Nights in White Satin

I had been living in that house for the last eight years, the best part of a decade but had to be out the next day yet, I had nowhere else to go. Finding rooms to rent were difficult and even when you did find something, they were never ideal. One place I’d looked at a week earlier had fallen through and the only place that seemed alright, was being rented by a creepy looking landlord who looked like he was looking at me as if I was competition and probably why he suddenly wanted a ‘nice girl’ to tenant that room.

I was sitting there curled up in one of the armchairs in deep contemplation not really knowing what to think about where I was in life, kinda thinking that if I ignored where all of this was going then it would all go away.

The Moody Blues were playing on the lounge room screen at The Isle of Wight Festival way back in 1970 amidst a setting sun as the day began preparing itself for night, archived footage immortalising a time now long gone. There was a sense of nostalgia about the festival, as if I was remembering a time I had never lived, all of those people hanging out and having a good time as if they had nowhere else to go and nowhere else to be. Though, it wasn’t just the music, it was the fashion, the t-shirts and the jeans, the hats and the hairstyles, all out of date but all brand new, it was the sense of belonging and the sense of being there, the sense of being and the sense of belonging to a part of something that was much bigger than who you could be on your own.

Yet, it was more than that, it was weirder still, it was as if those people had made it through in one piece, that era, that generation had now got to where it was they were going, that everything was going to be alright, that everything was going to be okay and that made me feel safe despite what was going on around me. Though, I was a generation removed and couldn’t go back and pick up my life as a twenty-two-year-old and live from that point on knowing I was safe wrapped up in that generation, that was never going to happen. I was stuck where I was and was about to be, again, shuffled back and forth from within the city’s deck of promises, not knowing from one day to the next what would become of me as the city offered nothing of what it had promised as I continued to grasp for that which lay beyond me reach.

It was Saturday night and I should’ve been out with friends under the summer sun having a good time, with friends amongst the leaves of fall at the city’s bars, at the local gigs trying to meet my match, I should’ve been out with a girl who I cared about, a girl with who I was falling in love at that restaurant along the river amidst the waning sun, at that secluded bar beneath those dimming lights. Yet here I was, being ushered along on terms that were not my own because I hadn’t yet found what I was trying to find.

I wanted to move but only when I could secure a sense of certainty…

…when I could afford that sense of security.

Those lyrics, “nights in white satin, never reaching the end, letters I’ve written, never meaning to send,” which was me all over, written letters I’d never sent, ends I’d never reached. “Impassioned lovers wrestle as one, lonely man cries for love and has none,” again, where was I in all of this, I wasn’t sure if I was lonely but I should at least be in a position in life where I was content enough within myself to embrace a lover who wanted to embrace me so we too, could wrestle as one.

I loved that song.

I loved that era.

The property was being refurbished so that bridge was being burnt on my behalf as if it mattered not where I wound up, I mean, it was one thing fending for yourself but it was another thing altogether trying to fend for yourself within a system that wanted nothing more than to see you to your grave with nothing but the shirt on your back.

How could anyone ever get comfortable enough in this world settling into someone else’s arms without ever having to look over their shoulder, without the fear of having everything they’d ever built, taken away by a system they themselves had voted in? There was always so much to lose. There was always that constant threat. It was as if you were never allowed to get comfortable. It was as if there was always going to be someone there wanting to take it all away.

I felt sad, I felt like I wanted to cry.

I was being moved on before I had somewhere else to go.

Though, that was twelve years ago and here I was still trying to reach for that something that lay beyond my grasp, wondering those exact same questions with a new level of uncertainly I wasn’t sure I could balance.

There was still so much that I didn’t know…

…still so much I didn’t understand.

Freedom from within,

The Journeyman.

www.thejourneyman.com