The children of that era were never quite sure why they would do it. They would voraciously consume culture by the rice-bowl, spooning it up greedily. Raptors of books and film, music and general artiness. It was as though they were wolf hunting in concrete jungles, looking for meaning in the highest, widest most convoluted spaces. They were the Pacmen of ’stuff’. Their logic was rather straightforward and seemingly uncomplicated enough; find a piece of work, strip it, bare metal, down to raw meat, devour it hungrily, rabidly, desperately, look for the next item on their never-ending nonexistent lists. Rinse and Recycle. It’s good for your health.

It was pointless consumption. Conspicuous consumption. Consumption of attempted intelligent delicacies. In their masses they would copy and share and ensure that they all had their fill, their overfill of media. A media feeding frenzy. The feeding upon. Their insatiable worsening need for more. More Art. With their endless categorization and analysis. Division and Subdivision. New Wave Electro-Bass Quasi-Folk Tin Melodies. Sub-Surrealistic Raw-Conservative Typographies. Deep as they swam, they failed to realised the lack of viscosity in their surrounds, the diminishing density, the dwindling substance in their living mediums.

Their very acts of overindulgence in cult items were the source from which this black hole (quadrant two plus two equals what on earth do you know) was bursting from. The overabundance of information and their Faustian need for knowledge was chiseling away at their cores, hollowing them out. In those instants, they did not want to stand on the shoulders of giants. They wanted to be the giants; but what they should have wanted, was an even quieter sort of grandness.

This time last year a soft spoken small person of a height four foot ten sat by the edge of the bed.

Iron held in an iron grip. Ready to rip lines, rip-roaringly along the creased, now-greaseless, handkerchief.

Glancing quickly out of a smaller window in the top right corner of the room, they followed a quick stream of yellow, dust dancing in the light against the pale wall.

The pale wall had an Outside side, and outside there lay a slightly less vertically inhibited individual sprawled stomach down, down, down on the ground.

The light glinted off the single metal bangle dangling on their hand as they manhandled the grass and attempted to sink lower than low, slower than the glinting blinking light on their limbs.

Head turned every so slightly sideways, ears pressed deep into the land they hummed and murmured, mumbled and heard a softer rumbling sound in the distance.

In that distance, during that very instance, storm clouds rode furiously inward, toward a rather more expansive person, expensively laid out on a bench with flowers in their hands.

Their gown flowed down towards the dangling difference between their nose in the sky and their thighs on the side, with the petals darkening and with the clouds now growling closer and deeper.

Their eyes shone apart as they stared down the greying light, brightly glaring back at them, and oh what a fright, as right there and then, the sky cracked open, Oh lords, Oh Heavens! they squealed as the sights began to roll in.

Roll Tape. “So where should I begin?”

I am now.here.

They spent their summers by the lake house. Not so much swimming in the lake so much as staring at it. Not really from the lake shore, so much as from atop the rain tank perched meekly on a tower to the left of the mild cabin that huddled by said lake shore.They would pull up a sound-box and sit it on a plank traversing the radius of the tank and throw some drinks into the teasingly cold water. Music would radiate from their nest, wafting over the whispering waters, tickling the trees and glinting back at the sun.

They would slink back and forth singing and chanting:

“The boat is | be gin ning to | leak a gain.

The boat is | be gin ning to | rock.

We stepped on the| boat, full |  kno wing that,

Even tua lly it would | stop.”

I would sit hidden amongst them. Under ruffly breath, breathily whispering, murmuring, mumbling:

I am not an Island, though I was in the sea.

I was not, I am not, I am a buzzing bee.

I eloped with an urchin, though I was married to the wind.

Slept on through earthquakes of sound and echoes.

Floating has now taken on; a thicker coat, velvet gloves and an ironic wink.

I dream of green blue planets, though I never learnt how to sing.

Not even softly, not in the shower and never in the Spring.

I ride upon the storm-clouds, though I didn’t see the sands.

Kept going through the night, in wait for this to begin.

Should have known,

it began.

.