I cannot write.

I can write. I can begin only to

stumble, crumble before completion.

A sketched outline of a world remains monochrome,

ink drying before I can saturate it with colour.

Characters damned as eternal silhouettes,

corpses hollowed out by my failure to breathe life into them.

And so. I cannot write. I am a butcher without the bloodthirst.

A baker short on yeast. A wickless candlestick maker.

Taunted by mountains of incomplete stories,

Head bludgeoned from banging against the block.

Trying to extract from the chaos of my mind a finished thought.

Willing it to conjure clarity with the same ease as it does excuses.

For then, I’d be flying. Instead. I march.

On and on, eyes raw from seeking meaning.

Pools of sweat or blood or both, between my toes.

Willing every footpath fissure to spurt inspiration.

The breeze drags by a crumbled Solero Strawberry Twist wrapper,

looking decidedly dejected,

And I clamber for a metaphor.

This sorry sight, a representation of the human condition?

Of our disharmony with nature? Of our ability to transform

something sweet into landfill through

our insatiable appetite for consumption? Before it can solidify,

this spark, like the wrapper, is wafted away.

And I march for days and hours through snippets

of stories, flashes of scenes, past unvoiced dialogue,

hushed tones never reaching ravenous ears.

Perhaps I’ve wrung my life dry. Sucked from it all

the tales I can tell. Vocabulary exhausted. Nowhere left to go

but right to the edge of the human experience. The precipice

of insanity. Towards pleasure, distressing in its

toe-curling potency. Agony so spine-chilling

it erupts into euphoria.

And even still, I awaken again in a pile of tatters,

coated in the sticky filling of half-baked pies.

Remain enclosed within the unbudging walls, bricks of

doubts cemented by panic. And so,

I relent.

Let the white flag billow as I lay

my pen to rest. Ink-stained hands tossing on it

fistfuls of brittle soil, ensconced with tales

that will remain eternally untold. Unheard. Unfinished.

Set them up in flames and grieve them with a cigarette.

Tar sizzles my lungs, offering fleeting relief

as it tingles the void behind my eyes. Smoke rises

from the smouldering tip, spreading and gathering

like a dance, as it scatters slowly into feathery particles.

Every exhale, a unique pattern that is carried away,

unconstrained by expectation. Formless, dancing mist.

Stirring in me is the impulse to cling to it. Reshape it into something tangible.

I do not.

Just watch instead.

Absorb how it seems to move with the rhythm of the city.

A symphony created by the orchestra of the mundane.

Billowing of the breeze in my ear. Dull murmur

as the underground shudders beneath.

Ambience of a building site,

clanking, drilling, a constant grating backdrop.

Hubbub of voices, foreign words spoken,

storytelling in languages unfamiliar.

A musicality to it all. Rising and falling in euphony, sounds swell

into a climax, then retreat just as quickly into a pause.

A flurry of action, A breath of calm.

Frantic fluttering of pigeon wings as they take panicked flight.

Eruption of shattered glass from a nearby restaurant

followed by the whooping of a raucous crowd,

precede the sad scratching of broom bristles and swallowed apologies.

Fuzzing of beer. Clinking of ice. Tapping of fingers upon a bench.

Occasional explosion of high-spirited laughter that slices

through the humdrum.

I am an observer of this dance of existence. The trees that groove,

swaying like an entranced crowd at a festival. Animals darting, sniffing, scurrying

amongst the blur of bodies. Walking, running, stretching,

standing, waving, flinching in fright, doubling over with laughter.

The people, all actors. Lost in the performance of the characters

they created. Whole lives expressed through posture.

Hunched shoulders, he limps by, looking like he might at any minute,

collapse under the weight of the world. Her strut,

the street her runway. Devouring every step.

Some desperate to be seen, others to be swallowed up. The ones that learned

the rules of fashion, and those who learned to break them.

A narrative in their being. Moved by objectives, evident

in actions. The father trekking purposefully,

miles ahead of his dawdling family.

Already worn by their company. The half-hearted

admiration of a tourist attraction. Barely concealed

underwhelm as visitors rattle through the obligatory box-ticking

of praise, like it will unlock access to their preferred activity.

The husband, two feet from the group. Arms folded,

lips pressed thin, tight nods, as his social battery dwindles

in the face of his wife’s endless goodbyes.

The forced cheer lifting the cheeks of the tour guide,

as he pantomimes the same lines, same quips, same gestures for

the dampened amusement of his sweaty audience.

All encompassing.

The world is a canvas. An immersive blending of visual media.

Of paintings, movies, still images. Doodles sketched into skin.

Loaves lined up in display, so fresh the crust crackles with a glance.

Ice cream dripping down fingers, thick swirling tears of dairy.

The architecture, jutting corners, towering monuments, ancient bricks

juxtaposed beside futuristic symbols of modernity.

VR headsets in the Apple store. Billboard displaying cryptic AI advertisement.

Across from me, two benches, side by side.

On the left, a row of men. Sit sullen. Lips pulled down,

eyes glossed over, deep in boredom. Or rumination.

On the right, a row of women. Discussion flowing,

all perched on the edge of their seat, poised to pick up

the thread once it’s dropped.

All art.

And above, the immeasurable mural, always in flux.

Expertly manipulating light and shadow, clouds like ink in water,

contorting beyond themselves. Tufts gather into slow-moving

slabs of grey, then spill into spindly strands like chewing gum

stretched through the sky. And beyond, and beyond.

Limitless, unimaginable expansion. Constellations creating universes

of psychedelic speldor. Incomprehensibly, unflinchingly creating.

And I sit here. Swept up by the simplicity of it.

And maybe there does not need to be a story created from everything.

The narrative need not be sought in subtleties,

exists already in the being. Plot feels unmalleable

not due to the absence of story, but due to the abundance of it.

Because existence is the story. All story.

All encompassing. All art. All real.

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It was electronic music, techno, house or something. One of those songs where they use a philosopher’s speech to build to a drop. Equal parts enlightening and infectious.

Very groovy.

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the song. I’m sure it will cross my path again someday. When I really need to hear it. Sending through me a jolt of relief in the shape of sonic euphoria when it does. As soon as that happens, I will be back here to update. For now, it remains buried in a sea of Liked Songs.

It was a quote by Alan Watts, I’m pretty sure. Possibly Eckhard Tolle. I really can’t remember. Anyway, whoever’s musings it was, in whatever song it was, has stuck with me since.

Ironically.

Saying something along the lines of…

“No moment will ever be the same as this one”

That this exact moment will only exist right now.

It will never be the same as the last one, or any that ever came before it, or any that will ever come after.

My feet started tingling.

The way they do when you get a glimpse under the veil. A fleeting moment of understanding what it means to be alive. Those moments that first crush you in their intensity, a tsunami of enlightenment, before retreat rapidly, water dripping through outspread fingers. Transient. Impossible to hold on to. Clarity, evanescent.

I felt a sudden connection to something greater than the material world.

Cast my eyes around the tedious humdrum of airport travel.

Something so banal. Arduous, even.

Seats occupied by people. Screens displayed flight lists.

Boarding. Delayed. Final Call. Delayed.

Tinny music from headphones. Dings and muffled announcements. An eclectic mix of accents and languages. The airport soundtrack.

A water bottle refill station that trickled out droplets. Passengers arriving at their gates. Eyes scouring for a seat. It was very crowded. People used seats for bags. Ignored the glares. Crowds around the charging sockets. One socket, broken. People tried their luck with it. The uniform look of disappointment, shoulders shrugging downwards as they retreated, back on the hunt.

Couples rested their heads on each other’s shoulders, eyes glued, with faint smiles of amusement, at a shared screen.

Anxious pacing. A woman checked the time with an ever-intensifying sigh. Hoping that might make things move quicker.

Kids ran around. Screaming. Fighting. Foot stomping at their little brother. Unequal screen time. So unfair. Weary parents with blank stares repeated the same lines. Robotic annoyance.

Flight attendants, as if on a catwalk, wheeled suitcases through the terminal. A big air of importance to them. Heels clacking on glossy porcelain tiles. Gossiping heads cocked together. Avoiding eye contact with passengers. Lost in their own inner worlds.

Queue for the bathroom. The ladies’ bathroom. Naturally. Impatient cleaning operative manoeuvring through the obstacle course of people and suitcases. Blue roll and spray bottle in hand.

Shoes on people’s feet. Variety of sizes and styles. A miniature form of self-expression. Hands gripped passports, whitened thumbs from the tightness of their clutch. Slightly sunburnt faces. Reddened noses. Checking tickets. Unmoving lines grew longer. Craned necks. Yawning, eating, sipping coffee, chatting, snoozing.

It all felt suddenly spectacular. So important. The humanness on display. I almost burst out laughing at the beauty of it.

The fickle randomness of existence.

For a moment (before I too joined the unmoving queue, just in case), I felt deep allyship with every stranger sharing this terminal building with me. All entered into each other’s lives as background characters. Totally inconsequential. Connected simply by time and space.

It would never happen like that again.

I wanted to shout it out. Tell them all how grateful I was to be sharing this moment with them. I didn’t. Obviously. But the temptation did arise within me.

This is all a long-winded, rambling way of saying that maybe it is the impermanence of everything that makes life special.

That everything will pass. The good. The great. The horrible, as well.

Something that changed your chemistry. Broke your heart. Shifted your existence. Now, so irrelevant.

An idea you were attached to. An imagined life. A person you’d built up in your head. Limerence. Got something you needed from them. Something you craved. In your soul. For the briefest time. The most intense time.

Fizzled.

An explosion of fireworks petered out into an ashen pile of unfulfilled potential, unwatered seeds of promise.

Identities we crafted with values so important. Meaningful. Even to ourselves, those past versions are strangers now.

The places we once considered home. Distant. Obsolete street names, buildings blurred, faded from memory. Once significant. Once everything.

People, the top row of your call list. Friends, once certain in your future. Strangers. Hard to recall even the colour of their eyes.

Jokes shared, once responsible for fits of gasping laughter, now resurfacing only at random. Awakened, brought to the forefront of the mind. Pay it no attention beyond the briefest moment to consider what once was. How much has changed.

Essentially, everything we are, do, and say is made to fade.

Sad. But also, not.

Comforting.

To think that, in its uniqueness, every single moment is precious.

Unmasked from its drabness by that fact alone. That it too will pass.

The impermanence of it all.

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