Innocence is ignorance
28 February, 2008
There really is nothing new you can say. I think you know
it’s true. When you slip the harem of wall-to-wall
entertainment, running barefoot down the road, you realise
that the dust-blown streets are empty, but everything is
familiar. It is a colour-drained version of everything you
have ever known.
You think you can find it. You twist and turn in the wind,
the sunlight playing off your dirty hands, holding them up
to flow demon shadows on the ground. You push at the trees,
the buildings, kicking up sand in the play pit. Try the
swings, squeezing your hips into the tiny seat, ignoring
the pain as you fly back and forth. It is all cold. The
breeze on your arm that you never felt, the metal taking
the warmth away, the scratching of the floor on your feet,
the grit in your eye. The dark cloud heralding the end of
the day. Don’t go home. Don’t leave yourself behind.
Innocence is ignorance. But repeat the mantra, drink the
water. Herbal tea and organic veg. You cannot catch the
butterfly. It is beyond the grasp of your mechanical hand,
so slow and clunky. Get drunk, aim for the narrow gap
between sobriety and intoxication. Slip your shoulders,
tilt your head. There is a path in, an eighth of an inch.
Can you hear it? The tiny voice. Wait………….No, it’s gone.
Are you sure it was there?
I am tempted by your wishful thinking. It makes me feel
like a dreamer. Actually, I think I saw you. Walking the
cracked street, a bag in your hand. I like the way the
sunlight played in your hair. You were a picture, a
perfection of art over triumph. But I couldn’t get close.
You were too far away, you would have been gone by the time
I arrived.
Perhaps I am cynical. Don’t believe a word I say. Try to
play the tricks of light and find the alleyways that lead
out of here. There must be a way, you can tell yourself. I
really don’t mind. A path to the original, the fresh, the
new. I wish you luck.