Talking Head

Hi ...
Thanks for calling by.

I know it doesn't look good
and I know I look a bit stuck
But its not what it seems.

Its interesting I feel
A lot of people stop and look at me
Take photos
Ponder, and so on.
Yet I was observing a fellow pavement dweller
On Princes Street
He's homeless, like me
But everyone just rushes past
They don't stop.
He seems invisible.
How he manages the cold I can't imagine.
I struggle with it so.

Sometimes people call me 'Gormley'
But I'm not
Not as Gormley as I look.
And here, in this space ...
This space ...
I can think
Watch things happen
See what happens.
You never know what happens in space.

I've noticed that people fear space.
I can understand that.
It is very frightening.
(... I'll come back to fear later).
We fill space, so does Nature.
Nature abhors ... etc.
Sometimes space shows us a reality we find hard to bear
Sometimes space shows us things about ourselves
Things that we don't like
Things that we find hard to tolerate.

But these things are not space
They too, like weeds
Rush in to fill the void.
We think they are bad.
But just many layers.
Then we find space ...
... or do we?
The long horizon ...
Filled with death
Because that is all there is in the end.
It is the 'bottom line'.

Well, we often chat
Death and I.
We sit on that wall
(well, he likes those spiky railing things)
And we consider ...
Chew the fat,
Life and Death,
Its an interesting wall to occupy.

I bleed you know
Lots.
I know it may not look like it
For lots of reasons ...
but I am in touch with my feminine side
and I wear a sports bra under all this cast iron
... stops people kicking my tits.
I'm told it helps to stop the spine disintegrating,
... the bleeding ...
And there was me thinking it was the tarmac.

He was a lovely chap...
The one who came to lay the tarmac.
We talked of this and that.
And when he finished I thought I looked pretty good.
'Ta, Mac' I said.
Oh, how he laughed ...

Yeah, right ... well, as I was saying ...
I know I look stuck
I sometimes wish someone would
Cross that zebra
And pull me out.
But people cross the road
For lots of reasons.
A chicken was telling me all this once.
He said, people keep asking 'why?'
Its a waste of time, he said.
They just get stuck.

Anyway, I digress ...
I was going to talk about fear.
It was the thing that struck me most today.
I was so frightened.
You wouldn't think it, would you?
I know it doesn't look as though much would bother me.
I know I don't look too human, stuck here, like this.
I wonder myself at times.
They call it a condition, you know ...
The human one.
But its the emotions that get me every time.
That's what tells me I'm alive.
And today it was fear.
I was so frightened.
I thought that wouldn't happen again,
Not now.
It already has happened, twice.
So I didn't think I was still vulnerable
Being cast iron, and all ...
But then I feared death again.
But not mine.
And then ...
Relief.
Such relief
I cried. And then laughed, kind of.
You wouldn't think it
Would you?
Being cast iron, and all ...