The Kinetic Circus
"Start with your eyes when they eye me in twilight, picking up pieces of mind. Tie me up with the twine in your eyelight, string me from heaven to time."
Autumn leaves are not beautiful. Motion makes them so. The wind playing in the trees causes those ripples of colour that so attract the eye, and it is that same element that eventually plucks them free, allowing a delicate and final journey to earth. A thousand metaphors are born, and none consider the truth.
As with the leaves, so with these streets. Dawn parts the sky for light to pour slowly yet irrevocably over this bleak, urban landscape. Yesterday's purchases are today's debris, given definition by morning. Crushed metal in the gutters, garish packaging lying torn and broken, flapping vainly in the breeze. False life. No thought, no feeling. A parody. A kinetic circus for an audience of one.
A gust of wind momentarily bloats a carrier bag and scrapes it across the pavement. Polythene on stone. It's a sound that can only ever be heard against a backdrop of silence. The sound of desolation. A soundtrack to nothing. The wind, as if offended, blows harder, and the bag takes to the air. As if on cue, a lone and unseen bird begins to sing the new day.
Another grey day. An army of clouds, thick and endless, roam listlessly across the sky, denying the sun's existence with lies burnished orange and fringed with gold. The tower blocks hold formation, pointing uniformly upward in a single, sad accusation. The trees, sparse and lonely, tremble with bitter humour. The bird sings on, gaining in confidence as one voice becomes many. A concert, for precious few moments, of nihilistic beauty.
But beauty is always stolen, and we are often the thieves. An anonymous woman shouts from an open window, a distant car coughs its first breath of the day, a plane slices open the sky. There are no miracles here. Just another day.
Another grey day.
Autumn leaves are not beautiful. Motion makes them so. The wind playing in the trees causes those ripples of colour that so attract the eye, and it is that same element that eventually plucks them free, allowing a delicate and final journey to earth. A thousand metaphors are born, and none consider the truth.
As with the leaves, so with these streets. Dawn parts the sky for light to pour slowly yet irrevocably over this bleak, urban landscape. Yesterday's purchases are today's debris, given definition by morning. Crushed metal in the gutters, garish packaging lying torn and broken, flapping vainly in the breeze. False life. No thought, no feeling. A parody. A kinetic circus for an audience of one.
A gust of wind momentarily bloats a carrier bag and scrapes it across the pavement. Polythene on stone. It's a sound that can only ever be heard against a backdrop of silence. The sound of desolation. A soundtrack to nothing. The wind, as if offended, blows harder, and the bag takes to the air. As if on cue, a lone and unseen bird begins to sing the new day.
Another grey day. An army of clouds, thick and endless, roam listlessly across the sky, denying the sun's existence with lies burnished orange and fringed with gold. The tower blocks hold formation, pointing uniformly upward in a single, sad accusation. The trees, sparse and lonely, tremble with bitter humour. The bird sings on, gaining in confidence as one voice becomes many. A concert, for precious few moments, of nihilistic beauty.
But beauty is always stolen, and we are often the thieves. An anonymous woman shouts from an open window, a distant car coughs its first breath of the day, a plane slices open the sky. There are no miracles here. Just another day.
Another grey day.
posted by Michael at 2:06 PM
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