‘The dreams aren’t broken down here they’re just walking with a limp’
~ TOM WAITS

I’m finding the world to be a weary ominous place.

In the broken narrative of our past and history I see an innocence that’s been lost and forgotten and as time marches unrelentingly on, like a callous mechanical army, leaving the broken and twisted in its wake to slip into disrepair and degeneration, left on the side of the road or in the dark crevices and deep eerie shadows of a misremembered time I feel this ugly weariness that I am unable to wish away or hide from.  But I have found that if I listen hard enough in the wastelands I can hear a quiet lonely melody and the clunking of a penny ride bringing with it a child’s faith and hope, rusting from the outside in but still retaining some cheerful carnival colour and past glory and a residue of innocence made up of laughter and joy – if dragged into the light these relics shine again with memories of a time when five cents could buy a little magic and joy.

HELEN BACK