A Change of Pace

Whoever was following me was doing a good job at staying hidden.

Looking over my shoulder I swept the street for any movement. Nothing…

I see a couple of parked and empty cars, a food van I’ve only ever walked past at night, cold and empty. It must have been a long time since the owners locked up… I should be home by now too.

I see warm lights in the distant tenement windows of Glasgow's trendy west end, illuminating pockets of life. The flats are likely teaming with students. In fact I can see the silhouettes of plants and posters from where I'm standing. Doomed flora pasted in the frame.

It seems like such a “student thing”, having loads of plants in the window.

I’ve got one friend who has actually become a “crazy plant lady”. I asked her and her boyfriend to take care of my plants while I was away for summer, and when I went to pick them up I felt like I was walking into a jungle. Albeit a very carefully maintained and ordered jungle.

I hurry on, my shoe scraping on the ground, making a racket in the silent street. I look back once again to make sure I didn't miss anything. Exactly the same. The sheer “normality” of everything is oppressive and I feel short of breath. Am I just imagining it? Could I just be making it all up? My mind is racing like a getaway car on the motorway, the rest of my being a hostage in the backseat.

I hear a “rustle” come out the dark. Faint. Stillness and tension envelopes me. And I stop. Halfway across Eldon Street bridge just outside of Kelvingrove park; in a pretence of admiring the beauty of the river at night. I’m nervous, but I lean casually with my elbows on the wall and I flicker a fretful eye momentarily out over the moonlit water,turning my ear slowly to the bushes by the bank. I wait there, straining through the gloom to pick out a noise, or anything. Anything at all. A gust of wind startles me, blowing the hood of my head. It makes me catch my breath, then I breathe in hard and defiantly, but the winter chill stings my nose without mercy and I wince in pain and cup my poor nose in my gloved hands; It’s raw from picking it bloody. It’s an anxious habit I have. (It’s usually not that bad but recently it’s been getting worse.)

My eyes watering now I squint back up to the silvery river. My hair is blowing around my head, and biting my face like a nest of vipers. I shut my eyes, trying to relax, and feeling the waves of emotion role over me without letting them snag.

I’m thinking about work, sometimes it gets so hot I have to run through the kitchen into the bathroom and watch in the grubby mirror as my anxiety trickles red down my lip. I look at myself as I taste it, then spit it into the sink, disgusted in myself.

Sometimes I cry in the bathroom too. I don't know where my life is going.

It was one of these shifts earlier tonight; working late and missing the last train home. And I was on my long way back to the other side of the city, when my senses started to prickle. A feeling as if I was being followed. I feel it now, in the midnight breeze. A peaceful watchfulness. I needn't be afraid. Should I?

There seems to be an untapped world beyond my fingertips. A presence looming from the shadows.

What it carries in the air electrifies the hair on the back of my neck.

The river beacons me now too, with gentle symbol roles of water rushing, underlining the gurgles and babels. I listen hungrily, and try to peer further up to where the river disappears into the trees.

A dark tunnel of foliage, pitch black at the centre, and when I try to penetrate it; a hoot echoes back raspy and shrill. I catch my breath for a second time. I know the night is calling me, and I must away.

Goodbye city, goodbye pavement, goodbye streetlamps, goodbye bridge. I’m flying now. Goodbye friend. My broad open wings muffling the air around me. I’m flying with no care. I’m flying for a second. That’s all I need to feel alive. I’m flying because that’s what I do. I’m flying with the thought of you in my heart, your song in my chest. I trill and whoop and sink no more. Carried aloft in the ebb and flow of life's journey.

"I don't know where this feeling has come from or where it wants me to go but I want to feel connected like this, I want to be free to chase these feelings with no hesitation. It’s waiting for me. To be with me. We’re inextricably linked, and I feel like my moments in the wild are not yet at an end. Will you come with me?" I say this out loud, wondering what it means, but I'm simply confused and maybe a little too tired to wonder anymore.

I get back home with little intrigue along the way, and in a trance I make my way to bed. I sleep well that night. Soaring on the wings of a barn owl. Far above the world, with the stars whispering tales of adventure and mystery to me. I dream a little deeper and imagine what these stories might be.

The next morning..

Corked, my thoughts erupt upwards like sea spray, my fingers are waves, dashing themselves on the keyboard cliffs, clicks rather than crashes, and less roaring convulsing fury, more chin scratching puzzlement, sitting in a kitchen, coughing while one of my roommates adds too much chilli flakes to her spicy chickpea salad.

I need to find some different work, something that pays well that I could preferably do from home. I need to be in charge of my own time. I can't be feeling stuck somewhere with people that I don't feel connected to. I start to daydream again. The golden promise of a fresh winters day shines in through the window. Glittering frosted garden kingdoms sparkle in a final glorious moment before being disturbed by a thoroughfare of daytime activity. First the blackbird, foraging for breakfast whilst his partner, up in the bows of their tree home sings a praise for the new day, then a multitude of other birds and mammals emerge. Squirrels, magpies, robins, all alert and sparky.

In my head I’m running with the boy that I am, the child inside, hungry and happy. I’ll let him hold the compass, “which way now?" I ask. Due west, it seems.

The sun parts fast, I don't believe myself, I look back. I don't believe in myself. It's nightfall once again. Who should I call on now? I need new directions. Lost in the dark.

Loosh kafnimiki rhymes with sneaky suspicions that his frame blisters missed a blister day chasing blizzards on their drizzly holidays, mister rays miserable ways land him floating in a visceral way, pained, it pushes him down to his ocean grave, blue sunk ships enveloped by the drink, i think i can do it, push past the blueprint, cut to the vision in the blink of an eye, like a prairie house that fell from the sky.

"I am always with you." said the owl of my dreams, as another day passed and I slept in my bed. I found comfort in his words, because the woods can be a scary place and I'm so glad I have a friend like you. Goodnight Mr Owl. "Goodnight. Write to me when you have the time Louis." Okay, I will.