We made a routine out of sitting by that cliff edge. We nipped back and forth from our tent as though the cliff, the seamless sky and the sea below it were simply the corner shop or the loo.
I lay back and looked. He was constantly naming stars and constellations, happiest to sit and gaze up. I was constantly discovering all the things I still feel I need to do in my life, things that I probably never will, but somewhere still hold a light to, hoping that one day ... when I'm rich, when my life is different, when I've completed the training, when I'm older and more settled, when I win 35 million on the Lottery.
And we would scuttle back to the tent and sleep or wake or giggle, and then we would be back there again, lying back, gazing upwards, him naming constellations, me discovering yet more things that I still want to do in my life and possibly never will. The list became endless ...
I must go up in a space shuttle and orbit the Earth. I have to fly to the Moon. I want to go to Mars as well. I want to be a rockclimber. A mountaineer. Go paragliding. Own and fly my own bi plane. Do formation dancing whilst strapped to its wing. I've got to climb Everest before I die. I will one day go to Antarctica. Can I live without having stood at least once amongst penguins and ice? I must understand all religions. I want to be wealthy. I must become Enlightened. I want to know Christ; journey to France to live alone with nothing but the clothes on my back. I want to be a mother. I will be a writer. How far off is that journey in a tour bus? What about the record deal? Can I build that home in the desert with my own hands? Will I ever really know what it is like to live as a drunken poet, willing to sacrifice all decency? Where is that great movie script inside me? How can I live to the end of my days without knowing what it's like to be a man? Is there any bird that could bear my weight on its back as it flies across whole continents? Why can't I write a PHD on Quantum Physics? Why do I still think stars are little candles in the sky? Why does my head explode when he tells me that the star I'm looking at isn't a star, but is actually a whole galaxy which itself contains millions upon millions of suns just like our own sun in it, and it is 2.5 million million light years away, with each light year itself being the equivalent of 6 million million miles away?
This cliff edge is strong. It's pulling me out towards the fulmars and the black-backs. Then it's taking me further, out into the inky mass of blackened planets, to where my craving meets my soul and both explode in starlight. These dreams are not the work of idle moments. They live in me like a constant heart beat; most of them since I was a child. Back in those days, so much was fantasy, an unattainable goal. These days it is not always easy to know what is far fetched and what's real. The moon landing or the record deal. The bi plane or the novel. The Big Bang or the Holy Spirit. However, craving, and the vision it brings does not usually possess me as much as it has on this cliff top; on this strange and beautiful cliff of longing.
I look at him. He has some secret I cannot yet discover. He simply watches and looks, his nose edging upwards towards the wings that pass above him. If I could be so content. If I could sit and remember it is all here now - the moon, the stars, the space shuttles and the backs of birds. My dreams are always of travelling, of flying, of taking off, or else they are of being struck down, struck by a lightning bolt that illluminates everything. Do I dream of angels? Yes, sometimes; as much as I dream of dirty bars. Is it here, now? Of course it is.
I like it here. There are no signs of a normal life lived here in these parts. We are happy. Him and me. At the edge. Both of us dreaming, in our own ways.
Showing posts with label the universe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the universe. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
thursday
Enough is enough. That's something, ironically, I often have to say to myself a number of times before I finally believe it myself. Today, as I pulled the lid from the old pan of pea soup that's been lying in wait in the corner of my kitchen and I swear I saw something move in there, I realised, enough is enough.
The stench of it was an amalgam of shit and vomit. It fizzed and spluttered as I poured its remnants down the sink, trying desperately not to breathe through my nostrils, gagging at the merest hint of the smell. And I couldn't help thinking somewhere, my life has got out of kilter here, I shouldn't be pouring half alive green sludge down my plughole, I shouldn't be ignoring the hair on the carpet until it looks like it is growing a second rug on top of it. I shouldn't find myself wearing the same socks for the however-many-days running because I haven't been able to face the launderette. But I have, and now I realise, enough is enough. Somewhere, in the midst of my life, I've been losing myself.
And as for the technology which has been bringing my life to a halt and corrupting all simplicity and grace in it, well, it has to stop somewhere. I find myself these days unable to exist without checking emails at least several times a day, but worse, without checking the various 'friending' and networking sites which I find myself having joined.
Although I know it's a valid way of keeping in touch with friends near and far, a way of getting my music out there and making connections for gigs and poetry submissions, I find that recently, instead of using that way, I'm posting people UFOs and aliens, and getting into needless arguments because of stupid privacy settings on my goddamn Facebook profile. Technology has become another thing to get addicted to, to become enslaved by; a way of keeping out the cold, of plugging the silence with noise and chatter; of not, finally, having to be alone.
I've got to cut this clutter out. And, yes, here I am, on my blog, writing when I could be outside in the cold damp air, feeling alive, taking in the waves across the sea, feeling the seagulls swooping over me, treading the pavement towards some form of rest and recuperation for my soul. However, this blog is one place I have no trouble justifying using, in fact, I cast it aside far too easily for more inane forms of communication.
Out, I need to go. Further than the seafront, further than the shore, further than where the horizon meets the deep, wet blue. I can't live for long unless I can penetrate the blue itself, go further, to where clouds swallow me and the air is frozen. It's not enough, this place; this city; this land; with its concrete walls and its TV sets, its motorways that always lead somewhere; its cups of tea to warm my hands against the winds that blow in from a cold, uncertain future.
Sometimes it's hard to bear the crushing weight of this sky we all live under. Sometimes, we must break up into pieces in order to let it touch us; to feel the grace of emptiness; the perfection raging in our souls. I feel like a woodland animal hunting out a warm burrow and some food. Like all of us, I need a shelter. And I am dreaming everyday of God, hoping for a glimpse of what brought me here.
The stench of it was an amalgam of shit and vomit. It fizzed and spluttered as I poured its remnants down the sink, trying desperately not to breathe through my nostrils, gagging at the merest hint of the smell. And I couldn't help thinking somewhere, my life has got out of kilter here, I shouldn't be pouring half alive green sludge down my plughole, I shouldn't be ignoring the hair on the carpet until it looks like it is growing a second rug on top of it. I shouldn't find myself wearing the same socks for the however-many-days running because I haven't been able to face the launderette. But I have, and now I realise, enough is enough. Somewhere, in the midst of my life, I've been losing myself.
And as for the technology which has been bringing my life to a halt and corrupting all simplicity and grace in it, well, it has to stop somewhere. I find myself these days unable to exist without checking emails at least several times a day, but worse, without checking the various 'friending' and networking sites which I find myself having joined.
Although I know it's a valid way of keeping in touch with friends near and far, a way of getting my music out there and making connections for gigs and poetry submissions, I find that recently, instead of using that way, I'm posting people UFOs and aliens, and getting into needless arguments because of stupid privacy settings on my goddamn Facebook profile. Technology has become another thing to get addicted to, to become enslaved by; a way of keeping out the cold, of plugging the silence with noise and chatter; of not, finally, having to be alone.
I've got to cut this clutter out. And, yes, here I am, on my blog, writing when I could be outside in the cold damp air, feeling alive, taking in the waves across the sea, feeling the seagulls swooping over me, treading the pavement towards some form of rest and recuperation for my soul. However, this blog is one place I have no trouble justifying using, in fact, I cast it aside far too easily for more inane forms of communication.
Out, I need to go. Further than the seafront, further than the shore, further than where the horizon meets the deep, wet blue. I can't live for long unless I can penetrate the blue itself, go further, to where clouds swallow me and the air is frozen. It's not enough, this place; this city; this land; with its concrete walls and its TV sets, its motorways that always lead somewhere; its cups of tea to warm my hands against the winds that blow in from a cold, uncertain future.
Sometimes it's hard to bear the crushing weight of this sky we all live under. Sometimes, we must break up into pieces in order to let it touch us; to feel the grace of emptiness; the perfection raging in our souls. I feel like a woodland animal hunting out a warm burrow and some food. Like all of us, I need a shelter. And I am dreaming everyday of God, hoping for a glimpse of what brought me here.
Friday, March 24, 2006
The Elegant Universe
The rain is warm tonight. I didn't need much of an excuse to get me outside in it, or to the sea front, past the patch of green at the end of my road and the ornate shelter where two figures were standing side by side, their heads low, murmuring.
Still I took out the rubbish bag to sling in the huge plastic green tub behind my house, and held that as my excuse, despite the fact I've never before felt the need to empty my bin at seven thirty at night. And knowing that, it made me laugh out loud, because when I was nine, I never needed a reason to be in the rain.
And I am a signpost in the humid dark, white froth lapping at my toes. The sky is empty of stars. As I watch, several thousand layers all come falling, a series of images: birth and ceasing monuments and facts and figures, and timeless shadowing of this life line, and the line is interrupted by a bang that never stops flinging itself into unknowability. We are here. That is there. Uncompromising universe I could fit myself into, if it would only let me. But I am a signpost in the humid dark. The universe is gaping. Too many equations. We can never sew it up.
And the reason I am standing here isn't even because I want to feel this rain on my face, or on my back, or my hands. It isn't because of the way the sea is stretching into a black nothing, so that I feel infinite, travelling, unsung and triumphantly lost. It isn't even because of the way the liquid in the air mixes with the evening heat to give off a quiet radiance, a gentle buzz, a comfort...
Little reasons and big reasons fill our universe up, and maybe that's why it burst in the first place: too many reasons and not enough, all bickering inside a point as small as the end of the end of your nose. Too much certainty inside a void. Too much void inside certainty. Too much that is too little, swimming with what is never lost, but always going. The balloon fills the box, the box is always breaking.
And I'll try and tame what surrounds me. It will become a poetic universe, of dark matter and rainbow light. But this is still my equation, my lassoo, my very own reason. I bring my mother and my father to all creation, the kids at school who thought I wasn't too bright, a yearning for the sublime, the shock of existing.
Wah wah baby coming out the womb. Old man dying. People on the roadside, diseased, raw sewage sliding by. I will make it add up, I will make it all add up. I will bargain with an unfeeling universe, else, without reason, it all grows too cold, too cold for human habitation. An icy galaxy, deathly, alone, feeble, wandering. A crack in time is all we are for. A bang that lasts as long as the pieces are travelling... then, what?
The rain is warm tonight. And stars hum, distant and unseeable. Micro waves fill the furthest reaches of world, beyond air, reflecting the face of our immediate birth. It doesn't take that much to see them, if you turn in the right direction.
I need no reason to be here. I need to reason to love. No reason to die. I need no reason to book a cheap airline ticket and fly to New York next month, nor to come back again.
And I am a signpost in the humid dark, white froth lapping at my toes.
I never needed a reason to be in the rain.
Still I took out the rubbish bag to sling in the huge plastic green tub behind my house, and held that as my excuse, despite the fact I've never before felt the need to empty my bin at seven thirty at night. And knowing that, it made me laugh out loud, because when I was nine, I never needed a reason to be in the rain.
And I am a signpost in the humid dark, white froth lapping at my toes. The sky is empty of stars. As I watch, several thousand layers all come falling, a series of images: birth and ceasing monuments and facts and figures, and timeless shadowing of this life line, and the line is interrupted by a bang that never stops flinging itself into unknowability. We are here. That is there. Uncompromising universe I could fit myself into, if it would only let me. But I am a signpost in the humid dark. The universe is gaping. Too many equations. We can never sew it up.
And the reason I am standing here isn't even because I want to feel this rain on my face, or on my back, or my hands. It isn't because of the way the sea is stretching into a black nothing, so that I feel infinite, travelling, unsung and triumphantly lost. It isn't even because of the way the liquid in the air mixes with the evening heat to give off a quiet radiance, a gentle buzz, a comfort...
Little reasons and big reasons fill our universe up, and maybe that's why it burst in the first place: too many reasons and not enough, all bickering inside a point as small as the end of the end of your nose. Too much certainty inside a void. Too much void inside certainty. Too much that is too little, swimming with what is never lost, but always going. The balloon fills the box, the box is always breaking.
And I'll try and tame what surrounds me. It will become a poetic universe, of dark matter and rainbow light. But this is still my equation, my lassoo, my very own reason. I bring my mother and my father to all creation, the kids at school who thought I wasn't too bright, a yearning for the sublime, the shock of existing.
Wah wah baby coming out the womb. Old man dying. People on the roadside, diseased, raw sewage sliding by. I will make it add up, I will make it all add up. I will bargain with an unfeeling universe, else, without reason, it all grows too cold, too cold for human habitation. An icy galaxy, deathly, alone, feeble, wandering. A crack in time is all we are for. A bang that lasts as long as the pieces are travelling... then, what?
The rain is warm tonight. And stars hum, distant and unseeable. Micro waves fill the furthest reaches of world, beyond air, reflecting the face of our immediate birth. It doesn't take that much to see them, if you turn in the right direction.
I need no reason to be here. I need to reason to love. No reason to die. I need no reason to book a cheap airline ticket and fly to New York next month, nor to come back again.
And I am a signpost in the humid dark, white froth lapping at my toes.
I never needed a reason to be in the rain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)