My Life in the Slow Lane

Sitting on the concrete, a kind of amphitheatre, an altar to the Sea and to the tanned, hard bodies of its priests, I drink in all that is around me. I hope for some kind of moment of clarity—some moment of realisation to make sense of this dismal world—but find none.

What is this strange feeling? Is it loss, regret, fear, desolation? I sit, vainly willing the neurons in my addled brain to fire and show me what I am looking for, if only to know what that unreachable thing is, if not to be able to find it.

I watch the waves crash and break in front of me. Bronzed swimmers and their children, the high priests of the Pacific and their faithful acolytes, frolic and play. The water crashes around them, unaware even of the presence of these invading bodies. I long to be in the waves’ midst, to feel their powerful energy engulf me. I long to surrender control, to let the salty water mingle with my streaming tears, like water unto sacrificial wine at the table of the God of the Sea.

The salty air fills my nostrils with sweet nostalgia, pure and unabated, of childhood pilgrimages to the Sea, to this altar, now neglected to the plastic back rooms of my memory. I don’t know for sure what is real and what a romantic reworking of long summer afternoons at Ettalong with my grandparents and cousins. Such innocence, I realise suddenly, is truly a gift—too soon revoked by the passage of time. The sacred innocence of childhood, like the salty air, disappears, replaced instead by the false virtues of Maturity and Success.

The choir of seagulls practice their discordant hymns behind me as the faithful gather for worship in their sandy pews. Children call out to their parents, running gleefully after large, iridescent beach balls. Their parents watch, kneeling in silent prayer to the God of the Sea, sipping their lattes. I want to call out to them—“Hey, you, little boy!” I would shout. “Don’t you see? This is all that matters. Right here, right now. Do not sacrifice your innocence for success; don’t exchange it for maturity! Don’t let it go without a fight!”

As the wind licks my face, I feel the remnants a muscle spasm pull my arm taut against the flimsy material of my shirt, vying for my attention, dragging me from the subjunctive wanderings of my mind, back to the beach. This body is like a wrecked building, a temple ravaged by fire and dereliction, scaffolded only a will to survive that, I can’t argue, I possess even if I possess nothing else. The hardened fibres of my muscles pull and pinch so that I can’t get comfortable, despite cushions, drugs, even laughter, the best medicine of all.

I stand, slowly, and traipse the sand searching for something I can’t verbalise nor conceive of. I wait for it to materialise as the priests and acolytes of this bizarre Church of Skin move around me, unaware of my yearning. I turn and wander back to the bus that will take me home—unfulfilled, unsatisfied, but alive.

This came to me tonight while I was making my evening cuppa before bed. I madly scribbled it down on the shopping list on the fridge and brought it upstairs to share.

Life is strange and, at times, so so very hard.
But if you embrace the strangeness, challenge the difficulty,
perhaps you’ll find that you grow stronger,
maybe better,
and you’ll get through it with only a few minor cuts as battle scars.

I wrote this poem this morning, watching the sun rise… I don’t pretend that I’m a great poet, but I felt a profound sense of hope, a very unusal feeling given recent events. My health has suffered greatly over the last five weeks, partly because of the emotional turmoil of the betrayal and heartache, partly because I haven’t been looking after mysef, partly because I have to walk everywhere now that there is no one to drive me around. But, despite all that, I am hopeful for a better future.

Esperanza,
     como la luz de amanecer,
          sube de día en día.

Algún día, dentro de poco,
     viviré sin dolor,
          ni ninguna enfermedad.

Esto yo sé—¡SOY FUERTE!

Podría sobrevivir cualquier cosa.

(Eso espero,
     mirando la salida del sol).

The translation reads:

Hope,
     like the light of dawn,
          rises day by day.

Some day, soon,
     I’ll live without pain,
          or any illness.

This much I know—I AM STRONG!

I will be able to survive anything.

(That’s what I hope,
     watching the sunrise).

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is wrong, forgiveness;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

Oh Divine Master, grant that I may
Not so much seek to be consoled, as to console,
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying to ourselves that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.