Saturday 24 September 2011

My humiliation

 Ok pour me a drink and I’ll tell you about it.  Thank you. 

Well I was standing on the platform awaiting my train to arrive, when a dark overcast fell upon me sending a light trickle down the side of my brow.  I held on to my rucksack as if my dear life depended on it and made a dash to the shelter when I thought no one was looking.  But upon my entrance through that shattered green door, there dwelled a silence so thick it clouded my mind and like a curse, it transformed me into 'them'.  It felt most uncomfortable.

They were lined up facing opposite each other, on rows of cheap plastic chairs with their briefcases or rucksacks stuck in between their legs or resting on their lap, with nothing but a long black metal bar running underneath supporting their weight.  There they sat so tightly compact, sucking in their arms protecting themselves from contact with the person next to them.  The only real space they seemed to cherish was this ‘no man’s land’ between them, inhabited by dirty cracked tiles, a white kebab takeaway box and dried bits of chewing gum that had by now merged with the colour of the tiles.

Anyway, you know what it’s like, you make a mad rush to a public shelter, open the door and suddenly you are triggered to conform.  I felt an invisible burden weighing me down.  The real me was somehow swept aside in a tsunami of beliefs and practices I have never experienced in my solitude.  They overthrew my authenticity, stripped me naked as it were, and replaced it with an inauthentic copy of their own.  My free spirit was denounced as I stood trial under the shadow of big brother, sending me to squeak past, tiptoe even, in shame of trying to find a plastic flap to sit on.

Oh yes, I found a seat but unfortunately it was smack bang in the middle of the row.  Why is it unfortunate?  I don’t know, it’s just a feeling I suppose.  I remember a teacher of mine saying that she purposely buys a McDonald’s burger and crudely eats it on the train as to ward other passengers away from sitting in her territory.  Yes! 'Her' territory! Funny isn’t it?  But does this behaviour not tell us something primitive about ourselves?  No, no in my country people are the same.  I just find this universal phenomenon odd…or maybe I am a little odd?  Who is to say!  I wonder how people would react if a celebrity was caught sitting in a carriage, would we pursue them manically, in the hope of becoming part of their lives temporary, as brief as a few stops down an old rusty track?  And as the people drain away from me trying to catch a glimpse of this figure, should I be happy because I have more space for myself? Or should I be offended?

Anyway, I am babbling on.  I sat down, and rested my rucksack on my lap.  I wanted to smile but the invisible hand covered my mouth.  On my left was a student I think, depressing looking chap, long serious face with pimples here and there, staring out behind the heads of the people opposite us, to the wall ahead it seemed.  Curiously, I tried to pinpoint the location of his stare, thinking that he caught sight of a spider or something.  But I didn’t seem to see anything.  Yet, his mechanical stare struck a cord in me.  Are you alright? I asked politely.  But his nerve seemed to have got the better of him, as his reply was compiled in words soaked in annoyance and offence.  I did apologize, of course, and I turned my head to the old lady next to me with a slight grin on my face seeking acknowledgement of my crime, but she too sat there staring at the wall waiting for me to look away.  Did I think this behaviour strange?  Why yes indeed, for on closer examination the more melancholically they seemed.  Yet some looked content in distracting themselves away from the others by playing around with these mechanical devices in the palm of their hand; some with a wire running up into their ears.  Is it the default response to boredom? I asked.  Or is it a strategy we use to get away from our real inner core – the self?  

Anyhow, my train eventually pulled in at the platform and so I pressed the carriage door button releasing the herd of commuters trapped inside.  I tell you, it was like watching a flock of dressed up sheep running wild, all seeking that precious inch of space to fill as they hastily made their way out of the train and up the stairs. 

Oh, no I’m fine thank you.  I have to drive back home later.

Let me continue.  I don’t know why, but I always imagine the many different eloquent professions that flood out of the train at rush hour.  Lawyers grasping the handle of their briefcase, business people on the phone talking about Barney’s escapades at the job down in Exeter, designers with their papers, and so on.  But then amid this thought, I wonder about their recent bowel movements.  Yes, I know it seems absurd, but, you see, there is only so much of an animal you can dress to make appear as a somebody.  Does it matter what decision we make whether wearing clean or dirty underwear?

I entered the carriage and took my seat.  Thank God most people had left by now, there was so much space I could lie down if I wanted to. 

It was a pleasant journey to be honest, but I couldn’t help but notice those damn advertisement boards pasted on the walls.  You see after a day in the office I just want my authenticity back.  I don’t want to be psychologically raped by these airbrushed adverts of women with crystal white teeth exaggeratingly smiling while holding up a brand of chewing gum.  I don’t want to be seen as number, as someone who’s more likely to observe a brand of mobile phone if her curvature is slightly revealed, mesmerizing your attention to something that is essentially a mound of polished raw material.  I don’t want to be treated like a consumer yet that is how I appear to be.  How disgraced it is to be stuck inside this metal tube, effectively drawn inside while an attempted brainwash takes place. 

Sorry I’m going off on one again.

My train eventually pulled up at my stop.  This time a young chap pushed the button from the outside, and I left the carriage looking at him smiling just to make a point that it isn’t a crime.  Of course he looked at me as if I was weird and made his way onto the train. 

When I came out there were a gang of youngsters hanging around the back entrance of the station.  As I made my way down the last few steps they smiled at me while I walked past.  Great! I thought, so I smiled back to them.  Anyway, I didn’t have anything valuable on me so I escaped with some minor cuts and bruises.  No, no, honestly, just boys blowing out some steam, you know? 

I got home, changed clothes and decided to go out into the garden.  It was damp but also very warm, so I poured a glass of red and managed to find some comfort in my solitude.  Pulling up a chair I sat down and lit a cigarette, taking in some deep breaths under the beautiful autumn sky. 

But then I caught sight of it.  That was it!  A cold shimmer of enlightenment ran up my spine erecting the hairs on my arms to a military salute as I became overwhelmed with this frightful sense of omniscience.  Beside me, pushing its way underneath a dead leaf that draped over an old soggy barrel, the tiny snail goes about its day without an inkling as to my own existence.  She doesn’t have to put up with the bizarreness of human nature.  She doesn’t have to conform to an absurdly perverse society infatuated with this inauthentic way of living.  The trains aid us in our world, while in hers; it is not even a thought.  What’s reality for us, is metaphysical for her.  Who is closer to their nature? What is nature? I asked myself.  It’s a dream in one way, a reality in another; something we know of, yet fail to know it.  Still, how badly mistaken are we when we deem this creature inferior, as something mindless, as something primitively simple that lives in the dirt, ignorant of our 'precious' physical discoveries, unaware of our way of doing things.  Yet, she lives authentically while we cover it up in our pretense and live an absurdity on the grandest scale.

How was my day you asked? I can answer you in one word: Humiliating!

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved




Friday 16 September 2011

The pretender

With everything to fear and nothing to gain,
Life’s a speck of his little game.

Running errands, here and there,
Mechanically in motion, no character nor flare.

Yes but is this all I hear you say?
Ah, now now, wait for May,
Where the summer breezes, and the pigeons squawk…
…Alas, where is that promised ultimate quark?

Indeed, she exposes her tulip, revealing itself
Is that a stark reminder of her hidden wealth?

Ah, but amidst that world so tender, so serene,
That ghastly God hides behind the scene.

His claws of bone and gnashing teeth.
His insults echo from the stones underneath,

He jokes around, letting the young grow up while the old grow down,
Either way he laughs: “the world continues to float while you all drown”.

That shimmer of truth he paints for us to cheer,
All the while we’re locked in his fortress of fear,
The fruit that bore my tender yarn on nigh,
Sits on his shoulder waiting to die.

You’re right, but even though the canary sing a summer day in bright,
That cat licks his lips in delight,
And with her river of time flowing to an end,
Out of a cocoon, a butterfly ascend,
Whoever can brake away from the madness, from his chain of sorrow,
No longer need despair in the wait for the morrow.

Ah! But tis a game he uses us as a piece
All the while sending us out under a short-term lease
So let the moon do our own hoping,
For, perhaps the time is now for us to do the joking.

O, the fruit of my skin fades and peels away
As time passes I have no more of a say.

But underneath his lying cloud is a truth overlooked,
That one day, on the eve of my time, my grave is booked.

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

Sunday 11 September 2011

The riddle of existence


Peeling away under the autumn moon, Jack sat awkwardly still amidst the night’s silence.  Blood pumping, blood rushing, layer by layer his skin dries and cracks before peeling off, floating calmly as it waves goodbye, down past his waist, down past his thigh, mute contact is made with the cold hard floor like winter’s snow, it melts, it is absorbed; back to source.  

Dying in the midst of mind madness, a flash of his delusional self breaches the boundaries of normality.  Like a schizophrenic atom, with no starting point and no destination, his eyes roll around fitfully stunned and dazed, starring out in a sea of pure purple haze.

The tiger can lick his cub but, like Jack, we can only lick our wounds.  No longer sound in mind, consciousness becomes fuzzy and stretched, time dilates to a ringing silence.  In the world Jack is, but out of it he remains.  He crawls in doubt and misery under the dusty carpet of youth, yet underneath this spell of his own terror, an optimistic thought blossoms like a Bonsai tree, and then dies as one.  Like lightening, it rips through the fabric of darkness with dazing shine, making the smallest drop of dew sparkle with vibrating colour and verve.  The heart once black turns red again.  A shine so sharp and white blinds Jack from the beaten track that lies; termites there may be on that road ahead, yet, his view becomes one with the sparrows; perfect knowledge and truth is fully acquired…slowly, though, he begins his descent into the dust below, that flicker of hope wilts away like a lonely flower, his plagued mind returns for another haunting.  In anguish Jack cries but sheds little tear; all the while Gaia sniggers silently under a rusty stone: “tis all an appearance, an illusion, a dream”.

Meditating beneath the great oak amongst the daffodils and worms, Jack puts existence on trial.  Yet, with every question thrown and thrashed, with every quip about the raging seas that kill, about the fox that kidnaps the chicken’s young, even of the dying petal that hangs; nature stands silent, nothing to say, nothing to justify, a silent witness to the sorrow of a single human being.  Raged and confused Jack turns to the shadows beneath him: “No meaning” they say, “You are one of us, welcome to the inverted world”.  Still, with every insect that passes by, with every leaf that falls, the door Jack walks out from is walked back through again.

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

Wednesday 7 September 2011

The Postmortem


There she stares amongst the chairs

Her sight so narrow, all too shorter than an arrow

Mind is numb, body cold, no longer lingering and no one to hold

This glare amongst her frozen stare remains expressionless like her hair

The birds chirping, the cat purring but nothing remains for her learning

Lying down and looking up her frail hands centered

And with the footsteps tapping and voices mumbling

Up she’s lifted without tumbling

In for collection out with the result

She died of a hernia and a stroke.

© 2011 Roberto Nacci All Rights Reserved

Monday 5 September 2011

The ballad from the maple tree


Lying silently on the bank of that tender green, where the snail hangs secretly underneath a moist blade of grass, where the wildfowls perch beneath the morning sun, an injured pigeon tucked away quietly awaits her end.  As her forgotten memories bloom like mushrooms - the autumn days in play and flight and the cold nights jesting with her young’uns curled in love – are now nothing but a faint dream.  Her last day now rested upon that inevitable dry hand, the last smell of wild flower descend, as she prepares her final flight beyond the stars above.

And as I point and hold back my crystal tear, screaming to the spider who wraps his fear, peeling off the slug that feeds on the shrub and plant; that old maple tree beside where I sit looks down at me in smile.  “For nine and ninety years” he tells me “they come and go like the morning dew.  Let the spider and slug be free to feast, for the world is but a mere painting in disguise, nothing to shudder an eyelid to, and nowhere to hide.  Leave its splash of colour, do not interfere, for it plays no moral game for us to jeer.  Rejoice and be still as the mallard sings, smile back to the woodlice that grin, let your heart see for when I release my last golden leaf, a small hyacinth makes it way back into the world in relieve”.