|
|
When I look outside the window, and I watch the traffic zooming by, the airplanes preparing their descent upon Pearson and the people on the street I think often of how it would be to look out that tiny window above the shop. Sometimes, I am so convinced that I am in such a place that in the early setting sun's glow as the church bells ring I sing to myself Oranges and Lemons.
Oranges and Lemons, ring the bells of St Clement's
"You owe me three farthings," say the bells of St Martin's . . .
It was a rhyme, my Nana and I often sang when I was little. I can smell homemade sausage rolls and hear the crisp as she cuts the veg for the table. The silverware in my tiny hands sparkle as I set the table. My mother's laugh drifts in the sliding doors on the deck as she talks to my Grandpa. It seems, so very long ago. As if not only my entire life has changed, but the world too.
So now, that is why it is so easy to lay about watching the people go about their life, wondering how they can be content when everything that is, never was. Or maybe it was, only different. Everything was different than it is perceived. "When will you pay me," ask the bells of Old Bailey . . . "Oh, when I grow rich," reply the bells of shoreditch. Rich rich rich. The complete driving force behind every one of the cars on the road. Is money really the reason we have nothing?
Where is the time gone? How has it been such that our language skills degraded down beyond comprehension. Litereature production at a stand still, instead mundane drivel publicated and pressed upon us without plot nor point, editors who scarcely can read themselves let alone put in proper punctuation or cut out the core pieces of garbage shoved into novels to beef them up. The plots are all the same. Just new characters, new faces, new setting. What was the line? Same story, different author. Thats all that books are.
Television with its reality. False gods, walking among men. Celebrities, riches, riches, riches. Big houses with no yard, big houses with no love. A dream, a dream to all be in these gated communities, all money, no worries. "When will that be," ask the bells of Stepney . . . "I do not know," says the great bell of Old Bow . . . I lay here. The sun shining on my face, through the glass doors. When will I feel something again? The freedom and the carefree life I had, passed by me in a blink of an eye. Movies playing in my mind, scenes missing, the sound gone. Faded colors like an old photograph. Colors of eyes fading, smiles stuck forever in time, that moment captured, visually, and yet in our minds, the memories are slipping away.
You can never go back you know. Everything changes. Change is inevitable, withouth it, you could never imagine. I often tire of thinking and I roll to my back, lay there breathing steady, trying to avoid thoughts of depressing bygones. Above my bed in careful sharpie is the quote, "They were careless people. They smashed up things and creatures alike before retreating back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together. They retreated and let other people clean up the mess they had made." I see that day in and out, as I lay in my bed and think. The saddest thing is these words . . . are so true. Written years ago and holding bearing over today, remarkable.
In the end, knowing these things make no difference. Here comes the candle to light you to bed . . . What lingers after us, is the mundane facts of our lives. The way the covers lay on the bed unmade, the closet with all the clothes we wore. And here comes a chopper to chop off your head . . . Our favourite sports star or band, the picturs on the walls and the floor. Unopened mail. Dirty laundry. Pieces of who we had been that will never fit back together in a way that someone outside of ourselves could understand. Chip chop, chip chop, the last man's dead! They lack the knowledge of our hearts, our desires, opinions, the laughter we scream as we run through our childhood memories. The way something looks from our perspective. No. In the end, it is nothing more than the clock ticking on the wall, that we will be remembered by. What lingers after us is a list of mundane facts, clocks still ticking our lives away in the rooms dim at noon, curtains pulled, dust colelcting. No, what we leave behind is not life. Trivialities inwhich the veiwer has no recollection of who we were or who we wanted to be. Happiness? It is all objective to the perception of life. When we are gone, there is no omniscient being who will ever understand.
-BP
|
