Five miles behind the line.

Watch out, the world's behind you

From a late night train the little towns go rolling by and the people at the station going home.  

and I don't even know your name.

Admonitions To A Special Person
by Anne Sexton

Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes) ,
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

“But what I do I do because I like to do.”

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”


- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

loud words never bothered me like they do to you.

My temper got the best of me

And when I said that I mean

I know that every single word that I said was true

"...comme vous pouvez le voir, je ne souris, ni ris, ni vis," et c'est tout ce qu'elle a dit.

I'm here, and it's tomorrow.

I don't think I'll even realise it until I see you.

 how much has actually changed; and somehow,

before you went away. Because it's difficult to believe

for me to get things back to anything close to what they were

And I am, in a way, but I'm anxious as well. I just don't know if it's enough time,

So you are back in fifty five days; and I should be so happy, ecstatic, over the moon.

There's no word for yesterday in Eskimo language.

'...and I'm scared of what's behind, and what's before.'

I know a year is always longer than it seems. I just wasn't aware that so much could happen in that amount of time. And I wish I could say that in spite of it all, I'm still the same as I was; that I'm still as hopeful and sure about what I want. But what's the use in that? It simply wouldn't be true.

A cold wind whispers and stirs a dream into the night.

"Then in the end, it won't matter, that I didn't do all the things I planned. Maybe nothing ever really matters, you only think it does. And all the notches on the belt that you run around gathering - as if the world will count themp up and reward you, declare you human after all - they won't matter either. All that time you could have been lying there under a tree, under a sky, bewildered only by the beauty above you. And still the world would declare the same thing: you are alive. Yes, you are." - Martine Murray, How to make a bird

And I know that you’re mad at me but if you're thinking like that I think you'll see that you're mad at you too.

There's nothing I could say
To make you try to feel ok
And nothing you could do
To stop me feeling the way I do
And if the chance should happen
That I never see you again
Just remember that I'll always love you

I'd be a better person
On the other side I'm sure
You'd find a way to help yourself
And find another door
To shrug off minor incidents
And make us both feel proud
I just wish I could be there
To see you through

You always were the one
To make us stand out in a crowd
Though every once upon a while
Your head was in the cloud
There's nothing you could never do
To ever let me down
And remember that I'll always love you

"And I won't let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me..."

Strangers by the River

We remained there for over an hour
on that bench. We waited,
until the light faded away
and we knew that the day was ending.

He didn't speak, and
I could think of nothing more to say.
So we sat in silence; and for a time,
I could still feel the warmth
emanating from the spot
where his hand had rested
next to mine,
before he pulled away.

I didn't want to look at him,
or see the unquestionable hurt in his eyes.
I knew that it was my fault,
that all the yearning, curiosity and excitement in them
had disappeared.

But I did glance over,
just once,
when the sun was flickering
behind the trees
across the water.

He was staring out in front, still as anything;
and for the first time since we'd met
I couldn't even guess what was
running through his mind.

His eyes were guarded and distant,
and I realised then that
it was too late;
we'd never be close again.


It was a quiet place;
far enough from the chaos
of everyone's to-ing and fro-ing
for us not to hear it.
And it was getting to that time of day
when even the stragglers agreed
it was a good idea to go home.

So we had that space to ourselves.
And it should have been peaceful;
but when the sun finally sank below the horizon,
I couldn't help but feel it took a part of us with it.
I'm sure that if anyone passed us at all
they'd have thought we were simply
strangers by the river,
sharing the twilight.

And in a way, we were.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

He had been waiting long enough;
                     and he wanted it all to cease,
    to stop,
                            to end.

It wasn't that it made him mad;

it didn't frustrate him,
            or send a rage boiling up inside.

It was merely tiring,
       and the weariness
               tore away at his heart,
      and made him feel weak,

helpless,

a    dandelion      in            the                  wind.

She had to make her mind up, he decided.

Because there was only so much more he could take
before he crumbled,
                      and all the fire that was once there
                                                 burned away into the past.

He had been waiting long enough.

It's only when you are aware that you're breathing that you are aware that you are truly alive.

I never thought it would be so fleeting.

But I realised then that the dynamics had changed; and all that had happened was the passing of time itself.

films to see.

do not think that you are something.

I'd always had this yearning to be someone extraordinary. And secretly, I'd hoped that I already was; that I had something special to offer that no one else had. So accepting that I was in fact ordinary, perhaps even less than that, was one of the hardest things I've done.

caught up in a story.

“And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it - but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.”  - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

capture me, trust me in your dream.

"A sentimental person thinks things will last; a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't." - F. Scott Fitzgerald.

action is character.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” - W. H. Murray

 

no other way

She was bitten by the wind again.
And she didn't know
whether to run and hide,
or to stay
and accept the hidden truths
she didn't want to believe.

It was all ending;
the people, places that
she had once known,
had once loved,
reduced to fragments
of sunken memories.

So how could she endure,
after that?
How could she start afresh,
when she felt as old and broken
as the home she grew up in?

To go on, she had to
find a reason for being,
existing, thriving;
someone better and
braver than herself
- someone to be excited by,
enraged at, enthralled by -
someone to be desired,
and kept safe.

There was no other way.

Mauer.

and i can't promise you that i won't let you down.

"Don't be pathetic, it's easy. Just tell me something true. Tell me. Tell me now."

The Butterfly Effect

I often wonder if I’d be better off if I hadn’t left the house that day. I honestly think that yes, I’d probably be a much happier person if I hadn’t. And it is funny, in a way, that all of us tend to look back and think, ‘maybe I shouldn’t have done that,’ or ‘maybe I should have said this instead of that,’ when, at the time, whatever we did or didn’t do seemed the most logical.

I know it won’t change anything, but I keep thinking about the little things that morning that led to me being on that bus at eleven fifty-eight. Like how I’d forgotten to reset my alarm, or how on leaving the house I couldn’t find my key, and how before that, I couldn’t even decide what to eat for breakfast. They were all things that by themselves wouldn’t have had any impact on my day whatsoever. Yet together, they paved the way for me to be caught up in something I doubt anyone would ever want to be a part of.

***

It was never going to be a pleasant day. I knew that before it started raining, before I got on the bus to Uni with the foggy windows and damp seats and air that made my stomach turn. Dragging myself down to the kitchen to find something to eat, I’d stood facing the window, looking out onto the garden. Thanks to the shadow cast by the clouds overhead, it had had this sombre, guarded look about it. Had I known what was to happen later on, I would have described these clouds as ominous or foreboding, but then and there, all the clouds meant was rain. And all rain meant was an umbrella, boots and maybe not my favourite coat.

Even so, I was having a slow start that morning, and the glum weather made me want to draw it out even further. So I decided to give it another hour and miss my first class; nobody else was home, so I didn’t even have to feel guilty about it.

***

I must have underestimated how long it would take, or had deliberately done everything slower than usual, because the extra hour I’d given myself came and went sooner than I expected, and instead of feeling relaxed when I finally made it out the front door, I felt more anxious than I’d been all morning.

***

I wish I could say that something told me not to get on that bus. Maybe I should have taken into account the broken windscreen wiper on the left side. But in all honesty, I doubt I noticed that until afterwards.

The bus came two minutes late. With the heating on, the windows had fogged up on the inside, and people had been writing things on them with their fingers. Getting on, all I could think was that I couldn’t breathe through the warm odour of tacky perfume mingled with the wet dog smell of musty seats, so I didn’t realise I’d sat down at least four rows in front of where I usually felt comfortable.

We were all going to the same place; that was evident enough. If I’d been blind I would know we were students by the conversations people were having. But I’ve never been drawn to people acting like experts about things they barely know anything about. And that was why my attention ended up focused on a boy across the aisle from me, just in front of the doors. He was reading one of my favourite books, and I immediately felt an affinity with him, deciding that if we had gone to school together we’d have been friends - which was a bit stupid really. My friends didn’t read at all.

He must have felt my eyes on him, the way you can always sense if someone is watching you, because he closed his book and turned his head my way. I hadn’t noticed; worlds away, I was imagining the conversation about that book that we’d never have. But the sudden movement snapped me back, and after some brief and awkward eye contact I diverted my attention beyond him to what I could see through the window, and tried to pretend that that was where I’d been looking the entire time.

Through the clouded, wet glass, the world appeared blurry and distorted. The overcast sky, the river and the houses on the opposing shore were all joined by the grey haze of rain hammering the water. And even though she was difficult to see, I did notice the girl riding her bike alongside the bus. But it took me a moment or two to figure out why something about it didn’t seem right.

Why she was by the edge of the road in the emergency lane, rather than on the path that would have been the obvious choice, I’ll never know. But it shouldn’t have mattered why. People do things without explanation all the time.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if the bus driver knew she was there, or if he could see her at all. I’d taken the same route for long enough to know that the lane she was in was going to end in another twenty metres, and because she didn’t look like she was moving to the path any time soon, she had two choices. One was to take her chances and ride out in front of the bus, or the safer option, to slow down and let the traffic go past. If I had been in her position I know what I would have done. Except that I wasn’t.

I nearly said something. Honestly, I really did consider telling the driver to look out for her. But as usual my tongue got the better of me and refused to let a word out. Or maybe I was just too damn self-aware.

***

Often it’s the in-between moments that you remember most. I remember realising that my watch had come undone and I remember that I looked down to fix it. It’s strange now, to think that that moment was the last time I really felt that I knew who I was and what I stood for. Up until then, I’d never considered that the consequence of my not acting could affect me so deeply.

The chaos came in the seconds that followed. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard it. Felt it. Yet I’m not sure what came first - the jolt forward as the bus screeched to a halt, the shrieks of the people around me, the crunching noise, or the dull thud of something heavy rebounding off tempered glass.

I used to think that the not-remembering was from the shock of it, and that it would have all come back to me by now. But no matter how hard I try to piece it back together, it remains a blur, and is the reason why I was never counted as a reliable witness.

What I do recall is looking up again and realising that the day had been turned on its head. There was a deathly quiet. Music had stopped and the conversations ceased.

The few people who had been standing had fallen down onto each other; someone had caught his forehead on a stop button and a trickle of blood was slowly making its way down his face. But he didn’t appear to notice; even when it reached his lip and he would have been able to taste the saltiness. While everything continued on around us, for a moment or two it felt like the only indication that the world hadn’t frozen was the pattering of rain on the windows.

The bus driver broke the quiet by opening the doors and the barrier that separated him from the rest of us. Turning back before he shuffled out, he said, “Don’t get out, kids,” but his heart wasn’t in it.

The doors were left open and the boy who’d hit his head was the first to find his feet. Then, curious as ever, we all found ourselves edging slowly out of our seats and tentatively stepping down and into the rain. If a part of me didn’t want to know what lay in wait outside, it was overcome by the fear that if I didn’t get out with everyone else, they would know. They would know that I had something to do with it.

***

The driver was a big hulking block of a man, and if I’d been younger I might have been frightened by the sheer size of him. But I doubt anyone could have been afraid of him at that moment, not with the way his shoulders drooped and how he seemed to fall in on himself as he knelt there. It was strange and somewhat unnerving to see how someone so large could appear so small. I guess that’s what happens to you when your spirit is crushed and your life has taken a turn you never saw coming.

The bike had snapped in two. Half of it was under the bus, and I think the only reason that the same didn’t happen to the girl who’d been riding it was because of the peculiar angle of the impact. And there she was; helmet askew, lying in the arms of the driver on the wet, miserable road while the blood on her arms and legs kept getting washed away by the heavy rain.

We had to face the facts - we couldn’t do anything about it. We weren’t qualified or able to do anything at all. The most we could do was reassure ourselves, “She’s breathing, she’s breathing, she’s okay.” And for a while there, she was.

But by the time the ambulance and police arrived we couldn’t be sure anymore. And when they took her away, we were just left there with a bus that barely had a scratch on it. Traffic returned to normal, but we couldn’t.

A girl who’d been standing beside me ran over to the water’s edge and vomited onto the concrete that stopped the bank from falling into the river. The rest of us just stood there, waiting, and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand being as helpless as the rest of them. Not to mention that I couldn’t help feeling somewhat responsible. If I’d said something, maybe none of this would have happened.

I didn’t know how I was going to get back on a bus after all that. But I knew that I probably would. And even though I wanted to walk away, to keep walking until my knees hurt and my legs ached and my feet blistered, I didn’t move. 

***

We tried so hard to live in the truth

Everyone is much too happy for you to be honest with them
because if you were honest with them the world would be colder.

You could choose anything, you choose to lose, again and again.

We are the angry mob
We read the papers every day
We like who we like
We hate who we hate
But we're also easily swayed

Je vous connais à peine, ce qui vous rend si spécial?

Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part.

Mon Dieu, je suis une telle contradiction. Je suis probablement schizophrène.

Il dit quelque chose mais ses mots ne font pas de bruit et je n'entends rien.

nous sommes tous emmêlés.

Sorry, but I'd only make you miserable.

There are people who cannot see,
                          who cannot hear,
                                      who have never slept in a bed,
    who have never known the sound of music
             or the feel of the ocean.
                         There are people in this world
                                    who are dying

                          before they've learnt to live.

The fact that you only ever think about your own little life shows the kind of person you are.

And that's not my kind of person.

Because failure's a part of it all

And if failure doesn't hurt then failure doesn't work at all.

When the winter falls too cold to touch.

Cause all that I wanted, all that I needed

All that I wanted, was to be

And all that I wanted, all that I needed

All that I wanted, was to be alone

Was to be alone

Was to be alone

I know all the rules, I just don't want to play it.

I don't want to be wanted.
I don't want to be adored, longed for or sought after.
I'd rather be desired for what I am and what I can do and say than be wanted for me.
I don't want to be wanted by anyone.
Not me.
Not me.

life, the universe, and everything.

"Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had been suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.


And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its thought from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah . . . ! What's happening? it thought.


Er, excuse me, who am I?


Hello?


Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?


What do I mean by who am I?


Calm down, get a grip now . . . oh! this is an interesting what is it?


It's sort of . . . yawning, tingling sensation in my . . . my . . . well, I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for that sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.


Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that . . . wind! Is that a good name? It'll do . . . perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for.


It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This . . . let's call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can really thrash it about pretty good, can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now, have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?


No.


Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation . . . Or is it the wind?


There really is a lot of that now, isn't there? And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming toward me very fast? Very, very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide-sounding name like . . . ow . . . ound . . . round . . . ground! That's it! That's a good name- ground!


I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now."
 

You don't want a girl like me.

Maybe I'm a crook for stealing your heart away


And maybe I'm a crook for not caring for it

And maybe I'm a bad, bad, bad, bad person

Well baby, I know.

Don't go looking for the answer, it's the question you don't know.

And that love that we fatally made
And the doves that took it away
And the love that you said it can't stay
It went away

you were a child who was made of glass

and when you're gone, will they say your name?
and when you're gone will they love you the same?
if not, that's okay.

why can't we just rewind?

"If wealth is lost, nothing is lost. If health is lost, something is lost. But, if character is lost, everything is lost."

she means well, so give her a chance.

stop biting the hand that feeds you before you take off more than you can chew and choke yourself to an early grave.

if only life could lean our way.

all the loudest voices in the world are never right.

i've never been good with change

but i hate it when it all stays the same.

Drunk from the street and from feeling, seeing, hearing everything at once.

I carry inside my heart,
As in a chest too full to shut,
All the places where I've been,
All the ports at which I've called,
All the sights I've seen through windows and portholes
And from quarterdecks, dreaming,
And all of this, which is so much, is nothing next to what I want.

kinda sorta miss you heaps, loser.

one of these days your heart will stop and play its final beat.

i'm not going to make the effort anymore.

just let it all fall in line.

I thought I understood it. That I could grasp it.
But I didn't, not really. Only the smudgeness of it, the pink-slippered, all-containered, semi-precious eagerness of it.
I didn't realise that it would sometimes be more than whole,
that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea.
Because it's the halves that halve you in half.
Didn't know, don't know,
about the in-between bits,

the gory bits of you

and gory bits of me.

in the daylight, everywhere feels like home.

we all look like how we feel.

we created a monster, but nobody wants to kill it.