Subway Windows
When I was a kid I thought that looking into the subway windows would let me see into the future. If I focussed on the flashing lights and lines as we passed, emersed myself in the clacking of the tracks, squeaking of doors, hum of light conversation, maybe I would be able to glimpse a jump in time.
Spoiler alert, I didn’t see the future.
But the windows never lost their appeal. The rhythm of the individual cars and the way they plunge into tunnels with nothing but streaking white lights on either side puts me into a haze. The faint reflection of passengers in the window mixed with the tunnel that abruptly disappears when we go outside makes it more hypnotizing. Regardless of my age, the windows will always have a certain magic.
Ambedo
Water cascading down the window
Leaving small rivets behind.
The way the sun glints on the dew.
The grass smells like summer, freshly cut.
Thunder screams in the distance, writhing under its everlasting chains.
Lightning teases it, dancing freely just out of its reach.
The bright blue birds dash left and right, singing in panic.
Darkness bends unto the weight of it all, groaning as it breaks loose.
The rain picks up, turning into a waterfall on my window.
Comfort surrounds me as I pull the blanket tighter around my shaking shoulders.
Thunder sounds its war call.
The end is drawing near.
Magnify
The raisin, like a whole landscape of ridges and valleys,
The smell like an orchard on the edge of your nose.
Powered water, pinprick hot, ricochets off your body; showered water.
Echo. Echo. Echo. Each step bouncing off the hall’s walls
As you stride through the atrium.
Thud-dump-thud-dump-thud-dump, hear your heart pumping faster
As your breath whooshes through your lungs like a metro train not stopping.
See the web, in the corner, hanging droplets clinging on
Like a chandelier of water suspended on a silken thread.
Deep inside, the answers have been waiting there for you,
Yet you ignored them; immersed outside yourself.
Look within; the answers lie within.
Whales were out of waving distance
Eva stepped out of her garden gate onto the beach with sand like cement. Blades of grass stuck up like zoomed-in hair follicles. Whales were out of waving distance.
The sky was peat and the problem she'd left on her desk, easily solved if she'd been halfway competent, braced her mouth into a smile.
This was a terrible place. You just walked and walked without anything changing, except that when you looked back, the gate was behind rocky walls and the idea of turning back was as exasperating as keeping going.
Why didn't she have a dog? She should have had a dog. She had on the wrong shoes.
She broke into the bank of seaweed that was choking the water back. Her foot crunched over a crust of tiny white seashells hidden in the stems, their perfect shapes coated in grains of grey sand. She reached down to touch them, straining for the relief of beauty, and got cold grit under old leaves.
Colours in my Music
My hands were cold, but now inside my pockets, they become warmer. Though my face is still numb. The late evening sky makes it easy to focus on the things I feel. Like the heavier colours, blue, green, and red, skirting around my feet. They jump up with my steps and weave between my legs. The lighter colours like yellow, and pink float off of me and my dog in mists that trail behind us. Air pulses to the beat of my music and I feel excited happiness alive in my chest. These are the colours of my emotions that accompany my music, and as my happiness swells so do the colours to wash my town and make it feel like home.
My life
My life is described as ambedo
I live in a trance that blinds me to the horrors of reality
I close my eyes for a moment and just let my worries slip away
As I see the things around me differently:
The one dimmer star in the sky full of brighter ones
The flickering lights on the horizon out my bedroom window
I live in an ambedo state that I never wake up from
The world around me will forever spin but I notice the dying flower in the field of newly bloomed ones
This feeling is a rare one for others, but is my whole life
So when you get this feeling, cherish it
And don't forget to look at the universe in a new light
Clouds
Sitting on a hill covered in a fine morning dew, my neck cranes towards the sky.
Clouds overhead, they twist and turn. Some sprout faces while others merge into new creatures. A dog. Then, an elephant.
They are perpetually amorphous.
They make me ponder. Maybe we can learn from these clouds.
Sometimes I think too much.
