Pumpkin men

I am thinking of Lamorna. The picture is dim. I don't have a very good visual memory and yet I don't like to use photos as a reminder. I prefer the hazy unreality of what a place might be like.

I am thinking of walking down to the beach with S. We are walking hand in hand, friends not lovers, compatriots of the heart who can feel together without feeling becoming corrupted by a touch. I do not know what S looks like but it doesn't matter. I am not thinking of a person beside me but of the feel of a hand in mine.

We are lying on the sand. The first stars are shining out of the velvet black sky. The only sound is the surf and our breathing. I am saying, You're not real. I made you entirely out of a few words, and yet, now I have you, I don't want you to let go of my hand. She is saying, You know this is one of those posts you should keep to yourself and not publish.

I am saying, Yes but if I knew when to talk and when to shut up, I would be a different being, perhaps the one that walks with you when you visit the beach with him.

***

In the night the hoons' brakes howl as they cut through the dark nights. The roads are near to empty; they only pose a danger to themselves.

I am looking at the boys and girls on top of Mount Gravatt. I am thinking, their lives are not going to bring them much, periods when they are part of the ten per cent, lowpaid jobs, a vague sense that the promises made by ads and Channel 9's vacuous programming are not being kept.

The question is not why are they risking their worthless lives in high-speed chases, which give them only a momentary thrill, but why aren't I?

***

I never think for one instant that S might like to feel my hand too. I imagine she is tolerating me, allowing me to be there.

Have I always felt like that? Was there ever a time when I believed someone who told me I was valuable?

***

There is a man who throws pumpkins at cars. He is operating in Mt Gravatt and surrounding suburbs. He only throws them late at night at the weekend.

I am a little jealous of the pumpkin man.

But what impels him? Does he hate his fellows so much that all he can think to do is damage their cars (a well-hurled pumpkin can cause severe damage to a car, you know)? Does he do it just to touch them, to affect them?

I imagine a lonely man. A man with plenty of friends but without the ability to articulate to them how he feels. I am almost the opposite. I am jealous of the pumpkin man.

The paradox is that he would be jealous, too, were he to read about me in the Southern Star.

posted by Dr Zen @ 7:41 pm