An introduction to a temporary farewell

 How to begin? By explaining the lapse of time between these two sentences? What a bore. Or perhaps, how beautiful the sky looks tonight. An imperfect kind of charm. Warts and all. The sky looks as if it has been painted there. By a young woman, top of her art class. She painted it from the words given to her by Van Gough as he described a sky that had once been described to him by a middle-aged woman with a severe learning disability, and a big heart. That sky up there... It is something special this evening, and I have no interest in what goes on below it. Everything down here is the same, on repeat. Insipid and unmoving. The second hand of a dying clock fighting against gravity between forty and forty-one seconds. Outside, the dismembered parts of chicken rotate on the spit, from raw to well-done, their own culinary metaphor for the passers by. There are birds in cages hanging from trees, but you cannot hear birdsong, not now the portable speakers have been wheeled into the courtyard. They all face each other at a distance, and the music that comes out of each of them is so prosaic that the cacophony in the middle of the courtyard differs very little from each individual song. I can't sit back and allow them to be called songs. Birds sing songs. Mozart composed songs. Bob Dylan wrote songs. Young children sing songs. This is something different. Something more like an audible byproduct of people becoming more entwined with their digital devices than with themselves. It's the noise of a humanity that has forgotten its humanity. Empty and repetitive. Meaningless, yet arrogant. The melody of an automated production line. The soundtrack of this island, as the dead go about convincing themselves they are living.     

You will not hear the birds singing until the morning. Just for the few hours before the sun becomes too hot and their owners shelter them away somewhere before they can be displayed again. I am not sure why. They are thrown into this cycle, everything is thrown into this cycle. It is Groundhog Day. Becoming ever so slightly louder and louder, until, eventually, the rains come. Rain, rain, come again. I long for the bad weather. Not that there is anything bad about any type of weather. I just long for the weather that is collectively referred to as bad, and intolerable. The kind of weather that keeps everyone inside and quiet. The kind of weather that halts meaningless commerce. The heavy rains, which disallow the outdoor karaoke, and groups of men chanting over a table of empty beer cans. The rain brings peace. It washes them away. The sea finally releases the pent up trauma of being pissed in by misshapen tourists for months on end. I have missed watching a violent sea. It is mesmerising. That same body of water that silently embraced so many strangers suddenly screaming out at the sky and threatening to kill anyone who so much as dips their toe in it. The sea is the reminder that the world does not forgive complacency. Soon there will be plenty more.

I’m fairly sure this is not how I wanted to begin. This is, however, how I go about finding a rhythm strong enough to wash away the noise outside. A warmup. A preamble. A slow shedding of skin. An undressing. I am ready now. This is how I will begin...

How well do you think you’d do if you were challenged to match the words of someone with their eyes? Let’s say you receive twenty anonymous emails from twenty different people, and a day or so later you’re in a room with those twenty people. I think I’d do okay, but I’ve also had my share of moments contemplating delusions of grandeur. There is much more darkness to see than just hue. 

Another passing thought approached me today while I was out walking the dogs. I don’t think so much anymore while I’m out walking. The bitches are on heat, and the male dogs have all adopted their own kind of crazy. They are easily provoked in to violence. They attack each other. I can still feel their leashes pulling my knuckles together. The thought was initially wordless. At first, a sense of Deja Vu, but then it redefined itself. As if a past version of me was occupying my present space. Looking out and around at the surroundings. Watching the dogs. “I told you,” it said. 

That’s when the thought was truly the thought. Do you ever have those moments when you catch yourself not realising who you’ve become? Then, not so suddenly, you get glimpses of the past and quickly realise just how much you are the sum of your previous thoughts and actions. This part is obvious: Our current state is the grand sum of all our previous states. In one way or another. Everything amounts to now, and it will continue to do so. But this was slightly different…

It had more of a ‘finding peace’ ring to it. Let’s say you’re like me. I think you’re a little like me. Why on earth would you be here if you were entirely something else? Let’s say you have at least twenty conscious years behind you. And before them you have a rough idea of childhood. You can split them up. To my understanding that’s essentially what the brain does. We don’t remember much of the childhood, but we can feel it. It laid the foundations for everything we’ve built on top of them. It also began to carve out our skillset. It decided how we might touch and be touched. Then you have those fully conscious years on which you built yourself. Or on which they built you. The sculpting. 

After all that is right now. And how you feel right now, will be largely dependant on everything before it. And I think this is where I find peace. I’ve met so many people, including myself, who are on a quest for a sense of some sort of contentment. A prolonged period of being able to breathe deeply and keep the heart rate steady. A time without trembling fingers or unexplained headaches. They know too much to foolishly chase happiness, but they still believe that there is a sense of peace waiting for them somewhere. An easiness. Nothing to do with complacency. They are (you are) made too differently for such nonsense. You understand time is against you, and the only thing to fear about death is death without accomplishment. Maybe it is not peace after all, maybe it is momentum. Uninterrupted. 

How do I say this? Well, first off, I hope as you read this you are well. Secondly, and I don’t want to put a dampener on things, but all those hues of the past… What materials did you have to sculpt with? Even if you have broken various cycles, you still had to break them with the tools you were given. No matter where you go there will always be ripples of who you have been. What has been done to you. What you have done to them. So this is how I finally say this…

When I was out walking the dogs today, a passing thought approached me. That passing thought was the knowledge of everything that has been before now. A reminder that we are all connected with ourselves in that way. And I think, as I have rallied against myself, I have forgotten who I’ve been. What I’ve witnessed. Not so much forgotten, just failed to be conscious of. So when I sit here, my muscles hard, my brain and heart, healthy. Sober. My nutritional intake near perfect. Adequately hydrated. I look a decade younger than I am. While I sit here with all these beautiful things in my life, I wonder why I often feel so gloomy. And I roam about the inside of my mind looking for reasons: Brain tumours, cognitive anomalies, sleep deprivation. This roaming is the cause of much stress. But today I was given the answer, and I knew it all along, I had just been careless. I am the grand sum of all that has been, and it’s perfectly normal to feel gloomy about that from time to time.

So there you have it. I suppose sometimes we try so hard at becoming something we forget who we are.  And I must be entirely honest with you about this blob of prose. I’m trying to warm up the connection between the brain and my finger tips, as I feel like it’s time to work at something with a little more weight. Hopefully I’ll be busy. Elsewhere. With momentum. Anyhow, I’ll do my best to drop in from time to time. Until then, don’t be a stranger to yourself.