Going home or, more accurately, travelling from your home to a place you used to call home years ago drowns you in familiar dislocation. Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep or the fact that these journeys so often start in the soft hours before dawn that heightens our sensitivity to the weird. Either way, you feel like an interloper in a land where time, unlike your memories, has ticked on.
Bypasses plough their economically booming furrow through the land. New buildings thrive in the displaced earth on either side. That’s what it said on the slideware so it must be true, right? I wonder what happens when there’s nothing left to bypass.
Didn’t so and so used to live there? Next to the roundabout? Wait…was there a roundabout there before?
The memories are not just of objects and places and people but of lifestyle. Life stage. These are the things we knew BC โ Before Children โ or at least for the most part. Back when we were younger. Back when there was so much time you could stuff great handfuls of lost minutes into your face, gluttonously chewing away the hours you’ll never get back.
Lost passages in a book that always moves forward. Sure, you can riffle through the pages of the past but the words are scattered. Indistinct. The meaning hazy and smudged like old ink. Eventually you reach the point where the current chapter settles into an endless, formulaic read. The narrative is stripped down to the basics. Rise, exercise, work, interact, eat, sleep, repeat. Orderly and familiar. Comfortable monotony โ is this secretly what we all want? Is that what we want to think about, to read about? Or is this, perhaps, why magic still holds true somewhere in our buried imaginations?
Before you fall pregnant you dream about gender, personality, looks, skills. You fool yourself that being pregnant is a couple thing and that somehow the load is evenly shared. Before they arrive you dream of ten fingers, ten toes and a heartbeat. Right now if I can dream of anything I dream that their life revolves around their passions.
I dream that their chapters are so much more than a collection of moments.
Gentle and melancholy and really lovely.
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Thanks Diane – it was nice to finally get some words down again ๐
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A great piece of writing Nik.
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Thanks Esther ๐ I scribbled some of this in my notepad on a flight back from Joburg a little while back and I’d forgotten about it. Was nice to be able to revisit it and tweak it a bit after the recent trip to Wales.
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‘drowns you in familiar dislocation’ Man, I have never read such a perfect description of that, who moved the furniture while I was out, feeling.
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You know that moment when someone picks out a line you agonized over for a while and were still unsure of right up until you clicked the post button…? Thanks for that – made it all worthwhile ๐
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I do know ๐
I’ve moved back to the place I grew up in. Sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming and my brain has got the scenery wrong. I’m gonna have, drowning in familiar dislocation, printed on a T Shirt.
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Sign me up for one if you can get bulk discount ๐
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No, no, I’m fine. I’ve just got something in my eye.
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It’s a bugger when that happens pal
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Some beautiful writing Nik. Gosh, I remember those glorious BC days when you could stay in bed half the day watching box sets just wasting time away… but I’d do it again I tell you! I don’t miss those days though. It’s great when you’ve been up for hours and got loads done then you realise it’s only 9.30am…!
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Thanks Becky – yeah I have to agree with you that I’d do it all again but that I don’t miss it either! Just wish I’d realized back then that I might one day like to write a novel as I had the time for it then!! Thanks for reading and glad you enjoyed the writing – just snuck in before my end of July deadline ๐
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Yes I wish I’d thought to take up writing earliertoo, instead of just assuming it was something I couldn’t do
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Oops hit reply too soon, meant to say at least we are still in our 30s/40s and not 70s, so plenty of time to write the bestseller!
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This is very true! Although I have to say it would be nice to have it done before I hit 50 hehe ๐
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Lovely โค
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Much like the person who made the comment – thanks Noel ๐
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What a gorgeous piece of writing, Nik! I remember the lost BC days well, and I love this line,
“…handfuls of lost minutes into your face, gluttonously chewing away the hours youโll never get back…”
Welcome back, Nik.
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Good to be back ๐ Thanks for the lovely comment – great to hear from you as always and very glad you enjoyed the piece.
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I’m melting. Love the ending prose. I’m going to hug my girls right now!
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Sounds like a good plan! Thanks Mel – glad you enjoyed this one ๐
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