But hey, who's on trial?

Musical accompaniment: Interpol - Evil

Skye and Marcia sat up and looked at their wrists, tapped their Smart Watches in perfect synchronicity, pushed their empty glasses towards my 3/5 finished pint, and reached for their handbags; two luminary geniuses in their fields with 1.9 PhD's and change between them heading off to meet up with a group of people who's education equates to a formidable Peer-Review Board and engage in a passtime which renders me dumber than a Remedial Phys Ed Teacher's Conference. 

"You sure you don't want to come?" Skye asked, knowing the answer, but demonstrating that intellect is no excuse for discourtesy. 
"Is it going to be louder than this?" I enquired, gesturing to the pub filled with treble-heavy 90's Pop-Rock clattering off all the hard-surfaces at a not-quite-but-almost uncomfortable volume. 
"Much!" Marcia confirmed, almost as gleefully bright as her lipstick-red peaked-lapel velvet coat. 
"Nah, reckon I'll just finish my pint and head home, but thanks. Say hi to folks for me tho.
Enjoy your karaoke." 

I sat, looked at my phone, swiped away the screen-full of notifications I gave negative-fucks about, necked the rest of my Strong Scottish Ale remembering wryly that it was called "There Can Be Only One". Pulling on my long coat against the biting cold I knew would be waiting outside, I paid the bar tab and stepped out into the street. I plugged my pair of 6mm drivers into my ears, activated the full-bore ANC isolation, and as the voice prompt confirmed "Connected!" pressed play on my phone as I walked south thru Dickson, and the head-drilling bassline started beating my brain whilst my shoes beat the pavement. I'd caught the light-rail up after knocking off work, but it was early and I was in no rush. Walking home instead of catching public transport was a habit I formed in London to save a quid and spend some time. Half a lifetime and some solid career-decisions later and I'm far from being short of a buck (or quid, baht, dollar, or rupiah for that matter), but the counterpoint to that sort of success is a dearth of moments where you're in one place and find yourself in absolutely no rush to get to the next, so I decided to walk home. 

It was only 3.2km, and "I'm sure I need the exercise," I told myself, so I cruised down Challis St, turned right on Morphett, flipping a mental double-deuce at the Emergency Services Depot from which Ambulances and Fire Trucks emerge a couple of times a night to race down Northbourne emitting an eardrum-piercing wail on their way to saving the life of some unfortunate arsehole who has the audacity to be having The Worst Night Of Their Lives At A Moment Which Mildly Inconveniences Me as I passed. Turning south onto Northbourne Ave and the home-stretch it's represented for significant portions of my life, my left hand reached up to skip track back for the third time. 

 Musical accompaniment: Interpol - Evil

In front of me lay a linear path stretching to a vanishing point convergence; the way forward was clear, all I had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, wash, rinse, repeat, and: 

Treading down that well-lit corridor, I saw streets and driveways diverging left and right, begging to be explored, luring me away from my south-bound trajectory with a siren-song of
"Stop! Go back! You are going the wrong way!" 
"Your North Star is behind you!" 
"The Princess is in another Castle!" 

As my footsteps syncopated with the drum beat of the song's 5th and 6th repetitions and the bass drilled deeper into my consciousness, my mind's eye explored those divergent branches sign-posted "If only I'd..." and "There but for the grace of God go I...", traced them each and all to their ultimate conclusion, saw their outcomes, and in third-eye hindsight saw myself staggered under the weight of opportunities-missed and paradise-lost to faceplant in the frigid cold of despair, again and again. 

But in the wake of time's arrow my feet maintained their rhythmic cadence, the eyes I hide behind lenses which allow me to see clearly fixed forward, whilst Interpol sang their song of Evil out of the chunks of rare-earth metals and plastic which isolate my auditory sensorium from the noise and chaos of the world around me. 

And I left my selves behind. 

Perhaps they'll report back one day with fantastic tales of their adventures chasing white rabbits through memory's wonderland, but I'll not hold my breath; as fascinating as it might be to see how my other halves might have lived, I'm content to live without the knowledge of their experiences in the dead-ends they find themselves trapped in after eating variously-coloured cupcakes with "Love me", "Try me", "Be me" printed in psychedelic-flavoured icing. Every choice I've had I've made with the best information, consideration, and intention I had available at the time, and the only way things could have turned out different would have been for me to have known things I couldn't possibly have then. If I were to pursue those possibilities I could spend the rest of my life experiencing pasts I know I'd never have chosen which, I thought, would be a bit of a waste. The twists and turns are all in the future. As we go it straightens out, creating a direct line in our wake leading from where we are all the way back to where we started. 

I wasn't sure whether I found that comforting or not, but keeping your eyes forward certainly helps avoid tripping over the eScooter that's toppled over in front of the Rex. 

Approaching the lights of Girrawheen St the graffiti'd hoarding gave way to the darkened open space of Haig Park, and my feet diverted to the desire-lines they knew instinctively must be there because this is Canberra, and at a visceral level we know each other in a way only old lovers can, so with a conviction shared only by true romantics and madmen my feet know that where they seek a path they'll find one. By the time we emerged from the still darkness of the trees into the bright lights and brighter young things of Lonsdale St I'd lost count of how many times that same song had played, but some hours later when my earphones ran out of juice my music player app counted 111, so it was obviously fewer than that. 

I needed to replenish my supply of beer; I knew this because my feet knew this, and I've learned not to second-guess my feet because those bastards know what's what; they have, after all, always taken me where I needed to be. 

A brief transaction later and they deposited me into the 6th floor shoebox filled with hungry meows and ghosts that I now call Home. None of those were here when I arrived; I brought all of them with with me; some of them I've carried and kept fed since before I left the first time. 

We are, after all, all the things we can't leave behind, and I've carefully packed all the baggage I can't bring myself to let go of again and again so I can beat myself with them no matter where I go. It's weightless; they add nothing to my carry-on allowance, but somehow no matter how little the scales at the airport tip my pockets are always filled with painful angst, because better to keep carrying them around than forget and replace them with more of the same mistakes. 

It would take a life span with no cell mate to find the long way back, eventually I'll learn to look the other way. 

But hey, who's on trial?