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Waiting Standing Thinking

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IMG_1041

Waiting standing thinking — will the weather change ? That horizon, like a stone bench holds a heavy heaven cloud, but just here the courtyard light streams through the skylight and all seems bright. Bright for now.  But what of yesterday too when ringing around with sound of hammer on steel I wandered slowly gazing. A bass clarinet breathing sounds through the parapet. A low sounding solo of calm resigned loneliness talking to the dying day. A furrow grazed his brow as I stood there looking at the far sky.But here I stand today all quiet and mourning the day like it had died already and just waiting,, waiting for the standing thinking time to finish.

“Do you think I would really leave ?  After getting to know you a bit ?” he said, not turning his head, but staring into the distance.

“I’m standing here thinking you’d already gone.  But I suppose things didn’t work out.  With the project..  So I thought.. I thought you would be.. leaving for the next place.”  she said.

“I would leave and I know that having left, I’d probably forget the place quickly.  Depending on what came next you know. But then I’ve got used to this courtyard, that crazy musician inside and you too. Standing there so thoughtful.  It’d be hard to leave again.” he said

“But that rock has to be split, you know – it cannot stay this way.  It was like a river rock to wrestle with, and now it’ll be split into two forever.  The pieces wont join back again.” she said.

“But there’ll be a left hand and right  hand part.  They could fit together and the memory of their fit might last.  Don’t you think ?”

“No, once split, those rocks will go their own way, the edges rounding off on other paths, and then they would not fit together again, even if by some faint chance they met again.” she said.

I would’ve said – “the day will die”

but for the hammer on the rock I cry,

and waiting standing thinking there

I saw him leaving

without a care

Turn of the Jangala

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Teriiska Maharaja

There would have been a mean turn eventually, once the creaking started. The fog drew it out grey actually, stuck fast in the wood from the old ship of dreams listing among the tangle jangle of it all.  Years it took of story telling bringing the ship around to this side. We got the latitude right I remember, but the clock must’ve been out since we ended up on the wrong island.  No welcome committee, no dancing girls, no laughing playing among the cock fires and shells. A few hundred miles out in thousands, but the end of our dream when the ship couldn’t hold out any longer.  Here among the jangling, the impenetrable scream of the jangling.  Where water and fog sapped the normal bright colors of the birds into a brown grey light.

By day it was that disturbing light, but by night under the stars, the jangling started longer and stronger. The sounds echoing across the dimly lit bay, with the poor broken sails flapping in a mild breeze.  Not quite but an oppressive strangling of the night across the bay.

And there we were stranded by the turn of the jangle.

Photo Maharajah.. Tersiiska:Flickr .. used with permission.

TL2 – Day 1 – The Bridge

On By cjx07sterIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Somehow a journey always starts with a bridge to somewhere. I’ve brushed off the sand and shelved the flip-flops, but packed the waterproof snow boots. Got up early in fact to see if I could get a start on those final emails, before setting of  on the next great cyber-terrestrial journey.  It’ll be around the world and probably take a whole month before getting back home.  Not sure if I would have gained or lost a day on the way north-east and around the outback of the globe to Sydney.  Its all a bridge to somewhere.  People talk about the journey, but I tend to think as before and after the journey – joined by two bridges – one at the beginning – leaving home – and one at the end – arriving and thinking about normal life once more.

Anyway bridge number one being the Sydney Harbour bridge – a well known landmark is always a great physical expression of that journey from the bush down to the airport.  I try to catch a cab or a train over it – probably to say goodbye somehow in my head to all the local domestic things and hello  to the next phase of the journey.  Today however, with the morning light fading to Autumn in a few days time, the radio chimes out about a multi-car pileup on the bridge with delays and cell phone calls hanging in clouds of frustration among the thousands of cars stuck fast on it’s superstructure.

So – backup bridge plan in Sydney is to catch a country train over a smaller bridge, way up river from the harbour and which offers a convenient bypass to all the snarl-ups on the great coat-hanger. Not the bridge I imagined, but a practical one.

Its around a 50 minute train[s] to the International airport, covering most of Sydney from the North to the inner South where the airport is located.  Jutting out into Botany Bay are the two main North South runway’s we’ll be taking off from.  Rain set in just crossing the bridge and now it’s damp, cloudy and otherwise – not pleasant outside.  This seems to be what is left of the tropical cyclones which just devastated Yeppoon and Rockhampton earlier in the week.  A category 5 storm, which by the time it hit’s Sydney is really just rain and cloud swirling down from the north east coast.

Even the barman is not standing around at the Bondi Bar at the International airport terminal.  That’s how deserted it can be on a mid week afternoon.  The flight will leave mid afternoon and arrive in the morning sometime pacific time.