Cliche

Summer.

I spent the first day of it sleeping mostly, I’m starting to feel like some cliched character, but I slept well at least, I’ve been having a few dreams, nightmares, the sort that doesn’t encourage sleep, so it’s nice when I do get a good, undisturbed rest. That’s alright though, all it affect is time and I’ve never been good with that anyway, I don’t count it the way other people do, days, weeks, months, I am generally a seasonal person, maybe a month if I put in a conscious effort, people tell me things, like, it was two years ago, and that, doesn’t mean much, lengths of time never feel like the length it was, a day a week etc.

I watched the sky at dawn today, when I was up in Queensland a few months ago I spent a few days watching the moon rise over the horizon out to sea, I enjoyed that, it was, nice to see other people doing the same, driving out to the same look out point, that meant a bit to me I think, even if you’re technically alone, you don’t feel it if you’re doing something other people are, for the same reasons other people are, maybe that’s why people like bars so much, because they see others happily there, even if they’re by themselves. 

I haven’t been, good, lately, I don’t particularly feel like myself and I’m very annoyed with myself for being so, overcome, with things. I think the reason I don’t write much about my day to day life, talk about it, is because it’s boring, it’s, dull, in some ways almost irrelevant, the stories that come from it often have significance and value, but the events themselves are, to me, irrelevant, if I don’t care about them, why on earth would someone else? I’ve run into some bad news recently, and bad news always has the same effect of me, it provides perspective, both positive and negative, and in this case, it makes everything else, that I normally think to be generally irrelevant, seem, totally inconsequential, by comparison, even if I could normally muster some interest in it, at the moment, I certainly can’t. It’s a shame in a way because the bad news followed some good, promising news, by a days length.

Stephen, an old friend, is dying, probably won’t make it a year, it’s been, very hard for me to talk about it, to tell anyone, the whole matter, has just been overwhelming for me, overwhelming everything, I haven’t seen anyone since the day I found out, I haven’t gone anywhere or done anything, I’m just consumed by this, and it’s, surprising, I know that sounds cold but what I mean is, normally, I can deal with things well, but for whatever reason I have no defence towards this at all. So here I am, weeks later, still feeling, weak, worthless.

Last time I saw him, I was driving him to the train station, he was going up to the central coast to be with his brother for a while, if I didn’t have plans, things that had to be done, I would’ve just gone with him, for a while at least, but that wasn’t, I don’t think, what he wanted. Alex walked down to the road from his town-house and sat on the brick fence with us. He began telling a story as always, about a kid in the neighbourhood who he thinks might have some mental trouble, he collects the rubbish bins for a few streets around his house, takes them from just outside the house down to the road for the collection truck, I suppose it’s his way of contributing to the community, I think it’s rather lovely really, and it’s more than I do to contribute to the community, anyhow Alex told us that one day whilst sitting on the couch in the living room the screen door was flung open with tremendous force, slamming against the wall and making an almighty ringing noise, the kid came in out of breath and said ‘Where’s your rubbish bin?’ He clenched his hands into fists and threw them up into the air yelling ‘I NEED IT!’

We all cracked up, me especially, this fantastic unrelenting passion, I really love it when someone has great conviction in something you’d think most to be fairly ambivalent about, Nicholas is like that with a lot of things, these bizarrely mundane things that he talks about with great emotion, great conviction. Stephen told Alex that would be a good scene in the film they’ve been talking about making since they were in high school. I said I’ll write it down, as I do most things that I find funny, and told Stephen I’d send him my file if he’s interested, which he was.

Across the road from us, from inside a house a violinist was playing Mozart, I crossed the little culdesac road, and kept my head bowed as I walked past the fence, so the player wouldn’t see me, I lay down on the warm concrete and listened to the pure, beautiful music, a set of stairs I had never seen before was in front of me, leading down to a small green field, I wondered how in all the years I’ve been visiting Alex’s place I had never seen these stairs, never knew there was a field there. 

A pine tree next to us had a fair amount of resin on it and Stephen likes to use it for his incense so we collected some, he used his carpenter hands and I used the keys in my pocket, it’s amazing what you can do with carpenter hands. Alex and Stephen said their goodbyes and Stephen got into the car with me and we drove to the train station.

We talked about some future plans on the way to the station, cycling along the coast together to visit old abandoned war tunnels, he said that he’s been thinking about what made him happiest and when he was younger it was cycling around after school exploring places. The business he wants to start up, a sort of natural healthy resort, growing algae on the side to sell to the public, I told him I’d help him, since I’ve experience in setting up companies and the like, accounting and taxation law, those matters. He told me about the sort of house he’d want when he’s a bit older, ready to settle down, maybe in four or five years he said, he looks forward to it, but at the moment there’s too much he wants to do, to see and experience before deciding on a location to spend a decade or two.

This and other things, all these plans for the future. 

As we got to the station, he said, in a quiet voice, that he really does want to do all these things with me, and he really plans to, it’s just that, sometimes things happen that change the path one is on, and he can’t know what that’ll be, so he said, ‘Maybe the train tracks will click over to another line and that’s the way I’ll end up going,’ but that he really does want to go cycling with me, explore those tunnels with me, get that business up and running with me, plan that house.

I told him I understood, that it’s the same for me, there is just so much going on that I can’t know if I’ll be on that track too when he does come back, as lord knows I might be overseas in a couple of months, but that I’d try to be around and help him with the plans, I asked him to forgive me if it turns out that I won’t be around to help him with his plans, he said he’d forgive me, if I’d forgive him. I said of course, and so did he.

And then he got out of the car, I said I’d get out and he said not to worry, he reached in through the window and we shook hands, held each other’s gaze and he said ‘See you soon.’