dribbling thoughts

A young professional enters the Viaduct. Loud pulsating music accompanied by taut slim bodies on the dance floor. Fountains of beer, liquor release the tension of the working week. His male pheromones mix with the sweat scented curves of a particular leggy blonde. Touch becomes the language of the lonely. The universal expression of the crowd swallows the couple. At the other end of the city, a young man sits on the edge of the bridge. He stands. The voices continue their endless pursuit. He has no where to hide. His neighbours spread vicious rumours of him being a paedophile. He can hear them, even now, miles away from the neighbourhood. Street signs warn pedestrians that he is on leave from the hospital. Doctors tell him he’s getting better. Nurses tell him to stop drug seeking. He does not speak the language of this world. He jumps. In 2 bedroom brick unit, a woman turns on the computer. She logs onto “trademe”. She types “for sale, baby’s boots, never worn*”. In the trendy suburb of Mount Eden, a group of young Christians sits around a café. They talk and laugh. Each speak of their experience of what God had done in their lives this week. Many mini sermons are exchanged but no one actually heard. Words are exchanged but no feelings shared. All superficialities of care conveyed but do any of them actually know each other? He stretches out his wrinkled sun kissed hand, searching for the strangely unfamiliar chubby arm of a likely foreigner. Muffled sounds of a foreign tongue drift into his deaf ears. He follows the guide of the hand and stands up. He does not know where he is, not that it matters very much to him anyway. He has been fed strangely tasteless mush which stopped his stomach growling. He sometimes descends into an whirlwind of fear, for he cannot find the life he had led amongst his memories anymore. In a time where aging is forbidden, he is now obsolete. Each event is unrelated linked only by the neuronal activity of a particular psychiatric registrar. It is strange how invisible sodium ions jumping in, potassium flowing out of a piece of fatty membrane, generated this passage. Everything has changed. Nothing is different. “Really?” “Really.” Really.