'One cannot speak anymore of being, one must speak only of mess.' - Samuel Beckett

Saturday, August 06, 2005

The sun always rises

When I was a lad, when I was small enough to fit like a puppy on the palm of an idealised patriarchs hand; a mythical figure with whom I might kick a ball around even though football was far from interesting, I found my inner Monkey. He would keep me company, swinging with me on a rope ladder whilst we watched the sun turn the old sky orange as I would intermittently plead with my mother for a few more minutes before bed.

Still he is with me betraying my need for order and peace. For him the sun will always rise but for me, when it falls I will have had my day. I struggle with the sheets at night and stare at a starless ceiling, a tabula rasa. I forget as an adult how I once saw stars and wild animals up there in the plaster, but then I'm reminded by a small enclave of wonderous faces in an unsheeted quilt that nothing has been lost. I know that I still swing from that old ladder and that I don't want to come down. I want to stay up there watching the sun go down forever.