Sunday 11 June 2017

Transient thoughts, pt. 2: after the event.

Transient thoughts, pt. 2: after the event.


Out of the darkness and into the light, of Bromley-by-Bow on the District Line. As the light pours in, life is affirmed and nature is visible, if slightly unnatural.  You’re on the penthouse train, atop the ground, now. It's the new one, the one where you can see all the way down and which kind-of resembles a snake; like the spirit of the thing itself. You're coursing through the city's core, now out of the thick growth where things aren't easily visible. You feel more free out here, but still inside a tube, not free, journeying to a place that you know you are going to. Home. You feel a crescent of deadness around your spirit, a crescent that at one point in its complete cycle, will be full. You feel frayed at the edges, but so very tight and taught at your center; unmoved and wound up. You are at a dangerous torsion and might topple like the wind-up toy, when the firm hold, grounding you, is released.

*

You kick your too-tight shoes off, flicking them with finesse into the shoe rack that your (ex) father-in-law gave you as a housewarming gift, from when you were consciously coupled with the love of his life: his darling sweetheart, his only daughter. You feel proud for landing both for one is good, and rare, but two is unheard of. You smile smugly, but not obnoxiously, with just a slight turn at the corners of your mouth. In your mind however, you are celebrating, in stadia to cheer as the two successful kicks return in action replay in your mind. The soft thud of TKMaxx discount-leather hitting the rack's wooden frame reverberates in your mind's ear and feels pleasurable.

It was a long day, as it always is, you think. You signed up to a digital magazine though, subscribing out of choice to get a free voucher for a takeaway, and other reasons.  You are culturally aware! You are creative and really do see the value in reading this week's lead story: 'why neoliberal garden space is uncanny, and represents wider political structures'. You'll probably cancel before the time given, in discount, as an introductory offer, and it pays for itself with free takeaway, anyway. Everyone must do it, you think. You think too much and often as if you are in a moment suspended; where thought and clarity abstract to something harder to decipher.

You are hearing, as you always do,  the drone of road noise, but by this small virtue, you think you probably save a few precious pounds a month. Your bank balance, which you checked on the way home, wouldn't buy many rubies, but for the first time in a long while you are in the black. Your watch ticks and you check it, around 3.37pm, and you thank someone, but nobody, for it being Friday: the day of the earlier finish.

No comments:

Post a Comment