Message from a roller-skating van man travelling inter-dimensionally

Yesterday's date contained the numbers 12345.  I noticed as I was drifting off to sleep and thinking it was after midnight, I actually thought it was todays date. On a day like that you have to have an interesting experience, it's mandatory.

It happened while walking down the road today. I was thinking as I normally do about random things and this time I began to drift into a memory of when I used to take my sister ice-skating. We had to take two busses, and I being the older was now proud custodian of our mother's beautiful white skates which she wore while being courted by my Dad. These same skates also co-starred in a recurring dream I used to have as a child. My sister is seven years my junior so I liked to do fun things with her when I was allowed.  While I was mentally skating down the cigarette-butt lined concrete paths on the way to get my weekly groceries, my mind suddenly switched to the fun I used to have at a roller-disco with my first boyfriend. Suddenly a van took a left in front of me and turned into the car park which I was approaching, mentally on roller-skates. On the side of the dark green van were written in large white letters - ROLLER-SKATING. I gasped. Was this a coincidence or was this something bigger? I had not thought about roller-skating for many years.
So I hid behind a post and waited to see if the van driver's appearance could give any clues and I was eager to tell someone about what had just happened, but thought better of it.
He came towards the shop smiling, (people rarely smile around here) and went to get himself a trolly. I went inside and began my shopping. The van driver vanished, but the van was still there when I came out. By that time, in the chaos such places render to my mind, I had almost forgotten the incident had happened.

The questions that bug me are these.
Was my mind playing tricks?  First came the thought then out of nowhere comes the visual in the form of a solid. Did my mind conjure this image? Was the image real, or imagined? I did not touch the van and I did not touch the man, and I did not verify the existence with anyone else.

The thought I prefer to think on the topic is that there was someone in another dimension trying to tell me something important or maybe no so important. I know this much though: I spent a lot of the early impressionable watching Dr Who in front of our old two-station black and white TV.

I sure as hell don't know...

...that's for sure
who can remember everything
I can if I try, but I prefer not to


                                              Ban Bullfighting, it's a cruel and evil sport

 

They were both Taurus, the reason I came into the world.
There was a poster in the kitchen something like this only more arty
Did it subliminally destroy their marriage?
I can only ever wonder, because I know I'll never know

 

Ist day of spring

did you hear the cuckoo and did you hear the sound
of rustling nest and baby birds falling to the ground?
did you hear the silence of what will never be
can you hear the lonely wings flapping in its tree
can you hear the leaf fall, rocking to the ground
don't you know love lives forever without making a sound

 Fiocle today

I spent a lot of my childhood in the country-side and there were many myths or sayings which
involved birds. One of them was that spring hadn't started until you heard the sound of the cuckoo,a simple sound which is almost onomatopoeic - I'd have spelled it Cookoo to be more precise.
The Cuckoo is unique in one respect. She lays her eggs in the nests of other birds who hatch and feed the chicklet. Before I had not had the maturity of thought, orthe time, to wonder why this bird behaves this way. If you think about it is extraordinary behaviour among all strange natural behaviours, which raise so many questions. But why should I be surprised?  Humans have been doing it for centuries. Giving birth to a baby and then telling themselves they can't look after it and giving it away for adoption. Why not the cuckoo too? In the secret language between birds does the cuckoo agree terms and conditions with the surrogate parents. Do they get anything in exchange? Nobody knows what goes on Birdworld. I certainly don't claim to and thus this mystery remains just that.







 

Just a poem

I look for letters that have never been written
I wait for friends who will never call
I beg forgiveness for sins uncommitted
I reach for your weak hand when I fall
I listen for your voice on the phone
All I get is the dialling tone

If I was Robinson Crusoe at least I would have something to do, so.
A beast to trap or a palace to build, with no one around to send me ill-will
but I have the clothes upon my back and an animal trap,
because I continue to work to the bone, to make myself some shack of a home,
till the day when I will no longer be alone

But here, it's all words and games, running in my mind with names
of those who have gone before, and those who are here who are here no more
and those who may run in through this open door, of those I cannot be too sure.

Part two (reversi)

I write letters that I never send
I have friends who I never call on
I forgive your sins committed
I reject your strong hand when I'm up
I plug my ears when I hear your voice on the phone
There is no dialling tone

I'm not Robinsoe Crusoe, therefore I have nothing to do, no
No beast to trap nor palace to build, with someone about to give me a thrill
yet I have no clothes upon my back, no animal trap
I don't work myself to the bone, nor make myself some shack of a home
til the night when I will be alone

But there it's all silence and stillness, outside nameless time
of these who are yet to come, and those who are still here
and thee who walked out of this open door, of that I can be sure






 

It's International Women's Day today and unlike Valentine's Day and other "card days" I think this one is important.

I knew this woman who had been accused of many things.

- hating men because she needed to defend herself from attack
- of being a racist because her attacker was a different race
- of being a slut because she was attractive
- of being a precocious child into causing someone to want to try and groom her for child sex
- punished for walking away from the situation - told that if she said anything she would never see her family again
- abandoned by her parents at a young age
- yelled at, ignored, lied about, lied to..... need I go on?

I asked her - Do you think any of these things would have happened to you if you had been a boy?
Her reply - Maybe so, I don't know.

I am sure there are many boys who have been treated equally as badly by women, and I don't think there should be a gender stereo-typing about abuse. Also this is the perfect opportunity to say that this woman who has been through the mill in her life, should be a bag of flour by now - but she isn't and here's why:

She felt empowered by others. This empowerment gave her back her courage. A part of this empowerment came from the society she lived in.
A society where a woman had social freedoms. A society of women who had fought for equal rights with men.

This is one reason why International Women's Day is important.