I'm perhaps not in the best frame of mind at the moment, or ever, but even so, the thought of 1) this being the way I will discover beyond any shade of a doubt, once and for all, that I am incontrovertibly and irreversibly getting old, and 2) the vivid kinesthetic image of myself, old but for the moment somehow mercifully shielded from quite knowing it, shuffling pointlessly along in a shabby torn drool-stained overcoat and decomposing footwear of the type that in its prime could only have aspired to being described by Felicity Kennett as 'shit shoes', struggling pitifully floorwards to pick up a bit of rubbish I have just spotted, scrabbling feebly with my weak and carbunculous fingers at the rubbish mirage only to having that brief and dim flare of hope extinguished forever on finding it is only a pattern in the treacherous, rubbish-mimicking carpet, but above all that 3) it is John from Parkdale who knows how it will all transpire and in the best tradition of depressing locations for sibylline utterances has chosen the Herald-Sun as the setting within which he shall cause the veil to be rent from top to bottom, is making me very sad. I didn't think I could be sadder, but it seems that I can.
Go, go, go, said the bird; human kind cannot bear very much reality.
Nobody's going to rescue me, I understand that. I'm rescuing myself. I think.
Old patterns are the continuing theme of the analysis. It's hard going. I can't really explain, and of course, there isn't any reason to explain nor anyone to explain it to. The godhead John of Parkdale already understands this, along with everything that has ever happened or will happen, wordless and deep inside of people and in the relations between them, and in all the vast untrodden reaches of time and space where people have no business to be. Comforting, in a way; nevertheless, I am having a rough time of it in private as well as in public. So therefore I want to leave just a small piece of rubbish lying here, on this orange, yellow and magenta carpet (such a poor choice for hiding the dirt, but practicality has never been my strong suit) to provide for a future in which I might come back, getting old and decrepit, with hairy warts growing out of my warts but also with this time in my life long ago over and done with, and in the discernment of this piece of rubbish I might understand and make sense of what this experience is that I've been putting myself though and I might be able to see and appreciate its meaning and value.
2 comments:
Laura, I'm sorry you are going through such a horrible time but I have to say your writing is amazing. I hope you're not like a songwriter friend who can only write good songs when he's miserable.
Thanks Helen. I can't write a good song under any conditions so that's fine.
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