I felt freedom today.
I still felt you there
But I ignored you for later.
I felt freedom today.
I found so many of you with them
And they smiled back
They conversed and
Conveyed
And when you swang on in
I looked up to swat you away.
I felt freedom today
And know tomorrow will
Have
No
Such
Luck.
I felt freedom today.
You’ll plague me tonight
But I damn well got today.
I spent December 31st with two things on my mind:
1) The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies
2) Death
The movie was showing. And my instagram account is piled high with the promise of books, fantasy and fiction. But as I sat there in the dark, alone, I kept thinking “I could die right now”. Yes, morbid but the raw thoughts of mankind is rarely tied with a bow! So I wondered what my family was doing; I had left the house in need of a breather from the storm of nieces and nephews that huddle in during the Christmas break.
I watched multiple deaths on that screen. I watched Arrogance and Strength war with each other. And still my fingers began to tingle in the not-so-nice-or-jazz way. The picks like icicles on all fronts of my hands. I sat stunned. I wanted it to end. I had only eaten breakfast that morning I must be hungry.
I don’t know when it ended. I do know that as I sat on the bus watching the remnants of the setting sun from the wrong side of the bus (the right), I thought about needing to finish Golden Son by Pierce Brown (at the time the huge hardback had been strategically squashed into an old camera side bag). But hauling the tomb out in public is easier said than done. So I took some photos of the book and the 75th Anniversary edition of The Hobbit I had just purchased on a whim. The debris of thought and air swirling in my pits. I looked at my books.
Three hours later my mother got a phone call. I was oblivious in bed and the kids running around screeching in mirth and mayhem while clad in glittering masquerade masks. My father’s little sister and the closest my mum had to a best friend has passed away.
I was named after her.
She had never shown any symptoms.
She had left behind six kids.
And so midnight closed in. 2015 in all its glory and promise was prime to glide over the world. But around me was silence and the curious and confused stares of little faces. The masks dropped forgotten as new minds tried to sleep comprehending existence turned to nothing. If even that.
I wonder if they realised that even the ‘big people’ wrestled with nothingness too.
I believe in an afterlife. I believe in the unseen. I believe in fate.
I wonder what difference my belief makes if I don’t listen to it.
Here’s to 2015 because our past is a lesson and the remainder of our breath a challenge we must continue to solve.
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