"In solitude we can come to the realisation that we are not driven together but brought together. In solitude we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers and sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God's all-embracing love.
In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call.
In solitude we indeed realise that community is not made but given."

Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome

you spend enough time in a place and it'll either eat you up or spit you out.

and the scary thing is you don't realise until its almost too late. Its not like being eaten by a shark, with teeth and thrashing etc... no, much more deadly like sleep walking off a pier or something (don't laugh, for some its a possibility....ask the editor for details).

I got woken up this weekend and was shocked to realise how far down a throat I was.

It starts slowly with small bends and compromises in thoughts and expectations, nothing major, but it'll make life easier.

Then you're dreaming different dreams, big house, big dog, steady pay packet.

Dreams start influencing choices and you let go off the excess, the in the way bit (like chopping off grissle if we want to continue the eating picture). and thoughts you swore would not dominate your head, begin to seep in like mold (so if i want to live here, with house prices as they are I need a wage so large to pay the mortage, so better go find me a HUGE wage....).

the bit of you thats awake and not sleep walking, gets quieter but sits stubbornly in the corner and cries. Thank goodness for that!!

Because after a while, as your toes hit the tonsils, you wake up and realise this is not what you were made for - to try and fit in other peoples boxes, their dreams, or the ones you thought would make you happy. all that will happen is that you get eaten and have a bit of you quietly crying.

So, I guess I'll pick up my grissle, be an awkward shape and get spat out of here.....

There's dirt on the window
Rubbish on the street
Narrow roads limit the sky
And silence has not been heard
Since we started here.

Yet as I climb
With creaks
And close myself in
I begin to soar.
My hair scrapes the ceiling
But I could run for miles.

There's only one star
In the orange tinted dusk
But it's enough
A reminder.

As I close my eyes,
Expanse opens ahead.
The traffic roar
Is turned to a dull drone
As stillness rushes on me
Like a crowd.

I rest
Yet intrigued
I long to tred deeper
Where do you end?
Where do you lead?

This foolish mind restricts
Your limitlessness.
I stumble
Like a blind senseless brute,
Desperate to be free
Of those restraining lines.

Unused to space
To freedom
My steps unsteady
But courage grows
As those voices quieten,

And soon I'm running.
No idea where
Forwards, sideways
Onwards,
And joy rises
As the unseen
Becomes the explored.