9.32pm Nottingham

I'm thinking about anchors. Y'know, big, rusty, wrapped in seaweed and busty mermaids, held in burly seaman's arms. Tagged with worn out ropes, there's nowhere to go but out. Or down. When are they useful, and when do we just cut them loose and sail on out? Or down.

I'm thinking about our track. Y'know, 'our song'. A kind of anchor that we drop every month, wherever we are we stop and chart our position by the clank of its rusty metal against the seabed. I don't hear it anymore, but I still wait for the waves, the ripples. And I wonder now about the distance still to travel, the gaps between the ripples.

I'm trying not to think about anything. I'm going with the flow. I'm skipping those ripples and surfing in those gaps. I'm treading water that's yet to be mapped. Those places that we talked about, those spaces for something new to grow...

Richard.x

Sydney Central 8:01am

The music plays...
I have my headphones this time.
It is wet and cold and winter. The rains have brought floods less than two hours north.
I watch the rain come down, I watch the cars go by and I look up at the clock atop Central Station, this is one of the older buildings in Sydney. As I peruse the scene, I do that thing that I often do, I pretend I am observing it for the first time and that this is new and I could be somewhere else in the world. It could be London, Prague, Brussels, Amsterdam, Madrid. Or it is Sydney and I have arrived here for the first time, taking in this view with the anticipation of a traveller, an explorer, a navigator.
I listen to the words of the song, it is funny they are starting to really speak to me now, take on a new importance, this is what I have been given to take care of and explore and navigate through, these bars these beats these lyrics.
Many people have asked me what was the song that Richard decided to play for the last time, What is this song that I have committed to listening to every month for a year. A friend asked, what was it about this song, the lyrics that so moved me when Richard played it for the last time. To all of these queries I have declined to reveal the song, for in truth, I would not have been able to tell what the song was at the time or its lyrics, for it was not the song that moved me, but the profound action of choosing to let go. The action of choosing an ending. The releasing of something that brings joy to oneself. Symbolic of the many endings, last times and little deaths we witness along our way.
So now as I board the bus, a traveller, and it departs Central, the last strains of the song play and I find it fascinating that I am moving closer to it.

love Julie
x

10:01pm Nottingham

I set the timer on my mobile phone and watch the seconds count down. I can still match the seconds to the memory of the song, but I wonder how long this will last. How much is left, and how much is left to change? 0:04 - beat. 1:27 - a syllable in a word I used to know. 3:13 - time is running out. Time is r u nn i n g ooo u t. .. What will come to fill that space, when time has run out? Will it be you? I propose the only certainty is that it won't be me. That it can't be Me.

I am at home. I'm leaving soon. This project somehow helps me to understand what I'm leaving behind, and the possibility of what I'm coming to.

I'll let you know when I get there.
Richard

6.29pm Prague

At 6.29pm, sitting by the banks of the Vltava, I played that piece of music. I don't have my headphones for my mobile with me, so I had to play it through the speaker. Just a few seats up a small stall holder was playing some disco on his tinnie ghetto blaster. It made for an interesting merge. In front of me, across the river the setting sun balanced above the Prague Castle and the shifting clouds kept creating that evening burst effect that you see in so many classical paintings, just waiting for some iconic symbol or valkerie to appear to the sounds of Wagner, or some such, but that is a little way off what I am listening to, possibly a minor thing.
I must admit I am a little emotional at this point having just stepped out of the Pinkus Synagogue, a memorial listing on its stark white walls, the 77 297 names of the Bohemian and Moravian jewish victims of the Nazis. Upstairs is an exhibition of drawings by the children that were held in Terezin a town/concentration camp, a "model" holding pen of sorts, north west of Prague. These drawings were encouraged as a way of self expression in response to the oppression around them. Most of these children did not survive, being transported east to Auschwitz. I know this history, I know the facts, and I know there are atrocities and genocides that continue to plague this world, however it never ceases to amaze me that when faced with the memorials and documents of this time, again and again it still leaves me gutted.
So then it is sun and a gentle river and an epic sunset and a crazy song and lyrics reminding me that yes, it is all transient. Transient, yes, but during that transience marks are made and excavations follow.
nazdravi
Julie