If today you had not gone outside to walk for a while and let your thoughts float free and your eyes to wander, if today you had instead stayed inside where things were just as you left them ... You might not have thought about the light and how it plays on every surface differently. You might not have tasted the breeze or felt its tug. You might not have seen the clouds breaking up and floating away like melting iceburgs in the blue waters of the Arctic circle. You might not have felt the coolness of the shadows and the reward that comes from crossing to the sunny side of the street. You might not have seen what has come out in your neighbour’s garden or their neighbour’s or in every garden of every house down the street. You might not have paused to look up at the sky through the branches of the plane tree and noticed its majestic silhouettes of twigs and leaves and nuts. You might not have heard the leaves crackle under your feet or the twig that snaps or the steady drumming of your feet on the pavement, the snuffling of a dog and the bark of another, the clanging of the gate as it throws itself against it. You might not have seen the postie on his rounds, in fluro orange, hopping on and off the footpath, weaving through the letterboxes. You might not have seen that mother and her baby, and the tiny feet that kick up in the pram and are caught by two equally tiny hands. You might not have seen the old man walking slowly and bent, wearing a hat and plaid jacket, or the old Greek lady in her black dress and tan stockings, frowning until your brief eye contact causes her to slip on a smile. You might have missed the ding of the trams whooshing past, the cold gaze of the models in the advertisements on their sides. You might have missed the tags and the street art and the stencils that spring up like secret characters of the nightworld. You might have missed the peeling posters enticing you to gigs that have already happened, scruffy musicians looking moody or tired, like they don’t give a toss but they have something interesting to say and you might want to hear it. You might not see the smashed glass in that window, the old brick house that harboured so many lives and small happinesses that has been condemned so they can knock it down and replace it with apartment blocks with smug sounding names will Bella or Willow or Cosmo. You might have missed the man whose head is encased in a padded helmet and walks lurching side-to-side but who smiles and says hello to everyone he passes, reminding you of a jovial jack in the box. You might have missed the different smells in the air as you pass jasmine bushes and that native one with small pink flowers and the name you don’t remember, and the smell of tyres and bitumen and car exhaust fumes and fresh paint and cooking smells leaking out through tired screen doors. You might not have seen the grass growing beside the path and decided to walk on it rather than the concrete path and you might not have wondered why everything is covered, suffocated, smothered in concrete and bitumen. And you might not have looked out for the blades of grass, the weeds, the plants that defy this subjection and creep up in the cracks and the grooves and the spaces and reassert their rightful place. You might not have felt the sun hit your face in such a way that it is surely a kiss from above, a greeting, a reminder that you should always come outside and walk these familiar paths and roads and leave your invisible footprints over this suburb you call home to be walked over by other people’s footprints and other people’s after them. You might not have taken a deep breath of air before returning to your house or let your shoulders drop or your gaze to soften. You might not have thought that, like the grass fighting to grow up through the concrete, it is imperative we leave our cages, our desks, our screens and take in the world with fresh eyes and ears and smell it like the hair of a loved one. You might not have seen this one precious hour of one precious day and then- well- then it would have been gone forever.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 06:16:27 +0000
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