I'll do something great

There's this street light, down by the round-about, and I can see it from the lounge room window. I have this crazy half arsed plan, that I'm gonna do something great, something with my video camera, with my words, with a smoke hanging from my lips. I dunno what it is exactly, but it'll be great. Then, when I stand there, grinning, triumphant, I reckon I may frown just slightly, maybe not straight away, but it'll happen. I'll listen to a song, wonder why your not there sharing my moment of glory, wonder why I'm not sharing your moments too. I'll wish you were here, wonder if everything I traded to reach that place was worth it, wonder if we'll ever be the free and easy souls we used to be, kicking back on that grassy river bank.

Yeah I'll do something great one day, but we'll always be those two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl. I'll walk past the Jewell next week maybe. Maybe I'll shake a family member's hand. Within the next few months I'll have a beer in Maylands and remember the whirlwind adventure we had when I first left home.

They tell me I'm twenty now, so many years have gone, but it feels like '04 was just yesterday. All the people I've met, the stories we shared, the nights with grog, the mornings with awkward silences as strange girls make excuse's as to why they did what they did the night before. We can laugh about all that now.

Twenty man, and my bones feel so sore. I feel like we crammed a decade or more into the past couple of years. But when I trade my soap box for a podium man, I'll listen to pink floyd and wonder where you are. Rest easy old mate.

Wishes all come true

The first time I wished upon a falling star, wasn't all that long ago ya know. Swimming in a pool, living nice in a motel, out there in the middle of the bad lands, laying on my back floating through a million thoughts and smiles, frowns and mistakes. Then without warning, a tiny little streak of light across the brilliant night time sky and a pretty girl told me to wish for something. It caught me by surprise, I only asked for things to be good, for adventures to deliver me safely.

With a smoothness wrought by the river of my life, I whirled around and found myself falling towards a light, away from a life I knew so well. Times they seem a little tough, but with practise, selling alcohol grows easier, these people around me, each are individual, it's almost like they've practised all the lines, especially for me, to record our own blockbuster, but not with film.

Many of us have said, many fucking times, but oh-so-true, the times they are a-changing.

A love story I suppose, but I doubt it'll go as scripted. But one friday night she walks in, dressed for the weekend party of life, life at twenty one is a merry old merry-go-round and around and she's standing in the doorway of my work, eyes roving for a helpful soul to guide her to the right concoction to lubricate social celebration. And I smile, goofy like, and she looks away and grins. I offer her a bag, and she offers her phone number. I clutch the little shred of paper and workmates light heartedly take the mickey.

The next night, a saturday, a more refined, more relaxed version of it's predecessor. She's dressed to match, with a famous feminine black dress and heels to match. The make up round her eyes stops me from looking away. A smile of recognition when I greet her with an awkward country sounding 'G'day'. We browse the fine selection of wine, lingering longer than we should. She asks when I'm going to call her. "Straight after work!" I reply, regretting my eagerness immediatly. She laughs softly, sweetly, tells me she looks forward to it. Tells me she'll pick me up and she me off to all her pretentious fake-friends. Yeah, it sounds okay to me...

At a party she invited me to, held in her modest back garden, I sit and look at the clearest constellation in the dark night sky. No shooting stars to be seen in these parts, the city lights hide all but the brightest of nighttime dots of sky globes. It doesn't bother me none though, things are good, a long way from the isolation of the western badlands, far from a life lived on a highway where nothing much ever happened. Things are good I guess.

Falling For Her

So this is a little tale, set to the kind of music I suppose Beethoven would write. A little story about a bloke, a dreamer, who bumbled through life. Hopes and plans and dreams that never seemed to... to.... to ever go right. A story about how one day, as he bumbled along, stumbled into a little book shop somewhere Perth, he managed to trip and fall headlong into love with an angel who was buying a book the dreamer had read.

Simon didn't know what he was doing, standing between those shelves, and he saw her, long hair flowing, legs smooth and graceful. Something startled him, his legs failed to move in time to his body and he felt the ground rise up to meet him, felt the corner of something hard greet his skull with force.

When he opened his eyes, he looked into deep pools of blue, her smile wide and easy, her words making sure he was okay. He was, he told her, and tried to rise, but the knock to the head had disrupted something and he crashed down again.

She sat and held his hand until the ambulance came. He asked what book she was looking for. Fear and Loathing, she told him. He promised her he'd give her his copy. She sat in the ambulance with him.

A concussion. He couldn't have been happier. She drove him home. He gave her Hunter S. Thompson's masterpiece. As the sun went down they both were smiling.

Mellow

So time ticks by, places change, people change, but when you look hard enough, your guaranteed to find a constant. You know, a couple of friends that are the same friends they were when you turned your back to the setting sun and returned to a place that only served as a prison for your soul, turning you over day in, day out like a pig on a spit?

So then you break the chains, you pack a bag, you remember what someone once said about never looking back and these feet below move you up a darkened highway. Then with the morning sun comes a first view of Perth, of the city and the houses and the famous Golden Arches, and you smile at your travelling companion and now, that no matter what the next day, week or month brings its gonna be fun.

Cruising round the streets, a song about a poker face or something, I dunno, the songs are all different nowadays. But the night air is cool, the sea breeze is loaded with salt, the girls are all around, the lads are drinking and singing together, and I'm mellow as man....

Back In The Real World

So as the sun went down, my mind was made, a decision set in concrete and there was only the one person I could tell and I wasn't even sure I could tell her. But bugger it, I thought to my self, and I told her, as we sat enjoying a beer in the cool fly free evening air. So she decided to come with me, which made me smile. And then we went, we hit the road, with no plans on ever returning, talking about life, what had happened, and wondering where the black hard tarmac stretching before us would lead us. Soon enough there was a lift, followed by a stint lying in the bush, gazing at the stars, talking, smoking, thinking, then another lift, a bit more walking then one last lift and then we were in PERTH!!!

And now, its a matter of getting a job, rejoining normal society, doing normal shit. I dunno much, but I know I enjoy the taste of sea salt on the evening breeze, I know I enjoy this freedom.

Peace