Building
Street lights against the slick asphalt after rain, red mostly, long and stretching from around corners, the same streets, the same rain and traffic lights, the same houses, paths, routes, people, mostly just advancing to the next day, the only things changing are the small fragmenting feelings that each day brings, nothing much more than hunger and love, basic, simple, human things, rain in the Summer, sweet scented streets in Spring, potato blossom, star jasmine, a few bright plum and cherry blossoms, these things, plain and certain but memorable, like going down a hill on a bicycle, in Winter the bakery that fills the surrounding streets with the scent of warm bread in the big quiet empty streets, talking about the places we’ll go, the things we’ll be, the last train, the last bus of the day, and the long cycle home at the end of the night, under the large Autumn moon in the still damp air, weightless liquid air.
Even now, when I visit the places I used to go, I still expect to find the same people there, as though it were obvious, just a matter of course, even if I haven’t seen anyone I know there for years, even when the thing I liked most about these streets was how quiet they were when it was just us, lamp light shadows and foot falls echoing against the houses and fences, the world vanishing for a few hours a day, everyone sleeping, leaving the whole place left just to me, to us, to whoever else was there, when most weren’t, when everybody else had stopped, but we hadn’t, we were still going, no, these weren’t the places where we would stop.
In the park a couple of months ago, I found a number of felled trees in the pine cone forest, the whole park is slowly changing like that, you spend enough time somewhere or with someone, you can forget that there is more to it, to them, than just what you see, the places I thought were only known to me had been altered, when I wasn’t looking.
About 150 metres away there is a small canopy of trees that I used to spend a lot of time in, next to the rock throwing pond, there lay piles of felled tree trunks along the ground, stacked upon each other a couple of feet high, I’d always walk the length of them, arms out, balancing, moving so I wouldn’t fall, next to them are the large slabs of stone, bigger than a carton you’d use to move houses, tremendous weight, at twilight when the cool wind became stronger, without the sun to warm you, we’d lay down on the asphalt of the road, which retained the heat of the day, even a couple of hours after the sun had gone down, warm again our backs, and the vast sky above for viewing.
Some days nobody would turn up so I carried a book in my bag, and my mp3 player, I’d find a tree to sit beneath and read my book, listen to my music, back when a 32mb MP3 player was considered to be big storage, and it used two AAA batteries, I could fit about 6 songs on it at a time, so I had to choose carefully, in a way it made them mean more. After I met Fiona when nobody turned up, I’d go and sit in the pinecone forest, at that little table, and, wait, I guess, you never really give someone up do you? You think of all the scenes in movies, where it turns out all to be a big fabrication, the vast sad crippling curtain ripped aside, even the most cynical person, would take some happy nonsense, over a sad truth.
I inspected these newly felled trunks, they had been cut into smaller piece length ways, about 2 feet long and a foot and a half wide, after a while I decided upon one, which had the finest bark and the most distinct rings in the wood, the weight of it was tremendous and I could barely lift it, so I walked back to the car and drove to the other side of the field, and then rolled the small trunk piece along it in the warm evening sunlight, whilst a mother and child watched, I think she disapproved, but I didn’t mind, those trees are mine, that land, the bark, the memories, you can’t steal something that belongs to you, finally I reached the car, my leather brogues marked and scratched, hands sticky with resin, sap and a find dust, but again I didn’t mind, it was worth it, I just wondered how I’d explain it to someone else if they asked, I do that a bit, more than, worrying about it, I just wonder how I could get someone else to understand, it’s always harder than I anticipate, people are very, linear.
I keep a single pine cone on top of my little fake piano, a keyboard with weighted keys and a wooden body, I considered placing it there along side it but it is too large, so for now I just have it on the ground, I’m thinking of polishing and varnishing it to protect it and then use it as an ottoman, I’m not sure, I think it’s fine as an ornament though, natural wood is quite pretty, and I like the natural shape, we’re quite lucky that trees tend to grow upwards, imagine if they all grew like hedges, early civilization would’ve been set back even more with all this warped and twisted wood to build with.