Park Ramblings

Sometimes, in this city of thousands, where you can never be alone, alone is really all you wanna be...

Sometimes there seems to be no end to the people.

I just crave that separate space where you're not under the constant scrutiny of others; where I can just be.

But I don't think 'being' is allowed here. 'Being' is something people can do when there is no importance in who you are, and that just isn't Melbourne.

Don't get me wrong, I like the place; in fact, in a lot of ways I love it... but I also hate it.

I love the beauty; I hate the crowdedness.

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But maybe part of the loving it, the part of loving anything; being able to see the good things about anything, is about loving yourself.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Mum, and about how easy it is to hate yourself. Coz I also spend a lot of time doing that.

And I realise that there are things I wish I'd know, and I wish I'd known how to do but then, in so many ways, there was no way to help her.

She didn't want to be alive anymore.

And I think, because of that, and because we all know that, we have a different kind of peace and acceptance with her death. Maybe that's part of the anguish that other people feel, you know, that isn't there for us. So hey, lucky us huh?

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It's strange, I feel so absent. So empty.... no, not that. Not empty, that's not true. Separate. And too afraid to bridge that gap; so afraid. God help me, I'm afraid of myself.

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Be, be going, there must be somewhere to go. Somewhere, nobody has time for nowhere.

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Look at these trees. They're so beautiful. I dread to think about they day that they won't be here. But we're not going to care enough; they'll go. The modern utopia, glass and steel. Afraid of the outside world, afraid of nature and its randomness.

Already, modern parents are afraid of their children, they do things that haven't been diarised, factored in, thought of. Children don't follow the rules that now suffocate our daily existence. People have no time to just let things be. To stop and take in the feeling of being alive. When you have touched death, nursed it, watched it take over. When it is there, around you, next to you, inside your heart, the slow whoosh of the automatic morphine drip, your heart beats in time with its blinking green light, you have time to think about life, and being alive.

When death comes at you with the force of a semi-trailer, the absentmindedness of an errant driver, when all you have to shield yourself from its blow is your own skin, then there is time to remember life.

Touch the grass, the trees, feel the sun, open your nostrils and breathe in the smell of the air around you. When will we connect our minds with our bodies and remember what it is to be alive?