Tonight, London has tired me. The oil paint roads weave through the crowds, these black crows. I think momentarily of penguins in the arctic, the slow painful rotation they waddle through to stay warm.

Tonight, on the bus, I see opposites. A mother-daughter pair exchange slim black and white mobiles. At the next seat, a black jacket boy smiles into his white clad girls cheek.

Later, a statue of a lady slow-steps into the bus, followed by a man, hair dyed a yinyang of black and white. She stands next to my seat; my eye is drawn to the tail of an 's' tattooed into the inside of her arm, dark green and mottled. I ponder tattoos and their absolute permanence - short of removing it by laser, but I'd like to think one never gets a tattoo with its removal in mind. Whoever does something with its death in sight? - there is something sensual about the body as a canvas, about inking something into that canvas, forever.

The arm shifts, the tail disappears, and both yinyang hair and the statue move out of my line of vision.

--------

The night has left me chilled, in more ways than one. I spoke briefly to you tonight; as always, it was too brief, too fleeting, almost-missed. I wonder about permanence, about promises and things (un)seen - both - I think about departures, distance and proximity. I decide not to come to any conclusions, lest any of them seem too sudden, like your last word to me, tonight.

last - next