THE PLACES FLED MACH II

NSW South Coast courtesy nswtrainlink.info

From here, there were so many things. He didn't think there would be peace behind a shadow, or comfort in a storm. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Everything had been erased. "I get everything," a nasty little go-go boy jeers in a Bangkok soi. Yes, well they do that. He hadn't known, hadn't known anything. And now he knew. He knew things would run around and around in his head for a while, because he wouldn't be here if he hadn't been there. That was the way of it. There would always be compromise, there would always be consequence. And that was the way of it, like it or not.

And no, he didn't like it. The sky is high, you can fly. You can do many things, mostly steal from the passing parade, take what you will, care nothing for what you do. That was also the way of it, amidst a peasant class which would always steal. If the cap fits, wear it. They wouldn't be doing it again. He ran afoul of foul elements; and now was washed up on an ancient shore. There was little to do. Little to know. The peace he had felt wasn't here. Things would always be the way they were. And he would compromise; in his heart and soul and deep down where; while they made heroes of thieves; and assumed the customer was always wrong.

How they compromised on this; how they made hay. How everything worked. How he could walk from one place to another; fragile, febrile dreams, not bitter dreams, although that could be the title of another missive; he wasn't done yet. They buried what they had done and time coated everything. Except for him. They washed away the shallows of themselves; were clean in a circus meant for someone else, were cold in a space where there was no offering, jeered at by masses, a chorus of pain. That was all there was to it. Ancient lusts; gone shrivelling down into the core. There wasn't anyway to get to you. There was no redemption, salvation, a welcoming calm. He was hiding in an invsible space.

So it was that this period went down; and went away. It wasn't a revelation. It was a game that had been played out upon him. Everything went AWOL, and those he thought might care didn't care. They had their own chorus, their own fans. Their own families. They had profited and survived; and he had not. He wasn't even here any more. He watched some ground birds hopping off into the deep scrub of the littoral forest; and could hear their chicks chirping. No enemies here. He could see a marker stone in the centre of what had probably been a midden. It had a feel, as if it had been the centre of something. Just as there was no mistaking the marker stone at the centre of Buddha Park, where he was supposedly born. Rushing to be alive; just as he had not. 

There would be a chorus but they were distant things. Bad boy, he saw, inked on stone brick. And not long after, a callow, sad looking man with his domineering wife, sitting in a cheap car, staring mournfully out as the winter sky fell quickly into dark. And the same words, "Bad Boy", festooned across his t-shirt, spoke of greater optimism than what life had handed him. He hoped they weren't the one and the same, just for the sake of errant beauty. In which case all would be lost, if it hadn't already. Because nothing stirred here, there was nowhere to go. The cold shrank in around them; and they hid in the dark overhang of the forest, protected from the wind whipping off the frigid sea, protected from the other tribes, protected even from themselves, as they cuddled togeher for warmth. There wasn't going to be an easy solution, not in this lifetime.