from the miraculous. Even that I had to learn.

Yes, there is a glimpse of something that keeps coming back.

The garden tonight is wonderfully restless, herons are shrieking overhead, a dog barks in the distance, running water down drainpipes as people prepare for bed. Some nights as I stand out there looking up at the stars it feels ripe for anything to happen, and I do not breathe for ages.

Copyright © 2003 Biroco