Sounds at Dawn
The first rays tentatively prod at the doona of cloud which hugs the horizon. From the eastern sky, fingers of light grope westwards into the darkness. Birdsong announces the impending dawn; highlights the eternal rhythm of the laws of physics vanquishing the night. At first it takes a measured approach and by degrees the light infiltrates. Slowly, surreptitiously, it advances until there is more light than not. The darkness is definitely leaching away. What was unseen is now discernible through the gloom. There is more urgency in the east, more urgency in the dawn’s endeavours. Suddenly, an explosion of brightness pierces the bedclothes of cloud. The eastern horizon assumes shades of gold, orange, salmon, vermilion. The night sky withdraws to the west, cowed and beaten. From the tiny window in my room, I watch, open-mouthed, and I weep. I weep not for the birdsong or the demise of the night sky, but for the magnificence of life, for the promise of renewal. For what might have been but will never be.
I had met my lover at a dawning decades ago. A chance meeting. I recall her startled face when I appeared in the darkness beside her at the lighthouse just before dawn. Her initial thought was that I may have been a goat. A herd of feral goats lived around the lighthouse and adjacent cliff faces back then. I’m not sure if she was pleased to see me; an interloper gatecrashing the solitude of her dawn event. A spiritual person, she was there to greet the new day, to give thanks for her life, to communicate with whales migrating northwards past this headland en-route to their birthing areas. Not wishing to intrude into her space and the privacy of her own thoughts, we sat apart, each reverentially observing the awe of dawn, the birth of a day.
We had talked knowingly after the daybreak; debriefed about the spectacle we’d witnessed; what it personally meant to each. We were, after all, children of the age of Aquarius. An initial spiritual connection morphed into an emotional and physical connection. We bought a Kombi, enjoyed the smoky haze of the Aquarius festival on the North Coast; peace and love, man! We strummed acoustic guitars at group jams, and smoked a lot of weed. Sought enlightenment through magic mushrooms and group focus sessions. Hurtled off into our own orbits a couple of years later to explore our own consciousness and self-awareness, to avoid becoming too dependent upon each other, but eventually gravitated back together. Binary stars.
Renting the shack in the hills on the North Coast was probably the tipping point. Candle making and markets just didn’t bring in the bread we needed to sustain our living needs; our choices of recreational drugs had morphed from home-grown dope and psylocibin mushrooms to harder stuff. This had presented a financial dilemma. I knew I was dependent when the trade-off for my relationship with heroin was to break into and rob my elderly grandparents. I knew where they hid their nest-egg far from the prying eyes of government sticky-beaks who would slash their fortnightly pension if they knew of the shoebox under their bed. I experienced a modicum of guilt about doing over my own grandparents, but we craved the hit. After that, I found theft a lot easier.
At the urging of my partner, we eventually left the North Coast to source cheaper drugs in Asia. Plentiful, freely available. We weren’t selling, we were addicted users but I had no qualms, no moral dilemmas about stealing to support our habits. The young seller on his motor scooter shouldn’t have pursued me. That was his mistake. The laneway was concealed, unlit. I’d grabbed his bag and turned to flee while he straddled the idling engine. With a practised flick on the throttle he drew level and leapt from his scooter, crash-tackled me to the roadway. I’m not a violent person, the knife I had tucked into my belt was for personal protection only. Panicked and strung out, I thrust that blade into the seller’s chest. There was a hiss of air, a fountain of blood, a silence.
The birdsong and the lightshow continues but I am still weeping at my small window. Weeping at other sounds. The harsh sound of orders, voices in another tongue, the scuff of boots and assembling of the firing squad in the yard below my cell. The sound of the bolt on my cell door being unlocked. Dystopian sounds at dawn.
