Slow Towns...

 

Raining.

Again.

 

It’s funny. 

When I was a little boy, I remember riding my bike about the town in the pissing rain…

doing my paper round, wet to the arse and thinking to myself…’thank God I have somewhere to go.’

Of course, home soon became a safe place no longer.

But the idea was...comforting.

 

In a way…I can never go home. 

Even if I knew what home was.  

There is something strangely appealing...perversely fascinating...

about wandering strange towns, lost.

It’s where we belong.

We, the dispossessed, the sequestered, the marginalised and disenfranchised...

 

wander about in the pouring rain in unfamiliar surroundings…

Perpetually looking for…

trust.

Hope.

Something to believe in.

However...

 

Don’t be tempted to help us…

We, the lost…and wandering.

 

We are not in pain.

We tramp the long lonely miles…

Not because it hurts…

But because it ceases to.

 

We don’t feel a thing any more…

 

most of us.

 

Don’t be suckered into helping people like me.

Don’t feel sorry for the abused, the molested, the raped, marginalised and the disenfranchised.

No good can come of it.

Sooner or later…

We will fuck you up. 

 

UNLESS…

You have spectacular compassion and breathtaking grace.

And this awakens something inside us...

A way of trusting again...the way we did before the grand betrayal.

Miracles have been known to happen.

It would take a major leap of faith for someone to make a home for the likes of me…

Maybe THAT is what I seek.

Compassion…kindness…

Audacity.

Stubborn, bloody minded, unrelenting philanthropy.

Generosity.
 

Imagine a whole town like this.

 

And entire community.

 

Built on kindness and good heartedness...

 

Of a systemic type & variety.

 

NOT an aberration…

I see evidence of it, from time to time.

Fleeting glimpses. 

 

This is why I travel; my blind faith in human beings.

And those pockets of compassion that we find occasionally.   

 

One thing I have noticed in Canada…

Wet to the arse, trying to cross busy roads…

People slow down for you.

You know in Australia and the US, when you are trying to cross the road, and the oncoming traffic has to thin so you can cross behind them?

Well, in Canada…

They literally slow down to a stop so that you can cross.

They don’t even need a cross intersection with lights for a reason.

It can be a little…

uncomfortable at first.

Then you get used to it.

It’s kinda’ nice.   

Maybe it’s good for us, the abused, the molested, and the betrayed…

Good to find a place where people ‘slow down for us’…

That’s hopeful.