back to neverneverland

Maybe the lack of April showers is letting our minds grow dusty - but there seems to be a lot of people suffering from the Tinkerbell Effect at the moment. Don’t laugh, its real, it must be because it even has a Wikipedia entry. Albeit a slender one - defining it as ‘those things that exist only because people believe in them’.

And its all around me. Its there when she says she wont throw it away, because it once meant so much - a souvenir from another day. Even though he said it tarnished long ago - and anyway, he always preferred the pea-green boat to the runcible spoon. A fairy tale postcard brought home from a pick and mix honeymoon.

Its there when he says he has seen the future. An amateur fortune teller with a mirrorball. And so she walks in the direction of his pointed finger - out onto the water - despite the holes in her feet where the rusty nails went in. And she still believes the only way is up when there is so far to fall, because there’s no choice when the autumn leaves don’t return your call.

adrift in a world of my own

I always wear the wrong costume. When I am meant to be playing the part of the philosopher - having pulled that dusty cloak from the fancy dress box - I get weighed down by my concrete boots. And when I am quill in hand pretending to be the poet, I am adorned in an array of abstract feathers.

So earlier this week, I sat down to write about bridges. Wanting to wield words to build solid sentences. To show others the bridges I have seen and the streams I have crossed. But as ever I drifted away on an abstract tide - always headed for the sea.

I thought about the postcard I had as a child - an elongated image of the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking like the land at the end of the rainbow, before I realised that the only place a rainbow leads is round the bend. I thought about bridges built of hopes and fears - wasted wishes scribbled onto faded playing cards. I thought of you stood high and mighty, casting off your shadow to walk lighter into another future, further into an unwritten past. I thought about fish tanks and river banks and Winnie-the-Pooh. I thought about two of her and two of him and only ever one of me.

mixing memory and desire

Last week she gave me flowers. She knows the power of the petal to brush away the clouds that can gather in a week where everyday is everyday.

Amid the crush of carnations and chrysanthemums stood three gerbera. Proud to be lifted straight from a childs painting of the perfect flower. Burning bright with innate vividity (if its not a word then it should be).

But within two days two had drooped. Bowed down and stooped under their own weight. But not a weight of grammes or eighths of ounces - a weight of colour. Over saturated by the depth of their own orange nature.

And once again I learn a lesson from the quietest voices. That some people live gerbera lives. Doomed to demand attention, to strike the eye or the mind. To bloom bright but to fade fast. To fall to the floor too soon, too soon - before you even left the room.