monoculture

I have narrowed my options. I have become monochromatic. Mono as opposed to stereo. Mono as in homogeneous, monogamous, monotonous. I have lost my ability to play, slowly, over years. And now, with the last few weeks and months behind me I have grown suddenly old. I am an adult now with adult concerns. I am stern faced. Sadness, filled with sad, and sad-encrusted. I look at the Tim Tams in the fridge (I will never again eat a Tim Tam) and I see the three layers of monotonous melancholy and I know that this is how I am these days now that I am an adult suddenly.

Still there is a glimmer. I have written a first part, not a chapter, but something. Better than a blank page. I have a plan to kayak in the night. I dream of rats and bats and the young boy who will accompany me, dragging him from the foetid river, almost unseating myself in the process. Maybe there is still some life in the old girl yet. I do not have the clean bite of a young grape but I have a more complex flavour. Peach, a hint of fruit, the ferment of years, but tempered by this new thing, a sting in the palate. And all this will make the writing more complex eventually, although I must apologise for the dross that has filled this blog of late, the self-pity, the self-harm, the self.

I do not know myself anymore. I am someone new. I thought perhaps I did not like her, but she has a subtle aftertaste and maybe it is just unfamiliarity that taints her, this new me. I have only known her in sadness, bleached to a watercolour wash by tears. When they are dry the picture will begin to emerge. She has layers, she has subtext. Perhaps this is what was missing all along.