inkfilledmind

Mrs. Busy is married to Mr. Busy. They have two point five children and live in a tidy house in a tidy suburb. Mrs. Busy is a very busy woman, with a full-time job and full-time family and full-time social commitments; dinner tonight at a nice restaurant, catch up with the girls tomorrow afternoon, wedding from twelve to five the next day (and make some important calls in between champagne and cream cake).

She woke up and turned to her side but Mr. Busy is a very busy man and had already quietly left for work, so she sighed, and smiled sadly at their sorry situation. Her mind quickly flicked those thoughts away, re-engaged, ready for her prepared day. Soon she was in the kitchen having breakfast.

“Morning, sweetie!” she greeted her young daughter, who was letting her yawns lead her out of her room.

“It’s Monday again. I hate school!”

Further such conversation was stalled by children’s programs. Mrs. Busy spared herself a moment to stare wistfully at the dark browns and greens of a mountain landscape hanging lonely on their whitewashed dining room wall as her daughter sat in front of a bright rectangle and let psychedelic colours stream around plastic smiles and fresh-faced dancers and into her eyes.

So ends this depressing vignette of a not-so-distant home.

I have my feet up on the train seat in front of me. The service pulls into Strathfield. A clean-shaven man in a suit comes up the stairs from the front of the carriage.

He looks at my feet.

The carriage is half-empty. It’s nighttime, so neither side has the disadvantage of bright sun. We’ve all had a long day and want to relax. Despite this, he looks at my feet.

We exchange a mutual glance of annoyance. I swear his eyes glint. His hand stretches towards the metal handle: he’ll pull the seat across, feet or sans feet. I quickly take them off. He carefully moves the seat over, and uses his newspaper to sweep off invisible dust from where my feet had been.

Did I mention my legs are fairly long? The seats are so close together!

Unseen to him, I slowly lift my knees up until I’m almost kissing them, then lightly place the soles of my shoes on the back of the chair he now occupies. Then I slam forward with all my sudden might: his neck gives a sickening crunch and his arms fly up and his body is thrown forward and his head smashes into the hard plastic window extension and blood sprays and loose newspaper pages flutter to the floor.

Okay, so that last paragraph was a lie. Actually, I shrug, wondering why people would rather get their own way than spare discomfort for themselves and others. Then I write a little story to distract myself.

Her mouth opened and shut, slowly, as the koi lazing through warm water proffer their silent observations to delighted children on a bridge above. Like she was repeating something on the phone, or giving solemn news that she could hardly believe herself. He tried to guess what she was saying.

“–yes, collapsed, crazy I know! Everyone was incredulous, couldn’t understand why–”

A lot of hard consonants. Yet so fragile, so fragile. Her cheeks were flushed with rose, a gorgeous tinge that together with her leaping arms completed his image of a delightful child enjoying the sunshine.

Oh, brilliant blue eyes, stretched wide, in curiosity? Right at him. He smiled and couldn’t help staring back as she moved around excitedly. But all so slowly. It was like he was watching her in slow motion. Slowly watching her grow more agitated. He thought she was just being silly now, trying to get his attention.

He glanced around. They were in a park. He was sitting on a bench, with the morning paper. The girl was kneeling on a tartan spread, about ten metres away, where she was having a picnic. Her friend had run to find the nearest toilet, and no one else was in sight.

So, yes, she was definitely making motions towards him. She tried to stand up but fell back on her knees; how clumsy. Now time seemed to be speeding up, she seemed to be aging and things were happening faster. The delicate pink cheeks turned to mottled red and purple, her movements were jerkier, spasmodic.

Ridiculous, the old man thought, offended at her uncouth behaviour. Why was she causing such a fuss? He collected the hearing aids from his lap, folded his paper in half to hide the half-finished sudoku, stood up and walked determinedly away.

Salty blooded lips, veins charged with adrenalin, ears ringing and hounds on her heels. This is how Eli raced across the cobblestones, raced ahead of accusatory cries and yowls and rushed towards her imagined destiny, the future being divined by threads torn from tapestries of the past and from the walls of sleeping merchant manors.

Another child was moving in the opposite direction, a boy named Yuri with wind streaming through his long dirty brown hair, cloth package clutched to chest, feet rubbed raw and running, running from what he no longer considered home in an attempt to find somewhere, anywhere, a place of appreciation and love.

Of course, they collided.

“You idiot!” fumed Eli as she scrambled around to pick up the fresh fruit spilt from her hands. Seeing the boy still lying in the dirt, fresh tears forming rivulets down his dust-caked face, she grew exasperated, pulled him to his feet and towards an alleyway safe from pursuers.

Under the sudden darkness of surrounding buildings and stretched canvas ceiling, leaning back against a cold wall, tense muscles relaxing and pulse slowing, there came about a sudden reversal. After getting angry at Yuri, she was now engulfed by misery; throat clenched and tight eyes and broken sobbing. In the corner of her vision, black dogs raced past the hiding place entrance, making the dazzling sunlight flicker as when hands pass before a candle.

“Hey, girl,” Yuri whispered. “Why, what’s wrong? You scared o’ the mutts?”

“No! Nothing like that,” she managed to blurt. Eli struggled to keep her thoughts to herself; the thoughts of being pathetic, forlorn and without hope, worthless, and to meet somebody the same, oh, so pitiable and wretched, what was wrong with this world – and then a wide naive smile flowed over Yuri’s ruddy face, wiping her pain and damming the damning feelings, setting her heart alight.

Live for the moment.

Walking along the evening beach, desolate, cold, I look up into the void above and am amused by how apt the phrase ‘wheeling constellations’ is as it rolls through my mind. The immense, sprawling starscape showing through purple dusk; making my mind reel, unhinging inhibitions; it gives me absurd romantic notions of wading through the shifting waves without intention of returning.

There is a place for me to go, across the waters; I’ve seen it on those cloudless days, the blue sky and breathless sea, verdant lowlands on the horizon looking suspended in the air, a fantastic floating landscape. I have to make up my mind, soon, before it transforms with the fall of the sun. That’s when the sea darkens and the mountains blacken; they merge into one, a pitch foreground with fiery light behind. I feel like a doll in a play set, the side of the earth roughly torn, turned to a yawning chasm like the open face of a plastic mansion. I am firmly within this world, but I’m teetering on the edge all the same.