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SEPTEMBER 10TH, 1997, RAIN AND RESENTMENT
It kept raining a little bit harder, as though the rain was trying to drag it out of me, I looked up to see if the sky was crying and I thought, no not quiet, the sun was too light for that, it was too much like gentle mist, like it was material mopping my brow but with the consistency of air, then it was onto something up from around my mouth, like a child that has spewed out some stewed apples as the mother wipes it away, and the child's face squeezes up following the pressure of the rag, I was feeling all babyish and ran the risk of crying, my eyes were large and growing redder by the second, but still my cheeks were barely touched by moisture, I will let the park cry for me because I cannot cry anymore, it was a choice between exhaustion and sobbing, so I chose to settle for weariness, but always I must cry cry cry it out in to the big park, as all the river red gums and their fallen leaves say, 'there you cry now,' says the grass and 'there there,' the nearest galahs are feeding without turning, 'you can cry for us,' I am bargaining with the sky, all at once the rain becomes heavier and heavier, and it starts to really wet me down through to the bone, it starts to slowly ruin me, 'All right,' says the park, 'I'll cry hard now,' and it wasn't the sky that was just crying, because the rain was coming from all directions, it was as though the park was really crying hard, and having a tantrum inside itself, I just stood there like an old snail shell being lashed by a hose, rain across one cheek then the other, I turned into the big hurricane temper of the park and said, 'you cry for me,' and it did, as it did every winter, flattening the grass into long damp sheets that fell regularly across it, like curtains of horizons falling down across oceans, the swell of light sky moisture meeting the veils of ocean heaving moisture, 'you fucking cry for me,' I said, I suddenly felt self pity, and then the big rush like I felt like tearing my hair out, for all the past hour the park had been coaxing out my grief with its gentle lashings of moisture, then its slightly heavier tap-tap-tapping of rain like knocking on my doors, finally I was left sodden like a wet rag in a tangle of hair, looking out of it dripping and angry like a one-eyed stray, I had been left like that on many occasions in the park after a good solid battering, teetering on the edge of rage whilst the storm had thrown itself around in its big wet skirts, it had tossed the birds and flattened the grass and then lived on, but today I cried really hard and soon, there were storms within, and I was out in the storm like I had turned myself inside out, and shed all skin barriers in order to turn and cry there, and today it was my dogs I resented, I resented them because each time I had wanted to end my own life, they always anchored me to this place, their eyes saying happily, 'wont you look after us, cause nobody else loves us,' with the inquisitive head clicking in thought from the small kelpie bitch, and the friendliest eyes and big dopey tongue of the blue heeler, or the 'blue hell' as he was called, who just knew I'd stay around, they weren't cleverer than I gave them credit for, but they instinctively knew what the world was like and what would happen to them if I left, I resented the fact that I was the only one in the world who loved those dogs, I was the only thing they had, once in the park I had hidden behind a tree, to give them a taste of what my absence would be like, and they had run frantically in search of wind and absence, they looked really worried and you never did see two dogs run so fast, trying to pick up the lost scent in ever increasing circles of confusion, it just about broke my heart into jigsaw puzzle pieces, because I knew this is what would happen if I decided to leave them, and I was so angry at the horrible world that I couldn't bare to let it get its clutches on those dogs, it made me think of a story, where a guy on a push bike who was riding down along the Yarra River, was stabbed in the back of the neck, when someone jumped him from behind, the police tried to drag the snarling dog away from the body of the dead guy in his bike helmet and shorts, but the dog wasn't leaving, I thought of ringing the city pound, but I was so exhausted I didn't, I was resentful the man had allowed himself to be murdered leaving this dog alone, that there was a murderer in the city park and in every one of our hearts, and that nobody loved my dogs in the world but me, I shed my tears in the big park, resenting my responsibility and all the absence of love, that makes me sad and weary. |
