Stars Above Us,

What Below?

 

 

 

We sat on the hill, watching. The suburbs winding out below us, like a roll of bandages. Parts were clean and had healed well, some green even occasionally poked through the choking wrap of black smog. Other sections were tightly bound by constructions, work in progress. Like a pulled muscle, disjointed and bruised then covered up with elastic, stretched to breaking point. The sky above contrasted so heavily. Like someone's masterpiece sprawled out before us. Almost like the roof of the Sistine chapel with religious dogs barking in the dingy streets below. Its colours swirling like a cotton candy machine.

Someone had poured in too many sugary pastels and it even smelt sickly in the heat. The clouds churned above my head and I felt my stomach lurch, bending over I threw up. A mixture of gruesome fermented orange juice and chocolate poured out onto the grass, as I sat there spluttering.

I turned to Johnno, grinning.

 

"That was lovely." he said in a dry tone. All I could do was laugh and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. He handed me a piece of gum and I lay back on the grass, hoping the nausea would fade with the dying light.

I thought how many people were sitting out there in the dusk, not daring to step out into the ambiguous sunset; sitting in their lounge room, waiting for the evening news to keep them happy, reassuring them that they hadn't actually missed anything important by staying inside. I once heard a saying "the most influential thing you'll ever do is nothing at all".

 

Well, I saw a whole city stretched out before me doing just that and it filled me with pity. Not for the masses, because they'd always been like that. Nothing had changed over the centuries, and it doubtless, never would. Rather I felt pity for myself because something inside me made me different from them. I could see that being a sheep in the middle of this wide brown land wasn't all they cracked it up to be.

 

I couldn't just sit at home and watch. So I sat in the open breathing in their smoke as it puffed out, covering the few of us who dared to step out in a blanket so thick and warm it made you drowsy. Almost like they wanted to hypnotise us and bring us back to the land of couch potatoes and beer.

 

I cared too much for the future, too much to fence myself into the paddock. I realised I was looking beyond this minute which even then slipped into paradox. I knew now didn't really exist. I wasn't as easily fooled by "live" TV. I wanted to see my world teetering on the brink of destruction then I wanted to stab it with my own double-edged sword made of real memories, made of lies, and of all the cruelty I could find. I'd dig it all up and dump it on that grassy hill right where Johnno could see. Then I'd make them all watch as I burnt the final pages of history and sent them floating into that blanket of smog. I'd let them choke on their own fury.

 

It was then I decided to become an artist. I looked up at the suddenly black sky, as if it were my friend. Pretending that I could reach up and touch those stars, wishing Johnno would reach over and touch me. Just like those untrusting stars, he never did.

Those stars looked like diamonds, with their rich twinkling; deceptive stars, fake leaders of the universe. They pulled us all across the galaxies, watching and waiting. They faked freedom in their stance.

They would not live forever as the light which reached us from the beginning of time, touching my cheek and fading away, promised. They were most likely already dead. Dried up husks of particles floating around, eternally empty shells. They were the last grey embers and I would see them shine till the day I died, knowing that what I saw was not now and was not real. I knew I was to search for what was real, what was true. Not the lies of nature as we sat on that hill. I had been created just like that comforting star to shine, and leave a mark on the world for ages after I had died. And like so many others, my shine would only be acknowledged as I passed over the waterfalls edge into the abyss of time.

 

Wrapped in a blanket of space I would float out with the waves just as those stars did; red-shifting into the distance with the remnants of the Big Bang. A Big Bang I had to create for myself. I would die and only then would people appreciate me, not for what I was but for the realisations I would bring them.

 

I would weave my blanket not of space and time as that star had, but of chaos. The chaos created by my hand, dipping into the pool of the universe and drawing out my own silver moon dust. I would make something. I would create just a little static out there in tv land and watch my glitter twinkle in their eyes. I would make art as I would find the truth hidden under false promises. I would show them the way to the edge of the universe and I would watch them fall.

 

Just then Johnno coughed and I watched him. His eyes were deep holes into which I fell each night, but that night I got up and walked away. He didn't call out.

I walked on and on, fading into black. A ghost of what i once was searching the streets for my shadow. I watched myself, with red eyes gleaming. My figure hunched, dragging the lifeless lump onwards. A part of me was dead. That type of death is harder to deal with than the death of a loved one. Someone else dies and they say "they live on in your heart and memories" but a part of you dies and it shrivels up and disappears.

 

No matter how hard you try to grapple for the memories, they've been erased and your heart goes numb at the thought. It is a pain beyond the stream of events and objects that seep into us and make a warped dance of our lives. The smiles and tears that we say make us or break us are but a cardboard scrap of what really happens. It is a pain without relief or even total comprehension. It is so overwhelming it almost comes on unnoticed and changes you so completely you don't understand what you ever were or what you could have been.

 

It is like a virus attaching itself to you so wholly and quickly it destroys you before anyone has a chance to notice let alone intervene. It builds so many walls around you that you become cold and hard, a mere mirror. I am as pitiless as Johnno now. He, without mercy, comes the closest to reality without going insane that i have ever seen. He lives such a dangerous life, yet he isn't just another rebel without a cause. His passion sends him to the brink. That passion is his fatal flaw as Othello suffered because of his Jealousy so must he. But what is my fatal flaw? A flaw I probably won't discover until it is too late.

 

 

I want to throw the very essence of humanity into the sky and see what gravity pulls back. I want to know if there's such a thing as unrestrained creativity, if we can ever really give up all our inhibitions. Give up the seventh veil and reveal the secrets of the mind, in clear view of all. Genius unraveled, but we would only dissect it as we did Einstein’s brain so perhaps it is the way of the world to keep us from our own mistakes.

 

Our self-deception keeping the secrets of a cold universe hidden behind the reflective glass yet we lose the game anyway because our enemy has so many secret weapons that we never had a chance in the first place. I look around at the whores on Greeves Street and the leering old men who wander aimlessly and see how hope has forsaken them.

Hope is a very vicious master if ever I had one. It drove my ambition onwards but tormented my mind in the meanwhile. I didn't really know what i was hoping for. I suppose what we all wish for, to satisfy our vanity.

That hope stopped me digging past my vanity and clawing in the dirt of my soul. Vanity protected me like a blanket but curiosity caught me in the midst of ignorance and twisted my world around till that protective seal popped off.

The contents are like medicine. Everyone thinks just because it tastes bad it must be good for you. Is it really? Will it ever do me any good to be ostracised by a society that thrives on the sadistic passions of hope? No, i have no faith but i do have freedom yet at what cost to my world?

 

Will I lose all will to love, or is there a way i can learn to live only right here right now. But that would be paradox because now doesn't exist. It isn't something anyone can grasp because if you did you would have to stop time. You are the grim reaper of my dreams who hungers for me.

 

I can feel his silk tongue lulling my mind to stop counting, so that he may catch me at an unguarded moment. Just as he did when i walked away from Johnno and he stole away that part of my life which i had shared with Johnno. Time drains us like a vampire, silently in the night. Many myths surround time and no one seems to know his true nature, "the way that he ticks". Though we see his passing we are powerless to stop it. To put him into the prison of our minds and hold him there, in some half-forgotten memory.

 

All we remember are feelings, the hunters in our wilderness. They track us through the green and make us keep running, until we find the courage and strength to take them face on. And at those times they are overwhelming and we drown but they teach us how to float again. They are the red sea. The liquid of life poured into us, exactly measured for each. That's why when you hold a shell to your ear you can hear the sea.

 

I no longer want to run for cover when i let myself down and the cave walls fall in. I am the bat on the rafters piercing the darkness, but i don't want to run when the echo gets back to me. I am weak of spirit in that sense, but then nobody likes consequences. I confuse myself too easily, my passion gets the better of me and i switch off. I think, if i could just turn off the light and the noise my world would be at peace and i could live in my shell of silence but it never works.

 

I have to learn to listen to the horrible sounds of the body and the breath of life and then i will hear the laughter as a sweet sound not a cackle which rips through me. That happiness exists somewhere is enough to drive some on, but i will not assume it does as i will not assume the sun will come up in the morning. Because I know my energy will always exist so i don't need to reassure myself or deny harsh realities.

 

The day i die i will begin my journey out to the edges of the universe and share in the light of creation which has fled so far from the center of everything. That is why i left Johnno, to escape the center of my world because the space was created from a vacuum that imploded and i knew i would eventually be flung away from him by the force of gravity. The hot night burnt the edges of my mind and now i have obeyed the natural pull of my heart and everything has cooled.

 

I feel almost weightless, like i have been spread out so far that i barely exist. I have become the salt winds and they lick at my wounded body as it disintegrates.

 

I look around for the first time in a long while, there's a whore staring at me. I look down at my watch and it is 4am. My thoughts took me away for a few hours and time captured my heart. I sit down where i am, not bothering to clear away the dirt, because my soul is dirtier than any street scene. I know the world won't strike at me, it can't hurt what it doesn't know.