Carry me away
Let me float
or don’t let me down gently

Thoughts
Watching them go by
Wondering how to rejoin

Just you

and I

and us

and them

lost together.

A butterfly or a moth
A mouse or a rat
Life in damp places
Life lived uphill

Clutter or calm
Grounded again
Body is lost
Start over

Walking a forever staircase
Happiness sits far away

Forwards to the other side?
A bit like my mind

Taunting the sun
Toying with its rays

Indifferent glow
Walls peel like skin

Colours alight
Doping up on energy

Lately
Everything is flat
No textures to touch
Tastes are bland
Breaths are disappointing
Colours or none
Instead of scratches and prickles
I want things to stab
And shatter

An illegible message carved into the sand: perhaps the name of a stranger; the symbols for peace; for love. The sand’s texture is thick, grainy, inconsistent. Not the kind associated with pure, white, clear-watered beaches. Its colour is a dark brown. The same shade in clothing might be called chocolate or coffee. But here it reminds of dirt, mud, filth, shit. Yet it’s teeming with life; with more beauty than could ever be found on a white holiday-friendly beach.

I watch an ibis go about its business. I remember a time when I thought they were ugly. I thought they were a pest sifting through bins. It was the religion with which I was brought up that lead me to believe a bird was inferior. That humans were the centre of the universe and animals were simply put here for us to make use of. But I now know that I am not above such a creature. As long as I had that mindset I was far inferior.

So I see ibis walking along concrete and digging through bins. I wonder if there used to be a tree in the bin’s place. Did the bird nest there? Feed there?

I wonder if while we were evolving into a more "civilised" being, maybe the ibis stayed much the same. It had no need for anything more. Surely the greatest influence in its evolutionary history is happening right now thanks to mankind…or not so kind. To reach our place at the top of the food chain I doubt much kindness was responsible.

Somewhere on the side of the road between the hot tar and the cracked desert.

Like the earth’s skin. With its pores, its hairs, its imperfections, but without perspiration.

As the dust begins to dissipate, the colour hides away and signs of same are revealed on the horizon. After a brief respite it was soon back to monotony.

I always get an urge to stop the car when I see roadkill. Sometimes to move the animal to save it from endless tyres. But often I don’t really know why.

Society today seems to shield us from being face to face with death, yet we’re exposed to so much more from a distance.

When I walk back from my car towards the animal, I don’t feel sad. Sometimes there is a fear that I’ll see something hard to look at, but generally I just curiously want to sit beside reality.

I don’t worry about small things. The superficiality of everyday modern living becomes insignificant. Something usually ignored seems more important. It holds more purpose than our petty concerns.

To society common, I’m seen as strange for prefering this to going home to watch CSI on television. But the more I think about it, the other way around just seems strange. I suppose the difference is that I am thinking, whereas the alternative is an exercise in preventing thought.

The pastel blues, purples and pinks are so fleeting. I want to live somewhere with a prolonged twilight. Somewhere the sky reflects infinite colours of subtle variation. And the fairytale is prolonged.

In order for life to continue, life must be consumed. At the top of the food chain, our closet of skeletons is the biggest of all. The progression of mankind is the result of a history of violence. Our intelligence is thanks to murder.

It’s hard for many to accept that a mosquito has no higher purpose. That the viruses it spreads do not exist for a reason which is somehow beneficial to us in the long run.

A female mosquito requires blood in order to breed and one of its favourite sources is humans. The method in which the mosquito extracts blood can allow the transfer of viruses.

It’s been 18 months since I was bitten and I can still barely walk most days. Yet each day I seem to become more frustrated with people (in all our wisdom) than I do with mosquitos.

I don’t have many vivid memories of my grandfather. I sometimes wonder if I had photographed him, would it feel different to look at the pictures? Would I feel more connected?

Even seeing myself in images as a child, I don’t feel a sense of familiarity. So it seems like a struggle to feel familiar with my ancestors in old photographs.

Prior to the invention of photography, was there a deeper sense of struggle for remembrance? Hearing stories, maybe even seeing and touching belongings or creations, must surely not have yielded such strong feelings of connectedness. Or perhaps the need to make significant use of one’s imagination might have resulted in a greater sense of fulfilment.

Perhaps the more clues to knowing a person, through the viewing of a photograph, the more questions that arise.

I used to imagine what it would be like being one of those kids at school who had shifted house six times, changed schools, swapped friends and started over. I never thought my family would move as they enjoyed the comfort of familiarity and stability.

When we moved to a new house I was 16 so it was not really like those kids I had observed. But looking back I notice changes in feeling. Houses became more modern. Everything became clean, bright and white. My new home felt more open and less like a cocoon of safety.

I see more of my childhood home in my mother’s childhood home. I never lived there but it still has that feeling which reminds me…well not of anything specifically. There’s just an overwhelming sense of feeling reminded.

The wallpaper is discoloured, becoming brown in parts. Even where some has broken away revealing a whiter wall, it still feels homely. The patterns on the wallpaper seem to be of endless variety. Tiling, lining, skirting… There appears almost endless details.

The waters rose a little higher than usual. Most of them went home eventually. Some stayed to wait for a new experience. But most of the everyday attendees kept away. The new visitors brought with them new objects, new feelings. The essence was still there. Better…worse. It’s just different. And that’s just fine.

I think I know her. In a city of two million, I wonder if that’s coincidental, or if those of a similar mould tend to seek out the same places for the same reasons.

I’m sure it saddens many how the more people there are the less they seem to communicate. It’s a nice feeling driving down a country road and an old man waves to you. Not because he thinks he might know you, but because there aren’t many people out that way and he is being friendly. Or maybe it’s loneliness. Or I sometimes wonder if it’s just easier to make the effort less frequently.

I walked around the city for a few hours and nobody spoke to me. But I never opened my mouth either. I often feel invisible, so I try to embrace it and become that fly on the wall, except hidden out in the open, amongst the masses.

I always thought I could never be one of those people who go to the cinema alone. The fact everyone else was with somebody would just upset me. Yet when I see others alone in there, I envy them and realise it’s not so bad.

I remember going to a concert on my own. It wasn’t easy for me. But there were lyrics the artist sung which had given me so much strength, so much wisdom…I had to go. Even if I didn’t know of anyone to take.

I stood with little wriggle space on the floor beneath the stage. Row upon row of disorder, I felt the hot, sweaty, smelly, hairy bodies of those around me.

We all shared in the wait for the show to begin. Most seemed to fill in the time with interaction…with talking…with yelling. I don’t like yelling. I’ve had an automatic reaction to it for as long as I can remember.

Music was playing during the interval, as if it were needed to fill a silence. No silence seemed possible with so many people. Each yelled – almost screamed – at one another…at a volume common to aggressive confrontations. I don’t like confrontation. Yet they were all friends. And the yelling was all part of friendly conversation.

At this moment of assessment, and of contemplation, something changed. Amongst the anxiety of the awful din, I discovered a silence. It was as if I’d reached a sort of enlightenment, like the Buddha in a rock garden.

I recall a lonely bushwalk along which I experienced an aural sensation of comparable intensity. A number of cicada bellowed a chorus from the trees. Not at once but incrementally at intervals seemless to the human ear. It was as if the defeaning noise triggered a safety switch in my head, shutting off my hearing ability altogether.

The same thing seemed to happen at the concert, except I’d simply switched focus. Listening became unnecessary. I had found peace in the chaos.

I stood a head above everyone, periscoped above the sea of sweat-coated bodies. As I looked around I couldn’t find anybody taller than my shoulder. Like an isolated obelisk my skin should have been itching with discomfort.

Yet I strangely felt the opposite. When swallowed up by such a crowd, the beating hearts of those around feel reassuring. Much like how the sound of rain is meditative, whereas a dripping tap is unnerving.

In the bustle of big city life, I often seek out others who seem to be escaping through invisibility. I usually just look at them and wonder what they are thinking, what we have in common. In a sense I’m looking for someone I can use as a mirror. I am not, however, only interested in exploring myself. The only person we know with some surety is ourself, and therefore, we must look to ourselves in order to understand others.

So I wonder again if I know her. In the sense that I wonder if I have met her, I am still uncertain. But in the true sense of knowing, I think I do…at least as well as I know myself.