Amsterdam, 10 years, two months ago

By Adam Gibson ©

exactly
ten years and
two months ago
i gripped a bunk bed
in an amsterdam hostel,
not far from where i sit right now,
anxiety attacking my head
hysterical on some dope,
a bad kenyan blend
that spelt the end
of my psyche as
i had known
it until
then,
and
a new
beginning,
full of endings,
had started to begin.
the next few years saw
my father die and saw me go
through a purgatory that brought me
face-to-face with the endlessness of the
middle of the night, the feeling of certainty
that i would soon die too, the searching for peace
that would allow me to sleep, the breaking of a
heart that broke and ruined mine to break.
those were days of lost 3am mornings,
evenings when static electricity
zapped in the dry and clear
winter air, the haze gone
all the way to the
Blue Mountains
and the
tv aerials
silhouetted
to the west in
perfect crisp purity,
straight and jagged lines
calling out for their desperate
connection to some bigger picture
that would turn lives and days
onward and carve out a
meaning from the
cold nights
somehow.
and my own aerials
were searching for such
connection too because winter
down under on side of the world
- denigrated by the online majority
because it falls at the wrong time of year,
according to the scraping masses of the northern
hemisphere, who believe they own july and august
exclusively and who laugh at our quaint freezing and
strange christmases in the sun – came in and i
shivered more than i'd ever shivered in
Europe, living in Karpy's flat on
Brighton Boulevard near the

bar heater, cricket on tv
beaming from England

or elsewhere and the

Roosters still doing

as badly in
the footy
as ever.
the parallels
with now are many –
same love delusions,
same writing aspirations,
same lack of money, same fact
that tonight i am gripping the bed
with a spinning head and the same fact
that the roosters are doing just as badly
as ever upon my likely return to place of home.