XLVII

Sometimes I think pictures matter more. Sometimes I think words. We see images, and colours, and vibrancy and life and moving colour. But we hear and say and write and record words. And sounds. Our tongues form vowels and we practice assonance and we do but we don’t know how to talk and those are the special moments where words are better. But go outside, taste the air, see the sky and the salt and the sun and silence or the sounds and that is the something that sometimes pictures can portray. But only sometimes. Words are only sometimes too, I suppose. Maybe that’s why I need both. Both these sometimes things when placed together make a little less sometimes and a little more always. And always is what I always want. Always is the way you make me feel, the way you make me laugh, the way you make me love. Always is the pitter-patter of rain on dirty glass and the salty air blowing my hair up and hugs and kisses and affection and tears of joy sorrow gladness frustration humility. Always things are not words or pictures but life and moments. But sometimes I like words. And sometimes I like pictures.

[Image: Unknown]

XLVI

Imagine if we were to wake up every morning, and see the world with new eyes. Not to lose our memories, or our understanding, or our past feelings but, just for a moment, to see things with a totally fresh perspective. As if we’d never seen them before. To see people, to see places, to see things, objects, to see events and situations, and natural occurrences. How would we treat injustice in our world if every day we woke up and saw it as if it were the first time? Would we be so tolerant? Would we work harder, would we raise more money, would we get our priorities straight? What if we were to see our partner or our family or our friends or our strangers, with new eyes every day? Would our friends stay our friends, would our strangers stay our strangers, would our family be so underappreciated, or over indulged? What if we were to see our world with fresh eyes every morning? As if we’d never seen a blade of grass, a blue chip of sky. Smelt the air in winter time, in summer time, in spring time, in autumn time, after the rain, before the rain, after the thunderstorm, when the suns been burning hot all day – what if we’d never smelt it before? How could we not know God? What if we were to see ourselves with fresh eyes every morning? As if a stranger passing us on the street. Would we love ourselves? Just for an instant, before we remembered to doubt. Before we remembered to critique. Before we remembered that we were too fat, too skinny, hair too brown, too long, too short, too blonde. Eyes too far apart, too small, too wide. Skin too mottled or wrinkly or elbows pointing in the wrong direction. Ears too big. What if we were just to see ourselves? Perhaps this is a skill that can be taught. Perhaps Mother Theresa would say that every morning she awoke, and saw the injustice and the indignity and the poverty around her with new eyes, and that’s what kept her going. Because there’s always more work to be done. And you can never grow faint of heart, or weary doing good when all you see is newness and new possibility and new adventure. What an adventure to forget. What an adventure to forget and then to be reminded. What an adventure to forget.

[Image: Unknown]

XLV

Silence

Silence is a loud thing.

Silence is a loud thing.

Absence is a very present thing.

Man: When I first asked my sweetheart to marry me, there was a silence so loud it nearly burst my eardrums. It stretched on for an eternity – the silence. “Will you marry me?” – the silence. Fortunately, the silence was broken with a resounding yes. But the silence that day was so loud.

Woman: I've never had a child, but I imagine that the silence that marks the break between their entry into the world and their very first cry – that silent intake of breath – I imagine that silence to be very loud.

Humanity: There are silences that should be broken that are never broken. And these are the loudest silences of all. As a child, being picked on at school, that awful, blinding, blurring silence between the bully’s’ remark and well… nothing. No one to stand up for you. No one to call them out. No one to come to your rescue or your defense. The silence of the onlooker – such a loud silence. And what about the bully’s that don’t live in the school yard? What about the bully’s that live in the dark streets and the dark shadows of the dark corners? Who prey on the innocent, and who force them into silence. A silence so loud that it can take over their lives. Take over their minds. A silence that rules them; a silence that binds them. Walls of silence that come up around them. A cellblock of silence. A fortress of silence.

Me: I experienced silence once, so profoundly. It was the 30^th of June. It was quite a mild day. And I received a phone call, informing me that my loved ones mother had passed away, after many days in hospital. I managed to keep it together on the phone, but as soon as I hung up the floodgates opened and I cried for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes. And when I walked into that hospital room the silence was deafening. The silence of a life just passed. No intake of breath, no rise and fall, no blood pulsing or heart beating – just silence. And with the silence came this awful, awful absence that made itself so known in that room. And afterwards – for months, days, years afterwards. Absence, such a present thing. A dark bird. The absence was stifling and the silence was deafening, and it was all so awful. And I remember it. And I’ll never forget it.

What a strange phenomenon, that things that mark lack can make themselves so evident. Such a strange strange thing, that life brings for us.

XLIV

Lovers Anonymous.

[Images: OracleFox, FashionGoneRogue]

XLIII

Untitled

There are things in me I can’t find words to express.

There are things in me I couldn’t let out even if I wanted to.

That if I did, would start a torrent of inner worlds and ceaseless sifting

Through what is true and what is real and what is not and who am I and why.

There are things in me I cannot face

And yet they’re in me – I face them every day

They come every where I go.

There are things in me I couldn’t let you in on if I tried

Because they’re not mine

I know not of them

And yet they’re in me – I know them every day

Unfulfilled unmediated unheard of unappreciated undone under my skin

There are things in me

Teach me how to let me in.

XLII

Home. 

[Images: Personal collection]

XLI

Pretty sure this was an H&M campaign from a while back. Still loving these images. It may be just an editorial, but the frames say so much about love.

XL

Have you ever loved somebody? Love them deeply and truly, until you thought there was nothing left of you that didn’t love them, and there was nothing more of them left to love? Have you ever just lain in the arms of a lover and simply mused on the love that you share, a mutual love, a love of equal measure. Is that even possible? How would we know? How do you quantify and compare? Have you loved someone who loved you less but still, loved, and that was enough for you? Has the loving itself ever become the object, rather than the beloved, so that their affection or evidence of reciprocation became unnecessary – it was your own love you chased, the knowledge of your love for them, the ecstasy of it, regardless of their position in the affair. Have you ever loved somebody in the midst of their not loving, or their rejection, or their destruction. Did you feel that love is destruction and that’s just how it is.

Our perception of love is entirely metered by our experiences of it. There is no absolute. There is no true North. It is what you feel it and see it and hope it and dream it to be. And whether you see it fulfilled in this way in your own life – that is the measure of joy you collect for yourself.

What a cruel game.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

[Image: OracleFox]