The Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History Museum, the fabulous Victoria and Albert… all of them fabulous, and within walking distance.
I felt like South Ken. It was tidy, stylish and calm, relaxed and lively at the same time. I would start there, at the NHM and its cornucopia of dinosaur fossils, animal shots, jungle panoramas, and the history of the continents before moving on to the evolution of decorative arts and design, sculpture and textiles in the V&A.
The latter: talk about an exhibition. The V&A had over two million items on display. From metalwork to jewellery, architecture and photographs, prints and pottery ceramics, it was the largest collection of its kind in the world. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did, and it gave me a fuzzy, tickling sensation. Come on, I told myself. Do the tour, learn stuff, and round it all off with a cup of hot chocolate at the cafe by the blue-green glass stalagmite.
On second thought, two million items of artwork plus four billion years of natural history felt like a lot of work. I mean, where to even start?
And how long would the tour take?
No, I couldn’t be bothered. Not even for the V&A’s creamy hot chocolate.
Not to mention it was late in the evening.
What time do the museums close anyway?
Once more, I had no idea what to do.
Does it get more annoying than that? To be spoiled for choice and be satisfied with naught?
I hate dithering. The vulgarity of it.
I needed to keep myself occupied. Do something with my time.
How about something more physical, like football or tennis? Mini-golf, basketball, squash? A jog in the park? A swim in the pool followed by a generous spa treatment?
Ah, the spa! It used to be that people socialised at the baths. What a great idea! Trade my rags for a fluffy robe and saunter through an immaculate pampering area, sipping on Highland water from crystal vases, simmering in the box’s freshly brewed steam to sweat out the day’s frustrations alongside my fellow citizens, exchanging nods and glances while trading tips on new restaurants and delicatessens. Get a bit of banter going to keep the social wheels working, in theory anyway.
In reality, it doesn’t go down that way. Tolerant as it is, this town doesn’t cater to bare intimacy. The sauna, if nothing else, involves exposure, which makes Londoners uncomfortable. Don’t expect much in the way of civic bonding. It works better in Germany and Scandinavia where people are accustomed to each other’s nakedness. (Here, it just highlights how far apart we are.)
Then how about a different kind of intimacy? I could go to the cinema, for example, where an audience experiences a story in unison. Let the common spectacle wash over us and join us in cinematic communion, vicarious and evocative, at the end of which we pick up our stuff and leave, our binding threads loose again, dissolving as we go our separate ways.
Or, if I wanted something less abstract, I could hang out in one of the thousands of pubs, bars, shops and food venues. Why not? A citizen in the land of publicanism who chats up strangers. No harm in trying. Not everyone is averse to banter, surely. Some people might be friendly, their responses spontaneous and unpretentious, especially if they happened to feel lonely and up for a chinwag, however brief or laconic. The booze might help (here’s to social lubricants, a staple in London culture). Just grab a pint and mingle, probe, show interest, letting others do the talking and the drinking. Better yet, I’d order a G&T and sip between sentences to nudge things along without getting ahead of myself.
Remember to approach the tourists first, for an easier and less complicated interaction.
Then, all warmed up and buzzing, approach the locals, the punters. Give everyone a chance.
Or simply hang back and watch them do their thing. People are fun to observe. Project a zillion possibilities on each group and come up with the most intriguing scenarios. Where are they from? What was their day like? Did they suffer a loss recently? Are they vegans? Do they sleep in on Sundays? Take the time to imagine what a stranger’s life is like, and life in general opens up. Scrutinise people to understand what they mean when they speak out and what they mean when they’re silent. Make the most of my shut-outness. Read each and every person, understand them from afar. There’s always something to learn. It comes in handy later. Good writing hinges on it.
And when I’m exhausted and fed up, sod it. Shut them all out. Let them be and crack open a book amid the clamour. A hundred pages, two hundred, right in the thick of it. Take a breather, look up, process what I’ve read, combine it with what I know, dive back for more. Lose myself. Do it in the middle of the pub’s maelstrom – the pubstrom, as a dear friend calls it. Play into the energy while doing my thing. And marvel at how no one has bothered me all this time.
What a rare treat, to just be. This city is good at that. Personal boundaries are nourished and encouraged, even in gatherings.
The problem is, sometimes people are approached when they want privacy and disregarded when they seek company.
Timing: Father Time’s prankster nephew.
*****
I walked down the streets behind The Strand, the gears in my head clicking.
If clothes don’t make the person, then architecture doesn’t make a city.
Only that’s not true. A city’s build defines it. Form drives function. Buildings influence how a town works, affecting the psyche of its residents and visitors, whose actions feed back into the urban setting, full circle, on and on across time. Manhattan induces a feeling of grandeur and majesty that gives rise to urban utopia that renders the impossible natural. Singapore is a beacon of cleanliness, order and, of course, lions (the symbolism of). Rome is epochal and timeless, and a wonder in itself; with two feet in the past, an eye on the future, and the weight of its legacy acting as a threat to its progress, it defies the odds, functioning in a most dysfunctional yet charming manner.
As for London, this is where Joseph Conrad’s most infamous novel begins; on the Thames, from where the ships of the kingdom sailed across the oceans to distant shores, creeping up strange rivers all the way into the Heart of Darkness, a terrain as menacing as the forests of the Thames must have been to those who crept up its waters in turn, in search of whatever one pursues across alien waterways.
And yet, despite its murky past, London shines bright on the world map. I love walking its streets, immersed in its spectacle. A vibrant city, it reinvents itself over the centuries, keeping up with the times, perhaps even leading them, raising standards, setting trends. Its diversity is uncanny, its architecture at the forefront. A striking variety of buildings attest to how history and culture come together to create something larger than the sum of the years. Georgian, Victorian and Tudor edifices with their plain and austere lines endure alongside the glass-encrusted high-rises that loom grand above the wooden tenements – whatever survived the wars and the Great Fire – with a number of recently erected imitations in their midst, the variety of which make up neighbourhoods of simulacra-meet-the-original, all of them a testament to the city’s enduring legacy. Nothing is allowed to perish, not without replacement. The country may be slipping into obscurity, but we, despite the odds, continue to survive, develop, flourish. The death that accompanies our progress is lively – a convocation of a process larger than any person.
We live to die, yes, mistbound, but what wonderful wrecks we are, engaged in a manner that survives the centuries.
*****
The city endures.
It has buried the ancient tribes, and will someday bury us in turn, outlasting us.
But our contributions will be carried forth through it.
And thus, we live on.
What a privilege to be part of this construct, even if it’s killing us.
*****
‘He who is tired of London is tired of life,’ said Samuel Johnson.
He was obviously referring to those who could afford it.
He also failed to acknowledge, in this instance anyway, the value of living in the middle of nature, or by the blue sea, or in a quaint village where people greet each other and mean it. Surely there’s life in such places, too.
Then again, the countryside can be treacherous (by nature.) So much entropy at work, lack of oversight, abandon, at least compared to the cities, most certainly in terms of fair play. People do as they please in the countryside, and it’s hard to stop them. If the neighbour who runs the lawnmower at five in the morning is a hardheaded early riser with no regard for other people’s peace of mind, chances are you’re not going to get him to change his routine unless you pound some logic into the conversation. Are you prepared to do that? Because the law isn’t likely to interfere, and if it does, you’ll owe its instruments a favour. Quid pro quo, small-town style.
And if, by chance, the person who runs the lawnmower at five in the morning is the police chief’s brother, there’s not much you can do unless you’re the police chief’s father or mother.
In the cities, of course, the people who do as they please are tycoons with helicopters and charities, cavern-deep networks and generous donations; honchos whose business and good graces are important to so many people. Good luck getting them, their children, and all their security people to stop riding shotgun in the street.
*****
I once spent time in Lymington, Middle of Fuck-all Nowhere. I was visiting a writer friend who had offered to put me up for a couple of weeks.
‘It’s a fantastic place,’ he said, referring to the town. ‘Sophisticated and fun. I’ll show you around.’
It was a prolific fortnight, occasioned with book readings, group discussions, presentations, and Sauvignon Blanc. A boisterous crowd indeed, made up of readers and connoisseurs who made merry in a fairytale kind of way, and yet, when the time came to sit down and have dinner, someone always had something nasty to say about those who weren’t there. Ongoing grievances were issued at will, aspersions cast like they were nothing. Jim Whatshisname was lazy. Jennifer So-and-so drank too much. The mayor was partial to the horse track and the police chief ate too much.
Sophistication is no antidote to entropy, after all.
The same thing happened in St. Paul de Vence, in the south of France, where I spent a summer writing a novella on the French Revolution. Different language, similar problems.
The same thing happens in London, but there’s something about the way it’s done. We moan, but we get on with it. We apologise too much but hardly mean it. There’s no time for regrets. We snap our fingers and carry on.
London is hard. Scarcely the bellwether for life, but solid enough to outlast most places.
*****
Father and Mother took me to the Tower when I was child. I wanted to go to the zoo, but it didn’t matter what I wanted.
‘You’ll appreciate the Tower,’ said Father. ‘It has everything one needs to know about humanity.’
Father went on to explain how the Tower was a medieval structure that served as fortress and dungeon, a capital within a capital where the kings and queens of old reigned immaculate. It was guarded day and night to prevent incursions, especially from the side of the Thames. Iron gates covered the portholes and no one was allowed in or out without a pass. It was something like today’s banks and corporate buildings, he added, only grittier and more romantic.
In other words, the Tower was a glorified bunker for the royals. One could call it the lodge inside which they ran their humongous zoo’s affairs. (Father laughed at his own joke. He glanced at Mother. She stared ahead.)
Over the centuries, Father went on, the Tower was expanded to accommodate the power of the court and the Realm at large. The monarchs erected courtyards, walls, bulwarks, wings and extensions to showcase their wealth and authority.
‘Their immense wealth and fragile authority,’ Mother interjected.
Father grinned.
‘And today,’ Mother added, ‘the Tower is a museum.’
We walked along the cold masonry and marvelled at the layers of history.
‘The ghosts of bygone eras tell us stories,’ said Father. ‘You have to listen. Pay attention.’
Mother smiled and patted down my hair. She took hold of my hand. We reached the Crown Jewels and observed them without comment. They were so shiny.
Outside, on the ramparts, a faint drizzle sprayed our faces. Mother traced out the crenelations with her fingers. She caressed my face. The smell of soot, stone and her flowery Yorkshire perfume punched moulins up my nose. I felt sick. Father thought I was putting on a show. He told me not to drag my feet. Children who dragged their feet were thrown in the dungeons, he laughed. Mother laughed, too. Her grip tightened. We walked the grounds and the corridors and ramparts without end. They told me stories about how the British Isles are a playground for spirits from around the globe, and how this land came to be after the continent of Pangaea split apart to create America and Eurasia. The fault line along which the British Isles arose marked the border between the old and new worlds. And in time, the Isles grew into a global power. The fleets that connected the world took off from their harbours and the ideas that shook the planet – bright and dark alike – were conceived here. The new world originated right here. The gilds that ran the globe operated from these shores, and still do, nestled in the City of London.
I would do myself a favour, and the Isles justice, Father hissed, when I learned to appreciate these truths.
‘Even the world’s time is measured here,’ he added.
‘Over there,’ said Mother. ‘Universal Time.’
She pointed to Greenwich. I remember how strange the name sounded: Greenwich.
I looked. The place was green but also grey.
‘GMT,’ said Father. ‘Greenwich Mean Time.’
I asked what was so mean about it.
They both laughed, and we moved further along the fortifications, our coats buttoned up to the collar. Greenwich was now behind us. The three of us stood together, facing a sea of construction. Mother’s grip was tight.
‘There!’ She pointed in the distance. ‘Elizabeth Tower.’
I grabbed the rampart and stood on my toes to see.
*****
Elizabeth Tower was completed in 1859. Mother’s words. It might not look it, but it stands a few meters short of one hundred. Her voice resonates, coming from everywhere all at once. Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the tower, but we call the whole edifice Big Ben for the same reason they call Tower Bridge ‘London Bridge’ – she forces a smile – … because we’re a mess … and no, none is falling down, bairn!
Her face fades. Her voice grows thicker, more masculine.
People learn one thing and stick to it. It’s impossible to change their minds. They remember things as they choose to. We all do.
Her face is a blur and her grip vice-like. She yanks me left and right, my shoulder cracking as I’m tossed around.
Stop moaning, will you? Listen! It’s a fun story. Back in the day, a confidence man attempted to sell Tower Bridge to a clueless American, pitching it as London Bridge (neither bridge was his to sell) and the American bought it, and everyone now confuses the two bridges. Just like that. The attempted scam becomes part of culture.
The smell of alcohol burns my nose. My eyes are wet.
Do you believe that? Don’t! It’s an urban myth. The real story is this: The original London Bridge – built in 1831 – was sinking by the 1960s, and the City of London Corporation flogged it. Robert P. Murdoch, a successful entrepreneur from Missouri who specialized in motors, chainsaws and real estate development made a bid for it. He wanted it for a city he’d founded in Arizona called Lake Havasu City. Murdoch won the bid, dismantled the bridge and transported the pieces by boat across the Panama Canal. Construction began in 1968, and by 1971 Lake Havasu had its very own London Bridge. The real thing. The surrounding property was sold at a premium and the craziest idea in history became a successful enterprise.
*****
It’s a funny thing, looking back. In hindsight, everything we know feels predestined. We take the past for granted. No matter how impressive the accomplishment, we raise our brows in surprise, take note of it, but deem it inevitable.
Relocating an historical bridge across the ocean, for example, wasn’t just a crazy idea or a logistical nightmare. It was a daft impossibility, akin to the ideas that disease was caused by pathogens (and not deities), that we could sail round the world and harness energy from atoms and exchange information instantly. All of it impossible to take seriously, until it got done. Then we took those developments for granted and deemed them natural, and even coloured most of them to suit our needs. Some said that science was the instrument of man’s superiority; of white dominance; of colonial evil. Some said that engineering as we know it is a sexist suppression tool, while others see it as the definitive proof of humanity’s intelligence and our advantage over nature. Others look to our emotional depth for proof that we reign supreme above all life, while some argue that our emotions are the key to connecting with nature, not dominating it. We make up stories to suit our biases, expectations and creeds, to feel better about ourselves, here, now, in the name of a better future. We’re creatures of temporal framing, agenda and self-interest. The world is a perpetual chameleon dance, with humanity its bona fide lizard royalty. Our tone and intention, the underlying message – all of it remains in flux.
It’s Elizabeth Tower, but we call it Big Ben. It’s an easy-to-remember name. It sounds strong. Who cares about facts or details? What’s the matter? Are you sulking?
Mother’s voice is her own again, her face clear. She stares at me with her deep grey eyes, wondering.
What’s wrong, bairn?
As if it were yesterday.
The city is full of memories. Wherever I go, something jumps out at me.
Time, bairn, is a reminder that everything in this world is pliable. Time is the ultimate smith (some call it a forger), and it works on us at will.
*****
I clicked on the Notes app on my smartphone and typed: The city knows how to keep time. It also knows how to keep track of life in a manner that edges forward, step by step, click by whipping click. Elizabeth Tower, clock of clocks, is time’s fortress. A monument to the keeping and passage of time, where the royal family of Hours and Minutes and their unruly and restless Seconds dwell. A marker toward which we look for guidance while the years pass us by.
*****
Avoid the Circle, Northern, and Victoria lines when possible. Keep moving, I remind myself. Flow and adjust to find the current that takes me where I’m appreciated, where all my questions are answered…
*****
The city is brutal. Everything has purpose, masoning up to a feeling of preordainment, like a super-community with a massive agenda. There’s reason behind the absurdity, a sense of direction in the chaos. We may be disconnected but we’re bound to one another, operational within a paradigm. We serve this paradigm more than it serves us, but no one admits it. We live in a time that demands we march with it, and we do. Our actions amount to something, if not now, then down the line, be we central or peripheral. We add up to the urban construct. There’s utility in the metropolis. Escape it for a while – if we can – to take a break, yes. Relax on the sidelines where the air is cleaner and the spirit able to breathe, by all means. Find fault with it where fault is present; argue for a better way of going about things; criticise it for what it wastes, for the way it harms its surroundings, and hold it accountable for all the pain it inflicts, yes – the city could use that kind of involvement.
But diss it, trash it, call it hell on earth, unnatural, anathema, an evil curse, a gross liability (as I do on bad days and worse nights) and the magic fades. The buried chieftains of old, from all the vanquished and assimilated tribes, roar in their resting places, protesting how their sacrifice will have been for nothing if we continue down this road.
The city is mad and overflowing with method. Everything happens for a reason, I tell myself. To trash the metropolis is to disregard its complexity, ignorant of what has brought us here.
*****
I made my way through Victoria’s government buildings. So many government buildings. It was late, and they looked abandoned, but who could tell. Security involves opacity, a level of uncertainty. That was the point: to throw the observer off. To be transparent invites compromise, and some things are too important to risk – at least that’s what the powers that be claim.
So in the name of security we erect towers and walls and dungeons. We build ships and armies and companies that span the globe. We colonise those weaker than us. We wage war and seize control of other lands before we rise up in revolution for the right to redraw the power structure inside our own country, and label each other an enemy and fight amongst ourselves, striking deals and violating them, making promises we keep changing. We either create a lasting legacy or perish in the process, and sometimes we achieve both, dying out while our creations pass on to the next generations.
The dynamic is ruthless, but it endures.
In the name of security people are slaughtered, and yet we carry on.
The blade cuts both ways.
The scars are visible to this day. Government buildings cut through the infrastructure to let us know that life is run behind the scenes. History is the product of choices made in the name of concepts larger than daily life. Each monument in this neighbourhood and every neighbourhood across the world is a reminder of the sacrifices made to causes whose motives we’re not familiar with but whose effects we still feel. The city is a giant scar, the outcome of massive trauma – part-butchery, part-surgery.
*****
Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety’.
The quote sounds parochial, and so does its creator, but it applies to this day: none may procure safety by sacrificing freedom.
Then again, I’d made sure over the years to be accountable to no one, my bonds shredded and my latitude wide. I was bound to myself, free to go about my business as and when I pleased, and even though part of me felt good, I’d been compromised to a degree. In freedom I’d found both strength and doubt, privacy and isolation.
*****
I visited Paris a few years ago.
It was a sunny summer day, the conditions perfect for a long walk. But first, breakfast at my cramped townhouse hotel at Le Marais, where I enjoyed a selection of lush croissants with steaming coffee served in a vintage silver pot. The pastry was extra crispy and buttery and the brew strong, and I indulged.
Stuffed and buzzed, I hit the streets, making my way to the Musée Carnavalet. They had a rich art collection on the French Revolution and I wanted to take pictures.
The gallery was in a converted townhouse that came across like a presumptuous home, not a museum. The chambers felt rank and the wardens were rude and unkempt. One of them grabbed me by the shoulder – pas de flash! pas de flash! – and I couldn’t help shooting him a dirty look. I moved along, making the best of the dim lighting, sometimes snapping a picture three or four times.
One of the images that struck me was an engraving of the Thermidorian Reaction: the brutal arrest of Robespierre, champion of the Reign of Terror; a cautionary tale on the perils of getting (carried) away with murder.
I must have spent a couple of hours in that place, in thrall to the spectacle.
Later, back on the street, I bought a pistachio éclair with creamy filling and fondant icing, which I slaughtered on my way to the Bastille.
The Bastille. Another item on the bucket list. The building itself had been torn down in the French Revolution but its outline remained, and I went looking for it with a mouthful of velvety sugar.
Place de la Bastille was like any other continental square, large and bare, but it straddled three arrondissements. Three distinct neighbourhoods met on this symbolic area.
It was a powerful statement. History and town planning had somehow merged on location to remind Parisians and tourists alike that life was an intricate, overlapping affair.
I chatted with a few bystanders who alerted me to the July Column, the square’s centrepiece, which celebrated the July Revolution of 1830, not 1789, they pointed out.
‘Bizarre, it’s true,’ one of them added, waving a lit cigarette around like a wand. ‘But such is the way it is.’
The Bastille, they went on, was built in the late 1300s. It served as a fortress for a while, before its gradual makeover into a state prison that doubled as a fortification in times of conflict. And by the mid-1600s it was turned into a state penitentiary, housing anyone from disloyal upper-class Parisians to ‘media types’ who were deemed a threat. It represented absolute authority, not as much for its brutality as for the way it loomed over the Parisians, to remind them that the king’s power was total and unassailable.
No wonder that the 1789 breach – what we call the Storming of the Bastille – became the inspiration for an entire revolution. It could have been just another unlawful incident, to be added to the waves of violence plaguing France, the effects of which would be forgotten quickly. But it somehow touched a nerve and grew into a movement that grew into a landslide. Tearing the fortification down was a sign for what lay in store. France would never be the same again, and for a long time there was blood and promises everywhere.
I followed the meandering outline that marked the former walls, marveling at the area it covered. So much enterprise had moved into this space, supplanting the pain and anguish people had suffered here for centuries. Life had triumphed, and in such a practical manner.
The outline itself was nothing spectacular. Just a borderline of rectangular grey stones in a cobblestone sea, and easy to miss. At the same time, aware of what that line stood for, I felt a charge emanate from it, imagining what it was like to live here back when the massive structure loomed like a medieval Guantánamo Bay type camp, smack in the middle of Paris, operational for four hundred years.
Four hundred years is a long time for an institution of that ilk to exist.
I found myself in the Bastille metro station where the outline of the former prison continued in the form of a metal strip on the platform, marking the boundaries of the moat wall. I straddled the strip. How many lives had perished behind those walls at the king’s pleasure? Did the royals know that one day people would play hopscotch over its boundaries?
My appetite for history whetted, I made my way to the Musée d’Orsay where the guillotine was on display.
It was a grim pleasure to behold. A cold, mesmerising device, heavy, sharp, unexpectedly menacing, the guillotine spoke of a recycled kind of justice, revolutionary in its politics and science, and yet similar to the Ancien Regime. Different from its predecessor in all but definition, its justice was carried out in the name of general will, at the pleasure of power and populism, politics, brinkmanship, and vested interest.
So it goes, wrote Kurt Vonnegut, and he was right. Round and round we go, caught in a loop, hoping the circle turns into a spiral so that we may move forward as we spin round. From the tyranny of the Monarchy to the tyranny of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security. From the breaking wheel and the stake, to the tumbrel and blade.
How did Robespierre put it?
The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.
And they say life isn’t a function of paradox.
As it were, Paris demolished absolute monarchy to set the stage for the modern republic and open society at large – a paradigm we’re immersed in, and which we take for granted.
Meanwhile, across the Channel, by the river Thames, the royals survived the revolutionary upheaval of the late 1700s and the 1800s, the British monarchy intact to this day.
Yet London is, in many respects, a more liberal town than Paris.
At the same time, parts of London echo with ancient prejudice.
The blade cuts both ways indeed, be it republican, royal, conservative, liberal, or anything in between.
*****
Oxford Street was ablaze with rickshaws decorated like nightclubs, and which carried passengers over short distances, blaring their music into the late night.
One of the drivers was taking a break on Duke Street, near Selfridges, smoking a cigarette and checking his phone, his speakers on eleven.
I asked him why he had to play the music so loud.
His response: ‘You a bloody racist?’
*****
Anger isn’t gratuitous. It comes from somewhere specific, often in the form of an eye for an eye. Cause and effect. An outburst, here and now, stems from pain experienced there and then.
As a result, people turn on you for no apparent reason. You become the target of their pent-up emotions, and the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.
My policy is, slam the door on nasty behaviour, fast and hard, whatever its presumed justification.
I asked the rickshaw driver if he was out of his bloody mind. He repeated his question. ‘You a racist, mate?’
I said the music was too loud, and he said it was a free country.
I said there were rules and regulations in a free country, and he said he had a permit, and when I asked him how he’d like it if I set up shop outside his home and played music on eleven – ‘with a permit, of course’ – he told me to piss off, and I happily obliged. There was no point engaging him. His mind had already been made up about everything.
*****
Civilisation is a grand experiment, no more than a game of (informed) chance, the outcome of which is fluid. The only certainty is that whatever happens, it involves transcendental joy and inordinate pain, vindication and rage, during which we do justice to a cause at the expense of another.
*****
There’s Buckingham Palace and there’s the Tower of London. Point counterpoint. Opposites, but also connected. You’d think there wasn’t room for both of them in the same town at the same time, but life is playful like that. It moves in parallels, in mysterious ways, and what remains – today’s open society, highs and lows, warts and all – is proof of how things come together even as they fall apart.
Not every place is as lucky. Time has shattered countless organisations, leaving no trace of them, save a few ruins, if any. Others have been obliterated, gone as if they never existed.
We’re lucky enough to be part of the exception. Not just in this city, but everyone on Earth, all those privileged enough to be alive – to have lived and given it a shot – such a rarity! We’re an anomaly, the exception to oblivion’s rule. To be alive is to have made it through, from nothing to something. It’s an extraordinary success in and of itself, no matter how brief our stint. We may have short life spans, but our continuity adds up. Our legacy registers.
*****
When Mother passed away I had trouble keeping my thoughts in order. There was a sting in everything. I couldn’t make sense of events – all those bottled-up emotions that raged inside me drove me mad. The world felt like a gauntlet, a processing machine that sucked in dreams and spat out reality and hopelessness. There was no point making plans if they’d end up in shreds.
But I was fortunate enough to reassess my opinion and not fall prey to its unhealthy, toxic current. During my fleeting moments of clarity, I made the decision to break the cycle before I ended up inside an institution or a basement, or as one of those crazy people who roam the streets mumbling to themselves. I needed to escape the thoughts that dragged me down. While there was still time.
The idea came and went, so I wrote it down and held myself to it. Remember… I stressed, then added a few verticals – Remember!!! – then retraced the scribbling with the pen – Remember!!! – until the paper turned soft.
And underneath:
Do it!
The plan was to save – and savour – each and every lesson, all the stuff I’d come to realise with Mother’s passing; the dredged-up emotions, the insight that came with them, and punch everything into my psyche to let it guide me from then on.
I did it, but, in time, most of it faded anyway, lost under the mass of experiences and memories accumulated over the years. I wrote most of it down, but the notes got lost or misplaced. Most of them are still packed up, excelsior for my moving-box Jenga towers.
Every once in a while, they come to me in flashes, and I write these epiphanies down, again and again. They end up in files, in pages full of notes and scribblings, and the process repeats, and I find myself lost yet again, searching for answers in a sea of intimated insight, so close I can almost taste it, but not quite. Everything lingers behind a perforated wall.
*****
A scene plays over and over in my head.
I jot it down:
I stand on a street corner
Looking back at the time when
I stand on a street corner
Looking back at myself
Staring at myself
Standing on a street corner
Looking back at the time when…
The public lavatory is damp and cold.
I leave, looking for something warmer.
I settle in a dry corner where the wind can’t reach. Shake my head, close my eyes and meditate. Let sleep take me, deliver me.
But the image remains.
I stand on a street corner, looking back at the time when…
I run around the block to hyperventilate. Set my mind on fire, burn it clean, start again.
Dream a little dream for me.
The only thing that can set me straight right now is my habit. A little fix to get me through the nasty hours, now that everyone’s asleep and no one’s looking.
Another ornery companion: my habit.
It keeps me warm and rotten.
I’m going to drop it as soon as I’m in a better place.
It was my echo, not I, that
crossed this town, making
sense of the world…
