August

I don’t know what made me do it. I’m usually a very thoughtful person. Careful. Every move is considered and planned out. I guess it comes of being a Libran; the sign of the scales, balance. That’s a good word for it; my actions are balanced. Today though… I sat on the rail in the bus stop and suddenly wondered what I was doing there. Something snapped and it dawned on me that I really didn’t want to be there. For some reason, the idea of following the same old routine made me feel slightly nauseous and I almost couldn’t bear the thought of going into college. Then the Libran urge to balance came forward and I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, continued to sit patiently. No, the everyday may not be the most attractive route but it has to be done. Why, though? The more I thought about it, the more I dreaded the idea of getting on the next bus. There was no particularly identifiable reason for this; education was not something I particularly detested, there was nothing that I feared or really disliked about the day ahead. And yet the niggling continued, doubt and temptation growing stronger. So I got up and walked away. In no particular direction, with no particular plan. Just walked from the bus stop and didn’t look back.

After wandering and contemplating, I find myself here, walking down a quaint, residential street with picket fences and manicured lawns. Already, the day is warm and the air is still and claustrophobic. I glance for a second at the topaz sky. It is flawless and plain, not sullied by any promises of cloud. The only blemishes are the ghostly trails of aeroplanes that stretch and fade across the heavens, probably heading to far-flung, exotic destinations. Or perhaps, just everyday London or Manchester. Who can say? The smoky paths of two engines intersect above my head and I gaze up at a powdery X hanging in the air. X marks the spot. I wonder where my X will be. I have never been all that comfortable with flying. It feels somewhat unnatural; to fling something so huge and so heavy up into the atmosphere and pray it doesn’t come falling back down on our heads. There seems to be a profundity and intensity to the azure pasture above my head that draws me to stare into its depths. I do not know where I am going or what I will do with myself for the day. It occurs to me that perhaps I should have some sort of idea of this.

A mother walks towards me with a stroller in front and child in tow. The child, a girl, is pointing out to her mother a butterfly, which has flickered into their path. Her mother has little interest in the comings and goings of the natural kingdom around them, more intent on guiding the child to their destination, briskly and painlessly. I smile at the mother as she passes me. She responds with a stony countenance of suspicion and draws her child’s hand closer to her, hurrying her along. It saddens me sometimes to see the cynical, contemptuous attitude that seems to have perforated modern society. I sigh and wonder what it is that makes us feel the need to live alone.

I remember the joy that butterflies instilled in me as a child. Throughout the long summer days, I would watch them float and dip across the horizon in their delightful, haphazard haste. Those were summers which seemed to last forever, as if September would never come. One summer, my father taught me how to capture these fickle creatures. They would horde around the butterfly bush that sprawled and rambled, much to the disdain of my mother, across the flowerbed on one side of the garden, pausing to feed from the great clusters of tiny, violet flowers. I became an expert butterfly-catcher, lying in wait for a likely victim. Whilst they gorged from the amethyst blooms, their wings rested together, I would advance my fingers slowly and carefully, so as not to frighten them away with sudden movements, then pinch their wings together and lift them from their perch. I would hold them in my clasped hands, peering in at their fragile bodies and feeling the flutter of their wings against my palms. Of course, soon enough the creatures were restless for freedom and I would release them with a sigh, following their fluttering path with wistful eyes, gazing in awe at the colours and patterns which dyed their gentle wings. They would float across the garden in a graceful zigzag before disappearing over the fence and away on their own, untold adventures. I longed to be able to jump into the air and take off, flying after them and away over the horizon… Peter Pan. My father had warned me of how delicate the creatures were, and I was instilled with a deadly fear of destroying their insubstantial wings with my gargantuan fingers. On the one occasion that I had been over-enthusiastic with my hunter instincts and ended up damaging the poor butterfly, I felt such an intense guilt that I stayed away from the bush for a number of days for fear of someone questioning what I had done to the innocent victim.

I look down and watch my feet as I walk, contemplating the ground beneath me. My shoes beat out a rhythmic pace between the lines of the paving stones. Don’t stand on the cracks in the pavements or the bears will come and eat you. I smile to myself as I remember all the myths of childhood. All the made up rules and stories that at the time seemed so powerful and imperative, that if broken would certainly have led to darkness and despair. All the intoxicating fairytales that must build so much of our character at such an early stage. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with adulthood. Maybe we just lose the ability to dream with the potency of childhood. With time, the illusion and enchantment that envelops our childish minds fades and erodes, wearing away as we are worn by the worries of society. I suddenly feel a longing for the innocence of childhood. I wish, for a moment, so strongly, to go back to the carefree naivety of youth, to the times where daydreams could last for hours and the monsters were all under the bed, not out in the streets. Instead, I look up and return to the limbo between childhood and adulthood. To the final embers of dreaming and the dawning promise of responsibility.

I decide that I will head in the direction of the coast and sit for a while on the beach. I have lived by the sea all my life but only recently has it occurred to me how much this is taken for granted. I made a pact with myself that I would make more of my surroundings. The day is warm and the relentless sun grins down on me as I ramble along, my t-shirt clinging to my back. I turn onto the promenade and pause for a moment, looking out to the shoreline. The sea is out, laying bare great expanses of sand and shoals of pebbles. I can make out the line of the sea in the distance. The beach is empty, save the occasional dog-walker, and I feel a twinge of tranquillity. There is something very restful and reassuring about the seaside: the inevitability of the waves; the cadence of the water on the shore; the languid, indolent draw and fall of the surf. I amble down the concrete steps that lead to the beach and meander my way out to the sea, finding an unspoilt stretch of sand, and sit down to reflect on my environment.

I feel the urge to be barefoot, and so remove my shoes and socks, placing my feet carefully on the sand. Although I enjoy the seaside, I have never had much of a fondness for sand. It ingratiates itself in far too many places, it dries and scours. Today, however, it is pleasantly cool on the soles of my feet and I dig my toes into the unspoilt patch, destroying the calm and collected surface with ridges and dips. The philosophical implications of sand, too, worry me; a substance made up of millions of years of waste, the gradual destruction of larger beings into insignificant, diminutive parts. And yet together, such parts can form such great expanses of land, dunes and deserts made up of broken-down history. An allegory for ourselves maybe? Our society, made up of the remnants of everything that went before.

There is a pleasant breeze here, closer to the water, and I lean my head back as it runs over my face and through my hair. The beach is deserted and it feels like this slice of the world belongs to me, almost. It is here for me only, private, isolated. A seagull drops and swoops through the sky, caught upon drafts of air. It hovers uncertainly, for a few seconds at a time, then descends and floats once more, suspended as a puppet in mid-air. It strikes me, for a moment, how definite the horizon looks. The solid, grey line of the sea is separated with such certainty from the sapphire firmament. Two distinct worlds, the heavens and the deeps. I wonder at what point the pasture before me decides that it is no longer sea and instead belongs to the sky. What causes the divide between the two? What is to stop the sea from jumping up and claiming the particles above it, so that the horizon switches from a still, flat line to great, bounding curves, with peaks and troughs reminiscent of mountain ranges? Of course, I know exactly what it is that stops this from happening; it is simply the way things are. It’s what has to be. The sea has to stay as the sea, and the sky has to stay as the sky, otherwise things wouldn’t work.

I imagined as a child that the great, rolling waves contained a multitude of fantastical creations and wonders to be discovered. Pirate ships with tattered flags, mermaids whose hair flowed in golden streams, whales that could swallow you up in a single gulp, secret islands that appeared magically, vast monsters with countless tentacles and undesirable limbs, all waiting to carry the unsuspecting bystander away on mystical adventures and death-defying quests. This composed, unruffled plain in front of me seems far from the misty depths of my infancy. There is little mystery or promise and instead the vista in front of me lays its secrets open and bare, offering only calm and stillness, and the reliable, unavoidable roll of the waves. Half of me wishes for the unexpected wonder of my youthful dreamings, whilst the other half feels the comfort of constancy and regularity.

I speculate where I would end up if I sailed away on the tides. To which kingdom would I drift, guided by the indigo currents beneath me? There is something inherently attractive about the thought of floating away from the mundane, leaving behind the manacles of responsibility and expectation, even if only for a short time. To be free of accountability, to be free to play in the inventions of the mind. Always, though, as regular as the tide, there would be the inevitable pull back towards the humdrum of the everyday. The sunlight glitters off the water in shards, glinting white on the crests of ripples. Light dances over the surface and I wonder what the creatures beneath make of the patterns that play above their heads, carefree and radiant. The northern lights of the depths, skipping across the oceans in a daily loop. I wish I could dive down and see for myself, feel the cool of the water across my skin, enveloping me in an sapphire haze. Something tells me it is time to leave, though, and the deeps must lay undiscovered until another day.

Sighing, I heave myself up and brush away the sand from my clothes. I stretch my hands into the air then, shoes in hand, turn and drift towards the promenade. My concentration is occupied navigating the many clutches of stones that threaten my naked soles. I make it to the concrete boulevard at the top of the beach and sit down to brush the remaining beach from my feet. Doubtless, despite my best efforts to the contrary, there will be grains remaining in my shoes and socks and various other orifices for a number of days. The ground beneath my soles is warm, having absorbed the infectious rays of the sun. After I have made myself as respectable as possible once again, I set off walking at an even pace. I pass the battered ice cream stall which, at the height of summer, is swarmed by hordes of children wanting raspberry sauce and sprinkles. Today, it appears strangely lonely in the geniality of the sun. A mother approaches, seeming to have given in to her toddler’s demands. She buys an ice-cream cone with a majestic flake to appease the child and places it in his hands while she busies herself with the contents of her handbag. The toddler proceeds to drop his ice-cream, flake and all to the concrete. His mother turns back to the scene and sighs in frustration, beginning a tirade which goes unheard, the boy being distracted by the seagull that is attempting to carry off the cone. He giggles and points as his mother pulls his hand and drags him away.

The sun has risen high above me and my shadow is reduced to a mere smudge at my feet. Anonymous lawns and clipped hedges pass me by in a daze. It feels almost as if I am standing still whilst the world moves beneath me. I simply move my feet in the right places, the sphere of the earth acting like a treadmill. I am helplessly moving forward in whichever direction I am guided. There is a strange comfort in that thought; that everything is already taken care of and all I have to do is go where I’m guided. Eventually I will end up in the right place, regardless of the route.

To my right, an elderly lady is pottering her garden, tending to the beds and uprooting weeds. It’s a garden which has been filled with care and attention; every blossom and leaf looks nourished and content. Roses dominate the beds, with huge, lolling petals in pastel shades of pink, cream and yellow. My eye is caught by a huge white rose which lounges over the fence in a recklessly beautiful pose. Right now, its bloom is at its peak, full and luxurious, pale petals folding in on each other for an eternity. This time next week, though, it will have drooped, browning at the edges and dying in a most undignified manner. I frown as I pass, remembering a piece of art I saw in a gallery once; the artist had engulfed a flower head in silicone. It was trapped, frozen out of the reach of time and the forces of nature, suspended in its prime forever. It strikes me as sad, somehow, poignant and ironic, that something could be trapped in its own beauty.

I turn a corner and a huge, regal and grandiose willow tree catches my eye from the garden of a house on my path. Its somnolent branches recline from a wan trunk, hanging insolently in the air. The pallid leaves drape halfway between the skies and the ground… when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down. The languorous tears of a gracious tree, refusing to make the final leap and fall to the ground, halted elegantly in mid-air. I remember as a child the games me and my sisters would play, running in and out of the amiable branches of the willow tree that presided over a corner of our garden. The willow had a mystical quality to it, as if underneath its shade there were magical worlds waiting to be discovered. For hours each summer, we would occupy ourselves in the gloom of the ashen branches, until one summer when my sisters were too old for play. The mystery and wonder were not as potent with nobody to share them with, and so I abandoned the tree and it grew, pale and poised, alone in the garden until we moved. Old-man willow leans sleepily towards me as I pass, and in its whisperings I can almost make out promises of eternity, timeless oaths.

I drift in and out of my own thoughts as my feet meander and wind beneath me, pounding out their own quiet cadence on the grey concrete. Before I realise it, I find myself home once more. The sun has begun to lower in the sky and its glow clips the top of the house as I stand, staring up at its façade. The dark, absent eyes of the windows; the worn, rusted crimson of the bricks; the cold, grey slate of the roof. Strange, that we should take such an impersonal pile of objects to call our home. Strange, how much can be hidden behind bricks and mortar. This house has held generation upon generation of people, families (sisters, fathers, mothers, brothers) who must all have taken it to be their own. A place that belonged to them. Sometimes, on cold, quiet nights, the house relives its days and the echoes of the lives it has lived can be heard rattling up and down the staircase, chattering through the kitchen or thundering about the hallway. Who, then, does our home really belong to? Perhaps in the end, the house simply belongs to itself, left standing long after its occupants are not. In the end, perhaps, my family, too, will be only a memory, ghostly laughter or eerie knocks left to play about on cold, quiet nights. If walls could talk… would they share their secrets, or keep them, only memories? My eyes follow the twisted, curling vines of ivy that entangle themselves round the drainpipe and crawl, clinging, up and across the walls. The ivy is almost a part of the house. It reminds me of our lives; the endless weaving and knotting of people, time, memory, hopes and dreams, the possibilities that were never realised, chance and fate, which grows over the bricks and mortar of our lifetime, obscuring what we were to begin with whilst becoming another part of ourselves.

The shadows have begun to grow around my feet as I stand ruminating on the philosophy of bricks and mortar. The air has become still, dry and oppressive. Sunlight scrutinizes my back while I sigh and look up at the hazy sky. My hand meanders to my pocket, gently grasping my key and I drift towards the doorway. I smile to myself as the lock turns, thinking of my secret excursion. The door opens softly. I turn back as I close the door, looking out on a world that will have changed in so many unknown ways by the next time I look upon it. The certainty of uncertainty. I smile again and the door rests with a small thud.