“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good”

King, M.L. Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. chapter two.

Interestingly enough several of those involved probably thought that they were morally right at the beginning and only one began to question whether they had been right in the first place though appeared too weak to stand up or walk away. One of those concerned said that their motivation was to destroy others who she believed were weak and one who believed in the superiority of their race above all others in all matters.  The others seemed to either not to want to understand what was going on or blow which ever way the wind carried them.  What characterised all these people in the end was their moral weakness and the fact that as long as they perpetuated the wrong they were doing the more contaminated, diseased and corrupted they became by their own self justifications for their actions.

There were many casualties in this conflict but because they held power and they were surrounded by those who had also done wrong so nothing touched them.  They clapped and celebrated as others suffered or the good that had prevailed crumbled about them.  They didn’t care because they had long ago lost their humanity.  They did not realise that what they thought they were building had it’s shaky foundations in misery and contempt for warmth, love, and learning and would therefore never flourish.  They tried to drive wedges between friends and lied and threatened those who had worked hard to bring truth and light to a dark bad spirited place.  Corruption festered at the core like a cancer. One suicidal self-hating and two-faced, misandrous, another treacherous scheming, bigoted and Machiavellian, endlessly but clumsily plotting to seize power -revealed by her schadenfreude induced enthusiasm.  The others corrupted, manipulated, misinformed, weak, wretched, and shambling.

They fed leech like on the goodwill that those who looked to them, but did not know their true nature, gave them much in all innocence.  They worked hard for the forces of darkness in the belief that they were right and anyone who opposed them was wrong, offensive and ignorant.  They criticised those who left as misguided, inferior or undesirable and embraced anyone who supported them no matter what their motivation or effectiveness.  The biggest offence, as far as they were concerned, was to question their absolute rule and if this ever happened then you could expect every thing that you were, or anything they could make up, to be turned against you until they were satisfied that you were no longer a threat.  Like a bitter divorce everything would be twisted to make monsters of loving people and self destructive battles fought for the hearts and minds of the children.

So we should feel sorry for them and pity them because what is founded on falsehood, contempt, disease and trickery will not prevail – will it?.  They will have no luck and their happiness too will be short lived.  Should the good walk away or fight from within?  Analysis Spock.  ‘In this case the internal contradictions were so great that walking away is the best strategy as to stay would merely serve to prop up a corrupt crumbling institution’. Nuff said.

You want a simple life and you told me that you wanted to spend your days feeling happy and appreciated and doing anything you wanted to do.  Of course you don’t want to be uncomfortable or have to suffer or work very hard either. So what exactly is a simple life anyway?  You said you hated your job and that the place you lived in was too polluted and you wanted to go somewhere else.  Suddenly this simple life involves relocation to achieve and that involves a lot of paperwork  and money.  Let’s just suppose that someone provided the funds and sorted out all the paperwork for you.  Now what?

You set off for your simple life in let’s say England (a country I know well).  You find a nice little shop with a comfortable apartment upstairs in a pretty little village with a mini-mart, post office and a couple of nice pubs.  You start up a little tea shop just for fun and spend your time talking to occasional visitors and retired folk.  Is this a simple life?  It is certainly an ideal life but how practical are you being.  There are bills to pay and you need a very good Summer to pay for a slow Winter.  So you spend the Summer working very hard with not much time off as there is plenty of time when the cold weather comes.  You spend your days in the shop and your evenings baking cakes and life begins to form a pattern.  You feel happier as you take long walks in the countryside.  You discover new sounds like the thud of raindrops on chestnut leaves.

Days follow days and become weeks that become years and sitting one day watching your garden glowing green after Spring rain has washed the leaves you think again of the city you left so long ago.  You remember how the lights twinkled across the bay and the skyscrapers soared through the early morning mist.  You can hear again the sounds of the market and the exotic smells of a thousand edible things. You remember me and how I stood at the airport with tears falling from my eyes saying  good bye as you turned from our city life to follow your dream. A sudden ache grips your very being and you know in that moment that your dream was just a dream without the one you loved.

Written in Faversham Kent November 1999

The week began Sunday night with the news of a death of a child in a tragic drowning incident.  A good friend had been running a course to introduce kids to their local beaches.  What was a wonderful day properly organised with activities for kids and the participation of their parents and the local community became a nightmare for everyone as a young boy died despite the best efforts of professional life savers at the scene and the emergency services.  This incident caused me to reflect very deeply about the preciousness of life as my heart went out to both the boys mother, who saw her dead child carried from the sea, and also those who felt responsible for him at that time.  The pain to those who knew the child or had recently befriended him is almost unimaginable and I feel very upset when I think of a young life being cut short in this way.

The sea, especially in Okinawa, is an incredibly beautiful environment and treated with due respect it is our friend and ally but it is a powerful force of nature that we really know little about and can be dangerous.  It is so tragic that good people were trying to help children to understand a little more of the wonder of the environment on their doorstep when a tragedy like this occured.  Loss of life at sea has been a fact of life for the Okinawan people for centuries as many of their communities have relied on the bounty of the sea to sustain them in good times, as well as and bad times, and every community knew that the price for this was that occasionally lives of the brave folk who faced the sea to fish would be lost.  This has always been the way things are between the sea and the people.  Offerings were made to the gods of the sea to appease them and that was all communities could do.

In modern times we often forget how insignificant we are compared to something as huge and powerful as the ocean and yet we damage it and as a species mistreat it through environmental mismanagement and polution.  Our unending demands for fish have destroyed food chains millions of years in the making and our desire to strip the land of its trees causes runoff of soil that is destroying coral reefs that can never be replaced.  I have always had a very strong spiritual connection with the sea and I am in awe of it.  I love it but I fear and respect it too.  My feeling has not changed.

An innocent life has been lost in tragic circumstances but we can all learn from this and remind ourselves of our own fragile existence and relationship with the world we live in.

————

On Monday my friends Wife gave birth to their first child.  It was wonderful to share in the celebration of this event having witnessed months of growing excitement and spoken to him about what it means to be a Dad.  Due to the wonders of technology pictures of the happy event dropped into my inbox and I was able to send my congratulations almost immediately to the exhausted parents after the 24 hours of hard work and in the case of his wife physical pain that is hard for any man to fully imagine.

It has been extremely good to share in his excitement and see him and his wife become closer in their new role as parents.  Some of the things he said really touched me.  He said his wife had become his hero after he witnessed her stoically coping with the pain.  As men who have witnessed childbirth know it is a terrible thing to see the one you love in such pain even though this is often forgotten quickly as soon as the little person responsible pops out.

His excitement at the event has not abated and he told me he even showed the guy in a convenience store the photo of his baby he had on his phone.  He described to me how he recently had held his son and looked into his eyes and felt an overwhelming feeling of love for him as he thought of all the years of parenthood ahead.  It is moments like that remind us what life is really all about even if it is a struggle and things don’t always work out as planned.

————

Most of us have to work for a living and I am no exception.  This week I had my three monthly review in my job.  This was an interesting experience as I have been honest about the fact that I am much better suited to working with older people than the very young children that I have been working with.  I was happy to hear my closest working colleague comment that in his opinion I had been doing the job better than those who were convinced that this was the job they were most suited to (you hope those people never become your dentist!).  So in a way my strategy of being absolutely honest shows strength of character but will no doubt do nothing for my wealth.

The world really isn’t ready for naked honesty and if everyone went to their bosses tomorrow and told them absolutely honestly how suitable they were to do their jobs or what the reasons were that they did their jobs then it is quite possible that society as we know it would collapse as everyone pursued their hearts desire and bosses faced the reality that their employees would rather be doing something else.  Let’s face it most of us work for the money and it’s a bonus if you enjoy it or are good at what you do.   If you are genuinely one of those people who don’t care whether you are paid at all, because you have such a deep and abiding love for what you do (I have met such people before), then good luck in the evolutionary ferment.

My boss surprised me by suggesting that construction work might be more suitable for me -he does a bit of stud walling and carpentry.  Although, possibly more skilled in construction than he is, having extensively renovated several houses and landscaped gardens etc. in my time, becoming a construction worker had not really occured to me particularly as I am more inclined towards being a writer or University/College Lecturer than anything else.  The bizarre thing is he is not the first boss i have had who has suggested this.  Mind you, I have to say I have always looked good in a tool belt in a way that physically less well endowed guys, such as my boss, can never hope to emulate without a course of powerful steroids (I don’t even need the super deluxe model) so I will give the construction worker thing some thought (even if it is just to dress up in occasionally!).  I am not certain what kind of work my boss is most suited to as it appears that he is still working that out (I don’t think he has ever been management material) but he did recently mention an interest in a team meeting  that he might like to take that in hand and pursue it on his own.

I actually do like my job a lot but I am realistic about my own limitations and also my own work preferences.  The job has not been mentally demanding in the least but it has been physically and emotionally demanding.  So as of now I am tidying up my CV and looking for something else which in Japans unemployment capital could be a bit tricky.  I am rich inside even though my bank balance is a bit lowuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.   This was when I woke up and realised I had fallen asleep on the keyboard from shear exhaustion.

Written in August 2007

I often go for a walk when I cannot sleep, especially when the moon is full. On these nights I do not feel in the least bit tired and just start walking. On this particular night I felt quite happy to be walking along the road in the moonlight and before long I achieved the state where my body felt like it was floating along with a steady rhythm and my mind was free to wander. Sometimes when I reach this state I might make up a play and have all the various parts playing in my head. I was therefore not aware of the scooter until it was quite close to me and was startled by the sudden sound as it sped past me. It was an older model called a Honda Joker and this one was shiny black with chrome handlebars. The rider had a black helmet, dark tinted goggles, and as far as I recall was dressed entirely in black. I guessed he or she was a student on their way home from a friend’s house. I saw them look back at me and then pull away at speed. I guessed they must have wondered what a foreigner was doing wandering about in the middle of nowhere at this time of night. The encounter was enough to break my rhythm and also train of thought. I looked around and realised that I hadn’t a clue where I was. Despite everything I decided to walk on in the hope that I would find a convenience store up ahead.
The road eventually curved to the right and there was a steep wall of rock on one side where the road had been carved out of the hillside and on the other side there was a steep drop with what looked like dense undergrowth. Around the next bend there was very little to see but I walked on until I noticed the scooter that had passed me was parked at the side of the road. It was ticking slowly like a clock as it cooled down. A short distance further along I noticed some wide steps cut into the rock and what looked like a path up into the rock wall. I thought this was probably some old footpath and probably led to some lookout at the top and on the spur of the moment I decided that I would go and see what was up there. During the day I imagined cars probably stopped here and I could visualise whole families running up the wide steps and at the top there was probably a couple of concrete picnic tables with little red roofs and a nice view.
I started walking up the steps and after a while I started to see graves. Graves in Okinawa are like little stone houses and some of the older ones resemble turtle shells and were originally constructed using skills learned from Chinese stonemasons. During the Battle of Okinawa many graves were destroyed by the invading US military as they were mistakenly thought to be gun emplacements or bunkers. Many civilians sheltering inside them were killed often with a single grenade slung indiscriminately into the entrance. There are also many stories of Japanese soldiers sheltering with Okinawan civilians held at gunpoint who were told that if they were discovered by the Americans they would be tortured and killed. These Japanese soldiers were also known for killing Okinawan babies, when they cried, fearful that their hiding place would be discovered. In the heat of the battle US forces were hard pressed to know who was a combatant and who was an Okinawan civilian simply trying to shelter in the crossfire between the battle hardened Japanese military and US troops many of whom had seen the desperation and recklessness with which the Japanese fought for every inch of the territory they occupied. Many of those Americans did not know how the Okinawans had also been overrun by the Japanese military and had been forced to speak Japanese rather than their own dialects and also suffered the systematic destruction of their own unique culture and traditions in the name of militarist aspirations. The Okinawans that were liberated by the Americans soon discovered that on the whole they were not so badly treated and the Americans realised that the Okinawans were a relaxed, peaceful, generous and wonderfully warm-hearted people with a rich culture that was significantly different from their northern cousins.  The land however was devastated and until the Vietnam war was in fact the most bombed place on earth.  To this day the soil in some places is stained  red with the rust of rusting iron from bombs.  The people were desperately poor and of course people resorted to any activity they could to get food.  Those were terrible days for the people of Okinawa.  Okinawa is still the poorest prefecture as they were still under occupation whilst the Japanese were enjoying their bubble economy.

I began to feel a little uneasy and muttered some apologies to the dead for disturbing their rest. Okinawans have a great respect for their ancestors and their family tombs are often impressively large. I should have realised that this was the entrance to a graveyard but for some reason I kept climbing passing several tombs on either side. It was then that I heard what sounded like a baby crying further up the path. I stopped suddenly and so did the sound. I felt as if it had suddenly grown very cold indeed. I was sweating from the climb and the air was still but I couldn’t help shivering uncontrollably. I pulled myself together and resumed the climb telling myself there was probably a very simple and logical explanation for the noise.
After a while I knew I was not alone and I had an intense feeling I was being watched. I kept turning suddenly sure that I would catch someone looking at me before they could hide behind a grave. I wondered whether I would come across the rider of the scooter I had seen. I hoped that I would reach the top and find them sitting there having a quiet smoke or finishing off a can of Coke. A few words to another living soul would be a great comfort.
When I finally reached the top there was a small clearing with some rocks but no sign of the rider. It was a little bit of an anticlimax after the drama of the climb up. I sat down on one of the rocks for a rest. I was hidden by some bushes and for some reason this made me feel better. I sat very still and took some deep breaths. I was looking straight ahead when I became aware of several small grey shapes in the bushes at the other side of the clearing. One by one they moved cautiously into the clearing looking around like a pride of small lions. I wasn’t surprised to discover this place was populated by a group of feral cats. There are many in Okinawa and they are a common sight almost anywhere. Surely they must have known I was there but they had decided to ignore me, I supposed, as long as I stayed still and away from them. They were all different kinds and all of them looked thin and bony. I then witnessed something a bit odd. Another cat came out of the bushes behind them walking through them gracefully and jumped with ease onto a boulder turning around in one smooth movement to sit and face the others. This cat was a bit different. It looked well fed and its coat was shiny and black, its green eyes too sparkled in the moonlight, making the other cats look poor and shabby by contrast. This cat sat regally like a queen on the rock looking down imperiously at the others who stopped and looked up at her briefly and one of them mewled loudly followed by another. I held my breath wondering what I was seeing then the black cat on the boulder turned to face me like a spotlight and I knew it was looking at me fully aware of my presence. It then turned away, as if it had sent out a message to the others, they then all melted away into the bushes and were gone.
I sat still for a couple of minutes and then decided I had better make my way down. When I reached the road again I noticed that the scooter had gone. I turned towards home and as I did so the first glimmer of dawn appeared on the horizon. Behind me I could hear the sound of a scooter still far off. I carried on walking and the scooter I had seen earlier passed me stopping about 50 yards ahead of me. The rider turned to look at me and as they did so they pulled up their goggles and my heart nearly stopped. I looked into the space where their eyes should have been and saw instead two holes of oily blackness. I felt a feeling of dread grip me as they slowly replaced their goggles and rode off again. It took me a while to recover my composure and I swore out loud and even tried to laugh it off, telling myself it was just some kid with some weird black contact lenses trying to give me a fright, but I have never seen anything like it. I made a promise to myself there and then not to go visiting any old graveyards in the dead of night ever again as you really don’t know who or what might follow you home.
I sometimes dream of that awful moment when the rider took off their goggles but in my dream instead of looking into those terrible eyes I see instead another face looking back at me. It is the face of a woman with short black hair and the most remarkably beautiful green eyes. I hope in my heart that it was the woman I saw and that the other face was just the product of my overactive mind and a sleepless night.

Most of the people I admire are dead so Will Self is something of an exception as he is very much alive and at Clapham Books on 23^rd October 2008 he was relieved to be back in London after touring around promoting his new book ‘Liver ; A Fictional Organ With A Surface Anatomy Of Four Lobes’. This was the first reading and book signing thing I have ever been to, or wanted to attend, but I could not resist meeting the man who has written books such as ‘The Book of Dave‘, ‘Cock and Bull’ and ‘Butt’ to name but a few. I was there early and was offered a glass of wine by the nice people, Nikki Kastner, Ed Mcgarry, and Alastair Kenward, of Clapham Books who own one of the very few independent bookshops left in this part of London. They may well claim to be Wills bookshop of choice as he purchases his yellow Post-It notes and other stationery items a few doors down at Flynns Commercial Stationers and is always ‘popping in’ the bookshop for a quick browse and a chat.

One of the first things that impressed me about Will Self is that, unlike some other successful authors, he is relatively modest and down to earth and unashamedly and unapologetically himself. I would describe him as a very genuine person who takes his craft seriously and is justly proud of what he creates ‘only I can write a Will Self book’. It is of course the case, that like any other original artist of note, only the genuine article can produce the genuine article.

He is necessarily intense, articulate, but not overbearing, having the easy confidence of a man at the top of his game despite his assertion that ‘I’ve not done anything yet’ when someone asked him if he was considering writing an autobiography. This is good news as he has a lot to say about any subject and a lot of interesting ideas and will hopefully produce many more books.

I have to admit that I was initially in awe of the man but warmed to him especially after I had spoken to him personally. He is an intellectual heavyweight and I’ve heard him in action before demolishing opponents such as the outspoken journalist Richard Littlejohn; who was taken apart live on radio and reduced to a burbling wreck. He was simply no match for the speed and ferocity of his attacker and his defences simply crumbled forcing the normally relaxed presenter to intervene to prevent a total knockout.

I humbly admit that I was too nervous to ask a question in front of those gathered and I waited until I could speak to him in person. I remember hearing once that when Carl Jung first met Freud he passed out, being overcome by the experience of being in the presence of the great man. I was certainly temporarily tongue tied and slightly incapacitated and I cannot remember the last time that happened in the presence of anyone -at least not when fully clothed.

I was impressed and inspired too. I think it was Dali who said ‘An artist is not one who is inspired, but one who can inspire others’. He selected two readings from his new book and these he delivered faultlessly complete with some appropriate actions, accents and changes in pace, pitch, tone, and volume; which very much brought the reading to life. He was very entertaining and held those present in a state of thrall only to be released on the cessation of his readings. He’s a performer and I don’t know why I was surprised by that given his numerous appearances on television and radio.

His writing is darkly humorous and appeals to my own sense of humour and taste for the socially unusual and descriptively exotic. Despite the fact that the small, plastic, front row, seat I was sitting on was a tad uncomfortable I was hanging on every word and could probably have listened to him all day. In common with some of the very best writers even when he is talking about a subject as debated as assisted suicide there is a sense that something else is going on at the very edge of your perception forcing you to concentrate on the characters being described fully lest you miss some subtle nuance that will give you the clue to what might occur next or has already occurred.

There really is nothing else like the experience of hearing an author read his own work and as I listened I felt the intensity of the emotion in his words. He could so easily have not come up to my high expectations of him however I am so glad that I was moved and I find myself respecting Will Self the writer even more. I only hope more people discover Will Self as he is not always the easiest writer to read but in my opinion he is one of the very best, challenging and thought provoking novelists alive and long may he be so.

If You Had Not Been There
Then who would have been in the space where you were.
And spoken with soft words about the energy of colours
If you had not been there
Then who would have been there to smile and tell me
With kind words about the meaning of giant spiders
If you had not been there
Then we would not have walked side by side by the River Thames
And drank earl grey and talked about identity and life
If you had not been there
Then I would not have been captivated and full of thoughts
And floating home with words singing in every fibre of being
If you had not been there
Then who would have been there and this would just have been
Another dream of longing to fill the empty spaces all around
If you had not been there

A young woman walks past he sees her put down her shopping bags briefly as she retrieves her travel card but she leaves one behind as she hurries for the bus. He sees this and moves quickly picking up the plastic carrier bag briefly examining its contents that he assumes is fresh meat or fish. Nice and easy. He takes a breath as he sees the woman get on the bus. She does not look back and he lets out his breath. He looks quickly left and right to see if he has been seen and then walks off briskly towards the park. It’s not stealing if you find something is it?  It’s your destiny. You can’t argue with fate can you? He feels nothing. He has already forgotten her face. She no longer exists to him if she ever existed at all.

Sitting in the park he smokes some weed he’s been saving. It is good stuff organically grown under government licences by a friend of a friend. The late afternoon sun shines and pretty girls walk by chattering on their phones. London’s full of pretty Eastern European girls nowadays. He looks at the children playing in the park and something stirs at the edge of his memories. It is a good day full of colour, life, and peace. He takes a long toke of his neatly rolled spliff and slowly exhales the pungent herbal smoke imagining dragons floating in the blue. A perfect smoke, he smiles at how things had panned out in his life. No ties, no responsibilities, no worries. He could have that as his epitaph.

He remembers the shopping bag at his feet and takes a closer look. Something isn’t right. Blood is dripping from the bag. He notices a small trail of blood that leads to the bench where he is sitting. A Jack Russell  pauses, sniffs at the blood looking up at him quizzically then runs away looking back at him as it runs. He looks inside and undoes the bag inside the bag and suddenly his heart jumps as he realises that inside the bag inside the bag wrapped around in a few paper towels is the tiny ghost white lifeless body of a dead baby. With trembling hands he refastens the inner bag and knots the outer bag and places this inside the rubbish bin beside the bench. He walks a little unsteadily to the drinking fountain nearby and washes the infants’ blood from his hands. The blood of innocents collects in the shiny silver stainless steel bowl of the fountain reflecting back his shocked expression. As he stares the baby’s face and his face become one in the trembling stream. He carries on washing and washing his hands but somehow the blood has penetrated his skin and no matter how hard he tries he cannot wash away the blood on his hands. Images, emotions and tears well up, and dead babies float past, reflected in the blur of his vision.

He looks back at the rubbish bin and imagines he sees blood seeping out. Soon it will start to drip onto the asphalt. It will make a small pool of blood. The image of the baby’s face and tiny clenched fist is burned into his mind. Something else bothers him. Some old memory coming back, something he’d wanted to forget. She’d wanted him to be there but he’d had something better to do. He’d told her just to get rid of it and let him know when it was done. She had begged him to come with her but he knew it would be easier if he did not. She did what he’d told her and he’d dumped her on the phone after she’d done it. It was easier if he didn’t have to see her again. She hadn’t expected him to do that and she told him he was a selfish bastard and she wished she’d never got rid of it because it was hers too.

He feels sick as he walks from the park but manages to control his rising nausea. When he arrives home he rushes to the toilet where he retches and vomits until there is nothing left but a thin watery discharge. The cistern whines and gurgles as it refills. He is crying again when he throws his clothes in the corner and stands under the hot shower rinsing his mouth and scrubbing his body roughly with lavender soap. He’ll wash it all away forever, all those dead babies. As he glances at his reflection in the polished chrome plug hole he sees again the tell-tale rosy bloom of blood as the tiny whirlpool takes him to the darkness below.

Tonight I am so restless and cannot sleep.  I just raided the fridge and ate some cold jerk chicken and washed it down with some milk. The night bus thundered past lighting up the kitchen strobing my movement. Suddenly I am caught in the act by several pairs of roving eyes.

Laying in bed the only light from street lamps I  am starting to see patterns in the woodchip wallpaper.  A dark mark sprouts legs and probosis then moves purposefully across the wall intent on its mission until I look at it and it once again assumes the disguise of a dark mark.  A moth flutters helplessly and then drops towards me like a dive bomber, swooping low, wing tips brushing my cheek.

There are small sounds at the very limits of my hearing indicating the presence of all kinds of small animal life just waiting for my eyes to close before advancing upon my helpless flesh.  When I wake in the morning I will feel as if I’ve been assaulted by an army of small beasts eager to have a piece of me.

Then there are creakings, odd sounds,  groans from the deep, next door or above or anywhere. The sounds of sleep, snores, procreation or digesting food.  The passing of late night traffic.   The nee-oorahhh of a motorbike being ridden too fast.  A bicycle rattling slowly past.  A toilet being flushed and someone in high heels click clicking slowly into the distance. Two drunks laughing and talking loudly in Polish.

I try to sleep but feel myself slipping out of my body and up into the air.  It is a great feeling and I just let it happen.  Before long I am looking down like an owl at the streets below and see the little cars moving along.  It is wonderfully peaceful up here with the barest thread of consciousness connecting me to the narcoleptic body below.

Feeling heavy again my eyes slowly close and I fly away into darkness.

Why is it that that that is essentially me, loves you?

I am sitting in a busy Café. I remember Walter Benjamin. Jazz is playing loudly. I am appreciating the rhythms that seem to form words. Perhaps I am synaesthetic. I am wondering why you want me. Why am I always here in the same story? Why is a line always turning a circle and back again.

Then the night is starting to rain in grey lines. I walk as if in a dream clothes becoming heavy. I look at the lights through rain-covered glasses. Cars stream by red and white lights – occupants concealed. Someone approaches. A dog strains on its leash barking at nothing. This rain is cleansing me of all thought. I hope

I am sitting by the water tower. The earth spins and I hold on tightly to the stone table. Golden rays stream from my fingers. Your glow is above me. Your health envelops me. Why I cannot talk to you. All that I am becomes smoke and floats on your breeze.

I am feeling waves of feeling and tears are falling to the ground. It is restless emotion burning away. Did you not know your smell intoxicates? I long to bury my face in your skin and sleep with you all around me. Then the lines on my paper become my words and words became real and then your fingers unknotting my back calms my mind.

I am walking down a strange road and a fruit bat crosses my path. Startled my measured heart beats hard. I hear the wind moving iron an eerie sound. I see you wear black and stare at my still body. Nobody laughs in the still of night an angel tears at my heart and peels off my skin.

Now I am nowhere then somewhere in the trees a horse gallops nearer. The moon is red and rain falls on rusted railings dripping from my veins. Black iron glints red in blood light. I cut the earth suddenly and blackness wells up like tar covering the trees and all. I am flying to the tree beating my wings slowly as John Coltrane plays with my heart.

You walked around and sat in a restaurant. I know that pain and lived it many years. Don’t lose yourself in this darkness. It is a way back if you come. You walked and lost something and found the child. Don’t continue as you are in the edge of somewhere I cannot find you. There is only a map to the edge of my heart. I’ll show you.

A trumpet tears me back to consciousness. Someone is shouting. My dead cousin Mark is shaking me. He shouts for me to wake to go to bed my parents are home. I run silently and hear him opening the front door. I am safe he is safe. I hear his voice calling my name. Carrie screams. Nineteen lives consumed.

Don’t turn off your phone. I’m in a room without opening. I can penetrate the dark with will but not the thought of any connection. If you can see the light in all its colours, and free that that binds you. If you can wonder at the air that surrounds you and stop the rain then you will understand why it is that that that is essentially me loves you.

The spaces between are empty and we move from one trap to the next until we are too worn down to resist any more.  The brightness fades from our eyes, the shine from greying hair, and our once hard bodies, ache, soften, crease, and sag like old leather.

The sweetness fills our senses. A gleam of light pulses faintly in gloomy grey the same rhythm as our heart.  We taste the tang of salt and the oily acrid smell fills up our nostrils and clings to our fingers like syrupy garlic but these are memories.  We stay when our hearts tell us to go.

The honey clings to us warm and inviting promising to take away all our pain.  We want it so much but know that the price is life itself. We sink further in forgetting that the way out is to fight.  We surrender to the dulling of our senses as the warm stickiness fills up our eyes, ears, mouth, nose and brain.

All there is now is soft and hazy and everything else is pain.  We are one with the dulling golden ooze pulling us where it will go.  The little light continues to pulse a little weaker now as our blurred eyes struggle to see through lids heavy with sticky sweetness.   A sudden thought takes hold to escape and breathe again the cool night air, hear true sounds and taste again the sharp bitterness of living.

And as a murmur of realisation dawns down long corridors of consciousness a window opens.  It doesn’t cling to us so powerfully and our limbs at last float free from its grip.  With our last strength we climb free towards the light and lay down, exhausted, panting, at last beyond its reach.  We feel again the weight of our bodies and as the last dregs run from our eyes ears and nose we sense the world again as if for the first time.

The criticisms that were often made of him were not altogether unfamiliar.  That he had tried to lift himself out of the mundane routines and practicalities of everyday existence and tried in vain to reach for something slightly beyond his grasp is true.

He did not see himself as better or superior to others in any sense but he accepted that he might have given that impression. He was making sacrifices and he hoped that it is worth the struggle.

Every now and then he came back to earth with a bump and blinked his eyes and looked around and at times like that the warm ideal he had carefully constructed to protect his fragile existence always crumbled in the face of cold reality.

You never signed up for this life and your dreams may have taken second place to his but he never intended that to happen.  Every thing is too painful now and your words pierce him like icy daggers, but to what end?  Does reality have to be so harsh?  Do people always have to be opponents?

You say that he tried in every way to hurt you and that nothing works anymore.  You have heard it all before and that he should try something new. You are immune to harsh words and hardened to any acts of self harm saying that they are the actions of a self-absorbed, indulgent person, who is essentially selfish. He has no defence.

So what is there left but to be alone and for him to live his life insulated and isolated from others including you.  Can happiness ever be found in an emotional vacuum? Will sadness envelope such a person and consume them?

He cannot bear to hear the voices of those he loves and all he sees is the face of a child that looked as he departed.  There is no escape from the voices that haunt him. He is cursed forever and his art means nothing and gives no comfort. A waste in the end.

I was walking dreaming when I passed the Thai restaurant and thought I saw a slight movement or perhaps sensed the spark of life. And there, clinging to the blood red wall, was an exotic creature. I guess it must have stowed away in a crate of restaurant supplies. After making good its escape it was now resting a while and trying to get its bearings before it made its way in this strange cold place. I look at its beautiful camouflaged pattern wings dusted with gold; wings that should be warmed by the slight stirring of a sub-tropical breeze not the hot oily discharge from a dirty restaurant extractor fan. It had perhaps found a tiny oasis of warmth. Seeing this doomed being though struck a chord in my heart and I felt once again the soft touch of your finger tips sending shivers up my spine and the warmth of your body. I felt sad though too knowing that this beautiful little creature would die soon, cold and far from the warmth of its home. I had not dared to breathe and then as if knowing its fate it appeared to give a small bow. I bowed too in return then it flew off into the night leaving me alone again.

I took a deep breath. There was a storm coming and the night air was heavy and charged with energy. The click of stilettos on the street behind me seemed to mark out my time too. I closed my eyes and realised I had been mourning for all those who had lost their way. I touched the wall where moments before a small creature had trembled before following its nature and flying out into the cold unforgiving world. Did I feel some echo of its presence? The wall felt rough and crumbled as I touched it, reminding me that even the most solid and lasting of our creations is in fact in the process of returning to the earth. Nothing is ever truly still and everything changes and becomes something else in time.

I looked at my fingertips, now red with brick dust, and suddenly there was a gust of warm moist air and I could smell lemon grass and jasmine and in that moment I was bathed in the fragrant warmth of a tropical evening.

I had a lot on my mind and when that happens I know that I won’t get anything written. The only cure I know is to go out and bring some paper and my trusty fountain pen and find somewhere different to write. On this occasion I took a bus into Newcastle and after walking around a bit found a cafe and purchased a BLT and a Mocha. The music they were playing was some kind of Jazz fusion thing and I put my squidgy earphones in to deaden the sound a little. I was just about to put pen to paper when a large middle aged man mumbled something and took a seat opposite me. The cafe was not busy so I looked around as if to give him a non-verbal message that there were plenty of other seats. He had a Diet Coke and was drinking this in a fairly animated way. it occurred to me that in fact the can was empty and he was in fact pretending, fairly unconvincingly, to drink it presumably for my benefit as there was no one else around. When he finished this he placed the can on my tray next to my half finished coffee and sandwich. I raised an eyebrow and at this point I slowly began to realise that this man was perhaps suffering from mental health problems. He was staring at me.

I had written three words on my paper and he was reading these out loud, ‘What’s going on?’ he then proceeded to answer this question, that he presumably thought I had posed for his benefit. I pretended not to be aware of his monologue as I had the earphones in and couldn’t really hear what he was saying in any case. He then got up and left and I felt a bit relieved. By this time the cafe was empty except for a busker sitting near the window. I started writing again and switched off from my surroundings when I was suddenly aware of a large middle aged man sitting down again in front of me this time with a Diet Coke and a BLT. He stared at me as he ate his sandwich in silence and then drank the Diet Coke without once taking his eyes off me. After he had almost finished (almost is an important word as will become clear) he let out an enormous belch that sent several soggy crumbs of partly masticated BLT over my own sandwich and into my coffee and most annoyingly onto my paper forcing me to stop writing. I wiped these off with a paper napkin and closed my pad. He continued to stare at me as I did this with no word of apology. I felt a growing sense of unease, a feeling that has served me well over the years when dealing with some very challenging people. The time had come to depart as writing was pretty much impossible. I put away my precious pen with care and without removing my headphones or saying anything I left the cafe without looking back.

After I had walked a little way the feeling of intense annoyance began to subside. I thought to my self, ‘Why am I annoyed?’ I had been mildly irritated earlier by some teenagers playing music on their mobiles on the bus. I cannot remember doing anything that would particilarly annoy anybody else on a bus. Was this a sign of age where little things irritated me? I started to think a little more charitably about my dining companion. He wasn’t much older than me and maybe he had had a tough life. Perhaps he had just wanted some company and someone to have a chat with him. He was certainly lacking in social skills and graces. He had probably had his fair share of rejection in the past. Something terrible might have just pushed him over the edge. I was thinking of many people I had known who had suffered mental breakdown or suffered from other mental health problems. Maybe this guy had a learning disability and I had just reinforced the many negative experiences he had already had. I ran a number of scenarios through my head including one where the guy had just arrived from Eastern Europe and knew very little English and just wanted to make contact with the locals. I felt a bit guilty and made up my mind that the next time something like that happened I would be a little more gracious and understanding of the rich spectrum of humanity and be a little more humane.

I did some shopping and cheered myself up. I had almost forgotten about the guy and was on my way back up the high street to Haymarket Bus Station when I saw an ambulance parked outside the cafe. I walked towards it and just as I arrived the crew were stretchering out the young busker I had seen by the window. A couple of the staff came outside too and a small crowd of onlookers had gathered. Someone asked one of the staff what had happened and he told them that some guy had just flipped and attacked the poor busker, who had just been sitting by the window minding his own business, and ran off. I had no doubt which guy may have flipped out. I thought about this on the bus on the way home. Maybe I had had a lucky escape but I shuddered to think that maybe by ignoring him I had triggered the impulse for him to hurt someone. This led to a whole other chain of thought about the interconnectedness of things and how karma might have a basis in fact.

He lay in bed reading a book but found he couldn’t concentrate. The bath was taking a long time to fill and she was humming tuneless to herself as she was taking a pee. After what seemed an age the toilet finally flushed and moments later he heard her lowering herself inch by inch into the bath making tantalisingly suggestive noises. The water must be as hot as she could bear it and he imagined her face flushed and pink.  He found himself fantasising about her outrageously and he felt a little guilty about it.

The hotel room was very reasonable.  When he was told the hotel would be supplied by the company he was meeting with he had just been expecting a fairly featureless box in which to spend the night but instead had been pleasantly surprised by the extra quality of the room and the hotels friendly and efficient service. The one drawback it seemed was that the walls were not very well soundproofed. In fact it was true to say that you could hear everything.  He was surprised that he had voyeuristic feelings.  He had an overwhelming desire to see her but not be seen. 

A friend of his had recently bought a wireless CCTV camera detector that he now took on business trips.  He had laughed when his friend had told him this until his friend had told him the story of his colleague who had been enjoying herself with ‘a friend’ in what she thought was the privacy of her hotel room in China but had been secretly filmed by a miniature camera that had been concealed in the TV set.  This was bad enough but later the next day she had been most upset when, during a business meeting, a company representative, she had been negotiating with, started playing the footage on his laptop.   She had not realised it was her at first.  Needless to say her negotiations were somewhat compromised. 

It all went quiet except for the quiet drone of the extractor fan as she lay back in the hot water a while later her heard her sit up he heard and wash herself and then heard her getting out of the bath. He thought of her drying her body on the large fluffy white towel. He then supposed that she sat behind him in front of the mirror applying moisturiser to her body. He imagined her slowly massaging moisturiser all over. She was humming quietly what sounded like a lullaby. Once this task had been completed she was probably getting into her night things and then folding back the sheets and quilt and sliding between them into bed. She turned out the light straight away. He imagined she was warm and drowsy from the bath and ready to sleep.

They had checked in at the same time and had walked along the identical corridors looking for their rooms together. She had smiled at him as they pushed their key cards into their respective doors simultaneously and entered their rooms. He thought about her smile now and wondered about her. He couldn’t help looking at her when they had been looking for their rooms. She was wearing black figure hugging trousers and from what he could tell she had a body that looked firm and athletic.

He turned out his own light and was soon asleep. It was a several hours later that he heard  the muffled sounds of her crying. She was sobbing gently, probably into her pillow. Every now and then she would blow her nose. This went on for over an hour until he heard her pick up a glass and fill this with water in the bathroom. He then heard her talking to herself, though he could not make out the words.

He felt he wanted to talk to her but could not think of any excuse that he could possibly use to knock on her door.  How would she respond if he just called to her through the wall to ask her if everything was ok? That would give everything away and she would guess that he had been listening to her.  With these thoughts turning in his head he fell asleep.

In the morning he woke late and after a quick shower he dressed and left the room. As he walked past her room the cleaner was already in there and it was obvious that she had already checked out. He wondered for a while how he might possibly contact her.  Maybe the hotel reception would forward his business card to her or he could pursuade them to give him some information.  However, he knew that this was just one of those things and he would forget her in a few days and she would just be a woman in room 418.

It was November 1994. Sitting at the junction I listened to the gentle purr of the VW Golf’s engine and I felt a deep sense of calm. Traffic was light and the next car that passed was also a VW the same colour as mine. Something registered in another part of my brain about this car. I noticed the driver first and as I looked at him we recognised each other and then I saw you. It is an image etched in my mind as you were wearing that long black coat that your father had given you. You had complained it smelled of mothballs. Had your father bought it for your mother? You looked pale your expression fixed as if you were in pain. I could not tell if you had seen me or not.

For a few seconds I could not move as every thought I had was frozen in that instant. Until that point I could tell myself that you were just away visiting your aunt, your brother or even your dad. I had been living in a fantasy world where you were there really but always just around the corner, at the supermarket,  in the bath, or the kitchen. I could tell myself that and feel ok but not any longer. There he was sitting where I had always sat before with his hands firmly on the steering wheel of my car driving away with you beside him. He not only had you but he had our dreams and everything we had worked for too. I knew with agonising finality, as I eventually lost sight of the car, that the last sliver of hope I had been clinging to with, it has to be said, increasing desperation had disappeared forever.

I cannot say what route I took after our all too brief encounter but I found myself on the motorway with my foot firmly on the accelerator. I didn’t notice anyone else on the road. I am usually a very restrained and careful driver but now all I wanted to do was to drive very fast feel something other than this numbness. As the car reached its top speed a tiniest flicker of a thought crossed my mind that I had only to turn the wheel a little to connect with a concrete bridge support then my life would almost certainly be extinguished and with it all the intense emotional pain I felt. I could visualise the impact and the crushing weight as that beautifully over engineered engine was forced into the space currently occupied by my body and g-forces dealt a death blow to my cerebral cortex. Fortunately, I was travelling so fast at this point that I was already under the bridge by the time these thoughts had been considered and instead of surrendering to it my body appeared to be acting independently in automatic self-preservation mode as I felt it easing my foot off the accelerator and releasing the muscular tension in my shoulders. I suddenly felt better than I had done for days and turned off the motorway at the next exit and headed for home clearly flooded with endorphins but knowing that however bad I had felt it was never that bad.

As I finally parked outside my home I knew that the crisis had passed. From that moment on I felt a lot more in control of my life and I finally felt free to live my life the way I wanted to again. It was my life again and this time I was in the driver seat going where I wanted to go.