There’s a storm brewing. The kind that cracks open Asian skies, makes skyscrapers quiver, men blubber like babies and shadows no longer exist. The dark, brooding clouds look like they carry nuclear bombs, have destructive spaceships hiding in them. It’s a real heavy one, perhaps the heaviest ever and it’s collecting its doom on the horizon. It seems whichever way I look it’s facing me. It scares me to death.
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I have a thing for nostalgia. I need to get a fix of it as often as I can. It’s a bit of a curse in a way. This minor addiction to it makes the-here-and-now a little more shallow than it should be. It leaves me wishing each current day were yesterday. Just so it can start growing that fuzzy moss which so comfortingly coats something once it’s in the past. It’s funny the hue things take on, the fluffiness and warmth in the pits of the stomach they provide when they’ve got a bit of time on them.

This bloody nostalgia’s got me loving yesterday, bored by today and scared of tomorrow.

The only thing tomorrow’s got is the promise of making today better.

So, I’m sitting on the bus and craving, searching – like a loser with a metal detector which will never cover its cost, I’m looking for anything that will shine brighter tomorrow. I’ve ended up with the seat that has an arm in the aisle. This means being glued closer to the guy next to me. He’s not too fat in in order to comfortably have an excuse for not sitting next to him and not so slim as to make it comfy either. He’s got a cheap, loud MP3 player on and some tinny 50s music is jabbering outwards. It’s old, smoochy stuff – ‘tonight you’re mine completely. I’ll give you…’ It’s the kind of tune I can get all slushy to myself, but right now I’m Siamese-twinned to this fat bastard and no music from no time is going to endear me to him or his cheap music player.

This particular slice of ‘right now' is killing me. I’m hunting desperately for it to become something tomorrow. I just want time to get its clammy hands all over it and mold it into something different. I want to shoot it up with a few hours at least just to take the screaming edge off it. I want this moment off me. I want it off me now. I want it’s tight bony hands off my throat.
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I’m here now - as in later. It’s written up. Already I let thirty minutes sink some comedy into it. I’m actually singing some of those 50s songs in my head and wondering if I’ve got a CD with that stuff on it somewhere. I feel like watching a film like Stand By Me or even Peggy Sue Got Married. The fat bastard on the bus has slimmed down already. Where his right arse cheek piled into my left now seems a bit more like a cushion rather than his skin. The tinniness of the music has taken on a certain allure - I can even kid myself it sounded like original vinyl. I’m home and the last hour has alleviated the pain. The now is the then and it's so much rosier.
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If I look the storm is still there though. It’s been there for some years now.