Soliloquy for one dead - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by James Phelan
JIM LEAVES HOME LATER THAT YEAR AND LIVES IN THE MOUNTAINS. He studies and works and shares a room with a friend from his city days.
The world is different up there, the same clarity and stars, but it's the smells and the sounds that change. No she-oaks and surf, all gums and silence. It's summer again, bright but cold, movements laboured in the deserted snowfield. The couple of people in the course who own cars become friends to everyone, as once a week they pack like sardines to get off the mountain for supplies and sanity.
At a party, Jim watches a guy fall from a second-storey window, only to return to the room moments later as if he meant it. He falls two more times that night, quite the joker. Jim wonders why a guy like that is allowed to go on. Girls strive for attention and Jim finds easier, less taxing company. Beds are seldom cold but the novelty remains, and somehow he and his friend survive the frigid summer and leave the barren mountain where it is and how it should be – uninhabited but for those seeking adventure. Theirs is all full up from that place.
Back in Melbourne, Jim works in hotels to use his diploma, and searches for what's next. Before he knows it, years pass, courses and jobs blend, and he becomes a wanderer, a drifter of intellect and ambition. He tries architecture – Joe wanted to do that – but it doesn't stick: too rigid and uncompromising. He misses the sound of the sea, forgets he likes to read.
JIM SITS AT THE KEYBOARD AND STARES AT THE BLANK SCREEN. The cursor blinking while a Nirvana CD plays for the first time in ten years. He needs that mood. He is planning a speech for the next day, an anniversary for Joe. He's ready for something like that. Needs to take those final steps. Jim sits and stares, the stereo reciting words he'd never forgotten and his girlfriend's singing obliviously leaking from the other room. Grunge rock versus soprano opera. Joe would like it, a mix of air guitar and high art. Jim pictures a ten-year-old blond boy having guitar lessons from George Harrison, Maria Callas teaching him to sing in tune.
Jim knows enough prose and poetry to recite. But it is the whole of it he wants to say. The missed time as well as the memories, the loss as well as the benefit of not being there in the flesh. Jim still lives in the city, the stars all packed up, the ocean poured away. The smells and sounds industrial, the days and weeks relentless. He's gone full circle and worked a few things out, found that it all makes sense when you're having fun with someone you love. Going for a ride. Sharing some laughs. Reading a book aloud.
Jim smiles. Types.
The joy of it all, Joe. That's what you missed – that's what we had – but all that you missed ... I'll tell you, Joe, I'll tell you all about it, what you had and what you left with, all that you went without: "Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it ..." ♦