Apr 2013
My inner child,
Recently I have found myself crawling through those hazy archives of my past, when it was only you and the dirt on those endless afternoons. And I wonder to myself how much of these memories truly exist and how many blanks I may have filled in along the way. I try to formulate a hypothesis on this but my mind is preoccupied with the image of the mound of soil at the back of the garden. The one our sister swore was a buried lion – a truth you swallowed so readily. Since then you have moved house and dug a grave for the lion yourself, only this one was your best friend.
We have drifted you and I. I rarely see you. Sometimes in the midst of pills and drink I swear we cross paths but soon my heart thuds heavily and I do my best to just keep my feet and then you’re gone. I am now just a composite of lessons learnt and punishments served. A sum of all the times I broke a heart, failed a class and tripped on a stone. I look ahead to adulthood – I know we never believed we’d get there - we never needed to, but here we are. I don’t wear a suit, I don’t drive a car and I have no money. Beards don’t suit me and as things stand, it is unlikely I will become Batman. I would tell you that we’re not a failure – that I’m not a failure but the world tells us differently. We need a real career.
It is a tired cliché admittedly, but I do miss your innocence – your boundless inquisition into everything about you. The incessant inquisition still remains, but the plague of indoctrination-education and the scorn on your school friends soon puts up borders in your mind. You soon realise which questions are stupid, even if they are right to be asked. Cleverness soon becomes more than being able to tie your shoes. You must be strong, you must be brave, you must be ruthless.
I think back to how much we loved our mother and how it hurts now, to see her ignorance and her emotional frailty for all that it is. The day when your mother becomes human is truthfully one of the most frightening days to experience. Still, for you, those wonderful April shower mornings in the park are a refuge. Feast on those sandwiches, huddle together under the shelter of the slide and listen placidly to the rain hit the metal. Do not think for a moment of what needs to be done or what has been done. Live in the present before you get lost the cogs of causation.
Learn to fall in love. Not just with people but with animals. With words, with pictures, with colours and tones. Textures, sounds and imagery. Please never lose the wonder of lying in the grass and seeing a separate world. I know you don’t understand beauty, perhaps because you are beauty within itself. Perhaps only I can understand beauty because mine has been lost through these fatherless years of self-effacing thoughts and relentless hangovers. Perhaps it is only now that I grasp for beauty, in order to claw back some of what I have lost. Just to taste it again.
I wont keep you for much longer. I know you need to run and yell and play until the sun falls. I simply wanted to tell you that I love you. You are what I love about me, despite what may have been lost in the classrooms. I know now that I should get my head out of the screen and cast my eyes beyond my bank balance, so that I can see you in the distance and greet you as a friend. My old friend. I hope I get to see more of you after writing this, because I miss you and my brain is sometimes just so loud and I think you might be the only thing to quieten it. I am going to fall into bed and sleep dreamlessly under the covers now. If nothing else, I promise you that as you grow older, you will look forward to bed time!
Yours in complete awe,
A very confused person.
Recently I have found myself crawling through those hazy archives of my past, when it was only you and the dirt on those endless afternoons. And I wonder to myself how much of these memories truly exist and how many blanks I may have filled in along the way. I try to formulate a hypothesis on this but my mind is preoccupied with the image of the mound of soil at the back of the garden. The one our sister swore was a buried lion – a truth you swallowed so readily. Since then you have moved house and dug a grave for the lion yourself, only this one was your best friend.
We have drifted you and I. I rarely see you. Sometimes in the midst of pills and drink I swear we cross paths but soon my heart thuds heavily and I do my best to just keep my feet and then you’re gone. I am now just a composite of lessons learnt and punishments served. A sum of all the times I broke a heart, failed a class and tripped on a stone. I look ahead to adulthood – I know we never believed we’d get there - we never needed to, but here we are. I don’t wear a suit, I don’t drive a car and I have no money. Beards don’t suit me and as things stand, it is unlikely I will become Batman. I would tell you that we’re not a failure – that I’m not a failure but the world tells us differently. We need a real career.
It is a tired cliché admittedly, but I do miss your innocence – your boundless inquisition into everything about you. The incessant inquisition still remains, but the plague of indoctrination-education and the scorn on your school friends soon puts up borders in your mind. You soon realise which questions are stupid, even if they are right to be asked. Cleverness soon becomes more than being able to tie your shoes. You must be strong, you must be brave, you must be ruthless.
I think back to how much we loved our mother and how it hurts now, to see her ignorance and her emotional frailty for all that it is. The day when your mother becomes human is truthfully one of the most frightening days to experience. Still, for you, those wonderful April shower mornings in the park are a refuge. Feast on those sandwiches, huddle together under the shelter of the slide and listen placidly to the rain hit the metal. Do not think for a moment of what needs to be done or what has been done. Live in the present before you get lost the cogs of causation.
Learn to fall in love. Not just with people but with animals. With words, with pictures, with colours and tones. Textures, sounds and imagery. Please never lose the wonder of lying in the grass and seeing a separate world. I know you don’t understand beauty, perhaps because you are beauty within itself. Perhaps only I can understand beauty because mine has been lost through these fatherless years of self-effacing thoughts and relentless hangovers. Perhaps it is only now that I grasp for beauty, in order to claw back some of what I have lost. Just to taste it again.
I wont keep you for much longer. I know you need to run and yell and play until the sun falls. I simply wanted to tell you that I love you. You are what I love about me, despite what may have been lost in the classrooms. I know now that I should get my head out of the screen and cast my eyes beyond my bank balance, so that I can see you in the distance and greet you as a friend. My old friend. I hope I get to see more of you after writing this, because I miss you and my brain is sometimes just so loud and I think you might be the only thing to quieten it. I am going to fall into bed and sleep dreamlessly under the covers now. If nothing else, I promise you that as you grow older, you will look forward to bed time!
Yours in complete awe,
A very confused person.
