Wednesday, April 20, 2011

dancing between the drops

abcde,

let me pick my way slowly through the pieces. the past four, almost five months have passed in a blur; it's unfair that happens because each day comes so vividly, they shouldn't get mashed up together like they didn't matter or have individualities, they did. i have gone from amused to novel, to blasé, to worn, to a hundred places in between. some days it feels like i stand in a white room while jigsaw pieces rain down upon me, things are breathless and piling up, the clues the obstacles, my hair loose falling down my back.

these months are for waiting, waiting is not so hard anymore. i sit sometimes, stand sometimes, move around like a stop-motion video. where i am has desks and chairs, cupboards and screens. the world is stopping for the weekend. i don't move as much as skirt, navigating between metal cages and books, glares and growls. now and then the clock breaks down and i am left dangling in space, leaning against the wall. sunlight fights for space with me and i lose time. everything is yellow and outside the glass panes are tiny men constructing a river from soil.

memories that flash have cheated, vietnam, mongolia and new zealand. impersonable, i have found the word. today i tried foreign, distant, past. i wonder why, and if it is because they wandered to other ports of call. the flavour is gone out of them- they are a stranger's memories. or perhaps i am the stranger, and these are someone else's memories seeking refuge in me. she keeps the flavours, i the chronology. once you were gone/it was never an honest world

there isn't really much else to say, except i think of the present and future all the time, and impassively of the past. i find hearts and size them up, sit on buses and lose myself. this is a time of waiting.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

1) while waiting under a bus stop whose roof leaked, holding an umbrella over me i heard a fat man whistle, whistle a tune, whistle a hymn.

2) i have four letters scattered before the keys; one bound for australia, the other new zealand, one for bristol and one for home.

3) and yes hl, i can drive. why do you ask?

Sunday, April 10, 2011

perhaps he's right

me: ... and at three i have a meeting-
j: yeah i'm going for it too
me: (stares for an inordinately long time while mind flashes various tables and people around tables trying to find j's face in one of them) oh... that's right.
j: you're in too many committees la

Friday, April 01, 2011

our newspapers are torn for space

g said that this year has been simply tragic, and she is too right. i still have no words for the 20th of march, and how a and m are still grieving. what does it all mean?

and then there's the new phase of life i have entered. i couldn't sleep last night, and got to thinking. news of a trip to yogyakata that i will not be able to take leave for was demoralising at midnight, and triggered waves of missing i had near forgotten. things that have changed since three months: thinking, time and community. i have been held under by this environment for too long, and have too many responsibilities out of it. what this means is there is no place and no space to think. and then i miss the ifg people- they're the home i left too completely too suddenly, i don't see them anymore.
i can't stay where i am too long; water will burst my lungs.