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Boy On The Wire
I am standing on the Detriot River bridge in Windsor on the Canada side. He is my private angel. I picked him up on the outskirts of New York. He is so light that he uplifts me, whilst resting on my shoulders like a world. I have named him the boy, for each time I try to name him, he treats me with laughter not words. When I say, 'The boy,' I feel like my head thrown back to laugh. He looks towards the dawn of all poverty and all pain. He clears the unclear like citrine stone and bergamot oil. He wants to know where it began, so that he can cleanse it from its centre out, by jumping in. He watches me from a telegraph wire. He is up there like a gull. At the moment he is inaccessible, so I leave him as he is. I am kneeling in front of the wonky Detroit skyscrapers, their dark reflections in the water. There is a city dying on the horizon. I shake hands with myself from across the river. The boy prefers invisibility. I say, 'Bad publicity is better than no publicity.' So far as my old family went, I felt excluded. For a long time I thought that I didn't exist for them. When I found out that they knew everything about me I was surprised. Then I was relieved when I finally knew the score. I knew the deliberation and the conspiracy. I knew the danger. It had been not knowing the enemy that had made me invisible, to myself and yet not to them. They saw me exist enough to try and non-exist me. It was like a little part of your mind had been taken out, but you never knew whether it was there or whether it was gone, because it had been inside without your knowing. So far as finding the root of the problem, I had no good upbringing therefore no proper training. There was always this extra dimension or layer to get through, like digging a hole and never getting to it. I was like digging that hole anywhere in the world, with no skill and not knowing what you are looking for. This was the frustration of not knowing myself, of not understanding the enemy of the outside and most importantly the enemy within. To know one was to know the other. The horror was of the buildings crumbling down inside myself, whilst I stood like a termite in front of the huge city of Detroit. Listen. 'I have been inside those buildings that are inside me. If they were to crumble I would know what to do. So follow me down the emergency stairway and you will be safe.' I began to rescue the city's animals. I carried away their devastation inside small backpacks, from the dilapidated buildings that were burning and crumbling. Even though no one had told me my story, or the story of their burning or of their recovery. There were the ones that walked free of the devastation with near to no injuries, and the ones that couldn't be saved. Not knowing the difference of what to hang onto and what to let go, I tried to save them all. Every experience has a complexity. I am a processor with daily cycles. I move from one point to another point, always going forwards. I learn until some doubt arises and I must reprocess the layers. I work best during the morning, as accustomed to warmth and daylight as the sun. I go to bed in darkness with some clothes on and a full light shining into my face. Later I switch it off. I get up in the dark to eat, take off more clothes and switch off the light just before daylight. It takes me many hours to be comfortable in the night. By the time I am it is morning again. I live deep in the dilapidated building with a night light shining by my bed. In the morning a kettle for black tea, providing both comfort and promoting action to launch me into the day. I want to greet the city humbly, yet like an army of sunlight. If I have a good morning of saving animals, I am able to be intimate in the afternoon. Then I go into the buildings just on dark where I cannot be contacted. A visit from a co-worker from The Lost And Found Home might bring me back to talk and listen. Then at night my bad time. I said 'They are all out to murder me in this city.' It has built up and up inside me, until I just couldn't speak in case I cried out. I thought The boy was going to murder me, or that someone was. But because he was the one in the room that I was physically closest to, then he was the one to watch. I turned to him with my suspicion and my proof. 'Firstly you are angry with me. Then you hate me. Then you have the potential to murder me, and then I must defend myself. So I must murder you. Now I feel helpless without a gun but can't be trusted with one, in case I interpret the signals wrongly and lose it.' It took a lot of courage and was a relief to finally say to him, 'I believe that you want to murder me and that you and the other boys of light are plotting to kill me.' I like the instinct of animals their acceptance and aloofness. As a child I stood in my Australian frontyard like the deserted city of Detroit. The riots could have howled through me, the fires and sirens screaming as all the borders into Canada were blocked off by police and military forces. The absence of love in people, the space left by my departing parents, the potential for murder, my murder by anyone at all. I want to get out of the pattern of thinking that I have adopted, and not be what they have created. For a long time The boy was the only one who could be trusted. He sat up on the wire looking back to Detriot from the Canadian side. I thought, there are times when I wanted to go back into the dilapidated city of Detroit, smashing itself down across the river. There are times when I am not the moose and elk and snow of Canada. It's still a little part of us, the suffering and the sadness. We can separate ourselves from it at times. We may like to completely let it die, but it will always be there. We can only love the damage inside us. It is like a child with a bloody thumb that cries and will never stop crying. Sometimes we can send it to sleep with an aspirin for a time, but a lot of time we spend kissing it better. Some things cannot be completely healed by love. It makes me sad. Then I felt sadness and began to weep, as I had not done for a very long time. It was as if this experience of sadness had taught me or given me permission. I had half forgotten what it was to express a feeling. The boy lit up until his light became my thoughts. I didn't know if he had even been there or how long he had been gone for. |
