Life winding, winding up, in this city, many years and the same winding roads leading me home. The big bricks of Brisbane are changing and new development has emerged, but the heart of the city remains the same. Staggering art-itechtural wonders, bizarre concept bridges, big, better gliding buses...and surprise surprise..more more more rules and regulations, white lines splitting the street, naysayers and conformity enforcers.
I feel this city doesn't reflect me anymore, in the sheer walls of glass and the grey concrete, I see less and less of myself. More and more of commerce that leads us forward..to where? I wonder about the disconnection, I really do.
And yet...
Yesterday I went clippity clopping in the city. My boots make a nice round sound on cement, and as I passed a fellow femanimal, my clop clips fell into beat with hers..I walked closely to her for a while, and could see she became increasingly uncomfortable, I noticed she purposefully tried to put her beats out of synch with mine, without success.
'A researcher hiding in an abandoned car once filmed children playing in a school ground at lunch hour. Screaming, laughing, running and jumping they all seemed superficially to be doing their own thing, yet careful analysis showed that the group was rocking to a unified beat. After some searching, the researchers found a tune that fit the silent cadence, and when they played it and rolled the film, it seemed as if each kid were dancing to the melody even though there had been no music playing in the schoolyard!'
So, are we connected..something within unifies us, makes us groove to the same beat of life, an unconscious undercurrent ties groups together and even in our most casual moments we pulse in sychrony. It's a feeling that makes me feel alright as I navigate the flow of energy, visible and otherwise, of this jagged, concrete place I call home.
