kskyhappy
New Member
Have you ever sat on a park bench and wondered, mind straying yet focused, completely detached from the human world? Perhaps mine is a conscious kind of detachment, sometimes events spiral and I get caught in them, like a sailor caught hapless in a maelstrom. Often I have felt this way, I wouldn’t say I was a passenger in life though, merely a driver without directions.
Perhaps it is more striking on this occasion, graduation day. I’m sat in a park outside the ceremonial hall dressed like Batman. Other graduates mill about giggling and laughing, here and there fellow students are led by the arm to the front of a tree, a sculpture or other landmark device to be pushed next to other members of the family or friends, there to stand smiling for prosperity. It’s worth remarking here, that this isn’t my first time, actually I wouldn’t have bothered at all but I had nothing else to do so why not?
It’s easy to drift in mind and purpose when you’re at a new junction of life. I watch a small bird hopping about here and there, picking at things too small to see, shifting through the litter. It picks up something and flies into the trees. I track it’s progress to a nest, a nest unlike all others though, it’s fashioned from crisp packets and bus passes, all woven together with drinking straws. The bird, obviously happy with its take away, starts chirping, an irritating chirp which causes a passing student to check his mobile phone.
From across the park the chirp is answered by an identical sound, then the two birds start chattering with a mixture of chirps and tweetings. I follow the sound to another tree, perched at a rather jaunty angle over looking the drinking fountain is an unlikely construction of cantilevered pizza boxes, I gaze around and see that all the trees hide nests of the most amazing constructions. Nests made from all manner of student waste. Here a bird has artistically woven only blue wrappers around a web of shattered biro casings, another has stuck to a formula of cigarette lighters. One unlikely fellow has made a parabolic tower construction using drink stirrers, padded with cotton buds and decorated with fragments from a shattered mirror.
The more I watch, the more time spent beneath this aviarian city of the trees the more I notice the traffic of the birds, hopping from tree to tree, visiting these fantastic constructions, here and there a piece is pulled out and rearranged. I continue to move from tree to tree, my craning neck aches and then I notice the quiet.
The students have dissappeared; the doors to the hall are now shut., and the posted list includes my name “Richard C Tate, diploma of architecture – missing in attendance.” Scribbled next to it in capitals “PLEASE RETURN HIRED GOWN”.
to be continued?
ksky
Perhaps it is more striking on this occasion, graduation day. I’m sat in a park outside the ceremonial hall dressed like Batman. Other graduates mill about giggling and laughing, here and there fellow students are led by the arm to the front of a tree, a sculpture or other landmark device to be pushed next to other members of the family or friends, there to stand smiling for prosperity. It’s worth remarking here, that this isn’t my first time, actually I wouldn’t have bothered at all but I had nothing else to do so why not?
It’s easy to drift in mind and purpose when you’re at a new junction of life. I watch a small bird hopping about here and there, picking at things too small to see, shifting through the litter. It picks up something and flies into the trees. I track it’s progress to a nest, a nest unlike all others though, it’s fashioned from crisp packets and bus passes, all woven together with drinking straws. The bird, obviously happy with its take away, starts chirping, an irritating chirp which causes a passing student to check his mobile phone.
From across the park the chirp is answered by an identical sound, then the two birds start chattering with a mixture of chirps and tweetings. I follow the sound to another tree, perched at a rather jaunty angle over looking the drinking fountain is an unlikely construction of cantilevered pizza boxes, I gaze around and see that all the trees hide nests of the most amazing constructions. Nests made from all manner of student waste. Here a bird has artistically woven only blue wrappers around a web of shattered biro casings, another has stuck to a formula of cigarette lighters. One unlikely fellow has made a parabolic tower construction using drink stirrers, padded with cotton buds and decorated with fragments from a shattered mirror.
The more I watch, the more time spent beneath this aviarian city of the trees the more I notice the traffic of the birds, hopping from tree to tree, visiting these fantastic constructions, here and there a piece is pulled out and rearranged. I continue to move from tree to tree, my craning neck aches and then I notice the quiet.
The students have dissappeared; the doors to the hall are now shut., and the posted list includes my name “Richard C Tate, diploma of architecture – missing in attendance.” Scribbled next to it in capitals “PLEASE RETURN HIRED GOWN”.
to be continued?
ksky
