I must have known at some point that all
this inward journeying, all this abstract introspection, would have to lead me
back here, to the pampered confines of my middle-class existence, ravishing
and admonishing the treat of normalcy and routine from which I feed life back
into my exhaustion. Even now I’m not sure it will ever be enough to return the
vitality once had, the energy and optimism of youth, that immense sense of
possibility born from the inner labyrinth of ignorance.
Playfulness is no longer an act, but a
secret memory.
Yet I hold out hope that maybe the night
will revel itself to be young again and the dawn will wink its shimmery eye at
me from that distant horizon and speak its promises. In these hollow empty
streets, lit up from the inside by dozens of neon razors, I might find myself
welcome once again, find an autumn air which is not yet ice inside my nostrils and breathe it
with zealously and compassion. Rediscover that old familiar sound, the crunch
of grit in the heart of the city, a city with no bounds, no confines, only
roadblocks of ambition and bravado. Nights alight in the cold stone
whitewash of the moon. Edinburgh, London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Dubai, Sydney, Tokyo;
once the siren songs of the twisted mind of an adolescent girl in
conflict with the sanctum of her windowless soul. A girl dared to tread a
million miles, through a million hills and down again to find out the meaning
of it all. There is no amount of gold or riches, love or power in the world which rivals
the need for a journey written into the heart of a child. A child who fighting for the will to
speak in for a world which turns inside her in all the emotional hues of the
greatest symphony. It was a desire to see greatness in grit, joy in fear,
and the meaning in struggle. To bear witness to the god that sighed oceans of tepid coloured
rain clouds into her mind. To understand the perfection of the imperfections that weave the web of serendipity. Which is to say, it was to know
oneself. To feed on the caress of your own past and spit the ashes of old
selves into the fiery eye of the setting sun.
To believe once again that you
can and should live, boldly, unashamedly and for the sheer inexcusable pleasure of it.
Simply because,
that is what we do.
