He stands;
stretches bone, muscle, tendon. Shakes out the weariness. The day is dawning
and he has yet to sleep. His mouth is like sandpaper; a drink and breakfast
before the light spreads slowly across his garden. One foot, two feet. Slips on
the dis-coloured linoleum, sticky and peeling at the corners. Dry cereal, like
chewing thumbtacks (the milk has gone off again). Silently wishes he could take
pictures of how the birds sound this morning so he could remember forever. How
can he paint the sudden contentment, the odd lightness of soul that fills him
now as the warmth from the water heater creeps through the thawing cold of his
nose, his toes. And yet, even as summer multiplies around him and he builds up
castles of conversation between himself and the first bumblebee of a forgotten
season, he finds himself homesick for somewhere that doesn’t exist. Bones
aching under the strain of domestication, he longs for a new place, a fresh
wind on his back and a new warmth on his skin. He can’t sleep, he can’t blink,
racing on sore feet through suburbia, trapped in amongst the little blue-doored
garages and picket fences, the houses lining up 12345 12345 12345 with their
driveways and neat gardens; soldiers belted, buckled, standing tall and ready
for war with hot breath boiling from their chimneys, unaware of the lives
fostered within their squat brick bellies.
He has been going
through the motions of this ordinary life for years and years, all the days
blending into one as he spends his nights tossing and turning in towers of bed sheets.
In the endeavour to have a quiet life he has had to overcome many obstacles,
knowing that residing within a rich and yet simplistic life requires monumental
effort and a monastic strictness that he doesn’t have the energy to maintain.
He reduces each
day to a series of thoughts.
On Mondays he
hides from the sun and thinks about dying. Death inspires him like a dog
inspires a rabbit.
Tuesdays are
less introspective. He listens to sad music in the morning, walks the length of
the garden a few times. Gets confused and a little disheartened at the state of
the world.
Every Wednesday
is yoga in the morning and then a cocktail of tai chi and meditation to calm
his soul (it doesn’t help). He drinks multiple cups of camomile tea, takes a
trip to the doctor and then spends countless hours staring at the sky hoping
for something to happen.
His Thursdays
start early so he can sit by the window and see the world bloom. He then wanders
without direction for the rest of the day, maybe watches The Karate Kid for
inspiration.
On Fridays he walks
five miles into town, spends minimal amounts of money and then walks the five
miles back. Gets home exhausted, drained from human interaction. He might let
himself cry for the first time since the Friday before.
Most Saturdays
he goes to the museum down the street from his house as soon as the doors open,
just to see things of eternal beauty and importance. He tells himself not to
feel insignificant. He does anyway.
Sundays are sad.
Slow, sweet, spent simply longing for the melancholy of Monday.
He has learned
himself outside-in and discovered what he needs, what he wants. There has to be
an order otherwise he might just cease to exist right here and now. How can he
live a simple life if there is no order? He assumes that anyone who would keep
his company is, at the very least, moderately troubled. Who would there be
anyway, when his is a universe of one? Only her. She is the only one he has
allowed to permeate his thick skin and settle into his bones.
Truly this is a
city of magpies, a parallel universe of chaotic order; each observation a note
in a book three-quarters full. He is sovereign of a sorry state, reaching out
in the dark and saying hello, I am here, with hands ready to hold yours. He
shoots up still prayers into the dawning sky. Without winds to carry them they
fall like empty shells on a pebble beach – listen carefully – see how the
sounds within reveal how sea and sky are but microcosms of something other,
still obeying unbreakable patterns of a higher order. He knows there is much to
think of, but instead he crosses his fingers that the tumble dryer will work
today.
He cannot help
but smile, for the first time in what feels like forever. The day is munificent
and he is endlessly small. Minutes pass in silence as he stands with his face
to the sky. He loves her, still. After all this time. The swans spill the
seasons from the river and he doesn’t move, just stays squinting, pointing one
finger to the sky. He forgets what he’s even complaining for. This world is
lovely and good; he wants to explore every murmur it makes. The rest of
humanity can breathe and all he can think of is sending letters and abandoning
work and having all the time in the world to be alone. He could swear that he
has been in this place for a thousand lifetimes. He knows that rebellion is
arbitrary and wishes he’d had enough time for it; for gentle acid trips and
drinking under the stars with bad influences. Maybe he knows too much to
mindlessly rebel against nothing; he already knows he is not a sheep but a
galaxy, carrying the mountains with him wherever he goes. He is like the
pathway of stars doubling back from dreamland towards the little boy he used to
be, painting in a tiny, messy studio, then the young art school brat striding
down the cobbled high street with a cigarette hanging from chapped lips, now a
middle-aged man with thermal socks, creaking bones, a patchy beard, sensible
shoes.
There is history
in the rooms of his house, in the bones of every single being; the history of
the here and now and all the moments in life. When he presses down on his
eyelids so hard he sees stars, he cannot help but remember the bones underneath
his fingers, holding him together. All too aware that every human is the same
inside the shroud of their skin, he remains conscious that he is too sentimental
(after all, his skin and bones are just a rental) and that the eternity of his
life is wearing him down. He is so very tired. He wishes for the thousandth
time that sleep would take him softly and allow him to rest. He is holding up
the moon on his shoulders and the weight makes him shake; he is too afraid of
eternity to speak and he will never understand why not a force on earth can
stop the trembling of his hands. When Atlas shrugged, he dropped the sky on his
toes, smashing the bones to dust. If a titan can be crushed by clouds, it is
not a surprise then that he is made undone by the memory of the way sunlight
hit her cheekbone in the mornings; the dust dancing and settling in hair, on
ear, lip.
He is forever
alongside the boys in jumpers on skateboards from schools and autumn leaves
fallen right across mid-afternoon, blazing on about how cultural language is an
operating system; a simple interface rendered listless and feeble when tested
with divinity or a true understanding of the human condition. He never did
understand the duality of art and reality. Living a life and treating it as
such, he cajoles his talent with discomfort and a strict lack of abandon and divinely
decreed artistry. Between the spires and rolling rooftops of the white city
bathed in orange English lamplight he casts only one shadow, for she is not
beside but within him. He longs for the infinite sadness of London and the folds
of the mattress where her shape lies. He loves her so fiercely that it is as if
he wants to consume her, wearing down the sandpaper roughness of his bones on
her skin. He remembers thinking about wanting to take romantic walks up her
arms with his chapped lips and 4am stubble, sneaking hipflasks of moonshine for
a picnic on the slope of her neck, or lay still under the stars somewhere in
the dip at the small of her back. He felt a sort of wanderlust for the city of
her. What harm can it do to hope?
He tries not to think of her. He knows she is
why he can’t sleep; imagining her fitting into London with an ease he never
attained pains him. When he’s there all he does is cry and write about birds
and infinity and wonderland. Here, he is happier. Not happy, but comfortable in
his skin at least. Hidden in every moment is the promise of a thousand more
slow dances under streetlamps with the rain pouring down. And even though he
feels like his life still has yet to begin and he cannot hear the music, he is
learning to dance right here on the sticky, peeling linoleum of his kitchen
floor. He thinks to himself (as he has done every morning of every day for the
last 9,496 days) that maybe tonight he will finally sleep.
-g.m
