City Sighs
A gossamer rain, soft like a lover’s breath, drifted like snow in the still air — insubstantial as a long lost love’s kiss.
Some day, I might pen something to follow that. Don’t hold your breath though¹. If it’s the start of something then it’s a long something I’ll almost certainly never get around to because I have absolutely no idea what comes next or why; and if it’s the start of some element (a chapter, or the next bit in one²) in the middle then the same applies — I have no idea what went before or what will come after.
Which is why I haven’t done anything with it since I first wrote it, standing outside, watching the rain drift delicately under the streetlamp — you’d do better to hope that someone like Aura steals it from me and does something useful with it.
Anyway …
Another thing I thought of one day, as I was walking along somewhere⁵ was how, when I was very little, we’d visit my grandmother sometimes (like Christmas or Easter) and spend a couple of days, so, I’d end up sleeping on a camp-bed (I think⁶) in the living/sitting room. She lived in a block of flats, quite high up, so the accoustics were good — you heard sounds from further away than you could down below, surrounded by the hubub of city life.
Even longer ago than that, I was re-watching Funeral In Berlin⁷ and there was a scene in it in which a car drives slowly through the empty streets of London and I thought to myself “Fuck off … the roads are never that empty — not even on a Sunday,” only to recall that, when I was a kid, they were. Not many people had cars in those days; they were a luxury item and prohibitively expensive. My father, unusually for someone of his socioeconomic standing at the time, had a car … one with a large boot/trunk that swung open upwards and we kids (family and friends) would pile in for the journey — three or four in the back seat and two of us (three at a pinch) in the boot/trunk. So, the roads were empty back then — there weren’t many cars to begin with and those there were were often carpools of necessity rather than ideoecological conviction.
Anyway … late at night, at my grandmother’s, when the city was abed but for a rare few nocturnal travellers on their way home in taxis, from pubs/bars/clubs/parties/somewhere, I’d hear the faint sounds of lone vehicles wending their way along the rainy roads … maybe crossing a remote crossroads or, perhaps, pulling away from a faraway traffic junction … echoing softly down the streets.
The sound was velvety and comforting; a gentle brown noise with the softest of sizzles … like the hiss of the surf in its last drawing back into the next wave on a beach … dampened by distance and the surrounding buildings — a reassurance that, whilst the World might be asleep, it wasn’t dead.
I miss that sound. The world is too busy these days … too many people, too many vehicles, too much noise; a never-ending urban orgasm with no time for post climax bliss, 24-hour lifestyles leave no room for quiet moments in which the city may whisper to us anymore — her pillow-talk muffled into silence, she has no sleepily murmured sweet nothings for us nowadays.
I miss the soothing susurrus of her breathing whilst she sleeps.
Again, this is something I was thinking about a long time ago now but then promptly forgot about ‘midst the charivari of Life. I was put in mind of it again today though as I discovered Aura’s piece Fragile Little Bubble — which you should read (it’s really quite beautiful)⁸.
—
¹ I’m not.
² You know … the one that comes after a big space between the previous chunk of text and the next³.
³ Possibly with some dividing characters⁴.
⁴ Like this …
… but that might only be in olden days books — can’t remember when I last saw anything other than simply a big space.
⁵ I forget where now … or why … but it isn’t important.
⁶ I was very little, so my memory is a bit hazy on the detail.
⁷ Which you should watch too — it’s excellent … one of the best ‘spy’ movies ever made.
⁸ I think Dennett in particular might quite like it.
