WRITING: Sense in the Citrus

On the morning of pancake day a sun had been crushed, following the rain of the night with a cool citrus flush. This citrus creased faces from the clouds and curdled the oil of a sick engine’s guts. The pips bent prisms of colour in the puddles from the rain, reflecting cacophonies of patterns in the dampness of haggard streets.

On this day I did wander the dampened down streets for the clouds were low and perfectly placed. Blowing towards the centre of this city passing birds who would twitter yet dampened down by a clutch on a Honda. It’s the drain and the strain of the rush hour through on the high street, and a perceptual awareness that I’ll try to explain, as the sun did try hard that day to hold back the rain. The frayed lemon is the clock; the backdrop is a gust and there was a 4 digit pull from of the hole in the wall.

So these clouds gathered low - merging mindsets in tow, of groups modern and past, of races and faith harboured idyllically safe. The laptops and mobiles and scumbags and youth – the hobos, the business, the cash point, the queues. Their faces, haircuts, clothing all trigger thoughts of where their head is and where heads their course.

Some, who followed the fashions of music and art, sparked the creative combustion of my turbulent heart. I know these disparate cultures so intimately that I’d quote them, but I saw other mindsets as surface colours on oil. In the puddles as they mingled, they curdled like the clouds; colours cascaded the weather system cycle and swarmed through the crowd.

With separate identities in a spectrum alight, each colour connects these mindsets burnt bright. The frail, the strong, the old and the young, the pantone patterns of upbringing, love vibes and angst, fractures and fragments the grey scaled streets. I separated apart states of mind like predicting the weather; it’s a process that’s seasonally safe but not perfect yet. And I colour coded this visually for the weather may change and I want to know where the tethered summer will reign. Storms always come when you can’t flush the drains.

We all move and we separate and float though this space like our own weather system under pressured gravitas. Rooting us down to these dirty haggard streets as the wind bellows free it diffuses faces in clouds, drips trickle back to the sea. We live and we breathe and we wander awake, we disperse out die and back to the lake – some will form puddles with oil stagnate, some will rain free and others shine citrus a spectrum cacophony.

Mathew Humphrey 3/3/09