Softsoap. Y' know, the liquid soap in a pump.
I was lingering on it a bit longer in the men's room at work last week.
Ever have those moments when you're just 'gone' - beyond the manufactured mundane moment and say, back in the '80s or something. (If you were around then and walking and all that.)
So, there in the gent's room - the scent of the softsoap tossed me elsewhere; the bathrooms in my folks' home, specifically the mid 80's locale. Window open, sleepy mid-Spring breeze, a look over the hill into the neighbor's yard below. The kids on their bikes and dogs barking. Plates being washed after dinner and the routine bumps and hisses of the home I knew for eons.
I try not to linger in these too much these days. I gots holes in me hearts from all the absences whose shapes haunt me.
Awake or in dreams.
Or, in softsoap.
INXS - To Look At You (Mp3)
Payolas - All That I Want (Mp3)
Tear For Fears - Head Over Heels/Broken (Live) (Mp3)
Simple Minds - Someone Somewhere In Summertime (Mp3)
English Beat - Save It For Later (Mp3)
2 comments:
Yes, oh yes.
'Soap Suds'
This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big
House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open
To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop
To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a child.
And these were the joys of that house: a tower with a telescope;
Two great faded globes, one of the earth, one of the stars;
A stuffed black dog in the hall; a walled garden with bees;
A rabbit warren; a rockery; a vine under glass; the sea.
To which he has now returned. The day of course is fine
And a grown-up voice cries Play! The mallet slowly swings,
Then crack, a great gong booms from the dog-dark hall and the ball
Skims forward through the hoop and then through the next and then
Through hoops where no hoops were and each dissolves in turn
And the grass has grown head-high and an angry voice cries Play!
But the ball is lost and the mallet slipped long since from the hands
Under the running tap that are not the hands of a child.
- Louis Macneice.
Eerie. I've never read this prior...I swear!
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