I love to observe the clamour of the streets but now there is nothing to watch. Each new day sees something from the tapestry of life removed, which makes the movement gradual yet deeply unsettling. At the weekend it was the throb of the roads, two days ago the buzz from the interminable chatter of the metro, yesterday the general bustle of the roadside eateries, and today, no entry to the everyday stores.
my mind drifts deeper to a past...
Each day, there is a per cent or two knocked off the generic hum, the one that’s evolved over the peaceful years, to become so present as to be inconsequential but necessary. I miss it now it no longer fills up the background. But that lack matches the universal mood that meets this fledgling reality. My mind drifts deeper to a past that presents itself as a fuzzy image, not wholly distorted, but drawn in such pale colours as to be easily dismissed, terrifyingly so. I recoil at how I basked in those simple freedoms, where fresh adventures materialised at every turn, but where I had the temerity to refuse some! Across the range of the wonderment, I rarely changed, as I’d begun to demand and actually live through soul-moving episodes before I ever became slightly bored. And though I had housed them in a space already golden, left to settle for decades as a reference point for confirmation of more-spirited days, now they glisten even more profoundly, sadly actually, those undeniable snippets of months we ought to have taken more care with.
yesterday the bustle of the roadside eateries
Most times, these moments were abused or not savoured enough, and maybe we simply didn’t have the time to do any of that, and we thought we’d have more time, always always just out of reach. And anyway there was never a realistic threat to our endless equilibrium. I wish now, desperately, in tune with the communal regret, for a second shot at those hazy realities; a pathetic longing and a waste of thoughts, but my mind is nonetheless consumed by them.
© Copyright 2021 John Maher