Blather like you mean to say what you’re saying…

 

Not long ago – days ago even – my imagination had me many leagues below an ancient ocean.

 

I dreamt I had returned to my long estranged hometown and, to recover long ignored memories, had ventured onto the sandstone hill I had played on as a child. I knew, as I had not then, that I was walking on stone that had once been a seabed. So, walking this same stone – this one-time seabed now turned sun-heated baking tray for every unlucky mollusc that lost its way. So walking this same stone that trilobites would have scuttled over – and now lie buried within – I wished wholeheartedly to take my time and engage with this feeling and the easy sustenance I found from it. This effortless meal of fantasy and immensity stretching out before me, that made me at once feel small and insignificant and then, in the same moment, made me feel integral to the world.

 

All this felt as if I were bringing all this life back, what had once been teeming and had laid for so long, that it might perhaps crawl up and out of the rock and start again the toil of existing.

 

Whilst standing there it became clear that, though I longed to join in with this aqua sutra – though I wanted to move back in time and occupy the same space as now, feel the cool water around me. Though I wanted a fantasy, for the pressure would have crushed me and I could not bring myself to accept that. Though I wanted so desperately to be a part of that world I know that if I were transported back I would not join, as a drop of water would, that ocean. Instead I would join it as a slick of oil.

 

Always wholly separate, that is how I am. That I would not fit in with prehistoric creatures is little surprise, that I could never fit in back in my hometown had the same ring of sadness to it – even now.

 

It is at this point that I find myself outside my childhood home, a shed on that same hill. The rusting roof, the doormat, the seats and that table made from a tire and a stop sign. I walk in and everything is upended. I walk out and find my old tools, a spade and some sheers, broken and rusting.

 

The day carried on, the sun pressed down on my skin, filling each pore with a rock pool of its own and glittering on the stone as its rays met the occasional polished grain – just as it glistened when the rays hit my moist skin. It had been like this all day, hardly a breeze to stir the stale air. Up in the endlessly blue sky unknown birds circled; too small to be vultures, not to mention unlikely for England, but still my imagination ran away with itself and I prayed swift deliverance from their greedy gaze. The song of crickets in the dry grasses sounded like the sizzling of eggs in a frying pan. The only other noise was the far off sound of engines on the duel carriageway, about two miles off in the distance, their survival ensured by our reliance on them.

 

Coming back to my hometown is like looking at fossils. There is no way to resurrect those old memories, or travel back to meet them. I must clarify that I wish to rewrite, rather than repeat those memories. They are now just fossilized, unearthed with careful thought. I can remember quite a bit about that old world I used to be a part of. Can see myself, undeveloped, like our ancient ancestors that would then have simply been curious looking fish.

 

Purpose seems to be the theme of these thoughts. That I have no purpose is an ever-present concern. My tools, rusting, are no longer able to do what they were meant. I have my wishes, aspirations, and targets. The trouble is that there is no impression in the stone for these things. I cannot trace the outline of a body. Cannot work out how they will move and come about. The ancestor cannot trace the family tree forward.

 

Realising that I have been standing on this almost lifeless mound for the last few hours breaks the spell. I walk down, first through brush – shoulder high and thorny – then down through greener ferns. Eventually I reach pavement as I leave the hillside and venture down through the winding streets and some time after that I arrive at the train station to board a train for my home, some 300 miles from this world.

 

As I look out of the carriage window there is a great rumbling – straining to see further down along the train – my face is pressed flat against the glass as I see uncountable tons of seawater fall onto that hill and rush down to greet me.

Filed under: Reality, childhood, hopes, mount, nightmare, sleep , rumbling, carriage, greet, glass, miles, hill, spade, sheers, station, escape, trilobites, sustenance, meal, fantasy, scuttled, baking, tray, heated, seabed

the start of things

Chapter One

Re-Genesis

 

 

Reality tearing sounds a little like the extended crashing of cymbals. It had a touch of ‘Revelation’ about it, with great lightening-bolt-like rips running down from the sky in a jagged pattern and, with a rumble of earth, stalactite counterparts reaching up to greet them. Once joined it all looked like a network of veins, or the strands of an epic haphazard web; ink running down a windowpane. The storms, which were a result of the rapid relocation of air, wreaked across the trembling landscape; trees were shaken loose from their roots. Light, too, seemed to change, grew more concentrated in places and in others the sun was eclipsed by the tall pillar-like openings that cast shadows without hems. Where cracks opened and met with the sea, The News showed the water pouring inwards and breaking into vapor that started to glow like embers. Embers that scattered in all directions inside the blackness, until they eventually put themselves out. Anything entering the openings did the same, exploding into a million fireflies that could be seen against the back-drop of black, until they faded out and died. Some cracks were thin, enough that one could circumvent them, like a tree, simply a nuisance to passing; others were as broad as skyscrapers.

 

A country singer, like Captain Wilco, might have described it better. Might just have drawn out a bit more majesty and sang a tune of going home soon, but most other expression pales.

 

Scientists, infinitely less lyrical, spoke like geologists; explaining that our reality had developed cracks along its ‘fault lines’. Announced that these were slowly expanding and that they would make the binding ribbons of our reality increasingly thin. Then they became bakers to explain how, like bread, once the ‘fibers’ of our reality were broken it would be torn apart piece by piece. Last of all they spoke like prophets and philosophers, explaining nothing past apocalyptic rhetoric and idol speculation; about worlds beyond and possible re-genesis on another dimensional plane. In the end it was all just black hole nonsense; nobody sane would believe that there was anything but oblivion on the other side. So, after the first of the ‘jumpers’; who had convinced themselves that what was needed was to ‘break on through to the other side’, most people had the sense not to accelerate their demise.

 

 When civilians saw it there were as many reactions as there were faces. Some wept, some screamed, others began to laugh like maniacs; while Cup Shonee, standing above the little town of Hosannah, just brought the bottle back to his lips and stood expressionless.

 

 fin.

 

 

more to come. 

Filed under: Captain Wilco, Cup, Hosannah, Re-Genesis, Reality, Shonee, books, cracks, hopes, mount, novel, prose, the novel, writing, writing the novel

better off in bed

 

‘Then again’ has got nothing on me. My every waking moment is a sermon on any mount you can count.

 

 

I’m not sure where to start today, tonight, this morning… it has been, and is, all these things.

 

 

I’m lying in bed with two towering bookshelves to my left. Scores of books, some read – most just flipped through. All those words, all that information and, though I hunger for it, I can never seem to find the energy to begin any real campaign – no winning this war of attrition, there will always be backup coming from somewhere; always a cavalry of classics lined against the lip of the sky.

 

 

Nest Chick is out with her Cuckoo Tweeter and so I’m a pidgin shy of all alone. Beak-to-beaking-it together and I don’t get a look in – she and she got no me, no me at all – one wonders how they cope; yet cope they do.

 

 

No one else is awake these days, I seem to find them sleepwalking through life and I quickly get sucked into that mentality. Follow suit in the very outfit myself. Tonight I found myself stupefied and so had to evacuate the house party before my brain oozed out of my ears and my heart sank like a shipwreck. Compass set to sheets and a shower, I got home in quick pace – then all I needed was a spot of sleep… or the spiders to leave… whatever. I made a cup of tea and waited up for Nest Chick. Snuggled down under downy sheets.

 

 

Tie-dyed was the style of my first bed-sheets, second hand at the point where they reached me, and I loved them. For all the non-dye stains, for missing buttons and its cheesecloth hem – all raggedy ends – for all those things I loved it. I knew early on that it mirrored my view of myself, that even now I want someone simply to love me as foolishly as I loved those bed-sheets. For all faults can be found endearing. Most blemishes the results of a life lived, rather than a life kept in an airing cupboard.

 

 

Now I wish I had those damned sheets, but mostly I miss the pillow. The was worn in the middle and the fabric had bobbled slightly. It wasn’t rough on the face, but soothing when it warmed to my temperature. I’d get to sleep with my head nodding. Rubbing my cheek against the soft-rough surface. It was heaven. It was comfort. Now I wish I had that damned pillow because I need some easy comfort. Hard to find nowadays, where most things flash and blink but are none-too-good against the cheek.

 

 

I liked things the way they were a good few hours back, when we were easy in each other’s presence. Perhaps I should have stayed, simply sat there in silence?

 

No, I think I’m better off in bed, with or without the pillow.

 

 

Filed under: Sad, about me, bed, books, childhood, compass, mount, nights out, pillow, sermon, sleep, solitary