Azz is in the shower and I’m lying on her bed before we go out.
Despite the lack of air-conditioning, the house is surprisingly cool. The light breeze of the ceiling fan is enough for me in this heat.
The others are in the living room working away but I came in here to just lie down and take a moment. The energy of the house is peaceful, there are spirits around but they’re completely harmless.
Something about Brisbane heat makes me sleepy all the time. In a rare moment, I put my phone away from me and face it down.
Dark wood, off white walls and a pressed ceiling. The detail is a wonder to look at. Are they leaves and plants with the odd flower?
Or is it something else?
Maybe it depends on who is looking.
A metal bird circling rhythmically with the fan. I focus on it. The t-shirts and clothes stacked in the shelves floor to ceiling slowly melt away and I feel the cotton bed cover on one side of my face, my arms and legs. I breathe in the comforting smell of home as I watch the bird complete each cycle untiringly – perfect each time.
Soon, more parts of the room fall away until it’s just the bird, me on the bed floating through space.
But there’s something else – I don’t move but I see the door behind the bedroom door is still present. Doesn’t matter.
I’m focusing on the bird again. Harder than before. It seems to be slowing down or maybe I’m slowing down.
My heartbeat slows and so does the bird. Each cycle complete makes a slow whoosh.
Whoosh
Whoosh
The bedroom door moves slightly and the door behind it opens too.
Whoosh
Whoosh
A hand rests on my cheek and brushes me ever so slightly like the way my mum would have done to me as a child when she found me napping.
My heart bounces and starts beating rapidly, my eyes open wide and for a split second I can’t move. I can’t adjust my gaze to see who has their hand on my face.
My breath quickens and I get up with a start. Was I breathing? It felt like I’d been holding my breath.
For a moment I look around – confused and startled. The fan spins, the bird cycles and everything is just how it was.
I look behind me and notice the door behind the bedroom door. The bedroom door is open, and the other door closed behind it. There’s a painting of some flowers hanging on some string, gently knocking against the wall from the breeze of the fan.
For now, I’m alone in the room again but something was in here just a moment ago. They’ve gone somewhere else now.
I’m calm again and plop my head back on the bed.
There’s definitely something about that Brisbane heat.
Human
Journal 13/01/2022
The reflection of the fan blades on the dark screen of my phone. Is it a [BLANK]? It definitely isn’t but I check anyway.
Trying to break a [BLANK] I don’t wanna break deep down.
I wonder if everyone spends as much time [BLANK] to work as I do. What else would they be doing?
Telling myself once I get through the ones left on my [BLANK] I’ll settle down and be content.
That’s what I call telling myself a goddamn [BLANK]. They say, to be a good [BLANK, you need to first convince yourself of your own [BLANK].
Do you think [BLANK] knows?
When [BLANK] looks at me when we [BLANK] do you think he wants to [BLANK] me?
To be honest I feel like deep down everyone wants to [BLANK] me one way or another.
Yeah, I know – I’m a real [BLANK]. You don’t need to tell me what I already know.
Bored with [BLANK] when I have it but yearning for [BLANK] when I don’t have it. I’m a classic [BLANK]!
Do you follow [BLANK]?
Oh, no I don’t use [BLANK].
Oh…[BLANK]!
I think I’m gonna [BLANK] before I [BLANK].
Enemy
This unseen enemy is wearing me down,
Eating away at the corners of my colourful dreams little by little like silverfish at paper.
At first I didn’t even notice and I felt like it was no match for me. I danced around it confidently thinking I was to win but here’s the thing, the whole time it laughed at me and I simply could not see.
Now my dreams are fast fading and my world is looking grey. I’m cold and alone while others dance and play.
I’m shut in and it feels like so many things have been taken away.
One Way Street
I’m running down this one way street towards you with everything in my arms.
I’m running toward you like some desperate fool even though I know it’s not going to be good for me.
In front of me I see your heart so full and fresh but when I look behind me and I see mine a little wilted and depressed.
The sweat is running down my face and I’m started to pant real hard. My chest is tingling but I cannot stop and rest.
I can see you smiling in the distance, not too far now I tell myself.
Then I drop to my knees, I can’t anymore. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t give you everything I wanted to give you. My head hangs in shame. The world is dark and I’m alone.
For a time there is silence, isolation and nothing but my shame.
I feel a hand pat my head from above and I look up to see you. You’re laughing at me. Tears are streaming down my eyes, I’m confused and I don’t know what to say.
You laugh even more and so much so that your eyes disappear before you say ‘Hey, you’ve been running down this one way street all along but you’ve gotta let me meet you half way.’
Split
It’s been nagging me for years since I came back. That feeling I left something of myself behind.
Because when I go back I feel so alive and I feel myself. Why is that? I could never figure it out.
But today during my session with the psychologist, it came out that perhaps I left a part of myself there, the part of myself I actually like.
So when I’m back there I’m whole again, when I leave I’m not.
If I’m not whole and the part of myself that I like and truly want to be is not here then what is it that came back?
Could it be that my shadow came back and forgot it was a shadow and just took my place? Meanwhile my true self is over there infinitely walking home from the station on a still autumn night in awe of everything around him not realising what has happened.
How do I make myself whole again?
Twilight
She asked me which point I felt like I was at in my life. I sat there for a moment and thought about everything. I was only going to get as much out of these sessions depending on how honest I was with myself.
I opened my mouth and started speaking,
I’m stuck between two places. On the one hand I acknowledge that I’m fortunate and incredibly lucky to be where I am right now. I’m both comforted and pacified by my current place in life.
So, while there is something stirring within me telling me that I’m destined for so much more, the comforts I have and my own insecurities keep me right where I am.
She’s nodding as she types something on her laptop. Rapid tapping is all there is to bridge the silence.
I continue,
Let’s put it this way, I feel like I’ve taken an afternoon nap, it’s been an amazing nap but I’m starting to wake up. In my state of twilight a part of me wants to go back to sleep because sleep seems ideal. Truth be told I have no recollection of how sleep actually feels but I tell myself that feel good because I instantly seek to return to that state as begin to wake up from it.
But then, there is another part of me, it’s this voice telling me to wake up because if I continue to sleep then what happens later on when I eventually do wake up. Sleeping way beyond what I should have.
This is the tension I feel now, the decision to be made.
Do I go back to sleep or do I wake up?
A brief pause, then the sound of typing. She looks directly at me now and opens her mouth to speak.
Genesis
Genesis by Grimes comes on and I close my eyes to find myself back in my apartment in Hanegi one evening during the week nearly five years ago. I’ve finished work and I’m sitting there on my beige coloured ikea sofa with the red throw on it.
I can see a seven eleven dinner plastic tray with a trace of food I just ate from it lying open on the coffee table in front of me. Disposable wooden chopsticks are sitting on top and a thin rubber band is a short distance away.
My heart, I never feel
I never see
I never know.
I’m restless, I always have been.
My eyes close as I get to my feet and throw my body into some kind of mad dance. I’m doing this in my shoebox space.
Oh, heart
And then it falls
And then I fall
And then I know
I wish this song would never end. It always does and I know it but fuck, I wish it would go on forever.
My
My
My
Ever see, ever be, ever know my heart
Ever see, ever be, ever know my heart
I think I’ll be restless forever. A tear rolls down my cheek and slides into the space between my lips.
My dance becomes more erratic, violent jerks throw me into the walls and tripping over my coffee table.
Home and I know
Playing the deck above
It’s always different
I am the one in love
I bring myself to my feet and I keep going, unable to stop myself. I feel the blood dripping down my left shin and the sting of the scrape.
Ever see, ever be, ever know my heart
Ever see, ever be, ever know my heart
I run down the hallway now and throw the door to my apartment open. Through the entrance and out of my building into a humid autumn night with cicadas screaming to genesis, hidden from view.
I’m screaming in the darkness and no one can see or hear me.
It’s always different
I am the one in love
I disappear.
Villain
No matter how good you think you are, you will always be the villain in someone else’s story.
Haunted City
I live in a beautiful city.
Some even say it’s one of the most beautiful in the world but I think that depends on who is looking and where they are looking from.
There was a time when I would fly, wide-eyed around my city filled with buildings both old and new, streets lined with plane trees and cute little laneways, each turn filled with me wonder and excitement.
But recently something has changed. When I walk the streets, I’m alone and I can’t help but notice them.
They are scattered amongst the new people that pass me by.
The ghosts stare at me with their hollow eyes and shapeless mouths.
I try my best to ignore them but there seem to be more and more.
I enter an arcade that I would spend countless afternoons in all those years ago. One of the cafes in the arcade has this upstairs area where I would sit by the arched window watching the crowds filter trickle through for whole afternoons.
It was a sacred place.
But now, as part of the trickling crowd I look up to the arched window and see a ghost sitting at my table, mouth gaping open and staring at me.
I decide to walk another way.
Food tastes bland and powdery, the buildings look weathered. The world around me is becoming a tired amusement park, the rides haven’t changed and things are starting to break down.
I’m not making new memories like I used to.
No – surely not.
I look through my phone to convince myself otherwise but most of my photos are of food, buildings or myself. The smiles that occupy my older photos before this all started are filled with warmth and feeling. Something has changed, I have changed.
What have I done?
Where did I go wrong?
Whatever I did, wherever I went wrong, there are only ghosts following me around and standing in my way.
This is no longer the city I grew up in, the city that shaped me into who I am.
And when I look under the thin veil it is very much apparent that at some point I stopped living.
How long have I just barely been existing?
I see you
We’d just had sex, relishing in the warmth of post orgasm cuddle play when he looked me in the eyes, “You know I really like you.”
My chest swelled with euphoria and fear and I smiled, “Me too!” But just as my reply reached his ears the sparkle disappeared from his eyes, his lips curled down ever so subtly – the post coitus warmth had dried up and my bed felt like winter.
“It’s okay, I know you don’t.” He said, the eye contact was broken now.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He was looking out the window, his thoughts were now as far as the mountain ranges in the distance. He started speaking, “You don’t want a relationship. You don’t want a boyfriend. You’re so lonely but you only want guys that are temporary but then when they are willing to stay in your life you back away because you’re so scared of getting close to someone.”
All I could do was nod. I didn’t know what to say but I couldn’t disagree.
He continued, “I feel sorry for you, I don’t know what happened to you but I’m really sorry that it happened. In all the time I’ve spent with you, I still have no idea who you are.”
Just like that it was gone, my jig was up. An act even I wasn’t actively conscious of up until that point.
Again, I just nodded and looked down at the messy linen sheets, really deep into the thread work and imperfections – speckles here and there, lumps and bumps.
Slowly I took my gaze up to my reflection in the mirror where I only saw myself. He was all but gone.
Rather than looking at my reflection, I was looking through myself in the reflection. My eyes glazed as I floated out from my body to imagine me viewing myself alone in the room watching myself look through my own reflection.
I felt so empty.
Urban Solitude 