The slow pull
Feeling a bit light this evening so i think i can talk about it.. the slow pull.
Maybe it is just the advancing years, the lengthening shadows. The dough, folded and folded again, to make a millefeuille. The complexifying of every little thing and yet — an increasing vagueness, a thinning out, a diminishing opacity. The memories like little distant dots. The grand schemes and structures of youth surrounding me like decaying buildings. The sky shining through the holes in the roof, the grass in the gutters, the moss on the floor and walls. An old broken chair on its back. And me; standing in the derelict classroom of my life, middle aged and sore, crazed hair, ragged clothes, slightly bent over, and tired. But not quite, quite over it all yet.
It came on me fast – a few years ago i still felt i had it all ahead of me, all my work. The big event that would define my life, the knell of recognition, or of the crystallisation of my own purpose, the setting of a dream/ becoming at last my only reality. That moment of realisation or alignment when all the plot threads would be gathered quickly together and my story would feel like it was finally told. In fact, perhaps it did happen, that moment of climax. Now i’m in the aftermath, it was so quick i barely noticed it passing. The whimper of a climax told it all, of whoever i was, of all anyone ever really is. Now begins the slow epilogue, the working out of a few dangling strands of life’s web.
Oh i’m still pushing ahead on all my schemes, but there’s a feeling now that there is no more working out to be done, just a slow settling down of things decided. No more mysteries to unfold, rather the working out of the proof of a certainty that is already well known. That’s all that’s left to do. Or to dare the world – go on, surprise me. I have no more cards left to play. Show me your final card, i know the odds are bad, but maybe that slim smile and that spark in your eye is hiding one last trick to unfold from you, the slyest, the oldest magician of them all.
One last update – a new single ‘Rainsong’ is on the way.. and i released my crime file podcast sounds to spotify etc. tonight.. about four years after i dreamed them up/they dreamed me/i still dream. I also revised “Bleeding Nose Pose” my poetry collection from a few years ago, it will be in the online shops soon. But all those poems are also available for free in the Wardrobe, and my songs are there for anyone on Soundcloud.
