With the early autumn sun shining down from the almost
cloudless sky, the strong wind gusting and taunting the now dry washing on the
clothes-line, the act of removing the pegs, releasing the clothes and throwing
both into the washing basket was more of a reflex, instinctual motion rather
than an active and conscious action.
Click, click….whoomp….click,
click….whoomp….click, click…..whoomp…
His mind was somewhere in the ether, only a quantum jump
from cyber-space, he might have suspected, had he been bothered to contemplate
it in the first instance. And like the eddying, random gusts of wind that
tugged and whipped at the ever decreasing number of items on the clothes-line,
so too were his thoughts: unanchored, random, tangible and yet nothing.
Click, click….whoomp….click,
click…..whoomp….click, click….whoomp…
As the line grew lighter and the laundered materials in the
basket grew higher, a roar from high above managed to penetrate the almost
impregnable walls of concentrated void that filled his mind, and touched upon
his consciousness, returning him to the here and now of his current perception
of reality.
He looked up.
It took only a few seconds before his eyes locked in on the
aeroplane that was gracefully, almost elegantly, circling away from the not too
distant airport. Its passage gave rise to the notion that it ran on a well
lubricated rail, held suspended by gossamer thin, yet resiliently strong
threads, up there in the air, over his head, amongst the lightly scattered
clouds. For an instant, he was up there, seated in the great metal tube, his
forehead pressed to the window, gazing at the bitumen-stitched patchwork of
suburbia below, thankful that he was on the move once again, traveling once more
to another somewhere.
As quickly as the buoyancy of his imagination had him
rapidly ascending into the atmosphere, the gravity of his reality slapped him
in the face and back to his earthly shackle in the form of a t-shirt, flapping,
cajoling reminding him of where he really was. For a moment he breathed deeply,
savouring the freshness of the wind dried material; it’s naturally acquired
solar warmth…..but only for a moment. As he finished gathering in his washing,
collecting the pegs and lifting the basket from the ground, another plane,
further in the distance, on approach this time, briefly caught his attention,
but failed to hold it.
Making his way inside, taking each laborious step one at a
time, to his first floor flat, he considered the his longing for flight, for
travel, for motion. While there was no denying that he derived immense pleasure
and satisfaction in arriving at new destinations and exploring them, alone or
with a local ‘connection’ made through the internet, he couldn’t deny that the
process and thrill of leaving and returning (so long as he got to leave again),
also sent a shiver of excitement through him. As he inserted the key to his door and
crossed the threshold, he acknowledged it was the escape from his reality that
he truly enjoyed the most.
He swung the door closed behind him…….and was swallowed,
once more, by the void of his life.
