Native to asphalt.
Boyhood dream
Of course it was all there, the dreams of romantic books, adventure, the wild plains, the savanna, I was fully loaded on this narrative and lived believing I would change the back yard of a tiny English rural village garden, into the world, I must have learned every crack, rock, brick, drain and roof slate, in our home of childhood education.
Where did this put me?
Well to be certain, I had no knowledge of time, its construct, nor the fuss of others, even though I had watches, clocks and alarms, I never felt the ‘pressure’ of time as a child, not until much much later.
I had literally all the time in the world, not even meals were important, just doing and being, cuts, bruises, rocks and sticks, ropes, dirt, snails and trees.
The hills were mostly too steep to ride a bike, so I was restricted by not bothering and just going the same two blocks unconcerned with this restriction I didn’t know and yet even in a small space, amazing changes happened every day.
Trees changed colour, strange exotic imports, bloomed, and faces arrived while others stayed angry behind lace curtains and even the events and local people dramas, filled the street with activity I would witness, even to the point of being ‘told off’ for noticing.
What were so many people hiding?
They seem to have everything but happiness?
I was happy with a small penknife, a stick, string and a stuffed toy, we would fly together from wall to wall, to school and back, amidst all the fuss and rules.
Why? I could never get an answer, just ‘I must’ or ‘because’, yet never an answer,
‘you will go to prison, if you don’t go to school’, I didn’t however get this result by testing the theory, and to this day, never had the answer of why?
Not even my Grandpa, the wisest man in the world, could tell me why the school, he just was constantly amused.
I at one point had asked so many ‘why’s’ in a row, I got sent home, it became almost a predictable routine.
Of course later I developed with my sisters help and began the ‘why not’.
The beginning of patriarchy.