Sunday, 6 July 2008
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Alicia
I’d been about a year living in Bristol when I returned to Oxford and to my old group of friends. I was about 21 or 22, the year possibly around 1988. At that point I was single for the first time since I was 15. I had split up with a girl of 6 years who had been my first love, and my only fiancé to this day. I learnt a lesson there. I hadn’t handled it well and it took me the time in Bristol to start to bring myself back from a bad place. It hadn’t been helped by an acid trip gone wrong at the same time as my life spent in love was degenerating. So, I eventually returned to Oxford and into a shared house with some of my old buddies. Things had changed between us, but I hoped it would improve. They were my school friends but the split with my girlfriend had created some kind of irreparable catharsis in my relationship with my friends, I never really understood it. Bristol had been a hard time, I was alone with my dreams there and I missed company. My longed for dream was that of getting my band going. My band was in Oxford, so I gravitated back there eventually. I should have known it was over for us, but something new had happened to me; I had grown my hair, I had started to get a new confidence and shine that I had never owned during my claustrophobic relationship. Women were finally starting to look at me. I had loved Nick, I know that even more today than back then, but that love had a dark side; it had throttled us both to some extent, we were too young, we both had too much going for us to stay together, but breaking up had been soul destroying and messy, I had been totally devoted to her right up until the end. I didn’t know how to flirt or chase women. I had given that desire up the moment I fell in love with her. Could I have stayed with her forever and been happy? I don’t think so, I think my nature, or maybe even destiny, demanded something else from me. Finally, aged 22, after having slept with only 3 women in my life, I found myself at the crossroads, like it or not. It seemed I was attractive to women, and so I leapt eagerly into the opportunity to become a Romeo. I remember the night it happened, the very moment it began, her name was Alicia.
I was in a pub called the Gloucester Arms in Oxford with my drummer, Dave. We had just bought drinks and I was feeling excited by grand ideas that would never even get close to materialising, big bands dreams, every kid has them, most lose them along the way, it took me 40 years, I always found it hard to let dead horses go. A blonde girl came up to me and pronounced she wanted to fuck me. The look of envy on Dave’s face was something I would soon come to regret, it ruptured our friendship forever and ruined any chances of our band getting together. But this had never happened to me before; women wanting me was totally new. I left with her not long after that. She took me to a big house in the country just outside of Kidlington where she looked after horses, I don’t know where it was, but I felt like royalty that night, I was a vagabond gypsy, on top of the world. She was older than me, she was a hunter, a broken woman in many ways that I understand better now, but had no comprehension of back then. She carried out her promise, but she was too crazy for me. We saw each other on and off for about a month before she cut me off cold and I never heard from her again. I didn’t mind, I couldn’t really get with her trying to horsewhip me, and screaming inanities while bouncing viciously on my bits, then wanting me to beat her. I found it hilarious, but disturbing. I was just a simple country boy still. One of the last times I slept with her, I found a piece of paper under my bed not long after she left. She had been playing the ‘dice game’ listing things to do and then following how the dice rolled. They involved choices between having a picnic, leaving without saying a word, or sucking me off before picking a fight. It was too much for my young mind to understand. I felt I was with a much older woman, though she was only a few years older than me, still she was far more worldly wise and cynical, not to mention kinky. She would laugh at my dreams that I fearlessly expressed at that time. She called them ‘noble but naive’ and she was right. It didn’t hurt me, I thought she was an injured soul, lost, beyond saving. I wasn’t wrong, I just didn’t know I was on that same road. She knew, but she hurt too much to care. She fell for me in some way; one night after she had driven me to a bar in Islington, driving back, she said she was in love with me. I had few feelings for her other than a sort of self-centred pity and she was a fun fuck, obviously. I said she just needed something to hold onto, it wasn’t love, and that was where our relationship ended. I guess she didn’t want to feel again, and I wasn’t someone she could trust, I was starting to rise. She just wanted to control something, or be loved, or cared for in a way I couldn’t give. I felt sorry for her, but I was scared of her too. I thought I could do better, and that she was busted, but the truth was I just hadn’t been broken yet. I was healing from love wounds, but it wouldn’t be long before I found myself hurting, longing, wondering the same. Just another soul stretched beyond repair in the zoo.
I found myself in that same Islington bar she took me to 4 or 5 years later when I would unsuspectingly walk into it not long after moving to Mount Pleasant. It was a strange experience to be hit with the recollection like a deja-vu, it cut deep and left me wondering about destiny, and the way we seem to sometimes be delivered to places by people. Things connected up. Alicia had been the one to take me to London, the one to lead me into a new way of being, the one who showed me lust and it’s cruel yet oddly honest bounty. Two years later I had moved up to London, drawn by that same lust. My thoughts were of Alicia that night, I was flying high on drugs and seeing things from another angle. I had been through a lot of tough stuff by then. I was still a Romeo, so I liked to think, really I was just a slut. Things had changed. I was a hunter now. I was hungry for that same virginal shine that was now missing in me, eager to feed on some kind of innocence anywhere I could find it. I was one of the fallen, one of the beaten, one of the hurting, looking for true love, but taking lust instead, yet never getting enough to satisfy that strange, perennial emptiness. Lust was easier; it was colder, pleasurably selfish, it didn’t hurt or leave you vulnerable, and I think I preferred it that way.
I still wonder about Alicia, I seem to see things about her clearer now. I am fonder of her memory, I didn’t realise how much she had been hurt or what that meant, now I do. Now I understand how beautiful she was, kind too, but if I met her again tomorrow it wouldn’t be any different. It’s the romance of the lost moment, reality just never comes close, it would always develop to be an empty disappointment in comparison. But that was were it all began for me, with that girl that night. The magic landed on me and stayed for about 15 years.
*
I sit now alone in a recently rented apartment in Sydney, I am near the beach and trying to make things come together. Trying to find my little piece of happiness. I am no further in life than I was back then, no closer to love, no closer to making sense, no closer to succeeding in anything much. I have the same money in my bank that I did aged 22. That would be zero. I am pretty sure I have been through all the pains and cynicism that I could ever experience. Been through loves, and lusts, yet here I am still; alone, sighing, wondering at this feeling that lingers on each day, so much entwined in life that it must be an integral part of it. And on those lonely nights as I sip Chivas mixed with water over ice, a nostalgia comes, now that I am too old to use the glitter to attract company on lonely nights, even if I went out looking I know I would find nothing. I am not suffering; I have strength and a philosophical outlook, but I have to admit I miss those beautiful days, miss the magic, miss the Alicia’s that would come save me from the moment that might fall, and does now. I don’t know why I was given that gift or why it was gradually taken away. That’s life, right? It sure was good while it lasted and I made the most of it, knowing damn well it would soon be gone, but it makes no difference, maybe it is worse that I had it. But I have to say I felt blessed for a while, and I am grateful for having been granted that to experience. I took a big bite of the peach, but hot damn if I don’t miss the taste now it is gone.
The brief moments of feeling complete and content come when I am so fucked up I can’t speak or feel pain too much, knowing the fall back down is going to hurt so much more than going without would have done, but still people like me have to hurl ourselves at it, it is just what we do. It’s a cruel life whoever you are, don’t let anyone kid you otherwise. Devil or saint. There is no satisfaction to be had here, I still can’t decide if it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved. To have been high and lived, or never to have lived. Either way it fucking hurts. I keep hearing those words a schoolteacher loved to say; ‘What you’ve never had, you never miss’ and he was right, the old bastard, but knowing that doesn’t leave us anywhere better, does it? Still we hunger, and still we are denied the pearl. One day soon I’ll die and be gone like all of us, it makes no sense, but that’s just how it is. How close did we get to nailing it?
I put the radio on and hunt for a station that works, it’s a new country, I am lost here. I find 106.5 where Richard talks patronisingly with his soft and velvety voice to lost lovers desperate to express their deepest emotions. Love songs play predictably gushing, new and old. Some take me back, some just hit me where it hurts. I sip the 12 year old whisky; the only salve I’ve got to hand, legally acceptable in Amsterdam. And I write into the computer surrounded by cold walls I cannot see through, and never will.
Tears fall upon tears
for all eternity
The damned have their dreams of salvation
but the righteous and good
will live forever
in fear of falling.
I was in a pub called the Gloucester Arms in Oxford with my drummer, Dave. We had just bought drinks and I was feeling excited by grand ideas that would never even get close to materialising, big bands dreams, every kid has them, most lose them along the way, it took me 40 years, I always found it hard to let dead horses go. A blonde girl came up to me and pronounced she wanted to fuck me. The look of envy on Dave’s face was something I would soon come to regret, it ruptured our friendship forever and ruined any chances of our band getting together. But this had never happened to me before; women wanting me was totally new. I left with her not long after that. She took me to a big house in the country just outside of Kidlington where she looked after horses, I don’t know where it was, but I felt like royalty that night, I was a vagabond gypsy, on top of the world. She was older than me, she was a hunter, a broken woman in many ways that I understand better now, but had no comprehension of back then. She carried out her promise, but she was too crazy for me. We saw each other on and off for about a month before she cut me off cold and I never heard from her again. I didn’t mind, I couldn’t really get with her trying to horsewhip me, and screaming inanities while bouncing viciously on my bits, then wanting me to beat her. I found it hilarious, but disturbing. I was just a simple country boy still. One of the last times I slept with her, I found a piece of paper under my bed not long after she left. She had been playing the ‘dice game’ listing things to do and then following how the dice rolled. They involved choices between having a picnic, leaving without saying a word, or sucking me off before picking a fight. It was too much for my young mind to understand. I felt I was with a much older woman, though she was only a few years older than me, still she was far more worldly wise and cynical, not to mention kinky. She would laugh at my dreams that I fearlessly expressed at that time. She called them ‘noble but naive’ and she was right. It didn’t hurt me, I thought she was an injured soul, lost, beyond saving. I wasn’t wrong, I just didn’t know I was on that same road. She knew, but she hurt too much to care. She fell for me in some way; one night after she had driven me to a bar in Islington, driving back, she said she was in love with me. I had few feelings for her other than a sort of self-centred pity and she was a fun fuck, obviously. I said she just needed something to hold onto, it wasn’t love, and that was where our relationship ended. I guess she didn’t want to feel again, and I wasn’t someone she could trust, I was starting to rise. She just wanted to control something, or be loved, or cared for in a way I couldn’t give. I felt sorry for her, but I was scared of her too. I thought I could do better, and that she was busted, but the truth was I just hadn’t been broken yet. I was healing from love wounds, but it wouldn’t be long before I found myself hurting, longing, wondering the same. Just another soul stretched beyond repair in the zoo.
I found myself in that same Islington bar she took me to 4 or 5 years later when I would unsuspectingly walk into it not long after moving to Mount Pleasant. It was a strange experience to be hit with the recollection like a deja-vu, it cut deep and left me wondering about destiny, and the way we seem to sometimes be delivered to places by people. Things connected up. Alicia had been the one to take me to London, the one to lead me into a new way of being, the one who showed me lust and it’s cruel yet oddly honest bounty. Two years later I had moved up to London, drawn by that same lust. My thoughts were of Alicia that night, I was flying high on drugs and seeing things from another angle. I had been through a lot of tough stuff by then. I was still a Romeo, so I liked to think, really I was just a slut. Things had changed. I was a hunter now. I was hungry for that same virginal shine that was now missing in me, eager to feed on some kind of innocence anywhere I could find it. I was one of the fallen, one of the beaten, one of the hurting, looking for true love, but taking lust instead, yet never getting enough to satisfy that strange, perennial emptiness. Lust was easier; it was colder, pleasurably selfish, it didn’t hurt or leave you vulnerable, and I think I preferred it that way.
I still wonder about Alicia, I seem to see things about her clearer now. I am fonder of her memory, I didn’t realise how much she had been hurt or what that meant, now I do. Now I understand how beautiful she was, kind too, but if I met her again tomorrow it wouldn’t be any different. It’s the romance of the lost moment, reality just never comes close, it would always develop to be an empty disappointment in comparison. But that was were it all began for me, with that girl that night. The magic landed on me and stayed for about 15 years.
*
I sit now alone in a recently rented apartment in Sydney, I am near the beach and trying to make things come together. Trying to find my little piece of happiness. I am no further in life than I was back then, no closer to love, no closer to making sense, no closer to succeeding in anything much. I have the same money in my bank that I did aged 22. That would be zero. I am pretty sure I have been through all the pains and cynicism that I could ever experience. Been through loves, and lusts, yet here I am still; alone, sighing, wondering at this feeling that lingers on each day, so much entwined in life that it must be an integral part of it. And on those lonely nights as I sip Chivas mixed with water over ice, a nostalgia comes, now that I am too old to use the glitter to attract company on lonely nights, even if I went out looking I know I would find nothing. I am not suffering; I have strength and a philosophical outlook, but I have to admit I miss those beautiful days, miss the magic, miss the Alicia’s that would come save me from the moment that might fall, and does now. I don’t know why I was given that gift or why it was gradually taken away. That’s life, right? It sure was good while it lasted and I made the most of it, knowing damn well it would soon be gone, but it makes no difference, maybe it is worse that I had it. But I have to say I felt blessed for a while, and I am grateful for having been granted that to experience. I took a big bite of the peach, but hot damn if I don’t miss the taste now it is gone.
The brief moments of feeling complete and content come when I am so fucked up I can’t speak or feel pain too much, knowing the fall back down is going to hurt so much more than going without would have done, but still people like me have to hurl ourselves at it, it is just what we do. It’s a cruel life whoever you are, don’t let anyone kid you otherwise. Devil or saint. There is no satisfaction to be had here, I still can’t decide if it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved. To have been high and lived, or never to have lived. Either way it fucking hurts. I keep hearing those words a schoolteacher loved to say; ‘What you’ve never had, you never miss’ and he was right, the old bastard, but knowing that doesn’t leave us anywhere better, does it? Still we hunger, and still we are denied the pearl. One day soon I’ll die and be gone like all of us, it makes no sense, but that’s just how it is. How close did we get to nailing it?
I put the radio on and hunt for a station that works, it’s a new country, I am lost here. I find 106.5 where Richard talks patronisingly with his soft and velvety voice to lost lovers desperate to express their deepest emotions. Love songs play predictably gushing, new and old. Some take me back, some just hit me where it hurts. I sip the 12 year old whisky; the only salve I’ve got to hand, legally acceptable in Amsterdam. And I write into the computer surrounded by cold walls I cannot see through, and never will.
Tears fall upon tears
for all eternity
The damned have their dreams of salvation
but the righteous and good
will live forever
in fear of falling.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
An old boy called Dave
Some friends where going to Glastonbury town for the weekend and invited me along with them. I wasn’t doing anything special so I agreed. They were the right kind of people to go to Glastonbury with; kind, spiritual, genuine and intelligent. I usually went to the West Country with more nefarious characters; druggies who liked to rave and get high, so I figured it would make a nice change. There were 8 of us - three couples, a single girl and myself. The plan was to stay in one of the hippy retreats at the bottom of the Tor and explore. I’d been to Glastonbury town a few times I knew it quite well; the chalice well, the site of king Arthur and Guinevere’s grave, the Tor, the witches, the druids, the stories. I knew a lot about this world, you could say I came from it in some ways. I was a Glastonbury festival veteran, I must have been to 15 of them at least. It used to be my Mecca right up until the year the fences finally went up strong enough that they actually managed to keep illegal revellers out. It had to happen in the end, the law was about to shut it down for good, but that was the year Glastonbury Festival lost its real heart beat. It would never be the same again. You need the wildness, and it just won’t get it back. It is a corporate event now. Everything changes, it is just how it goes. Life cycles. The festival is something I could write a book about of itself, hell, maybe one day I will, but this story is about something else, it just so happens to have taken place in Glastonbury Town.
So we hired an 8-seater and drove the 150 miles from London to Somerset after work on a Friday night. It was winter but wasn’t too cold or harsh. Maybe it was spring I don’t exactly remember, but it sure wasn’t summer. We all stayed in a wood cabin on the grounds of the retreat. There was chanting and meditation in the evening, the usual vegetarian dishes, and lesbian hippies all over the place being twee and talking bollocks. Such places always made me sarcastic and obnoxious. I just didn’t seem to settle well into the whole pseudo-spiritual-environmentally-sound thing, which is strange considering how much of a freak I am and what I have seen and done. I always feel a little let down by them somehow, distanced. Like, where is the spunk? It’s all a little pretentious, or maybe I am. I am never certain. Well I tried to go along with it and play nice. My friends were the same, but seemed better adept at being polite and fitting in than I. So I snuck out for cigarettes and wondered when we would all go out drinking so that I could try and pull something. We found a crazy party in the end with drunken West Country cider drinkers playing ukuleles and cross-dressing, t’was quite a night. I started to think it had been a good move getting myself out of London for a change. We got up early the next day, hardly hung over, and raring to get out and about round the town. It is a great place to visit even if you aren’t a hippy. It’s small, but there is magic there, this is the true Isle of Avalon, and if you are even slightly bent towards a spiritual nature then I guarantee there is no better place in the world to have weird and amazing experiences. It is always good, always odd, and always somehow feminine, but I digress.
We did the town, and by the afternoon were ready for the walk up the Tor. For those who don’t know, the Tor is a medieval building atop a strangely layered hill that rises sharply above Glastonbury town. A king hung a monk up there once to prove some point, and there are strange tales about a Badgerman who lives inside the hill. Good old England. You can see the Tor for miles around and it has many legends associated with it. It is a powerful place. The sun was out, it was a calm day, but crisp, and we ascended from the far side up a zigzag path that had seats occasionally for to rest ones tired butt. It was at one of these seats that the single girl, J, met an old guy called Dave. I noticed him immediately because he made me laugh, well his hat did, it was torn in the middle, a flat cap clearly the worse for wear. I had walked past him and nodded hello, then snickered to myself, and continued on. J being the beautiful character that she is, decided to stop and chat, and the next thing we know she has invited him to join our little soiree up to the top of the Tor. Not a big deal, but as Dave’s story unfolded I was touched by J’s perceptiveness to know that this guy really needed something like this to happen just at that moment.
I can be a pretty ignorant son-of-a-bitch at the best of times, but it wasn’t long before I caught snippets of the conversation between J and the old boy, and my curiosity drew me to walk with them. It turned out Dave was 80 years old. He looked pretty good for it, I thought. He could still hold his own in the walk up the Tor. He said it was the first time he had gotten out of his house in a few months. Turned out his wife had died about 2 months previous and he had gone into a state of shock. She had been the only woman in his life; this guy was true old-school British. When she had died his world had, unsurprisingly, fallen apart. He said the last of their good friends had died a few years back and so when she went he realised he had no more friends on this earth. He had no other family alive, but we didn’t ask why. It had hit him hard, he said, and his collapse had been total. He was unable to make sense of the world for a while. For anyone who has had any kind of cathartic shock in life you will know that when these things happen you cease to be capable of functioning, and so it was his body and mind had shutdown. He said he got steadily worse until he ended up laid in bed for 2 days, covered in his own faeces, totally out of his mind, unable to eat, or move, and no idea what to do other than wait for death, and so he waited. What upset him the most was that no one from the local church they had attended for the last few years rang, or came to see how he was doing. Dave was a Christian. He was devastated by the realisation that all those god fearing so-called do-gooders had been so selfish. He couldn’t understand it. In the end, after a couple more days, he managed to get up and clean himself and left the house to get some food. All this had happened a few days previously. He had walked out from his home that morning to the Tor hoping to try to start getting himself back on track, he couldn’t afford the bus fare either and was waiting a few days to collect his next pension, what little it was.
I was shocked by his story and more so, that I had not picked up on his state at all. He just looked like another old boy sat on a bench enjoying the air. I had walked passed so many of them in my time and never considered it much. It got me thinking; how many people had I passed in my life and ignored, yet had this kind of story and just wanted someone to tell it to, some stranger to connect with? You just wouldn’t know to look at them. The loneliness of growing old was so unavoidable as you become more and more distant from people, with less and less reason, or ability, to communicate to strangers who would really probably rather ignore you. I had been pretty blasé towards him, I was always like this, and I had no idea until then just how bad I was. I had seen that loneliness before too, with my Granddad and my Gran. It dawned on me that there was no escaping this fate for any of us. The only way out was an early death and no one wanted that. Life was so god damn cruel. The future was a pretty scary place.
Dave hung out with us for the day, he was so revitalised by having human contact it was a beautiful thing to see. He said he had never met people like us, always hanging round older people as he had, but he was no fuddy duddy, he’d had many adventures in his life, a few of which he told us about. You could see the glow in his eyes as he recounted them and the pleasure he took in having an audience that actually was interested to listen. I wondered what kind of life he must have been living the past few years and what kind of people he’d had to suffer just to find company. The human world can be so full of coldness and false pretence. He kept saying how different we were, but I knew we were just younger, it was changing for us every day, getting a little harder and more isolated.
We took him back to the retreat and the lesbians made a big fuss of him, danced with him, fed him, and generally totally won me over for being able to give the guy a bit of love that he really deserved. I was shamed to admit they were better people than me after all, they knew how to give love to a stranger. Another thing that amazed me about Dave was how he had no bitterness in his soul whatsoever. I was 40 and already 40 times more twisted over life than this guy, and my story was nothing compared to his. But there was an unspoken fear there, we all sensed it in our own ways, it was our fear; the reflection he brought to us that made us look into our own lonesome souls and quake in terror at the inevitable day that this would happen to us, that we would find ourselves alone, love-lost, and helpless. I guess this is why all those churchgoers shunned him, instead bowing to their false sanctuary they called the Church of God, going each Sunday to put a little money in the charity tray just to buy off the guilt they must feel, because I figured everyone of them knew damn well they were avoiding Dave.
The sad thing was, or maybe it wasn’t sad at all, but on the journey home the next morning after what had been a life changing weekend in many ways, I sat in the back staring out the window at the rain falling on the queues of cars taking the M4 motorway back to the Big Smoke, when a thought struck me; Had anyone bothered to get a contact number or address for him? I asked, knowing I wasn’t the sort to stay in touch, but thinking they might, of course no one had.
That was the way it went sometimes, you fell into a moment, you passed people like ships in the night, experienced something profound yet often disturbing, and then it was gone like dust through your fingers before you could grab the goodness in it. A guilty silence descended, but I knew we had done something right, there was nothing more we could have done really. The experiences came and went, like life did, and we had shared it in the best possible way. If we had clung on, it wouldn’t have kept the magic, it happened how it happened and it was right, I felt sure. I snuggled down, pulling my jacket round me, and listened to the hum of the engine and the music play quietly, watching the red car lights lead me back to one of the biggest cities in the world and yet a place where you could live in anonymity without speaking to a soul for years, all the while surrounded by over a million people. Makes you wonder about us all really. How cold we get, how uncommunicative we become as the years go by, and how hard it is to stay happy, so god damn hard just to believe everything is going to be ok in the end.
So we hired an 8-seater and drove the 150 miles from London to Somerset after work on a Friday night. It was winter but wasn’t too cold or harsh. Maybe it was spring I don’t exactly remember, but it sure wasn’t summer. We all stayed in a wood cabin on the grounds of the retreat. There was chanting and meditation in the evening, the usual vegetarian dishes, and lesbian hippies all over the place being twee and talking bollocks. Such places always made me sarcastic and obnoxious. I just didn’t seem to settle well into the whole pseudo-spiritual-environmentally-sound thing, which is strange considering how much of a freak I am and what I have seen and done. I always feel a little let down by them somehow, distanced. Like, where is the spunk? It’s all a little pretentious, or maybe I am. I am never certain. Well I tried to go along with it and play nice. My friends were the same, but seemed better adept at being polite and fitting in than I. So I snuck out for cigarettes and wondered when we would all go out drinking so that I could try and pull something. We found a crazy party in the end with drunken West Country cider drinkers playing ukuleles and cross-dressing, t’was quite a night. I started to think it had been a good move getting myself out of London for a change. We got up early the next day, hardly hung over, and raring to get out and about round the town. It is a great place to visit even if you aren’t a hippy. It’s small, but there is magic there, this is the true Isle of Avalon, and if you are even slightly bent towards a spiritual nature then I guarantee there is no better place in the world to have weird and amazing experiences. It is always good, always odd, and always somehow feminine, but I digress.
We did the town, and by the afternoon were ready for the walk up the Tor. For those who don’t know, the Tor is a medieval building atop a strangely layered hill that rises sharply above Glastonbury town. A king hung a monk up there once to prove some point, and there are strange tales about a Badgerman who lives inside the hill. Good old England. You can see the Tor for miles around and it has many legends associated with it. It is a powerful place. The sun was out, it was a calm day, but crisp, and we ascended from the far side up a zigzag path that had seats occasionally for to rest ones tired butt. It was at one of these seats that the single girl, J, met an old guy called Dave. I noticed him immediately because he made me laugh, well his hat did, it was torn in the middle, a flat cap clearly the worse for wear. I had walked past him and nodded hello, then snickered to myself, and continued on. J being the beautiful character that she is, decided to stop and chat, and the next thing we know she has invited him to join our little soiree up to the top of the Tor. Not a big deal, but as Dave’s story unfolded I was touched by J’s perceptiveness to know that this guy really needed something like this to happen just at that moment.
I can be a pretty ignorant son-of-a-bitch at the best of times, but it wasn’t long before I caught snippets of the conversation between J and the old boy, and my curiosity drew me to walk with them. It turned out Dave was 80 years old. He looked pretty good for it, I thought. He could still hold his own in the walk up the Tor. He said it was the first time he had gotten out of his house in a few months. Turned out his wife had died about 2 months previous and he had gone into a state of shock. She had been the only woman in his life; this guy was true old-school British. When she had died his world had, unsurprisingly, fallen apart. He said the last of their good friends had died a few years back and so when she went he realised he had no more friends on this earth. He had no other family alive, but we didn’t ask why. It had hit him hard, he said, and his collapse had been total. He was unable to make sense of the world for a while. For anyone who has had any kind of cathartic shock in life you will know that when these things happen you cease to be capable of functioning, and so it was his body and mind had shutdown. He said he got steadily worse until he ended up laid in bed for 2 days, covered in his own faeces, totally out of his mind, unable to eat, or move, and no idea what to do other than wait for death, and so he waited. What upset him the most was that no one from the local church they had attended for the last few years rang, or came to see how he was doing. Dave was a Christian. He was devastated by the realisation that all those god fearing so-called do-gooders had been so selfish. He couldn’t understand it. In the end, after a couple more days, he managed to get up and clean himself and left the house to get some food. All this had happened a few days previously. He had walked out from his home that morning to the Tor hoping to try to start getting himself back on track, he couldn’t afford the bus fare either and was waiting a few days to collect his next pension, what little it was.
I was shocked by his story and more so, that I had not picked up on his state at all. He just looked like another old boy sat on a bench enjoying the air. I had walked passed so many of them in my time and never considered it much. It got me thinking; how many people had I passed in my life and ignored, yet had this kind of story and just wanted someone to tell it to, some stranger to connect with? You just wouldn’t know to look at them. The loneliness of growing old was so unavoidable as you become more and more distant from people, with less and less reason, or ability, to communicate to strangers who would really probably rather ignore you. I had been pretty blasé towards him, I was always like this, and I had no idea until then just how bad I was. I had seen that loneliness before too, with my Granddad and my Gran. It dawned on me that there was no escaping this fate for any of us. The only way out was an early death and no one wanted that. Life was so god damn cruel. The future was a pretty scary place.
Dave hung out with us for the day, he was so revitalised by having human contact it was a beautiful thing to see. He said he had never met people like us, always hanging round older people as he had, but he was no fuddy duddy, he’d had many adventures in his life, a few of which he told us about. You could see the glow in his eyes as he recounted them and the pleasure he took in having an audience that actually was interested to listen. I wondered what kind of life he must have been living the past few years and what kind of people he’d had to suffer just to find company. The human world can be so full of coldness and false pretence. He kept saying how different we were, but I knew we were just younger, it was changing for us every day, getting a little harder and more isolated.
We took him back to the retreat and the lesbians made a big fuss of him, danced with him, fed him, and generally totally won me over for being able to give the guy a bit of love that he really deserved. I was shamed to admit they were better people than me after all, they knew how to give love to a stranger. Another thing that amazed me about Dave was how he had no bitterness in his soul whatsoever. I was 40 and already 40 times more twisted over life than this guy, and my story was nothing compared to his. But there was an unspoken fear there, we all sensed it in our own ways, it was our fear; the reflection he brought to us that made us look into our own lonesome souls and quake in terror at the inevitable day that this would happen to us, that we would find ourselves alone, love-lost, and helpless. I guess this is why all those churchgoers shunned him, instead bowing to their false sanctuary they called the Church of God, going each Sunday to put a little money in the charity tray just to buy off the guilt they must feel, because I figured everyone of them knew damn well they were avoiding Dave.
The sad thing was, or maybe it wasn’t sad at all, but on the journey home the next morning after what had been a life changing weekend in many ways, I sat in the back staring out the window at the rain falling on the queues of cars taking the M4 motorway back to the Big Smoke, when a thought struck me; Had anyone bothered to get a contact number or address for him? I asked, knowing I wasn’t the sort to stay in touch, but thinking they might, of course no one had.
That was the way it went sometimes, you fell into a moment, you passed people like ships in the night, experienced something profound yet often disturbing, and then it was gone like dust through your fingers before you could grab the goodness in it. A guilty silence descended, but I knew we had done something right, there was nothing more we could have done really. The experiences came and went, like life did, and we had shared it in the best possible way. If we had clung on, it wouldn’t have kept the magic, it happened how it happened and it was right, I felt sure. I snuggled down, pulling my jacket round me, and listened to the hum of the engine and the music play quietly, watching the red car lights lead me back to one of the biggest cities in the world and yet a place where you could live in anonymity without speaking to a soul for years, all the while surrounded by over a million people. Makes you wonder about us all really. How cold we get, how uncommunicative we become as the years go by, and how hard it is to stay happy, so god damn hard just to believe everything is going to be ok in the end.
Sunday, 22 June 2008
The Blue Butterfly
It lay shimmering in the African morning sun. Iridescent blue that appealed to my eyes. I crouched down to look closer and saw it was a beautiful blue butterfly. The way the sun created such rich, deep colours on its wings fascinated me. But something about it was not right. Moving its wings slowly, not flapping, and it was lying on its side. It was about the size of my hand, but I had the small hands of a six year old. A shadow came over the sun and I looked up.
‘What you got there? said my mum.
‘A butterfly mum, I think it’s broken’ I said.
I could see something in her eyes change as she looked more closely at it. I didn’t understand that look.
‘Can I keep it?’ I asked
‘Well its probably best to let it be’ she said
‘I’ll look after it, I am sure I can fix it’ I was pretty convinced of my abilities, all it took was love, right?
In the end she relented, but there was something that annoyed me in the way she did. It felt like she was hiding something from me.
I took the butterfly to my room, put it on a shelf and watched it. I could see its little proboscis moving in and out. I willed it to get better, I spoke to it, tried to gently touch it and stroke it, but dust came off on my fingers when I did, so I didn’t touch it again. I made some prayers to God, made some promises to be good if he fixed my little friend. Then I got my eye up real close and peered at it. It had such strange big and round, black eyes. I wondered what it was seeing. My Gran came in.
‘What do butterflies eat Nan?’ I asked
‘You could try giving it some honey’. I thought it was a great idea.
I fetched some and placed a small amount by its head as near to that flicking proboscis as I could get. I stayed for maybe an hour watching it, praying it would fix. I knew it would. I loved it so much, I knew it was going to be grateful to me and stay with me.. There was a kid at school who had a pet a crow that would sit on his shoulder. I wanted a crow. I didn’t know how you got one, he never told us. He never said much at all, he was pretty cool though.
‘Dinner’s ready Mark’ I heard my mum shout. I didn’t want to go but I knew they would insist.
At dinner I sat staring out the window thinking about the butterfly, I was eager to get back but my family had rules about eating; Kids never left the table until all the family had finished. It always frustrated me, there was always something better to be doing, usually out in the garden, especially in Africa, there was so much to see, I loved it there. It was so alive, in any bit of dirt you could find something. All adults seemed to want to do was talk, and about really boring things. Their voices brought my mind back, it sounded like they were talking about me, but I wasn’t sure.
‘He’s got to learn sometime Meredith’ said Gran.
‘Learn what?’ I asked.
‘We aren’t talking about you dear’ my mum lied, giving me another look I didn’t understand.
Why was she sad? I wanted to hug mum. There was something odd about Gran though, she was pretty scary, I wasn’t sure I liked her. She always showed me kindness, but to a kid, her worldly wisdom made little sense, she was a tough old bird.
When they finally let me go it was from a silence. All their eyes followed me out. I ran down the corridor to my room, burst through the door hoping to find the butterfly flying around, but it wasn’t. It was still in the same position I had left it, except now it was motionless. It looked just as beautiful, nothing about it had changed, nothing in the colour of it’s wings, or the eyes, there was nothing that really showed me much of anything, it just didn’t move anymore. I pushed at it. I couldn’t understand this. How could it not be moving, why would God not fix it after I had promised. I didn’t understand what this was.
My mum came in. She had tears in her eyes, and as soon as I saw her I burst into tears too. I wasn’t really sure why, there was a feeling growing in my belly that I had never known before, it was vast and uncomfortable, it was painful and I didn’t want it to be there, I wanted it to stop growing but it wouldn’t, it grew until it had consumed the warm feeling that was normally inside me. As it did all I could do was cry, and the more I cried, the more my mum cried.
‘Why wont it move any more mum?’ I sobbed
‘Its dead, darling. God wanted it to go to heaven to be with him’
‘Why couldn’t he let it stay here with me?’
‘I don’t know darling’
She had no answer for me, nothing that I could understand. I cried until I felt sick. After a day or two I got used to that funny feeling in my belly, or maybe it just went away again, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the butterfly or why God hadn’t let me keep it. I wouldn’t cheer up. I couldn’t, instead I sulked about the house, being scolded occasionally by my Gran for not ‘being a little more grown up’. I guess I was a sensitive kid.
I was moping about in the garden when I heard a voice,
‘Mark, come with me’ it was Smart, the gardener who worked at my Grans house. I had never spoken to him before, he was a really old black man and that scared me, I still wasn’t used to people with black skin. They seemed to keep themselves very separate from us, he never sat at dinner with us, and I never heard Gran invite him. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do.
‘Come, come’ he said again in his African twang, and pulled gently at my hand.
In the end curiosity got the better of me as much as his insistence, and I followed him out into the garden. He took me to the rockery and carefully held my shoulders for support as he got me to lean over a small bush and look on the other side. What I saw there was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. There were two snakes curled up enjoying the sun. I had never seen a snake before. I looked at Smart and he beamed at me. I beamed right back, I liked Smart, and best of all that pain in my belly was gone too.
‘What you got there? said my mum.
‘A butterfly mum, I think it’s broken’ I said.
I could see something in her eyes change as she looked more closely at it. I didn’t understand that look.
‘Can I keep it?’ I asked
‘Well its probably best to let it be’ she said
‘I’ll look after it, I am sure I can fix it’ I was pretty convinced of my abilities, all it took was love, right?
In the end she relented, but there was something that annoyed me in the way she did. It felt like she was hiding something from me.
I took the butterfly to my room, put it on a shelf and watched it. I could see its little proboscis moving in and out. I willed it to get better, I spoke to it, tried to gently touch it and stroke it, but dust came off on my fingers when I did, so I didn’t touch it again. I made some prayers to God, made some promises to be good if he fixed my little friend. Then I got my eye up real close and peered at it. It had such strange big and round, black eyes. I wondered what it was seeing. My Gran came in.
‘What do butterflies eat Nan?’ I asked
‘You could try giving it some honey’. I thought it was a great idea.
I fetched some and placed a small amount by its head as near to that flicking proboscis as I could get. I stayed for maybe an hour watching it, praying it would fix. I knew it would. I loved it so much, I knew it was going to be grateful to me and stay with me.. There was a kid at school who had a pet a crow that would sit on his shoulder. I wanted a crow. I didn’t know how you got one, he never told us. He never said much at all, he was pretty cool though.
‘Dinner’s ready Mark’ I heard my mum shout. I didn’t want to go but I knew they would insist.
At dinner I sat staring out the window thinking about the butterfly, I was eager to get back but my family had rules about eating; Kids never left the table until all the family had finished. It always frustrated me, there was always something better to be doing, usually out in the garden, especially in Africa, there was so much to see, I loved it there. It was so alive, in any bit of dirt you could find something. All adults seemed to want to do was talk, and about really boring things. Their voices brought my mind back, it sounded like they were talking about me, but I wasn’t sure.
‘He’s got to learn sometime Meredith’ said Gran.
‘Learn what?’ I asked.
‘We aren’t talking about you dear’ my mum lied, giving me another look I didn’t understand.
Why was she sad? I wanted to hug mum. There was something odd about Gran though, she was pretty scary, I wasn’t sure I liked her. She always showed me kindness, but to a kid, her worldly wisdom made little sense, she was a tough old bird.
When they finally let me go it was from a silence. All their eyes followed me out. I ran down the corridor to my room, burst through the door hoping to find the butterfly flying around, but it wasn’t. It was still in the same position I had left it, except now it was motionless. It looked just as beautiful, nothing about it had changed, nothing in the colour of it’s wings, or the eyes, there was nothing that really showed me much of anything, it just didn’t move anymore. I pushed at it. I couldn’t understand this. How could it not be moving, why would God not fix it after I had promised. I didn’t understand what this was.
My mum came in. She had tears in her eyes, and as soon as I saw her I burst into tears too. I wasn’t really sure why, there was a feeling growing in my belly that I had never known before, it was vast and uncomfortable, it was painful and I didn’t want it to be there, I wanted it to stop growing but it wouldn’t, it grew until it had consumed the warm feeling that was normally inside me. As it did all I could do was cry, and the more I cried, the more my mum cried.
‘Why wont it move any more mum?’ I sobbed
‘Its dead, darling. God wanted it to go to heaven to be with him’
‘Why couldn’t he let it stay here with me?’
‘I don’t know darling’
She had no answer for me, nothing that I could understand. I cried until I felt sick. After a day or two I got used to that funny feeling in my belly, or maybe it just went away again, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the butterfly or why God hadn’t let me keep it. I wouldn’t cheer up. I couldn’t, instead I sulked about the house, being scolded occasionally by my Gran for not ‘being a little more grown up’. I guess I was a sensitive kid.
I was moping about in the garden when I heard a voice,
‘Mark, come with me’ it was Smart, the gardener who worked at my Grans house. I had never spoken to him before, he was a really old black man and that scared me, I still wasn’t used to people with black skin. They seemed to keep themselves very separate from us, he never sat at dinner with us, and I never heard Gran invite him. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do.
‘Come, come’ he said again in his African twang, and pulled gently at my hand.
In the end curiosity got the better of me as much as his insistence, and I followed him out into the garden. He took me to the rockery and carefully held my shoulders for support as he got me to lean over a small bush and look on the other side. What I saw there was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. There were two snakes curled up enjoying the sun. I had never seen a snake before. I looked at Smart and he beamed at me. I beamed right back, I liked Smart, and best of all that pain in my belly was gone too.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
The other world
I was struggling to see straight. We had been in the club for about 6 hours and there was another 6 hours to go, if we wanted it. I could feel the pills wearing off. I could see P chewing his jaw. He saw me looking at him,
‘What you laughing at?’ He asked
I couldn’t reply. I was still too whacked out. I just raised my slitted eyelids and dropped them back down again. Too much trouble. I think I was chewing my jaw too.
N came over. He had something in his hand and pushed it towards my mouth. I struggled to stop him. The reaction made my voice work again though I noticed that colours were still blurring too bright to make much sense of anything. God the music was loud.
‘What the f...!’ I pushed his hand away. ‘What is it?’ I asked. He was grinning at me.
‘Acid’ he said conspiratorially.
‘Oh, ok’
For some reason this was fine, and I took it and popped it into my mouth. Felt that ever so subtle slither of ether-like glisten on my taste buds that told me it was the real deal. I swallowed, and gulped it down with a bottle of beer he had in his hand. I already felt more awake just from knowing what was coming next.
We went higher that night. Maybe 7 of us. At one point I tapped C on the shoulder and pointed to a man walking across the smoke filled dance floor.
‘Blue Dragon’ C said.
‘Come from the underworld’ I replied.
We both knew. We watched to see where this creature would go. It drifted off into the smoke and was gone. Then a woman came up. She was all arms and zest, like a jumping cricket. She had a cricket soul. We could see it. She offered us a smoke on her fat reefer and we breathed it in. The three of us enveloped for a while in a cloud of weed. I don’t know what was said but something passed between us.
A little higher we went, a little higher, and a little higher. Edging up to the place where you would never remember, not even therapy could reach it because it made no sense. It was the other world. It felt like the place we really belonged. Everyone was happy when they got there, there was a calm and peace that decended and a joy too. An openness. I never understood why it was so hard for us to get there. We had to do so much. blow our minds. Sure there was fear, that followed us in, from this world. Always the fear but you could control it for a while. But when you fell, oh dear christ, then it went down like Icarus.
I tapped C again and pointed to the ground near our feet. This happened every time. He smiled.
‘Vortex’ I said, ‘ I think that is where all this comes from’
He nodded. He understood. It was good to share the vision. I felt good. Kindred spirits I rarely found.
The energy in this place was different to anywhere I had ever been. I reckoned it was some kind of portal to the otherworld. It was the only explanation I had.
Then F walked by. He appeared to be on something of a mission. He was wearing nothing but some tight lyrca bicycle shorts and a Vietnam US helmet.
We watched him make his way past us to the DJ booth whereupon we heard him try to order chips from the DJ. Unsurprisingly this didn’t go well. F was an insistent sort.
I don’t remember too much else. The acid and poppers were taking me out of the last bit of mind where memory could function. F returned past us. Disgruntled at his failure to acquire chips and aided by a suprisingly understanding member of Scorpion Security. C and me struggled to stop laughing long enough to observe him moments later attempting to unscrew the top of a black guys baldhead. That was too much, and I fell on the floor clutching at my stomach.
I have no idea how I got home or even if I did. This was commonplace in London clubs in the mid 90’s. The party moved on but my visions remain. They had always been there really, I just learnt to slip into the state of mind where I could see. We all have it. I just never came back from that once it opened up, some people are like that. I don’t mind. I would share them, but they make no sense in this world, so would be of no use to you.
‘What you laughing at?’ He asked
I couldn’t reply. I was still too whacked out. I just raised my slitted eyelids and dropped them back down again. Too much trouble. I think I was chewing my jaw too.
N came over. He had something in his hand and pushed it towards my mouth. I struggled to stop him. The reaction made my voice work again though I noticed that colours were still blurring too bright to make much sense of anything. God the music was loud.
‘What the f...!’ I pushed his hand away. ‘What is it?’ I asked. He was grinning at me.
‘Acid’ he said conspiratorially.
‘Oh, ok’
For some reason this was fine, and I took it and popped it into my mouth. Felt that ever so subtle slither of ether-like glisten on my taste buds that told me it was the real deal. I swallowed, and gulped it down with a bottle of beer he had in his hand. I already felt more awake just from knowing what was coming next.
We went higher that night. Maybe 7 of us. At one point I tapped C on the shoulder and pointed to a man walking across the smoke filled dance floor.
‘Blue Dragon’ C said.
‘Come from the underworld’ I replied.
We both knew. We watched to see where this creature would go. It drifted off into the smoke and was gone. Then a woman came up. She was all arms and zest, like a jumping cricket. She had a cricket soul. We could see it. She offered us a smoke on her fat reefer and we breathed it in. The three of us enveloped for a while in a cloud of weed. I don’t know what was said but something passed between us.
A little higher we went, a little higher, and a little higher. Edging up to the place where you would never remember, not even therapy could reach it because it made no sense. It was the other world. It felt like the place we really belonged. Everyone was happy when they got there, there was a calm and peace that decended and a joy too. An openness. I never understood why it was so hard for us to get there. We had to do so much. blow our minds. Sure there was fear, that followed us in, from this world. Always the fear but you could control it for a while. But when you fell, oh dear christ, then it went down like Icarus.
I tapped C again and pointed to the ground near our feet. This happened every time. He smiled.
‘Vortex’ I said, ‘ I think that is where all this comes from’
He nodded. He understood. It was good to share the vision. I felt good. Kindred spirits I rarely found.
The energy in this place was different to anywhere I had ever been. I reckoned it was some kind of portal to the otherworld. It was the only explanation I had.
Then F walked by. He appeared to be on something of a mission. He was wearing nothing but some tight lyrca bicycle shorts and a Vietnam US helmet.
We watched him make his way past us to the DJ booth whereupon we heard him try to order chips from the DJ. Unsurprisingly this didn’t go well. F was an insistent sort.
I don’t remember too much else. The acid and poppers were taking me out of the last bit of mind where memory could function. F returned past us. Disgruntled at his failure to acquire chips and aided by a suprisingly understanding member of Scorpion Security. C and me struggled to stop laughing long enough to observe him moments later attempting to unscrew the top of a black guys baldhead. That was too much, and I fell on the floor clutching at my stomach.
I have no idea how I got home or even if I did. This was commonplace in London clubs in the mid 90’s. The party moved on but my visions remain. They had always been there really, I just learnt to slip into the state of mind where I could see. We all have it. I just never came back from that once it opened up, some people are like that. I don’t mind. I would share them, but they make no sense in this world, so would be of no use to you.
Put those thoughts to paper
What is this longing to be free? Keeps me up at night burning the midnight oil. Keeps me fighting through life living for the dream. Keeps the fire in my blood. What is this mission I am inexorably bound to. Like a captain on a crewless ghost ship damned to sail the seas looking for a land that is lost in time. What is this? Why is this in me?
I have always been strange. It wasnt drugs that did this. Maybe it was all the travel as a kid, never settling down. Maybe it was this, or maybe it was that. It only became a bother to me when I could no longer control it. When it took me over. That is when it became something of a curse.
I have been an adventurer, but never quite became a superhero. Which is a shame as I would have done great things, but I suppose we can’t have everything. But when the adventure trail cools, and I sit of an evening with a candle on the table, pen in hand, and my ship gently sways from side to side still moving through quiet waters, I find myself back to that same place. That same lament. That same question, that same why.
What is this longing to be free? Free of what? I am not sure I even know.
I have always been strange. It wasnt drugs that did this. Maybe it was all the travel as a kid, never settling down. Maybe it was this, or maybe it was that. It only became a bother to me when I could no longer control it. When it took me over. That is when it became something of a curse.
I have been an adventurer, but never quite became a superhero. Which is a shame as I would have done great things, but I suppose we can’t have everything. But when the adventure trail cools, and I sit of an evening with a candle on the table, pen in hand, and my ship gently sways from side to side still moving through quiet waters, I find myself back to that same place. That same lament. That same question, that same why.
What is this longing to be free? Free of what? I am not sure I even know.
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