She Was.

The truth is that I’m scared. All of the time. Scared of being here, and more scared of going home.  Home is known, here is unknown. Or. Inverse. I’m jobless, penniless, dependent, exhausted. I am unemployable here. At least in regards to the profession that I studied for years to become part of. A profession that would guarantee that I would never be broke again. And yet I am. Again. Debt keeps accruing and the money is long gone. Speaking to my former housemate reveals that half my stuff has gone missing, my room is gone, my bed. I don’t even have the energy to be angry anymore. It’s resignation and no surprise. Once upon a time, when I had been freshly dumped* and back when I had a life full of interesting things – things I’d worked hard for, things I loved, I remember telling my sister that I would gladly trade it all in for the relationship**. The right one. Ironically, I find myself in just that position.

Flip.

At home I have things. I have books. Books whose pages I miss. Words that remind me. John Locke said that identity is memory. I want to re-read that passage. I want to pick up my copy of The Mandarins, and I want to press my nose against it’s pages, inhale the history of a second hand book. I want to lie on the grass, underneath the big shady tree in my backyard. My backyard. I want to walk out to the letter box and pick up my mail. (I used to get mail!) I want to go to a pub with friends after work on a Friday night, sit in the beer dark and listen to music – live music – in English. I want to go the beach, swim in board shorts, worry about skin cancer and lie on the soft sand out of view of the next person. I want sandwiches on the beach and dinners on jetties and chocolate paddle pops. I want to listen to music, sitting cross legged on the floor in my lounge room, my puppy licking my face. I want to wake up in the morning with a purpose. A job to go to. A routine. A 9 to 5. Friends on weekends. A stainless steel sink in the kitchen. No more of this marble bullshit. I want neighbours that are friendly. That pop over and swap home grown vegetables with me. My watermelon for your farm fresh peas.

I want to go home.

Flip.

I love this dirty, rude, congested, ugly-beautiful city. I love the almost unbearable heat that radiates all night off the marble (what else) footpaths. I love hearing my neighbours argue and laugh and fuck and cry, and, I love knowing that when we meet in the corridor neither of us will say hello, even though we probably know more about each other’s lives than our closest friends do. I love the freedom to wear what you want to wear to the beach (unless it’s board shorts – you absolutely cannot wear board shorts). Fat women, skinny women, awkward women, in-between women, old women, young women – everyone wears a bikini. And clothes are worn because they’re beautiful, or comfortable, not because you haven’t eaten in a month in order to be worthy of a designer dress. I love long nights eating under the trees in the courtyard of some small taverna, where the menu is brief but each dish is someone’s homemade specialty. I love that this city has emotions, it lives and breathes and is never repressed. Yelling, tears, anger, laughter, misery, despair, joy – it’s all on the street, any time you care to look. I love the tolerance. Tolerance of every shade of insanity. I love village life. The slowed down pace matches the scenery – the mountains – old as time. I love this man that I share my life with. The fights over nothing, the screaming, the tears, the bitter battles over toothpaste and drinking straight out of the water jug. I love the way that he whispers he loves me in his sleep at night as he kisses between my shoulder blades. I love that I have no secrets from him. I love the naked trust between us.

Flip.

So how do I leave?

Flip.

Or. How do I stay?

* I thought he was the love of my life.

** I was clearly an idiot.

Photograph by lukeroberts

She sits in a fragrant garden watching the faces of the people around her. Her eyes in that face in the corner, her smile shining back at her in the glow of the flickering candlelight. She lights another cigarette, conscious that the quiet girl, face hidden, is silently counting her repetitive drag, inhale, exhale. She sucks the smoke down deep into her lungs, feels the gurgling wheeze smother the rising anxiety.

It’s hot under the jasmine, the bougainvillea branches. She is trying to stay with the conversation, following the slippery snake turns. She can’t concentrate. His feet walked up those steps. Did he trip up them quickly barefoot, or quietly in soft rubber soled shoes? All the lights are on in the house and she wonders which room was his. Where did he sleep? Did he wake up in sunlight or in the shadow of the apartment building next door. She smiles and nods politely. They are all wanting to talk to her. To ask her. To tell her. To show her. All trying to get her attention, to find out her story, the missing years. All twenty of them unwinding at once. ‘We don’t want to upset you’, they keep murmuring between the probing. Don’t they know they are forcing the scabs? Setting off the absence and the missing and the wondering and the acrid taste of not knowing. She answers as best as she can. Sometimes they piss her off and she can’t quite keep the edge out of her voice.

The older woman, all grey hair and plump softness makes her way over to where she sits. Holds out her hand, tentatively. She wants to let her know that it is ok to touch her, that behind the face that makes the older woman cry is a younger woman who misses. She can’t bring herself to relax her body, to ease herself into an embrace. To submit to it. She feels herself stiffen, she knows how this will be interpreted. Cold, unwilling, unforgiving, distant. It is inability. She has wanted it for so long, she doesn’t know how to let it in. She can’t trust this new offer. She doesn’t believe the quiet whispering:

‘We’ve been looking for you for so long.’

‘We always asked about you.’

‘Please let us know you.’

She offers them too loud reassurances of future time travelling. She’s suprised that her mouth forms all the right words when really, all she wants to do is scream at them. They birthed her this way. Sucked her up and swallowed her whole. Their spittle hardened her edges. Fuck them. She was never that hard to find. If they’d really wanted to.

She feels a bead of sweat slowly trickle it’s path between her breasts. She knows her questions will remain unanswered and that none of this was worth it. They’ve just given her something new to miss.

Photograph by Jim

Somewhere there is beauty.

Somewhere she hums a tune.

Somewhere I lost my place in a classroom.

Once, I sat, too long by your side. The smell of the sea on my hands as they sat fidgeting nervous in my lap. I watched your too long springy curls graze your neck and I envied them their proximity to you. Their licence. To touch, to feel, to be, to know. Once, I sat on my hands and stifled the urge to feel your honey gold wisps soft between my fingers. I learnt to crumble under the weight of you. To like the impatience in your fingertips. Once, when I sat too close to you and for too long, I heard the sound of my laughter and was surprised to find that I still could.

Somewhere there was a time.

Time circles above, loops, hovers and comes back to ask me questions. It returns to poke at my edges. Like you do. Like you always have. Because I let you. I invite you with my song and with my longing and with my memory and with my rotten cold heart.

Here there is a game that I won’t play. There are too many spectators, and you keep changing the rules.

This is not beautiful. It is immovable and stale. Here there is nothing, no tongues flick over coffee lips. There is no beer breath. There is no night. There is no touch and there is no ease. There is no singing.

I dont want to measure my words, and I do not want to count. I have no rhythm – no melody to offer. Only quiet shoulders hunched in the lying dark.

Benched by Jim

I find keys. Single, old, ornate keys. I find them often. Sometimes in odd places, but, more often on the sidewalk or underneath a table in a library cafe. Single, shining, silver keys. Or – rusty, intricate bronze keys. I furtively slip them into my pockets. Silently drop them into my bag. Or – snatch them up, curl my fingers around them, try to absorb their cool secrets, and wonder where they belong. I collect them. They sit in a bowl on a table, in my bedroom. Each time I find one I buy a lock. Keep them together. Serve their purpose. Mainly I forget about them. Don’t notice them. They don’t unlock anything in me.

Somewhere there’s a boy with a song.

Somewhere he sleeps and does not think of me.

I hold him frozen in my shutter. Between my fingers. If I squint my eyes, I see him. Captured. Longing. Of mine.

Photograph by Ul Marga

Because sometimes, believing that it’s all going to end up ok – is all that I’ve got.

Anyway.

In an effort to spend some time not looking back in order to avoid looking forward – mosaic fun with Flickr, via the brilliant read that is Schmutzie.

Method:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below using Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLS for your chosen image into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a   picture mosaic of the answers.

Ingredients:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite food, right now?
3. Which high school did you got to?
4. What is your favourite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favourite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favourite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?

You will need a flickr account to make your own mosaic.