Life 101: Cigarettes, Moonlight and Drama

Whoah...... s***!.....the whoosh from the wing flap flipped my hair up, I swear, the wing swept inches in front of my face and upwards at once...she must have been trying to catch something on the ground... didn’t she see me standing here?

I think its a barn owl (don’t know how I know that, but I remember they are not common around here), she’s sitting on top of the light pole on the street, exorcist head gazing down at me... yes, I see you Owl... you can see me too now... and she is also looking at something else, someone on the lawn....oh no, I can see it now... a small mammal, a ratty shaped thing on the grass, ferreting away, little claws scratching, snout probing the lawn... a bandicoot? Oblivious to the lethal intent of those sweeping wings.

I’m standing still and now I'm sitting on the top front stair, I’m bathing in cool moonlight... trying just to be. Wearing my sad despondency, sitting beside the melancholy I feel about everything, life... on my own... at 2am at night ... yet I’m not alone am I Ms Barn Owl (for a female she must be in my mind)? You, me, the creature scrabbling below and the smiley face above; all night owls.

My family; mum, dad and sister, in dreamland, unaware of the nocturnal drama unfolding, this scene in Act 1, starring me, clutching a solo cigarette in one hand, a lighter in the other, and Mrs Golden eyes (aka Owl), that most natural of actors, on her lofty post and also, in a supporting role (possibly that should be my role description, not his), the nibbley, ratty one, he who plays the victim, over exposed on the close clipped lawn in our front yard.....

I want to smoke my cigarette, stolen from my mother’s handbag last week, in peaceful contemplation....and I want to feel my sadness and to feel less me....to be a secret rebel, a mysterious moonlit creature, not an anxious 15 year old male, but another version of me, my moonlight super powered, insightful, beautiful me. The real me?

I did not intend to be a witness to a massacre, really, its too much already to be alive sometimes... Owl looks at me and then back to the prey... maybe she thinks I'm a rival for the little meal...? I try to hold her forceful gaze...you are mighty and lovely though... and to be honest, a bit scary...

I can see that the prey, the little ratty creature, is oblivious, dumb, innocent, unaware... surely its foolish to be out on the open lawn in the moonlight and under the glare of a street light... stupid creature, trusting fool... we have a cat too you know dummy, go to the shadows, go nibble and scratch in the dark safety. Little creature I think is a male, a youngish male, I can see vulnerability, I can feel his dumb optimism... overturning dry leaves, searching for insects to crunch, just plain oblivious to danger.

Owl stares at me, obviously I am impeding the natural course of things... me being here is preventing the owl from eating her dinner (breakfast?). Why must I be so implicated in their lives, I resent it, I want to be on my own... I should just stand up and leave this Mise en Scène but somehow I can’t, the tension is wound too tightly, it feels like it’s coiled inside me as well... the creature on the lawn makes tiny ratty progressions, nibbling and scratching or something, I can’t really tell.

If creature were living like this inside our house, my lovely mum would deign to shriek, then to kill him with a trap set with stealth and she would make me transport the whole thing, trap and dead creature, to the bin. Creature should be dead either way you play it out. Oh what a great part to play in the game of life.... I’m on creature’s side tonight...its not a fair fight....he’s so doomed anyway....consider the cat's potential for harm alone....let alone my mother and this wretched night stalker...

I whisper...”phstt!!... hey.... you... GOooooo! GOoooo!... pshtt!! pshtt!!”

Creature doesn’t even hear me, goes about his merry little way, nibbling and foraging....

I look upwards... Owl is watching me though, I think she heard me... she’s thinking I’m a betrayer, maybe she thinks she has to take me out first, before she does her dinner... big, round, golden, death-stare eyes... I psychically yell "f*** off bird!!!!" She doesn't shift a jot, still as a wide eyed statue...

This three-way tension (well two-way, creature is oblivious that I am saving his life)... I am morally bound now, creature moves a couple of inches along the lawn nibbling and snuffling for a feed... Owl's vast plate-like eyes track creature's movements... tension's awinding up...any moment now... s***...!!!!!!

If I stood up suddenly, I could smash this strained state of affairs, everything might resolve.... but I can’t do it.... I feel frozen in situ... instead I am telepathically screaming,

“Run... run... run....!!!!” Run if you want to live my boy...

Actually, its too much, I have to act...I hold the black plastic lighter in loose fingers and swing it on the lawn in the vicinity of creature in a bid to wake him, shake him and induce him to save himself. 'Plod'! In the silent soundscape falls the lighter...I can almost feel the sound waves of that 'plod'...a lifesaving 'plod'!

I see creature startle,

alas, too late he is poised and alert, up on hind legs, little furry neck turned towards the 'plod', about to sprint off....I rise up too in anticipation...too late...it's all over>

The patient epicure has seized the moment, her dinner momentarily distracted into submission... by me.

She has descended in a graceful arc, pinched up the little victim in her talons and swept clean away from me, up the middle of the long lit street... the helpless passenger’s tail swaying.....s***...s***...s***....s***.

However, thank god she’s gone...I can’t be witness to more sad reality at this moment, no ripped apart little bodies...long dramatic sigh by me... I'm bowing out.

I stand dazed for a few moments, I bend forward to grab the failure of a lighter and with unsteady hand, flick flame onto the slightly damp cigarette end. I’m not an experienced smoker and I inhale too deeply and choke out a flurry of cool menthol smoke. Sit down hard on the cold stone step and breathe my own shock for a few breaths.

Cant quite believe I saw that, was part of that, contributed to that...didn’t save my sweet little creature...life is grim, life is brutal, it makes me anxious...cough again, again.

All is not lost, I can feel the cigarette’s smoke soothing me, smoothing and pulling out the knots in my racing pulse. My mind is sharpening.

Located in clarity, sitting alone under clear moonshine, washed over by night world’s breath and existing in the crisply minted present...my single occupation for life I decide, must be to take notice of, without judgement, as both participant, and spectator, all the large and small gestures, the formwork of life, my life I guess. Everything matters... and yet everything can also be reduced to insignificance. How to live with and inside of that pulsating conundrum? Is that the work of life?

I sigh deeply, steadily inhale the smoke and control the exhale again, that pale snake of smoke that, let’s be honest, doesn’t really ever touch my virgin lungs except when I suck it in reflexively after I cough.

I glance upward to that cheery face in the sky, he’s always happy despite the shit-shows he's compelled to witness on every night he appears to be seen by all of us, if we care to notice.

It’s as if he is there, a steady smiling uncle type who visits every month, to reassure us that life is best accepted for the way it is and that it just keeps going, on and on and on, regardless of how you, me, an owl or even a tiny creature feels about it.

She sails back over the yard, face down, streaming with wings outstretched, probably with a full belly although perhaps my creature friend escaped, wriggled and fell his way free and is hiding, feverishly licking wounds, under some dark and damp leafage, safe for a moment on earth. To live another night. Yeah...

I scrunch the lit cigarette end into the soil of a pot plant and sit a few seconds longer, face upturned to the shine, eyes closed... it feels good to be here, now... and I've decided... I'm giving up smoking.