Nostalgia is the monarchy, commanding with all its shortcomings, as workers work levers with fingertip flinches: static, inaccurate trainers of recalcitrant gramophones. The courthouse steps talk to me – in second languages, of course – but their accounts of snakes fleeing the domus patris shrinks me to back to my four-year-old fears. What am I even nostalgic for? I watch the sweet street of the royal hairdresser flood with tourists and towering ravens, fluttering apologetic eyelashes as they wheel empty trolleys in search of loot. I’ve a bag full of near-misses and ricochets; a bag full of riddles, tight to my chest. Workhouses rise on every corner, tottering stacks of ridicule and heart attacks, each boasting an apostrophe chipped from pediments, a monument to the apostate mass. The mob moves on without motive or monitor, filter-feeding on nothing but the mechanism of sighs. Some might say it’s a sign, but my resignation is uncooked, my sense of perspective milky with dust. Nostalgia is a day divorced from all untoward appurtenances and a sad crown. These Royal beads will swarm me.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor