'Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.'
There is something remarkable about the attempt to put things together..our deepest instincts, you think, are to unify, draw patterns, gather and resist the flow...
You stand by the small bus stand on a blustery and clear day, wondering nothing much in particular, trying to make yourself invisible. Behind you the huge, dark and imposing Gothic hospital with its labyrinth corridors and army of professionals. Out here you feel healthy, pure; inside there is a sickly kind of warmth, a diffused light and tepid hospital food. There is the recognition of pain, suffering, something that must be dealt with and that cannot be escaped. Outside, there is much dreaming...
Two nurses stand close by and discuss their plans for the evening. And who can blame them. But the strangeness of it all. To carry the idea of revelry in your heart as one eye looks at death. There is no room for poetry here and you're overwhelmed by the ability of people to only deal in facts, the bare bones, the stark realities...life reduced down to a series of tables, charts and probabilities. It dawns on you that it takes a special kind of strength not to day dream, not to leave the room in which you are standing. Everyone looks ridiculous without their own clothes. An old man, ninety plus, has so few memories, so few words that he can only repeat the same phrases to us in an empty ritual. The war is now the defining moment of his life-though it didn't seem so before.
On the small bus back already your mind is turning to dinner and you feel guilty. The sheer inescapability of decline grips you by the throat. That our fate is shared or universal provides no solace. Each person fades, dies, in their own special way. If someone were to see my face from outside-for the whole journey-what would they see? Behind the glass they would see dim watery reflections of clouds and trees pass over my face, highlighting and then obscuring my eyes; they would see my tangled hair, my thick peasant hands propping up my chin, my Buddhist-ears listening to the silence, the deep lines on my face that with more concentration would have been saint-like; they will see a clown on his day off, a one-legged acrobat mumbling to himself as if he were talking to God. A dropout, an outsider, unkempt, his laces permanently undone, his jeans torn, his t-shirt stained, the loosest collection of clothes one could imagine.
An unread book in one hand, a pencil in the other. There are no notes to make since to do so is a kind of betrayal. Stay tuned, pick up on the mechanical warmth, your heart staying bewildered.
There is something remarkable about the attempt to put things together..our deepest instincts, you think, are to unify, draw patterns, gather and resist the flow...
You stand by the small bus stand on a blustery and clear day, wondering nothing much in particular, trying to make yourself invisible. Behind you the huge, dark and imposing Gothic hospital with its labyrinth corridors and army of professionals. Out here you feel healthy, pure; inside there is a sickly kind of warmth, a diffused light and tepid hospital food. There is the recognition of pain, suffering, something that must be dealt with and that cannot be escaped. Outside, there is much dreaming...
Two nurses stand close by and discuss their plans for the evening. And who can blame them. But the strangeness of it all. To carry the idea of revelry in your heart as one eye looks at death. There is no room for poetry here and you're overwhelmed by the ability of people to only deal in facts, the bare bones, the stark realities...life reduced down to a series of tables, charts and probabilities. It dawns on you that it takes a special kind of strength not to day dream, not to leave the room in which you are standing. Everyone looks ridiculous without their own clothes. An old man, ninety plus, has so few memories, so few words that he can only repeat the same phrases to us in an empty ritual. The war is now the defining moment of his life-though it didn't seem so before.
On the small bus back already your mind is turning to dinner and you feel guilty. The sheer inescapability of decline grips you by the throat. That our fate is shared or universal provides no solace. Each person fades, dies, in their own special way. If someone were to see my face from outside-for the whole journey-what would they see? Behind the glass they would see dim watery reflections of clouds and trees pass over my face, highlighting and then obscuring my eyes; they would see my tangled hair, my thick peasant hands propping up my chin, my Buddhist-ears listening to the silence, the deep lines on my face that with more concentration would have been saint-like; they will see a clown on his day off, a one-legged acrobat mumbling to himself as if he were talking to God. A dropout, an outsider, unkempt, his laces permanently undone, his jeans torn, his t-shirt stained, the loosest collection of clothes one could imagine.
An unread book in one hand, a pencil in the other. There are no notes to make since to do so is a kind of betrayal. Stay tuned, pick up on the mechanical warmth, your heart staying bewildered.
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