October 2006 Archives

I make the short stories long...

Every day i take a bus from work down to the flatlands to do what little shopping i need to the furnish my hermitage. Various public transport routes converge on the Apia retail/residential after-school panic: elementary to senior high school students terrify the stuttering traffic, senior citizens brave the clanging train crossing... it's a mayhem only rivaled by the flash mobs of the weekend Last Trains.

Anyway, I gather my shopping bags of vices to hide from the "HARRO"s and "BAI BAI RICHARDO"s of my students, then hit the foot of the Hill. I hate this hill. Not that it's really hate inspiring; just that it's there every time I'm footsore, bag be-laden or plain drunk.

Every time.

So ten to fifteen minutes everyday uphill to my eyrie, with the constant increases in gradient grinding my knee joints away. some days I just cant be arsed. in fact, most days, by the time I'm half way up, I can't be arsed. The ipod just doesn't cut the whole "this is borderline exercise" simulation.

ok, the scene is set.

c:\> quit metaphor.exe
..
c:\>msobfuscator.exe
.
excuted

The simple matter is is that I knew the aforementioned Sunday morning wasn't going to come. By Wednesday night I had figured this out. Why? Because I went looking for something that wasn't going to be there. Now you're thinking "a can opener.... no, no... a comb,,,, no, hang on, a stapler", but its something a little more personal than that. It was a moment went I expected to find something, well, in realm of few people knowing, and it wasn't there. it was never going to be where I was looking and will never be again.

I not going to be magically happy when I wake up this morning (or more likely, this afternoon). A long lost friend recently said that I need to stop fussing about ingredients and just put what I need to in to the oven and let it bake. (obfuscator.exe is chewing up all available RAM). One thing wasn't there when I went looking for it, and I woke up, still at the foot of the hill. No matter how much of a familiar or unfamiliar bitch it is, that hill is going to be there for a long geological time. Everything is not ok ,but thats ok.

Let's start stepping.

edited to correct some horrible typing, et cetera. Everyone who is going to read it already has tho... :-(

its not really funny to think:

no matter how you feel that "this week" is going to blow in a different direction to the previous ones, that evenings are planned, that futures are being sketched, that somehow you're going to wake up on sunday morning thinking "shit, that week went fast" because so much has happened and you may realise that you are starting to get on that new vector you've been plotting for awhile now...

a day still rolls along at its same pace. subjective time only catches up after the fact. a monday still feels like a monday. you still have to go to bed eventually, no matter how tired you dont feel, because there is work, a 5000 word assignment, an 8:00 class or just an overdue bill to be paid before you cant have that morning shower until the red tape of disconnection gets scribbled through (choose your own adventure).

i've never thought about the sunday morning before, but i've been crossing so many digits recently that i can now scare my students with mobius joints. i've always been focused on tomorrow morning, that i can maybe wake up and maybe, after the first hour of trying to untangle synapses, i'm going to be productive, entertaining, charismatic, or just smile. i want more from my life. hell, i might actually start 5 year plans like my dad always wanted me to. baby steps first though... a satisfied sunday morning

just give it to me now.

1.
to the town
this key
is the sound of disappearing

a slow blink ends
glass eye opens bright
and then another

2.
the kettle demands
i soothe its screams

i add a notch
to the calendar of cups

the sink and i
share indifferent looks -

both of us can wait

3.
another sap
has been taken in
by the levitation act

the spider's cheap trick
that pays his meals
which i know because
the sunshine whispered its workings

i let him tether
his secret outside
in return
he doesn't involve the clothesline

4.
bright closes
slow blink begins
a silvered surface stranger passes
to who the town and i
haven't spoken