collected sign posts

It’s a terrible longing when you cannot even put a name to it. Restlessness. There is a need to be somewhere else yet strangely totally at home with myself, here, now. I lay for a long time on my unmade bed, over the disturbed quilts, thinking about nothing at all. On my tongue, names kept rolling along like a slideshow on a lollipop and they all seemed like a taste remembered but not the flavor sought.

Names are good; they are like the filing system of the brain, the single word codes to many meters of memories. Those memories are like tiny maps of time and me at a certain place and those names are the signposts, some saying don’t go there, that road is no good, others doubtful and still others, good enough campsites. Some fractions of those names belong as much to me as they belong to the namesake. I own some parts of those names, those parts which were with me and which I took away with me. I carry those names but I don’t need to or maybe I do, as signposts to me. I think there is something wrong with this. Those signposts are pointing backwards but I have to follow the road ahead.

My friend has been calling me to her city for a mini holiday and I think will go soon. I can hardly wait to see her. We always have so much fun, being silly together. Even when we talk about sad stuff, we end up laughing like a couple of pre-adolescent girls. The first time we bonded I think, was the night she slept over in my house and we talked the night through. I don’t remember what we talked about, we must have been six or seven or maybe younger but I remember my mum had laid out a bed for us in the living room and we were sharing it, sharing stuff we could tell absolutely nobody else, mighty important stuff. When we needed to turn over, we switched sides so that we could continue talking to each other, facing each other. She lives in another city. We have spent our lives visiting each other and yet we still have loads to talk about. I must add here, that there have been long spaces in between where we almost lost contact but when we met again those spaces were only just some more stuff to talk about.

I tried writing a bit of erotica today but it ended up sounding false and sort of clichéd. It was true in parts but not true enough. It is important to be true although it is so easy to lie. To steal a heart, one can lie. One can lie to build a home but neither that heart nor that home will remain happy if bought with lies…. although lies are so tempting…like detours to the goalpost. Some guiding souls will tell you when you lie but most will not. You got to watch out for your own little lies.

“This land is your land, this land is my land/ from California to the New York island.”, an old song written by somebody called Woody Guthrie, has been playing in my head, all this while, in the scratchy old voice of Mr. Bruce Springsteen tempting me to sing and all I can remember are the first two lines.