Strange isn’t it, how the discontent arrives uninvited when all is well, and you have finally settled down?
And as the brain expands and the throat constricts, the hips go out in arthritic sympathy.
I had planned at this stage of a well read and mistake riddled, long life I would be beyond this pain, but I am not and that hurts more because the knowledge of my ignorance strums louder in a body of bones I cannot control.
‘Lack of control is the challenge’ a little voice reminds me in the recesses of a wiser mind conveniently closed.
So, the regret rattles like pebbles caught in a lawn mower’s catcher.
Tick, tock, tack it goes.
Over and over.
Round and round.
Chipping away at the resolve I loosely held, my courage thrown into a battered bin with the grass clippings.
Refuse is a camouflage for regret.
Always has.
Always will.
And it is comforting to wallow in the rubbish until a used Band-Aid gets stuck on your face.
It is hard to be taken seriously when you look like a disgruntled, dirty clown.
Who needs another earnest face when the world is a joke?
Time to pivot, so I turn on the TV and get accosted by the evangelists trumpeting victory at COP28.
Strange isn’t it that the ever growing, graduating class of COP28 does not realize how self-righteous and entitled they look in their chambre shirts and badly polished RM Williams boots?
Just throw in a few polo ponies and crates of French champagne and they appear just like the colonialists they so vehemently rally against.
Shiny, eco-friendly convention halls and a stirring plenary do not hide the fact that history repeats.
Well intentioned missionaries come in many destructive guises and every religion morphs into misguided faith.
Academia or scripture is just passion masking ego.
Always has.
Always will.
Off goes the TV and on goes regret.
Yes, I’m still tightly bound by images invented in a boyhood I thought my manhood had shattered into pieces but even the oldest jigsaw puzzle can still be put back together.
In the end we are all just children in an adult body trying to justify our worth and the harder we try the less relevant we become.
Words mean nothing once they hit the air, so I pat the dog and take him outside for a walk and turn my face to the Sydney sun.
I always find a quiet land paved with convict stones and my loudly branded sneakers squeak to the echo of another colonial lad and I accept the fact that I am not that important.
Strange isn’t it, the discomfort has gone, and the Dubai heroes become cartoon kids playing with Barbie dolls and Tonka trucks.
