1
Of
course, it is one of those things that is always around us, carrying with it
among the most prominent fuels of our being. Yet, you barely notice the air
when stationary. The train it is different. The train moves at such a velocity
that suddenly - everything is subject to change. I look outside through the
cracks in the timber and watch the world as it filters in and out of existence.
Trees, mountains, tracks, vast divides altogether real enough to touch, are
suddenly morphing into hazed mirages. I no longer have any way of knowing if
they were, are or ever will be, entirely real. Such a burden is the knowledge.
How my hair becomes sticky with existential dread.
I first boarded the train some
two or three hours ago. Since then I have remained nestled between the mail
bags. May you be concerned as to how I have not moved. It is true my limbs have
begun cramping in this stiffened position. Oh how my poor leg aches. But the
bags have provided cushion enough that movement need not yet be marked a sin.
The harsh ignition of the train does much to blur the knowledge of my presence,
and any knowledge missed is cushioned and saved by the paper stuffed linen. You
need to let your presence settle. Human beings are fools yes, but they are not
as foolish as one might think. They can sense when something is different, and
they turn sinister and vindictive in its face. When something does not belong, it
is with this knowledge they destroy it. So, you cannot come in; all guns
blazing and expect to make it out unscathed. I guarantee the money, even when
safe and secured in your hands will still give you paper cuts. There is a real
patience to this. An art. They need suspect nothing. They need only be left to
wonder if you ever were, are or will be entirely real.
A few more hours pass by and the
driver and attendants have surely become lulled enough by the steady static
momentum of the train. I begin rummaging through the bags to find the mail
checks amongst the torrents of letters. How desolate and desperate people are
to remain entangled with each other. How vast the distances they deem appropriate
for words to cross. Words on paper and paper in my hands. I empty one of the mail
bags onto the floor and beginning filling it with my now collection of mail
checks and securities.
I move to the carriage door and
fling it open. The entire carriage now alights. I can hear the burning from
behind me. The mail bags full of letters, and the collections now splayed
across the floor are being enlivened by the thrust of the wind. I can see them,
as they itch towards their escape. Their bodies crawling from the lips of the
bags, flickering their way to the exit. I watch as they fling themselves into
the wind and are swept up and carried away into the wilderness. Again someone
somewhere deemed their journey significant enough to take. Standing in lines,
licking stamps and crafting words, and so to repay them, they fling themselves
out through the open carriage door. Falling graciously to the wind I wrap my
fingers around a sturdy piece of motion hot timber, nearing the ledge.
The train vibrating beneath my palms. It
would appear we both find ourselves electrified under the bonds of pressure. Pushing
my chest up against it I hear the sound of my own heartbeat as each turn of the
wheels ripples through my body. Painfully apparent becomes the difference in
our breathing. Mine, struggling against the distinct shifts as the mechanics
and motivations of the train alter and waver. The wind as it is, is ice cold
and ferocious on my skin. In invisible lashes it attacks my cheeks. It brings
with it an acute kind of burning. The sensation draws the blood vessels to the
surface and electrifies the humble human landscape. I pull the body still
closer to me. The grip tightens and so ignites a definitive, visceral,
cognitive shift. Slipping away from my breath goes its heightened human rhythm.
Morphing with the mechanics. My bodily cogs are replaced by the train wheels as
they turn.
I open my eyes. The tear ducts
left open to assault from the air. So too are they hypnotised where they water,
so the droplets are swept up and carried out through the door. I pull my eyes
to shelter behind the wood. My face pressed against the body. I extend my hand
out into the opening. The shifting, suctioning aperture of space. There I try
to hold my hand beneath the near brute force that leaves my fingers jostling
and livid in the air. The wind might very well freeze them at the sockets and
rip them off in chunks. In that moment I would be left with little more than
cavernous stubs serving as an enduring emblem of my own senselessness. Yet, I
cannot find the instinct to pull the hand back inside. My eyes will not turn
away as they uncontrollably waver against the rush.
It is only with a jolt of the
train lines that my concentration is broken. I am jostled forward, needing pull
myself back inside the carriage. I look down to my fingers, they have started
going blue against the wind. I tuck them under my shirt and lay my body on the
floor. I feel the shift begin again as my body dislodges and sinks into the
hardwood. I can feel with much greater accuracy now when the train begins changing
its mind. My arms firmly rap around the linen bag of adrenaline and checks. My
heartbeat slowing as I wait patiently for my moment to come, when I too will be
suddenly moved to fling myself through the door.
2
The
cool eastern breeze that moves over the bay operates unlike anything I have
ever known. How gentle is the calling that so arrests and overwhelms me. The
waves lap at the shore. Entangled in its fingers the wind carries the sound. Effortlessly
cradling its image so even over the concrete dips and throughs of this
metropolitan kingdom, they cannot be kept from me. I sit here in my lonesome
window. The world beyond and below still hums and buzzes in the same
consistency as the messenger who whispers day after day. The people move by, crawling
across my vision. I like to place my finger on the glass of the window and
press down over their tiny bodies and imagine them squishing beneath. I hold my
thumb until I can feel their pain through my finger. If I was to keep pushing,
the window would surely shatter. Breaking into shards and imbedding itself deep
within my skin. The bones in my finger would splinter and crack so they
protrude until the two worlds of glass and bone are left attacking each other. The
flesh caught and torn to shreds in the middle. I release the pressure, turning
my finger to me, expecting to see the subtle red droplets of the pierced human
flesh, yet all I catch is the gentle white as it begins fading back to red in
the blood rush. The people below continue in their daily bliss, unaware of my
feeble endeavours towards their destruction.
They go on in their steadfast
immediacy. Not swept up in the back and forth comparison between past and
present, self and self, shore and shore which have so governed my existence.
The obsession with the division and duality arises more and more violent till
the view from the hotel window is power enough to incite the roaring state of
delirium. I close my eyes in reprieve. Trying to blur our entanglement, only to
give rise to my other senses. The auditory now richer. The smells now more
capable then ever of driving waft and diffusing into the walls. In seeps the
fumes of car gas, the familiar breeze of coffee shops and bakeries. Even the
ever-enduring allure of garbage and waste marks the cornerstone presence of
humanity. Yet, all is made effortlessly subordinate to the salt as it
circulates in the air and cuts the human aromas in two. I can taste it on my
tongue. One pain dulls, so another can merely rise and take its place.
The fog horns blare and wale in
the distance. The waves crash against the bellows of the ships so that in the
resulting momentum they can fling themselves back and forth between the shores.
They drift with only slight variation. Each creeping to the sand with a
dampening immediacy, only daring touch the world for a moment before returning
to its familiar void. Again and again they wash up and appear in their likeness.
Unaltered, they seem, by each journey across the bay, yet not accounted for is
the consequence of the currents, who take with them, the fundamental vigour of
their existence. Through the water the waves are helpless but to mingle with each
other so that with each revolving journey they return to the shore, fundamentally
changed, no matter how visible to the naked eye.
When the pain of enclosure becomes
too great, sometimes I dare walk the streets. How easy it is to become lost in
this city. I look to the images through the windows, the people glowing in the
soft evening light of freedom. They go about their business, meticulously rearranging
sets on their tables, priming centrepiece flowers in vases and repositioning
the chairs. I see them as they come home. Losing the definition of their faces
and figures as they conceal themselves behind radiant glazed windows. I catch
their silhouette as they hang their coats by the door. Their bodies once having
been basking happily in the incubated heat, have now deemed it unnecessary in
their welcome home. I wonder if they know how effortless it is for strangers to
peer into their world. To understand the intricacies of their existence as it
jostles around the partition. The white walls having been stained yellow in all
the years they have spent seeped in happiness.
I stand here at the threshold, helpless
but to imagine how they likely operate as they do, as a direct result of the
resolute knowledge, that anyone who might pass the time gazing into their world
from the outside in, could scarcely know enough about it to pose any real or
genuine threat.
I try to keep at least my simple
visceral body planted to the ground. I cling to the poles and the drain grates,
the lamps and the benches, yet at any given moment my soul may leave my body
and seamlessly transverse the obstacles in its way. And so it does. I watch as
it drifts from me. It moves closer than I am capable to the window. It places
its hand on the glass, and studies with more accuracy than I am able, the
movements as they present themselves. I wait as it lingers there for a moment, trying,
long-suffering, to feel the warmth on its skin. Still it remains cold and damp
and blue. In one saddening, honest moment it pulls away. I hope it might come
back to me. I know instead it will fling itself into the air and glide over the
hills which divide us and the water’s edge. I make my knowing way down to the
shore. It is little beyond useless to try and keep the two from one another. I
watch as it dances again with the wind, cradling and enveloping each other over
the liquid silver as it waves. I take off my shoes to sink my free feet into
the cold sand. Shackled they are again to the memory of life beyond this
promised serenity.
3
“I
didn’t even know sound could travel like that.”
The
salt, having been carried by the wind from the water, scales the sandstone and
greywacke and crystallises in our hair. The residue burns in the wounds of our
mind.
“It
can’t, you’re just changing.”
“Changing?”
We
can’t see clearly though the opaque windows or the towering cream walls. It
makes us as good as blind in here. The mainland is more than a hundred yards away
yet I can still hear it, and smell it, and taste it as if it were next door. If
I could walk on water, I swear it would take me no more than ten minutes to get
to it. But I of course, cannot walk on water.
I enter from the courtyard. Again
the same series of steps shuffle all around and above me, the steel door opening
and shutting behind. The sound echoes through the block. I can hear the guards
as they pace back and forth along the railing. Each one is positioned on top of
the other, their footsteps meet each other in a steady measure. Any jarring
would be a distraction, any sound out of place, a concern, any voluntary
movement a threat. They need be constantly aware of us. Us, and each other. Meticulous
and painstaking. The keys turn in the locks. The bar door slides open and slams
shut. Every day, the same thing.
“It’s
like we’re morphing into some kind of wayward beasts, rattling around these
cages.”
Looking
up at the sky. The whole vision awash in steady pastel blue. Truly, paradoxically
clear.
“We
already were beasts.”
“Not
me, I had a life, I had a family.”
“And
you gave it all up? For this?”
“So
what’s this place meant to make of us then?”
“Whatever
it wants.”
The
thin cotton mattress isn’t near enough to break my fall. Still I fling myself
onto it. Any reprieve, no matter how fleeting, is still reprieve. The stings
dig into my back through the fabric. I stare up again at the ceiling. The
cracks are growing wider and wider each day. I thrust my fist against the wall
sending vibrations through the foundations so that flecks of plaster fall to my
face. I feel them rest on my skin. I peer out through the bars. All clear.
Standing on top of my bed I push against the ceiling. Along the opening are
indentation made markings of each day that the slit has grown. I place my hand
against the roof to steady myself. I use my fingernail to scrap an indent into the
plaster, marking its journey as it continues. This section appears particularly
persistent; it does not fall as easily to the pressure. I push my hand harder
against the roof, attempting to leverage enough force to make the incision. The
plaster refuses to give as I dig it deeper and deeper until my steadying hand
crashes through the roof’s surface.
“You
could get out of here couldn’t you?”
The
words burn.
“You
could.”
“It’s
not possible.”
“You
could.”
“It’s
not possible.”
“But
you’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”
The
concrete made lacerations on my skin as I moved through it. Once I had the
opening in the roof, I stuffed it with pillows pasted with toilet paper, but it
couldn’t last long. I started stealing files and picks from the wood shop. The
moment I had everything it couldn’t have been more than a day later. Because of
the way the sound carries from the outside in, and the way the city enlivens at
night, you’d be surprised how much you can get away with. It wasn’t until I hit
the water that I had any idea what I had done.
So came the night when the city
moved with a particular vivacity. Not near enough to rouse any sleep deprived
mind but sufficient enough to captivate any lingering insomnia or provide
excuse for a suspicious noise echoing through the cell block. I pushed the
pillow from the opening. Carefully I picked away at the surrounding brick and
plaster until the hole was big enough to hoist my body through. The concrete
made lacerations on my skin as I moved through it. I crawled along the
framework of the interior, careful not to send any limb hurtling through an
unsuspecting unit. The floors of the cell block could be bypassed through the
section of brick concealing a network of water and heat pipes. The channel led
all the way to the ground. I was on the second floor. I crawled until I reached
it. I manoeuvre my body through the network. Every now and again my skin is
singed having gripped or rested too long on the hot steel. Finally I find my
feet planted in the opening below. In the undergrowth I crawl through the dirt
and mud until I reach the now sole wall between myself and freedom.
“It’s
not possible.”
“Why
not?”
“You
don’t know what’s out there.”
How
ominous and sinister.
“Then
what’s out there?”
The water doesn’t move like the air. No, it doesn’t
cause your hands to flicker like the wind, allowing them to waver and return,
never entirely at risk of a battle lost, or being divided from its sockets. No.
Water gets into everything. It drew me down to the rock’s edge. There is a
reason why no one considers these straits possible to cross. The moon flickers
on the surface. I am made helpless and delirious in the simple fact that once
again I can see. There across the bay is the constellation of life. The lights
from windows and buildings, offices and homes as people breathe without the
weight of their own destruction. They move freely in the air beyond exile and
punishment and reminder of their own pertinent guilt. I feel the soft breeze on
my skin. I can still hear it as it calls to me. The waves move enchantingly and
enthrallingly in anticipation. There is nothing I can do to stop myself from
slipping into the water.
“Ask
me again, and I’ll smash you face into the concrete.”
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