TIMEezine at l'atelier bonita
established since december 2002
ONCE
UPON a
TIME
ezine at l'atelier bonita
established since december 2002
|
Sitting on the train....
by Paul White Sitting on the train back to Penn I find myself thinking. My father's work-bag. Square, heavy, mysterious. The tools of his trade. A magic kit, weighty, worthy, unknown. No childish hands could penetrate the buckles and straps. I was too young for the hermetic secrets sealed within. A few stray glimpses of the contents captivated me, fetishes held and Worshipped and wondered over. Like the Small green notebooks he always used. Hard-covered and Lightly ruled, and filled with his tiny condensed hand. And to this day I wonder what he wrote in this script of his. Diaries or musings? Ideas or wordplay? Observations to pass the long dark hours. As a child I wrote obsessively so I never thought it strage. Indeed, I still find myself confused by adults who don't carry notebooks. He had torches too. A green one and a red one. Square, functional and ancient. Solid metal, with carrying handles. The magic of coloured lights. Shining like love in the dirty tunnels. A spark of life in the choking roaring gloaming. Other things too. A small, slim old-fashioned flask. It was smoky-blue and had a metal cap. Portable radio, small for the time. His driver's hat, Peaked and important. An enigmatic set Of metal tools, like the magic keys from My fantasy books. All strange shapes and unknown uses. I now know them to be keys to tool-boxes and storage bins. But the mystery Of keys endures. I cannot ignore a lost key in the street, or the bottom of drawers. What else? Memory fails. I decode my life's intricacies through One child's obsession with his father's roundeled bag. Saturday, March 12, 2005 ©2005 Paul White _______________ Paul White is a Londoner by inclination, but will sit around and people watch anywhere in the world. When not writing he is putting the world to rights from his favourite bar stool or trying to make people listen to his new records. Some of his poetry and prose can be found on his blog. Being a literature and philosophy graduate, he is quite naturally unemployed. |
ONCE
UPON
a TIME
ezine at l'atelier bonita
established
since december 2002