About | Bedenix

“Writing has nothing to do with success; it has to do with lucidity.” (John Berger)

THE WORD

In the beginning was the Word – the sound of inspiration. And, inspired by a distant memory of such a moment, feel free to give voice to these (your) rising thoughts, (our) rising thoughts, (or) thoughts, quite simply, and to sound them out, and, being inspired in your breathing, turning inward, be inspired to write down these thoughts, and to write the thoughts down, with ease, at ease, just as they come, as word, as words, in words.
And learn in this way to set down your thoughts in words, and to know a little of (our) mind, (our) rising thoughts, (or) mind, (or) thoughts, quite simply (your own) (much like an other’s) mind, and, relaxing into the mindful, to trace there, upon the page, the journey of a single mind’s reflections,
And to breathe, and to write – and simply to breathe, and to write,
And, putting pen to paper, simply to let the ink flow, ink flowing, so easily, so that,
Whatever your inspiration,
You write it up,
And write it down,
And write it out, write now, at once,
So as to find then your voice,
And your vocation, and, in doing so,
To free your inspiration, and to hear that voice resound, as if
A sound, resonating, from the silence, the depths of silence, a sound, a prayer,
A form of prayer, from out of nothing,
A form of prayer, from emptiness,
And a dream, of days, and nights, divine.

HERE IS WHERE WE MEET

In a spirit of confidence, trust, good faith, let’s let go. Let’s be open, free. Let’s lose ourselves a bit (as if in love). / For when you need something, there it is; and when you look for something, you find it; and when you look for this or that person, some / one / special, they find you, or you find them, if not immediately, at once, then soon. / For wherever you go, there you are, always present, saying: / Be Here Now. / And so if I, passing, meet you, and desire to speak, then why should I not speak to you? And you to me. For you are the riddle of another world, infinitely fascinating, calling out for a deeper understanding, some sense of communion in a shared humanity, a sound in search of echo, a call that seeks response, a question, and sometimes, perhaps, an answer. Let’s both then pause and, if only for a moment, wonder about the world, together. Tell me, where do you call home? From where have you come? Where, your roots? And what your point of view? In any case, you have surely travelled far to be here now. So what now? What next? And to where? Or are you perhaps one who prefers not to know your destination, simply enjoying the sensation of being a little lost, a little adrift, afloat upon the dancing river of life … knowing that this great life energy, great life spirit, seeks not to restrain us, in any way, but lifts us up, rather, stage by stage, to wider and more open spaces … open spaces, and warm, open, faces … and faces, and faces, and faces, and so many faces, so many, many faces, and faces, facing it, and just facing it, just facing it, faces, facing, such beauty, in motion, emotion, and the motion of movement itself, moving time, flowing time, a mystery, and travelling always towards the over there, the beyond, and beyond even the I, and the You, and the That, towards a kind of ecstasy, an o, an om, a ho, a hum, a hymn, a huh, a why, a who. / (Your smile brings joy) / Asking: what is your name? Who are you? / And who am I, for that matter? Who am I, to you? / (Am I only one, or one of many, perhaps, or no one?). / Of course, the thing is not so much what we call each other, or the fact that we may be mistaken and getting our names quite wrong, like calling a wrong number … no; the important thing … well … who really knows? … who really knows … the one mind … with an attitude of humility, even reverence … standing under … and perhaps also understanding … sometimes … a little … if only a little … in confidence, trust, good faith … so as to drop the reins completely … to let go … and, letting go … letting it all go … to be open, free … and to lose ourselves once again, a bit, and then again, still more (as if in love) … so do let’s smile, say hello, establish contact, make a call, write a letter, be in touch … for in this way, we’ll share perhaps a word, and perhaps a world … / And I am glad that now our paths have crossed, for here is where we meet. / This day, this journey; paths crossed, stories shared: a time to keep silence, yes, but also a time to talk, break bread, sip tea; a time to sit still, for a while, to rest, to relax, and a time to move on. / It’s been a great pleasure to meet you and to speak with you this day, to share stories and journeys. / (Thank you). / May you know great happiness, in love, and gratitude. / And, until next time, same place, or some place other, like a wayfaring stranger, a wise traveller, walking always in confidence, trust, good faith, and, whether in company, or seemingly, alone: bon voyage, my friend; fare well.

THE SOUND OF HEART

If we listen carefully, what might we hear in the word “heart” or, at least, speaking for myself, for me, as I think through and try to express myself in this, my own, “mother tongue”, my own first language, what might I hear, now, listening here, right here, and now, with you, in this world, in this word, in this world of words, in that which we call, in English, “heart”?

But wait! We are perhaps racing ahead in our thoughts. Or I am, at least. Nothing new there. But should we not rather go slowly, taking one small step at a time, and first asking ourselves the following question, or questions.

How can we know when we are really listening carefully?

How can we do that?

How do we listen carefully, as if, with heart, with all the heart, with all one’s human heart?

How should we listen well?

(To hear the sense, and sound; to hear the music).

I am not sure that I have any satisfactory – or satisfying – answers to these questions.

Have you?

Never mind; no matter …

Let’s sit quietly together, in any case, and try, if only for a moment, to think it through.

–Can I pour you some tea?–

And, allowing time to think it through, thinking it through, letting the thinking through, through thinking itself, through with thinking, and sitting quietly, as our thoughts begin to settle, thoughts settling, and the mind, little by little, becoming entirely quiet, and still; and it is in this moment there that, first and foremost, we may recall ourselves to each other, in our shared mystery, and potential, and simply be present; perhaps it’s an act, or a decision; perhaps it’s an attitude, or simply a reaction, of recognition; perhaps it’s an inspiration; or perhaps it’s already the beginning of this, our answer.

(The beginning of our answer to each human other).

(A meeting; an encounter; a discovery).

(A conversation).

(A dialogue).

(The beginning of our answer to each and every human other).

–Some more tea?–

And, in this, our inspiration, we sit together, as if our meeting of minds were itself a kind of dwelling place, somewhere to feel for a moment at home.

And then, in a little quiet time, we sit together perhaps a little more closely, a little, ever so little; we come a little closer, and feel a little closer, one to the other; and, sitting close, our perspectives become aligned; and, in this way, ever so slowly, and ever so subtly, we become fleetingly conscious of the fact, a little, ever so little, that we are breathing now together, more or less, in time, and as if our breaths, in truth, were one, were only one breath, and our now quietened thoughts, for a single present moment, in harmony.

And, sitting down quietly together, in this single present moment, now, we realize, even if not quite fully, and fully consciously, something quite extraordinary, which perhaps we will call here, for want of a better word, “understanding”; but “understanding” understood very modestly, to mean something like “standing under”, as if standing under, for example, a vast and magnificent sky, the heavens above, and in an attitude that is fully open, to wonder, about the world, itself, and fully open, to a feeling, a sense, a keen sense, of mystery, and to not knowing, and then, in fact, to not really knowing anything, in its entirety, and to not really understanding anything at all, at all, or not completely, and instead leaving always a little space for the company of some, one, some, thing, other.

Do you understand?

And in this, our understanding, and in this, our recognition, of our lack, of understanding, and our insufficiency, our incompleteness, our modesty, we come perhaps to sit even more closely together, to sit still more closely together, a little, ever so little; and we come a little closer, and feel a little closer, one to the other; and, sitting close, our perspectives becoming aligned, in lack of understanding, in understanding; and, in this way, ever so slowly, and ever so subtly, we become fleetingly conscious of the fact, a little, ever so little, that we are breathing now together, more or less, in time, and as if our breaths, in truth, were one, were only one breath, and our now quietened thoughts, for a single present moment, in harmony.

And, sitting down quietly, together, in this single present moment, we have become now so close, you and I, that it is as if I inhale your breath, you mine and, in this way, we come at last, again, to listening, and to listening carefully, to what we might hear, when we are listening, very carefully, in the heart, the human heart, your beating heart, my beating heart, as if, listening carefully –listen!– there is hearing, upon the eardrum, vibrating, reverberating, a heartbeat, itself, a heartbeat, beating, pulsating, to a pulse, a rhythm, a pulse, a rhythm, now a little faster, now a little slower, vibrating, reverberating, and sounding, listening carefully, together, as one, one song; and one song, as if sounded, as it were, in unison, as if unified, one beating heart, one voice, one song; one song, as if the heart, together, in company, in choir, can open up, in this single present moment, now, to become as if a vast, celestial echoing chamber, or dome, of magnificent sound, as if the song of the very sky itself, in swollen human heart; and this then, being, at once, sounding, and listening, is to the relaxed human heart, hearing music; for relaxed human hearts hum happily as one.

(And, almost as an aside, I ask you: what is language if not a music of the tongue? And what is culture – and especially a culture of art, music, and dance – if not a ground, a site, on which and from where to encourage and cultivate growth, a ground that encourages growth, in an attitude that encourages growth, and a ground that is worthy, therefore, of recalling, and of our recurring attention, and cultivation, and praise).

So let’s now take courage, seek greatness of heart, and encourage in ourselves a deeper listening, and hearing, and understanding, and compassion. For, if we listen very carefully, what we might hear, in this word, our “heart”, is the very art of hearing itself, or the art, that is, of listening, hearing, and understanding, with compassion, and heart, and only heart – the art, of heart!

And we humans, humming happily, come home, sound of heart.

Written with my feet in Switzerland, my ears in Oman, my head again in the clouds, thinking sky, and my heart all over the place. What great good fortune!
Geneva, 21 November 2017 – We Called It A Tuesday

IN THOUGHT, A FACE

In thought absorbed, in the depth of thought, absorbed, a face, cut as if from fabric, may sometimes wrinkle, sometimes crease …
And you look so deathly serious, my friend!
Your face so grave … graven … as if engraved … a line of thought, written upon the face, which sometimes I imagine that I can read, as if reading you like a book, and at other times, as now, the text seeming impenetrable, as if infinitely mysterious, unfathomable, unknowable.
(A foreign language).
What is it?
What then, your preoccupation, or concern? Your incomprehension, or bewilderment? Or what, perhaps, your secret happiness?
Sadness? Anxiety? Disappointment? Dismay? Melancholy? Regret? Grief? Anguish? Embarrassment? Envy? Jealousy? Guilt? Impatience? Fear? Frustration? Anger? Bitterness? Dread? Rage? Hatred? Despair?
Something of that, perhaps?
Or is it, rather, an excited anticipation?
Hope? Joy? Delight? Passion? Love?
(A relief, at any rate).
(What happiness).
And calm.
(Perhaps).
Or compassion?
–It could be so many things.
(Can be).
(Confidence).
And our emotions move the heart and stir the mind, enslaving us to passion, and getting us all worked up, and rendering everything at times so confused, and subject to so much desire, and so much suffering.
And there, upon the face, a line of thought that seeks perhaps the clarity of word, and perhaps a word’s beguiling promise, of separation, of liberation, a release of emotion, and a hope for freedom, for freedom from thought, from further thought, from thinking further.
(Some peace of mind).
And this line of thought, this long, long line of thought, looking back, looking back upon it, traced in memory, like so many steps along a journey, and something like a path, perhaps, a kind of life lived, or story, his story, her story, where we’ve been, or to where we’re going back, a mind’s eye’s dreamlike journeyings, forming pools here of reflection, reflections there fading, fading away, away, fading.
And are you not then but a mirror of time? A mirror of time’s reflections?
(Mind’s eye).
And I reach out for and take up my pen now as if my instinct were spontaneously to draw you; you, I mean; really you …
(To draw you near).
(And it’s perhaps just a helpful way to see you, by way of profile, or portrait; a vision, something like).
(In creative imagination, some empathy).
(And the consolation, warming, heartening, like an offer of hospitality, and a belief, a hope, a trust, in comprehension, in understanding).
(A kind of refuge).
And then, for but a moment, timeless, time’s glimpse into eternity, I rest my gaze upon you and, observing, try to see you, really you, and, while tracing these thoughts, as lines, I see each line of thought as if a detail, a feature, upon your face, and each detail, each feature, upon your face, as if a line of thought.
And I allow–I hold–that thought.
(And with it, I turn my thoughts to what feels then like an infinite tenderness, like a light sea breeze in summer; a gentle caress).
(To be in touch).
(And no more tension, then; no more resistance).
And so I draw you near, hold you dear … listening … your beating heart, its pulse, and rhythm, an ebb, and ocean flow, in breathing, in breathing … in listening … in breathing, in breathing … in listening … a kind of music … a music, of mind … a sky blue mind … full of light … and seeming so lucid … and clear …
(And refreshing – so refreshing!)
So that there then you are, somehow, held near, held dear, in this but a wrinkle, a crease, upon my face, absorbed in thought, a line of thought; and an embrace, of sorts.
(Your face, or mine; your thought, or mine; or another’s; eyes open, or closed; reach out, that’s all; no matter).
(And we then, who we, the so many, so very many, for whom you, for whom you, in passing, our love, my love, such love).
And here then this line, this thought, this line of thought, for the love of this, our human life, and for the love of your life, of you, and for the love of you, this life, your love, and then, too, for the love of, and for, your children, and the love of, and for, your parents, and their parents, your grandparents, and the love of your siblings, hopefully, and your friends, of course, and all your lovers, many, or few, and not last, and certainly not least, let’s not forget your husbands, or your wives, your life’s companions, and above all (such gratitude) to this your life of love, of searching love.
Love of this.
And love of you.
Love of this life.
This life of love, and …
Love.
Life.
You.
Gently, then; ever so gently.
Hold me gently.
Hold on gently.
Or so I thought.

AS IF, THE SKY

Who listens to us in the sky?

“Nothing can justify what is happening, but so long as it happens, it is necessary that it should be taken in, because it is necessary that the inner life of man, that the life that he creates within his mind, resemble as finely, that is to say, as truthfully, as possible, the actual world. And the whole history of art and philosophy is the history of a long and extraordinarily hard struggle to make this possible … But if we accept what is happening, then, not always, but often, one is face to face with the tragic … And, what happens, in face of the tragic, is that people accept it and cry out against it, although it won’t change. And they cry out, very, very frequently, to the sky … The sky is the only thing that can be appealed to in certain circumstances … Who listens [to us] in the sky? Perhaps God? Perhaps the dead? Perhaps even history … ”
John Berger, In Conversation with Sebastião Salgado, in “The Spectre of Hope”

As if, the sky.

To look, to listen, to watch, to wait, to learn.

As I write down these thoughts, these words, I feel so deeply blessed, for I am bathed now in light.

And it’s such a beautiful clear blue sky today; can you see it too?

Such a beautiful clear blue sky; and one experiences it as vast, as boundless, and yet, and yet, contemplating, such a sky, a sky that appears to be perfectly empty, entirely without physical depth, there is, in the fleeting twinkling of an eye, an infinite moment, and that’s to say, time, eternal time, recognized, and for a moment known, with such depth, of clarity, that it’s something like an insight, as from a sparkling, diamond mind – even if, to whom we may refer – and whose insight – whose mind – who knows – such that, the who … no matter – for, simply speaking, one observes only …. Sky … and only sky … sky that is entirely clear, perfectly clear, and empty, like some vast, heavenly dome … and sky, revealing, only ever more, of itself … as if expanding … ever expanding … always expanding … into clarity, every greater clarity … and light … the sky … and the sky so clear, so blissfully clear, as if, all, were clear, and the sky, so clear, so blissfully clear, as if … all … as if all, were entirely clear … for just that moment … all clear … and only light, and only light, be only light; and indeed, there is no detail in such a clear blue sky upon which the eye can feed, obsess, hunt down, or seek to possess, becoming fixated; and what a surprise, that is – startling, almost a shock – startling, like someone abruptly woken up, in a start – such that, the reflection of such a sky, after such a start, relaxes, then, the eye, into something, perhaps, like freedom, an expanded vision, where you are at once lost, freed and, at the same time, the sky itself … all the sky itself … seen, somehow, itself, in beauty’s bliss … as that … that’s seeing … the seeing … all seeing … eye …

And you will recall that, in reflection, the mind itself, sometimes, can seem this way; such that the mind, that opens, much, to perceive (as if to contain, or indeed to be), the sky, sees something like a vision, so beautiful, but at the same time so disorientating, so intensely disorientating, so overwhelming, that the beauty itself, too much … such that one loses oneself, in the sky, and the eye, for a moment, is dazzled, blind, in the immense clarity, that beauty’s bliss, of such a vision.

And in this way I do not have to imagine a clear blue sky, but only to open and lift up my eyes, and to allow the light to flood in, for it is there above me, viewed from exactly here where I am, where now I stand, and, when I look up, at this sky, it’s as if it catches me, in its light, embrace, of sky, light, unfiltered, and it’s almost as if the sky itself were somehow, in a sense, my mother, and as if the sky itself were somehow, in a sense, my father, catching me, in memory’s dear embrace, child of the sky, and, in this way, this sky serves then, somehow, as a reminder, a gentle reminder, that I am alive, still alive, and in this way the light, breathing, air, and stirring spirit, and inspiration, and thought, lifting up, seeking life, upon a breeze, a light, gentle breeze, makes me question, for a moment, if I am not, or if I am, myself, not for a moment, or for a moment, as if the very winds, of change, and that life itself, seeking life, itself, somehow, in the light, the illumination, is fanning us, again, into life, in this impulse, deeply human, stimulated, to look up, and look forward, and to reach out, arms outstretched, heart open, towards the sky, and to stand tall, and to search, and to search, and to search, the sky, for horizons, time’s changing horizons, observed, when seen, in each blinking eye, as if anew, and then imagining there, sometimes, upon the sky’s distant horizon, the beginning of hope, and possibility, and a calling, and a calling out, again, and a calling out, again, to dream.

But supposing that now, as you read these words, you are outside, and feeling yourself in some sense already quite free, or supposing that you are indoors, having gone in, through doors, only to find yourself, there, behind closed doors, and high walls, as if trapped, locked in, imprisoned, and barred from seeing clearly the light, of the sky, yet even then, even there, and even so, you find a window, and for a second you look out, as through the bars of a prison cell, and, in simply looking up, and out, what your eyes see is no clear blue sky, but rather a sky that is grey, cloudy, and overcast, or windswept, and rainy, or wild, and tempestuous, electric, with thunder, and lightning, or black, in dark, apocalyptic vision, and as if you were seeing all from the silent stillness of a storm’s blind, roving eye …

And you will recall that, in reflection, the mind itself, sometimes, can seem this way; such that the mind, that opens, much, to perceive (as if to contain, or indeed to be), the sky, can see there something like a vision, a dark vision, so bleak, and so terrifying, and so disorientating, so deeply disorientating, so overwhelming, that the darkness itself, too much … and all becomes black … black, like this apocalyptic sky … such that one loses oneself, quite simply, in the darkness, of such a sky, and the eye, for a moment, itself, sees black, and is blinded, by the darkness, the immense darkness, of such a vision, becoming black, and blacking out, as if all is lost, and at an end.

And then, then especially.

Look, listen, watch, wait, learn.

Is there still breathing?

And is there then still, something, of you?

And, if so, then quietly, still quietly, let’s recall …

For then, and then especially, my friend, perhaps, look in, within, and, sky’s mind, mirror, recall the sky, that memory’s clear blue sky, still pool of paradise, sky reflected, so deep, within …

And may these words, like prayers, help us somehow to sketch again, to imagine again, just such a clear blue sky, there, out there, as reflected also here, in here, within, the eye, behind, and beyond, all, or at least, until again, until again, we see it so, and know it so, as of course it will be, sometime soon, already is, as deep down well …

(You know).

And it’s such a beautiful clear blue sky today; can you see it too?

And, as I write down these thoughts, these words, I feel so deeply blessed, for I am bathed now in light.

To look, to listen, to watch, to wait, to learn.

As if, the sky.

WE, THE ONE

I breathe in the light.
Breath, breathing, breathe; I breathe.
Breath, breathing, breathe; I breathe.
I breathe in the light.

I breathe in the light.
I breathe the light.
I breathe.
(Each breath of light).
Light, shallow breath; deep breath; breath of life.
I breathe.
I breathe the light.
I breathe in the light.

I breathe in the light.
And, it’s in that light, or, in the light, of that, that, still breathing, I breathe; and my eyes, open; opened wide, my eyes, in the light, in the light, of that; in the light, looking out; in the light, looking out, that I breathe.
I breathe in the light.

I breathe in the light, asking:
Am I, then? And am I, really?
And you? Are you, then, too? And, if two, where, and who, are we?
Where are you? Who are you? And are you really?
(Are you really, “the one”?)
I keep breathing; I keep on breathing, in the light.
I breathe in the light.

I breathe in the light.
I breathe in the light, asking:
If really the one, if really you, you are, really, and if really you are, and if really you are the one, then how shall I know, how shall I find you, recognize you, separate and save you from a great sea of strangers, and make your face, to me, not just familiar, but infinitely precious, infinitely dear, the one?

And what anyway do I mean, you mean, we mean, “the one”? What does it mean? All mean? What does it all mean? What, the meaning?

And I don’t understand, I simply do not understand, I simply do not understand why I’m thinking this way, or breathing, or is it, breathing, this way, and thinking, and thinking this way, and breathing, and breathing, and thinking, at the surface, in the depths, surface, depths, and the light, breathing, thinking, breathing, in the light, asking:
Who? Where? What? When? Why?
And must I, should I, shall I, then, keep on … the one … ?
(Breathing).
And I keep on breathing; I keep on breathing, in the light.
I breathe in the light.

I breathe in the light.
I breathe in the light, looking out.
I breathe in the light, looking out, wondering, where you are, who you are.
And, still breathing, in the light, I seek you, search you out, with eyes, hands, heart, seeking you, searching you out, wondering, where you are, who you are, if you are, and why, be, and why, am, I, and why, am I, and why am I, then, still struggling, still struggling, in this light, to find you, to feel you close, and seeing your face in but an instant, shine out, shine out, shine out, and, from the great sea of faces, shining out, separated, saved, distinct, and uniquely special, special, and unique, your face, from out of the sea of faces, shining out, shining out, from the face of humanity, to see, just you, at last, the one, to catch sight of you, recognize you, find you, know you, and to feel you then so close, so familiar, so dear, and to follow then each breath, each heartbeat, each thought, each emotion, each slightest motion, together, as one, one heart, one mind, one spirit, one soul, as you, to we, the one, breathing together, breathing, breathing together, and opening up the eyes, then, as wide as one can and, with eyes, wide open, opened wide, to see you more clearly, to catch sight of you, recognize you, find you, know you, the one, for in this way, clearly, comes light, more light, to see clearly, the light, so beautiful, upon your face, the one, and such beauty, so beautiful, and so dear, so dear, dear face, seeing, you, and seeing, seeing you, separated, saved, at last, from the great, great sea, the great, great sea, of faces, of faces, of stories, of stories, of faces, so many, and some, so many, some, so many, so beautiful, too, and all so beautiful, beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, and so, so dear, this dear, dear face, this dear, dear face of humanity, and yet, still, still you, you are, the one, the only one–I think so–for whom I’ve eyes, to see, to see you, your beautiful, dear, dear face, the one, and that lovely smile, sea of faces, sea of love, ocean of love, ocean of joy–I think so–not drowning, clearly, but a little lost, and overwhelmed, and looking, looking out, and still, still seeking, searching, wondering, yes, wondering, yes, asking, simply asking–I think so, the one–and more light, clearly, more light, to see, to see clearly, to see, clearly, the one, the one, where you are, then, who you are, then, here, to me, I am, breathing, breathing, in the light, I am, the one.
The one.
Me.
I.
(And you?)
(And you?)
(Asking).
And …
Breathing, in the light.
And I breathe, in the light, looking out.
I breathe in the light.

And still I breathe, in the light.
I breathe, in the light, looking out.
And I look again up, look down,
Look to left, to right,
Turn to left, to right,
And turn in circles, in circles, turning, turning, whirling, whirling, turning, and turning around, and around, going around, and around, as if in circles, this turning world, blurred, bewildered, confused, where are you?
And, are you?
And, are you, even, somewhere, some place, someone, some, one, breathing?
And are you breathing?
Breathing, in the light, in the light, looking out, looking out, in the light, at the world; and this dream … for now … let’s call it … reality …
Reality, yes.
Let’s call it that.
And breathing, in the light, looking out.
And I breathe, in the light, looking out.
I breathe in the light.

(And, if, and if, my soul; and if my soul were singing out, to you, would you, would you show yourself, and come to me, at last? Would you come?)

And I breathe in the light.
I breathe, in the light, looking out.
I breathe, in the light, looking out, and waiting.
And I count the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years …
I count the lifetimes.
And I’m surely growing old, growing so old, as I count the faces, and count the faces, and count …
The first, the second, the third, and so on … asking: are you the one? … Are you? … Or you? … Or you? … as if we’ve all the time in the world … waiting for all eternity … the one … for … all …eternity … are you? … and to pass … time … the one … time, passing … I count the faces, one by one … one time … counting … each … and every … face … and each, and every, face, counting … counting … waiting … waiting … breathing … breathing …
And I breathe, in the light, looking out.
I breathe in the light.

I breathe in the light, asking:
Are you, then, the one, right here, right now … standing here, before me … mystery … mirrored … momentarily … in my gaze … and, in this, your presence … a moment’s taste … of … eternity … the one … looking out, looking in … out there, within … the one … and … something … like … poetry … some kind of love poem, for each … and every … one … for each … and every … one … of … you … that is, looking out … for you … you … you … and you … and faces, many faces, so many faces … sea of faces … a song … music … an ocean … music … of love, and longing … love, and longing … asking:
Are you, then, the one? Or am I?
Am I, then, the one? Or are you?
Are they, then, the one?
Or are we?
No matter! For there you are, I see (mystery). The one. And here am I, I see (mystery). The one. And let’s, then, in our loving, at least, be free … and join together … as “we” … the one, the many. And let’s write, then, poetry, some kind of poetry … a poem … a woven fabric … a tapestry … of love … sing a song, of love … and a love song … a love song to each … and every … one … the one … the many … the all … to love … and all … thanks … all thanks … to … love … to you … love … to you … all love … to … you … all … love … all … love … to you … and all … love … to you … a mystery … all love … eternal …

And we breathe together in the light.
We breathe in the light.
Breath, breathing, breathe; I breathe.
Breath, breathing, breathe; I breathe.
We breathe in the light.
You. Me. We. The One.
We breathe, together, in the light.
We breathe, in the light.
We breathe the light.
We breathe.

And then, so suddenly, no more, the light?

And now?

Good night, then, my love; good night.

I THINKS YOU THOUGHTS WE

Infinitely empty, never to be filled.
And can you even see it, sense it?
Great energy, insight.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes, exactly.

And yes.
Yes, okay.
Let’s.
Let’s stop.
Let’s stop and think.
Let’s stop and think about it.
Let’s stop and think it through.
Let’s stop and think about it.
Let’s stop and think.
Let’s stop.
Let’s.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
And …

Me. You.
This. That.
Why?
Why not?
What?

Yes, exactly.

And let’s think about it, and again think about it, and again think about it, asking:
For what purpose, your creation?
And what, your calling? To what? To where? To who? To whom?
And, depending on your answers, ask yourself, I ask you:
Are you innocent, or guilty?
Should you be condemned, or forgiven?
Or are you, somehow, paradoxically, both innocent, and guilty?
At once condemned, and forgiven?
And, if so, if in the former, or the latter, then, in whose eyes? In the eyes, of whom? Whose I’s eyes sees you, to judge?
Me? You?
Peers?
Parents?
Children?
Forefathers, and mothers?
The living? The dead?
And so I ask you, ask yourself:
What do you think?
Who I?
Who you?
Who knew?

Yes, exactly.

For it is I, who thinks, thoughts, of you.
It is I.
Is it?
It is I.
You.
And I, who, you.
I You.
Thinks.
Thoughts.
Or so it somehow sounded, seemed, somehow.

Yes, exactly.

And I thinks to myself, yourself.
He, or she?
I, or we?
Thinking.
Thinks.
Thoughts.

Yes, exactly.

And I too, I think, I think so, too.
Who?
Knows.
Thinking.
Thinks.
Thoughts.

Yes, exactly.
Yes, exactly.
Yes, exactly.

And so I too, I think, I too, I think, thinks so, sometimes, thoughts, too.

And thoughts, then; thoughts, then; thoughts, then; thoughts.
Thinks.
Thoughts.

And, from the birth, of thought, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts; such that, from darkness, emptiness, nothing, nowhere, hidden, waiting, quietness, mind, breath, breath, breeze, spirit, insight, birth, thought.

And thoughts, then; thoughts, then; thoughts, then; thoughts.

And, birth of thought, thinking, thoughts, thinks, thoughts, if not, necessarily, in a flash, then in a spark, small spark, bright spark of an idea, and, from that seeming, darkness, of ignorance, unnoticed, unseen, forgotten, ignored, there is hidden, waiting, quietness, mind, breath, breeze, spirit, sounding, vibrant, coming, being, becoming, being, real, alive, insight, birth, thought.

And, with each tiny spark, fragment, shard, splinter, shattered splinter, from fullest expression, creative possibility, boundless, comes this unfolding, revelation, and our creative, creativity, our collective, genius, like so many, and like so many, missing, missing, pieces, pieces, puzzle, puzzling, putting it, puzzlingly, together, together, now, in gradual, emergence, convergence, rumination, illumination, the mindful, let’s say, thinking, thinks, thoughts, I thinks.

Such that, from tiny fragment, of thought, word, world.

And, in this way, perhaps, a thought, in the beginning, beginning.

And, in the beginning, beginning, a thought, word, world.

A thought, word, world.

In the beginning, beginning.

Yes, exactly.

And who would have thought it?
The birth of thought!
And so yes, yes let’s.
Let’s try gently to catch it, that thought, and gently to hold it, hold on to it, write it down, write it now, at once, that thought, thinking, and, with it, like a light, like a sun, like a newly revealed sun, to salute the dawn, and seize the day …
For perhaps our most vital, important, valuable, labour, human labour, may be, may well be, be well, in truth, the work, the labour, of dreamers, songsters, storytellers, poets, and bards, marginal, each one, but transforming barriers, into frontiers, transforming barriers, into frontiers, and each marginal, eccentric, one, engaged, at the edge, at the margin, far, from the centre, far, from the centre, seemingly lazy, and perhaps, or probably, by definition, half-crazy, in a labour, a birth, of the imagination, our most vital, important, valuable, labour, human labour, being a work, a labour, of the imagination, and working, in this way, our minds, as, at other times, we work, or, as once, we worked, and cultivated, our fields, and going, that is, to the ground, and preparing, that is, the ground, and cultivating, that is, the ground, and giving, ourselves, to the ground, adding, ourselves, to the ground, being, ourselves, the ground, and, being, being, ground, the ground, grounded, earthed, and digging, deep, digging, deep, and, having been digging, deep, digging, deep, digging, deeper, still, to dig, and still, to dig, then, deeper, deeper, deeper, still, and deeper, deeper, deeper, still, keep digging, deep, and digging, deep, and digging, deep, and don’t you think, and don’t you think, and don’t you think?
And yes, exactly.

For I, think, thinks, thoughts.
I. You. We.
Think, thinks, thoughts.
That’s all.
Just so.

And yes.
And yes, exactly.

But how are we to know, I ask you?
How are we to know?
And how are we to know, and understand?
To know, and understand, when we’re digging, digging, digging, in the true, the right, the sought for, place, and following the right direction, the right line, and discovering, and entering, as it were, in this way, the right field, the right ground, and the right zone, right?
And how will we know?

Yes, exactly.

Well, we’ll know, that’s all, we’ll simply know.
And I think, thinks, says it, so.
For it’s all energy, my friend, great energy; just go with the flow!

Yes, exactly.

And we can name this great energy using as many names as there are words in a language: ida, and pingala, for example; or human, animal, plant; or sun, wind, earth, fire, water; or planetary, cosmic, universal … and yet, it’s in some sense, and in no sense, everything, nothing, all the same; no matter …

Energy.

Great energy.

Boundless, infinite.

Go, go, go …

Just go, with the flow.

And when it finds its expression, in I, become You, in voice, vocation, it finds, we, heart, together, human, human, heart, heart, home, and, brave, strong, the human, human, heart, knows, the way, the path, home, and so, surrenders, and so, surrenders, and only, surrenders, at last, and surrenders, at last, to, thinking, thinks, thoughts, and, understanding, standing, understood, simply surrenders, and only, surrenders, trusts, walks, and walks, walks, walks, its way, seen, in insight, trusted, supported, revealed, surrendered, our destination, and destiny.

And so it is, perhaps, that, when you’re on the right track, you’ll know it, and when you’re on the right track, you’ll know it, for your energy, your energy, your energy, will feel, enormous, huge, boundless, infinite … and enough, and more than enough, and enough … to move mountains … as, very easily, spontaneously, naturally, and intuitively, flying, with the breath, across the landscape, of these, your lungs, you discover, give voice to, your tongue, and discover, give expression, give voice, to this, to this, to this, in call, response, echo, of this, (your) (mother) land, and this, (your) (father) land, and, in, this, way, to sing, the songs, to sing, the songs, of the ground, the land, the earth, your birth, or earth, or ground, or land, or chosen, land, choosing, where there, where there, the landscape, sets, your heart, on fire, and inspires, your breath, your soul, to sing, and there, where there, where there, the land, is familiar, and a place, perhaps, of memory, family, home, be it day, night, sun, moon, desert, mountains, lakes, rivers, streams, marshland, bogs, forests, fields, or steppe, endless steppe, endless steppe, steppe, steppe, steppe after steppe after steppe after steppe, and …

Steppe. Steppe. Steppe.

You’ll know, I know.

Yes, exactly.

Such that, here now, a breeze, a subtle breeze, spark of thought, burnt earth, fertile ground, looking up, reaching up, open eyes, open hands, open hearts, to see, touch, sky, blue, mind, boundless, bliss.

ONLY THAT, I AM

Draw down the full moon into the echoing chamber of the mouth, the eyes closing, the ears opening, the heart, calling out, to love, and the mind, quite still, I am, and listen, there, to the depth of quiet vibration, and the sound, that is forever taking shape and, with the seeming slowness of all eternity, the sound that gives rise, slowly, to inner conviction, and knowing, and certainty, and wisdom, and that knows, that that, that knows, that that, that inner that, that sees, and meditates, upon that great vision, the great vision, that, being, for the moment, only me, and only you, is also being, for the moment, and for always, only that.

THIS TOO, MY LOVE, IS YOU

These first, warm, waking, dreams, intimate, of joy, in life, for which, no words, but see, and hear, and touch, and smell, and taste; as, in this, this dreaming, this dreaming delight, of my awakening, in soft, sleepy, eyes, you are, my vision; and the warmth, too, of your breast, breathing deep, then shallow, again deep, again shallow, my gently open hand, you are; and the bright taste, too, of your nipple, teased awake, and now alert, my curious, restless touch, this too, this too, you are; and this, this extraordinary, wondrous, magnificent, and so, so lovely, human landscape, sublime, on which, body, of humanity, I rest, now, these restless thoughts, my mind, my weight of head, desiring, as if again, as if again, again, to sleep, perchance, to dream, and to dream again, of this, this life, this time, and of mountains, and lakes, forests, and rivers, woodland, and fields, and to dream, and to dream again, of this, this life, this time, and of once were dreams of childhood summers, somehow, and liberty, and innocence, and of warm sands, bright sun, sea breeze, and a glorious, carefree, youth, and this too, my body, this too, my body, your body, naked, you are, you are naked, I am naked, I know; and this, then, too, this feeling, I feel it, feeling, flowing, as in a stream, a stream, of pleasure, and reverie, and thought, and sensation, and joy, that simply expands, and expands, and expands, and that’s simply expanding, somehow, ever, forever, like a seed that seeks fulfillment of its potential, and its destination, its destiny, such that this, this soft, tender, opening, now, to the world, this too, this too, you are, and fire, burning, my desire, with such great energy, vitality, lust, and longing, and burning, burning, for more, yet more, and more, yet more, and yet it’s clearly enough, and yet never enough, enough, and yet, at the same time, not enough, this lonely life, and longing, this lonely life, and longing, alone, and not, and alone, and not now alone, my tongue, in poetry’s parting lips, to sing, in breath, in breath, by heavenly breath, and heavenly breath, breathing, and yet always, somehow, breathless, my soul, still breathless, and gasping, for air, and grasping, for the air, for the breath, for the spirit, of the divine, and this too, this too, in dawning light, my love … for the divine, somehow, somewhere, here, or there, and here, and there, and this, this too, you are (I am), and this, this too, as – thirsty, as the earth, for your rain – hungry, as the flowers, for your sunlight – impatient, as the night, for your day – so that our song sounds this, at last, and sounds this, this too, this too, in dawning light, of day, new day, and new day’s morning song, as, singing – who? – we are, for this too, my love, this too, an ocean of bliss, sky blue, is you.

THAT'S ALL

Losing oneself, a little, one self, in deep relaxation, as if, there, you are, no longer, one, or are you, there, even there, at all, as if, at times, sometimes, happening, something, sensing, something, one thing, one feeling, feeling, and picking up on, flowing into, sometimes, some lower, deeper, frequency, or vibration, hearing, as if, something, like, a low, humming, sound, always present, always there, and yet, so rarely, so very rarely, if ever, heard, perhaps, or never, heard, perhaps, or never ever, even, at all, perhaps, heard, and really heard, and really heard, and yet, yet still, it’s there, then, listening, and, let’s some one say, then, that one, not one, as only one, lonely one, and one, indeed, alone, just imagining, hearing, only hearing, the stillness, the silence, from where, that is, that, that, one, senses, only, observes, only, sees, only, plays, only, the energies, the deeper energies, the wave, the circle, the spiral, the flow, and there, then, trusting, all, and, trusting, all, is well, is, well, the magic, of the moment, for a moment, seeming, then, there, almost, to dance, here, and now, upon the air, where we are, who we are, and, here, there, to sparkle, in your eyes, your eyes’s reflection, and your eyes, that is, those eyes, that, are, that, that’s, seeing, then, here, there, forever, now, this vision, singular, in verse, in universe, such beauty. And so you breathe gently in, breathe gently out; open your heart, your arms, lift up your eyes, stand tall; and call it love; that’s all.

YES TO ALL

(A Poem For My Son)

Listen, my child, let’s see if we cannot just quieten our chattering thoughts, for a second, and set aside our oh so clever intellects; and lose our heads, as it were – just for a minute, I promise; and instead, just trust our feelings.

Animal instinct, we’ll call it.

And, if you like, and if it helps, here, take my hand.

(And I’d hold your hand forever, my child, if you wished, and if I could; and even then, the time would pass by too quickly; for forever would never ever be enough time to stand with you, by your side, hand in hand. And, yes, yes, I know, yes yes, I know, and I know only, and all, too well. For you don’t need my hand at all, truth to tell, do you? For you’re already far too confident, and independent, for that. And that’s only right, and natural. But at least here, in these words, on the page, I can still extend, still extend my hand to you, and to tell you that my hand will always be there for you, to hold, to hold your hand, hold hands, for when you need, or should you wish, just so, and said, without, I trust, too much embarrassment, at least I hope so).

And so, with a hand, or with no hand, whichever the case may be, please just trust me now, this once, on this one, no need to think, or fret, but take it easy, breathe freely, and let it go.

And indeed, abandoning all control, let’s just close our eyes, shall we, as if to pray.

And we’ll close our eyes (and, at least in my imagination, in my thoughts, hand in hand), simply observing, within, we’ll … well … we’ll … well … we’ll … well … just relax … into waiting … and waiting … and waiting … saying, let’s just wait and see …

For the thought is evolving, of that we can be sure; indeed, we can take that one on trust, if I may say so, as if in faith.

And it’s coming, this thought, this expression of thought; it’s coming …

And it’s like the seeds, you see, that begin, in spring, to shoot,

And the flowers, that blossom, and bloom,

And the trees, bearing in some cases such sweet, such succulent, fruit,

In their season, the rhythm, of days, and nights, sun, and moon, the light, and light’s absence, lit up, by the brilliance, of stars, galaxies, and galaxies, of them, and each bright, blinking, and twinkling, every one,

And all fed, as by the birds, and the bees, and watered, as by the rains, from skies above,

The oceans, and the seas,

The rivers, and the streams,

The mountains, and the forests, and the fields,

And all the living, moving, breathing, being, things, and that’s to say, let’s make a list, then, shall we, lest we forget; now let me think …

(And I just said not to think!)

(Oh Papi!)

But thinks, and thinking, even so …

(For sometimes one just can’t help it; it’s just the way we’re made; it’s in our DNA).

And it’s in any case coming, this thought, this expression of thought; it’s in any case coming …

For what we’re talking about here, lest we forget, let me think, is all those living, moving, breathing, being, things, like …

The Alpaca, and the Antelope,

The Cockroach, and the Caterpillar,

The Zebra, and the Hippopotamus,

The Ant, and the Octopus!

And that’s not all, of course.

It’s just that, well … I’ve already got myself lost … I’ve got a bit lost … distracted, perhaps … lest we forget …

Where was I?

Ah yes, that’s right.

It’s coming back to me now.

For it’s still coming along, this thought, this expression of thought; indeed, it’s coming along quite nicely …

For it’s like the seeds, you see, that begin, in spring, to shoot,

And the flowers, that blossom, and bloom,

And the trees, bearing in some cases such sweet, such succulent, fruit,

And all fed, as by the birds, and the bees, and watered, as by the rains, from skies above,

The oceans, and the seas,

The rivers, and the streams,

The mountains, and the forests, and the fields,

And all the living, moving, breathing, being, things, and that’s to say …

Where was I?

Ah yes, that’s right; let’s go on with our list, and even make a longer list, shall we? Yes, let’s … lest we forget; okay, now let me think …

Where were we?

That’s right.

We were …

The Earwig, and the Elephant,

The Buffalo, and Butterfly,

The Giraffe, and the Guinea-Pig,

The Crocodile, and Crow,

The Whale, and the Walrus,

Not forgetting the Parrot, and the Peacock, and the Vole,

The Dog, and Donkey,

The Turkey, Toad,

The Wolf, and Weasel,

The Lobster, and Lion,

The Hamster, and the Hen,

And then the Cow, the Chameleon, and the Kangaroo,

The Penguin, and the Pussy Cat,

The Monkey, and the Water Rat,

The Dragonfly, and Mole,

The Hedgehog, and Ladybird, and Koala Bear,

The Slug, and Salamander,

The Lamb, and then the little Mouse, just over there,

Behind the Spider, and the Snail …

And yes; and yes; and yes; and yes, I know …; that’s not it all …at all … at all …

For the list is not exhaustive, dear child, nor even alphabetical, let’s admit.

For structure was never quite my thing; and nor should it or ever could it have been.

For it’s the natural world, after all; we’re best enjoying it just as it comes, shouldn’t you say, and don’t you think?

But yes, you’re right, it’s true.

Another might have said, first this, then, that, first A, then B, then C, and so on, to M, to O, and Y, and one day, and some day, and there you are at last, my friend, you’ve made it, you’re at Z (and fast asleep, more likely than not; dead beat).

But no, that’s not my style; that’s not me, at all.

And that’s the whole point, indeed.

For, starting with this thought, that’s still coming along, this thought, this expression of thought, just nicely; it’s still coming along just nicely …

And it’s just the natural world, you see. It’s nature. Seemingly all over the place, but actually following each thing its rhythm, and reason, and purpose …

Like the seeds, you see, that begin, in spring, to shoot,

And the flowers, that blossom, and bloom,

And the trees, bearing in some cases such sweet, such succulent, fruit,

In their season, the rhythm, of days, and nights, sun, and moon, the light, and light’s absence, lit up, by the brilliance, of stars, galaxies, and galaxies of them, and each bright, blinking, and twinkling, every one,

And all fed, as by the birds, and the bees, and watered, as by the rains, from skies above,

The oceans, and the seas,

The rivers, and the streams,

The mountains, and the forests, and the fields,

And all the living, moving, breathing, being, things, and that’s to say, well …

What?

To say what?

And should we go on with our list, or not?

Shall we, or shall we not?

Or shall we stop?

But …

Wait, wait, wait …

Where was I?

Where were we?

For it seems to me now that we’re forgetting some one, or two, in me, and you, for we’re here too, don’t forget, like so many animals, and also a part, of the natural, world. For it’s not a zoo, you know, it’s nature; and we’re nature, too. And seemingly all over the place, especially me, but actually following each one his rhythm, her rhythm, our rhythm, and reason, and purpose …

Animal instinct, we’ll call it.

And, if you like, and if it helps, here, take my hand.

And so, with a hand, or with no hand, whichever the case may be, please just trust me now, this once, on this one, no need to think, or fret, but take it easy, breathe freely, and let it go.

And indeed, abandoning all control, let’s just close our eyes, shall we, as if to pray.

For the thought is evolving, of that we can be sure; indeed, we can take that one on trust, if I may say so, as if in faith.

And it’s coming, this thought, this expression of thought; it’s coming …

And it’s like the seeds, you see, that begin, in spring, to shoot,

And the flowers, that blossom, and bloom,

And the trees, bearing in some cases such sweet, such succulent, fruit,

And all fed, as by the birds, and the bees, and watered, as by the rains, from skies above,

The oceans, and the seas,

The rivers, and the streams,

The mountains, and the forests, and the fields,

And all the living, moving, breathing, being, things, and that’s to say …

Relax, my child, relax.

Nature knows what she’s doing.

And we, for our part, can simply enjoy this extraordinary opportunity that we have been given to read widely from, and to study, her book, saying:

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And …

Yes, to all.

THE MIND'S EYE

When the mind’s eye dwells always in contemplation upon itself, great liquid body of sparkling light, reflecting cloud and mountain upon the still face of the waters, clear blue lake of heaven, and when mind’s thought dwells at once upon the surface, and in the depth, of time, then may heart and head, earth and sky, be understood, again, as one.

THERE WHERE THE SUN

A bank of snow cloud can, as it drifts across the horizon, appear as something indescribably grey, or even black, and as something so heavy, weighty, threatening, portentous, that the sky bears the burden of it only with difficulty, and this the reason for it looking somehow so thick, ugly, and threatening, like fists closed in anger and frustration, spoiling for a fight, the energy taut, tight, weighed down, pushed down, compressed, oppressed, and waiting, drifting, drifting, waiting, as if waiting to be at last free from all this weight, and liberated.

(And all these flurrying thoughts, in my mind, are themselves like so much weight, and noise).

But then, once released, liberated, and grounded, how calming its quiet, soft, gentle whisper, and how reassuringly intimate, and warming, this smooth white blanket of snow.

And look there, then; do you see?

It’s so bright!

(There where the sun shines through).

THE MOON, BRIGHT

The moon, bright, floats upon the clear night sky.

The poet hangs out words like laundry on a line, picking out one at a time, with care, and seeing each word, albeit naively, as for the very first time, something fresh, and as good as new; and, for all the modesty of the task, he looks for poetry there, among these words that blow about in the breeze; and he looks, also – sometimes – maybe – for a sense of something, like an end to longing.

The moon, bright, floats upon the clear night sky.

(This, at any rate, is how the line began).

The moon, bright, floats upon the clear night sky, like a thought to which – mindful, if entranced – the poet returns, obsessively, again and again; a thought as lucid as only a dream may be, sleeping fitfully.

And he gazes up at her, so far away; he strains to see again her face; and he drinks, in his delirium, of the taste of her, so fine; and a more delicious taste, like the taste of a fruit, ripening in his thoughts, he’d never tasted, he swore.

And in such a way, in his upside down imagination, the images wording his sleep, his memory, he plunges into her again as if the sky were like a sea, and she a disc of pure white gold. And then he looks harder, peering into the dream like a man losing sight; but then, in a blaze of light, to catch himself diving, deep – bitter, sweet – salty, sharp –into the colour blue, of bliss. And he knows it’s her.

And in such a way she reaches out to him – or so, at least, is the logic of his dream – in wave upon wave of desire, each fresh wave taking him further, then further still, drawing him down and down (or up and up), deep delight, delicious upon the salt sweet lips and tongue until, at last, washed up, exhausted, he falls upon her sandy shores, so warm, to sleep.

I’ll embrace her then, he thinks.

I’ll embrace her again and again.

For only the poet dares to drink deeply of her, gulping her down, thirsty for more and ever more of her, the White Goddess, his muse, and the gaze of the milky moon.

But then she, not indifferent, exactly, but quiet, cool, turns her back: this is her part. And he – bleeding in his ignorance – begins clumsily to stir, and fumbles for a line of poetry he fails to find, switches on a light.

And the poet hangs out words like laundry on a line, picking out one at a time, with care, and seeing each word, albeit naively, as for the very first time, something fresh, and as good as new; and, for all the modesty of the task, he looks for poetry there, among these words that blow about in the breeze; and he looks, also – sometimes – maybe – for a sense of something, like an end to longing.

And the poet, never quite satisfied, entirely, whimpers tearfully towards the moon, lonely in his solitude for something only instinct might recognize, as company.

(Or so he thinks.)

And as a bell strikes five of the morning he takes a pen, some paper, even so.

SAKURA

(With deep gratitude to Imre Thormann, whose Butoh workshop inspired these words.
www.bodytaster.com)

Sakura
(Cherry Blossom)

Be still for a moment.

Stand still.

Stay still.

Remain.

Still.

Be still.

Present.

(A gift).

Standing, still.

Understanding …

One may find inspiration there, or here. (In the unlikely places).

A child’s spiral coil, for example. Or a skeleton dangling at the end of a sprung chain. Old-fashioned wooden toys, perhaps a cat or a dog, or a donkey, that dance at your will. A bouncing ball. A sheet of white fabric held out, then allowed to fall. The ways in which things move. Energy.

Fold; flow; coil; curl; spiral; stretch; turn …

Vibrations in energy.
(Subtle vibrations).

All this energy must eventually be earthed, it seems.
Respect the pull of gravity.
The weight of things.
Inertia.

(Reading Alan Watts. In his words, then: Every approach to the limit of absolute inertia condenses by inversion into a departure from the limit of absolute energy. Flip – total void equals big bang.)

The body is heavy, its energy spiralling down towards the earth.
The body is also light, however; its energy spirals back up, from the earth to the sky. It bounces back.
The body is earth, yes.
And yet the body is water, too; in fact mostly water.
Something a little muddy, then.
Like wet, fecund earth.

And now imagine the organs, the bones, floating around as if in a balloon filled with water; and everything is fluid, soft.

Think, too, of a baby’s body; the body of a baby, when relaxed, is naturally very soft, and malleable. A rag doll body.

And think in terms of circles or balls. Imagine that you are balancing on a ball, first of all. Then imagine, too, that you are holding a ball, with both hands, in front of you. The head; the upper body, the chest region; the middle body, the tummy region; imagine each of these as a circle or ball of energy.

Think, then, about how your body moves and turns.
The axes of the body.
Horizontal. Vertical.
(And you yourself are always in the middle of things; you are always at the centre.)
Imagine a line, a cord, running from top to bottom of the body, like a puppet; and this, your spinal cord, open, and long. A long, straight line, more or less. Aligned.

Aim to be aligned, then.
Alignment.
Going with the flow.

Now make small movements away from the vertical and think of these small movements as expressions of, or responses to, emotion. Try to open up the solar plexus, the heart. Allow this impulse, this impulse to be more open, to extend up through the neck, the open mouth, the eyes looking up to the sky, the head thrown back.

And it is important that the jaw be as soft and as relaxed as possible. Adopt the face of someone a little like yourself, indeed, a simpleton, an idiot. (Only teasing). Allow the jaw to relax, and the mouth to drop open, all loose.

Be intelligent, too. Connect to a balance between the ears, to a correct positioning of the jaw, to a correct alignment of the spine. And at all times be aware of your feet, and their degree of balance or imbalance. The feet are your roots to the earth.

Ask yourself: why do you move?
What impulses cause you to move?

Heartbeat; pulse; impulse; rhythm; movement; reaction; attraction; desire.

The foetus develops first as ear, as hearing: you are above all a response to sound.
There is sound. And you yourself, in some sense, are the echo.
There is an incantation, a calling out, a question: and you are the response, the answer.
And that’s okay; it sounds fine.

Now, standing, perhaps also swaying a little, back and forth, like a reed in a breeze, be aware of that point at which, falling forward, moving forward, becomes inevitable.

And already here there is illumination and a key to understanding life. How to express this understanding?

As follows. In life, one cannot always test the next step; one must simply trust, have blind faith, step out, walk. Is it not so?

And this walk, properly understood, is a walk towards – or into – death. There is no turning back.

How to enjoy this walk? How to derive from it a maximum of pleasure, satisfaction, intensity, beauty, meaning?

‑ Butoh: the dance of the dark night ‑

Now imagine a little old lady, gnarled, haggard, greatly aged, stooped low, and barely able to lift her head let alone to walk. Yet walk on she does. Slowly; extraordinarily slowly, and deliberately, and consciously, she walks on. And can you slow yourself down so as, not to pass her, but rather, to follow her, walking a little way behind, and ever so, ever, so, slowly? Can you accompany her on her way, at her pace, her speed?

This old lady appears to be so old – so old, in your eyes – that she seems somehow ageless, strangely, like time itself, and yet still she walks on, walking on, along a long, long avenue of cherry blossom, symbol of short‑lived spring. And each pink cherry blossom falls in a perpetual stream of colour, each petal a moment of life, an experience, a thought, a memory; and the blossom sparkle and glitter in the blazing spring light, like diamonds in the mind.

Settling upon the earth, each cherry blossom nourishes the dead who lie beneath: yes, for it is the dead who make up the material of this long road, and the path itself a mosaic of rotting flesh, decomposing corpses atop the dry bones of the long dead.

The old woman, walking slowly forward, contemplates with pleasure the cherry blossom as they settle at her feet, falling one by one to earth. And only once do you see her look up to admire the cherry trees themselves.

And I want you to do something extraordinary, now.
I want you to imagine that you are one of these cherry trees.
I want you to imagine that you are the cherry blossom, falling to the earth.
I want you to imagine that you are the old woman, walking slowly on.
I want you to imagine that you are the old woman, who is dying.
I want you to imagine that you are the old woman, who is dead.
I want you to imagine that you are the old woman; and you are death itself.
And I want you to imagine that flowers fall from your open mouth; and from your nose; and from your ears; and from your eyes.
And I want you to imagine, now, that you are the path.
For you, too, belong among the dead.
And you, too, are one of the ancestors.

Earth to earth.
Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.

Let’s call it this, then: an imaginative experience of one’s own death. And from the immense darkness of such an experience, and knowledge, one awakens to a new life, full of hope and promise, energy, and light.

Dance, then, to the dance of the cherry blossom, falling.

For this is beauty, now.

And how sweet are the taste of tears; they quench a deep thirst.

SOMETIMES A NAME

Some Thoughts on Life and Death

Sometimes it is enough simply to repeat a person’s name, holding them lovingly and gratefully in mind. Sometimes calling out a name is simply the best you can do. And sometimes a name is all you have.

Recall the names of your loved ones, departed; hold them dear.
*
My thoughts turn to you.

To you I write these words.
*
To honour the dead is to find within ourselves the courage to face that which remains otherwise unspeakable: the deaths of the dearly departed, and the death, too, that waits for us alone. It is to find the courage ‑ the heart ‑ to go to (and into) that ground. And having once risen up to the heavens, standing proud, and tall ‑ boy, girl, man, woman ‑ it is to think to the earth and to the prospect of being one day earthed ourselves, at the last. It is to think to know a little, already now, of a natural great peace; to be whole, one.

‑ Rest in Peace ‑

May you rest in natural great peace, now and always.
*
In an obscure way, it is sometimes the dead themselves who offer us the gift of this great courage. Recalling their example swells the heart and gives us the strength and confidence to go on. Our ancestors; the one‑time elders of our community; our sources of inspiration, our role models, our teachers; our brothers and our sisters; our fathers and our mothers; our children, breaking heart; we need never feel alone; come close.
*
‑ My heart’s memory turns to you. ‑
*
I risk losing myself in a confusion of words, words stumbling to draw near to something that shall perhaps never find expression: the silence of the grave. Before death one is always at a loss for words: silenced by death, words fail us. And that’s okay too, I guess.

(May death be my forgiveness).
*
The word “confused”, incidentally, means literally “fused with”, i.e. a state where for a time we lose our bearings, our direction, our habitual sense of self, our way. A fire flames up within us that threatens – or promises – to purge us wholly of (or at least to distract us from) our small, separate selves. We draw too near to that flame; naturally, we get burnt.

The powerful emotional charge present at times of profound change naturally renders us confused, without words, dumb, numb. How to gain insight from within the midst of an intense emotion?

In thinking, keep to the simple, advises Lao‑Tsu. And the solution – let’s face it – may be simpler than one thinks, or fears.

Pierce the confusion, then, and simply face it: hold up death as a mirror to your life and learn to gaze unflinchingly upon your reflection there.

Touch the earth; go into the ground; look to the dead.

In doing so, you receive a reminder that beyond all change is that which does not change, which knows nothing of change, just as, looking beyond life, what one comes to see is death. Life, then, is like the upturned face of a coin. The other side of the coin ‑ giving life its currency, its value ‑ is death.

(Small change? No, I don’t think so.)

The word “understanding”, after all, means literally “standing under”. And where better to develop understanding – that which is to be found, the pro‑found – than there where the earth has been dug deeply and then engraved upon, the silence of the grave beginning subtly to sound as grave voice, low, deep, comforting, inviting, calling out.

‑ My heart’s memory turns to you. ‑
*
To honour the dead is to unearth an inexhaustibly rich and fertile ground of inspiration: a ground that as you cultivate it, labour upon it, work it, turn it, returns you again and again to life. It is to know that we are each and every one of us but a sigh of breath between earth and sky, thin as air. In this we share a common humanity.

I repeat: to honour the dead is to turn our thoughts again to the living. It is to think afresh about those who cross our path, the relationships that subsequently develop, the growing trust and mutual respect, the emerging friendship and love. It is to hold everything and everyone dear.

(From the perspective of death, all falls into place).

‑ My heart’s memory turns to you. ‑
*

What to do?
What to do?
What will you do?

What do you do?

(It’s a question one hears often.)

How do you spend your time?

Who are you?

And – the question of perhaps greatest significance – who do you wish to become?

(In the face of death).

Who do you wish to be?

For my part, I have yet to find any succinct or satisfactory answers to these questions: what is to be done? As is true of most and perhaps all of us, I do many things, I am many people; indeed, each human life seems sometimes but a flare of intense energy through the blur of which this or that relationship, role, activity, job, hobby, whim, wish, longing, desire, passion, or dream, may prove to be of at best only partial, incomplete significance; only partial, incomplete significance compared, that is, to the lifelong mystery of a more expansive and complex human whole.

(A matter of small change?)

(Small changes).

Let me say this, at least. I am someone who devotes time ‑ when time there is ‑ to wondering about the world, in words. I try to take note of what I see and of what I hear and of what I taste and sense and feel, and of what I think about all this. I try, too, to take note of what I know and of what I’ve yet to learn. I write out these notes in words, in notebooks. And then I read these almost as musical notation, listening for the harmony. I try to make sense of my notes; I try to make some sense of my written‑out world. I try to work things out. I fail, mostly; a failure that leaves me often with a tremendous sense of loss, as now.

(Dear You).

Be that as it may, I take the decision – open hands, open arms, open heart, open mind ‑ not to leave these words like so many scattered ashes, but rather, calling out your name, to see them lift off the page so as to take fresh form, perhaps, in an expression found elsewhere, in other hands, other eyes, other lips, other hearts, and living longer that way.

Why write at all if not to share words of courage in the face of death: words released like prayers upon the wind.

And as the memory of you will at times be as living company ‑ to me as to many others ‑ may these words be also as company to you, with all gratitude and love.

These words are my only offering; and it seems to me, at least at this time, that I’ve nothing to share with you of greater worth, greater value. May these words speak meaningfully to you; may they keep you company.

A prayer for the living and for the dead.
*
Giving thought to someone, sometimes it is enough simply to repeat their name, holding them lovingly and gratefully in mind. Sometimes calling out a name is simply the best you can do. And sometimes a name is all you have.

‑ My heart’s memory turns to you. ‑

In deep gratitude.

8 NOVEMBER 2016

Salivating impatiently in the shadows of social injustice waits the many‑headed monster of political turmoil.

And, once unleashed, this monster manifests as a most fearsome creature, furiously lashing out in all directions, and in every which way, to the left and to the right, in the virulence of its anger, and its hatred, like a singular evil eye, seeing everything in black and white, seeing red, or like a red, raging fire, which appears to burn brightest in the pitch blind darkness of the very bleakest and blackest and longest of nights, consuming all in its path, including eventually even itself, sooner or later, at last, until finally, finally, finally, it burns itself out and, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, all is again quiet, and desolate, as this scorched earth of humankind, to the earth itself, once again, returned.

So take great care – be wary, prudent, vigilant, alert – for there is no ordinary human strength or wisdom sufficient to tame such a beast.

Only the brave and gentle heart can do it, with a loving, kind intention, and a quiet, calm mind, like a sea of tranquillity, an ocean of compassion, and a dropping down, or at least an effort, an intention, to try, at least to try, to drop down, like a person on their knees, in prayer, into deeper, and ever deeper, deeper depths, of understanding.

So come then, we once were capitalists.

We oh so clever bankers and CEOs, we oil barons and top brass “defence contractors” (or, sorry, is that, “arms dealers”?), we property tycoons and landed lords, we hedge fund managers and venture capitalists, we media moguls and TV personalities, we fat cats and big fish, presidents and ministers, drug lords and farmer-pharmacists, stockbrokers and shareholders, economists and trade experts, lawyers and statisticians, insurance brokers and car salesmen, silicon valley techies and washed up wonks, corporate slaves and minimum wage corporate cleaning contractors, boardroom to bored room, single room flat, absent dads, and lost sons, mums, and babies, and all of us enchained in our prosperity, and all of us enchained in our poverty, and all the rest of us, besides, wherever we might aspire to place ourselves, somewhere, in between, these beefed up, or plucked clean, extremes, and all of us, in short, in one huge great family, global village, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, all colours and creeds, all orientations, sexes, and sexualities, asking ourselves, each other, all together, if we can surely do better than this, be better, can we not?

Can we surely not do better?

Be better?

(Surely).

(Birth place: Earth. Race: Human. Politics: Freedom. Religion: Love).

For the material can be useful, can be lovely, but without some breath of spirit in the thing, the music of soul, and stripped of hope for a deepened humanity, it’s all as good as meaningless, this stuff, all basically meaningless, this ‘phone, this car, these jewels, these fine, fancy, and oh so fashionable clothes, and all of it on the way to soon seeming so lifeless, so stupid, so numb, so dull, as deep down well you know.

So come on, let’s face it.

All we really wish for from one another is some face of recognition, forgiving gaze, some gentle eye, and loving touch, some small sign of shared humanity.

So there, that’s it.

Let’s work together to search for, realize, and celebrate our mutual flourishing, sharing our food and our clothes, our shelter and our warmth, our gods and our cultures, our fathers and mothers, our husbands and our wives, our hopes and aspirations, our dreams and our delights, our wine and our song, our laughter and our smiles, our bodies and our souls, and all our lives.

And let’s drink a toast, then, to that, and all join together, and together, eat, and be merry, sing, and dance!

And stretch out your hand, then, for mine.

Hold my hand …

(We’re almost there.)

And the mind, still, and the thoughts, like the breath, slow, calm, quiet, deep, and the heart, the heart, at once centred and, like the arms, wide open.

And together we’ll make evaporate all those feeble, distasteful, ungenerous, and ugly nightmares. And we’ll do so simply from the clarity and strength of our far sighted dreams, and from our hope for and belief in better days, soon to come, maybe here.

And look, look up, the light of the sun sparkling sky is up there still, clear and blue.

Lift up your eyes, to see.

And lift also your hands, and your hearts.

(Your human spirits).

In prayer, in praise, in gratitude, and grace.

And let’s enjoy then still some confidence, and faith.

And take courage.

All will be well.

We’ll make it so.

MY LIFE AS A WORM

I eat letters!

And I could read before I could walk, as the saying goes.

My mother read to me and with me from an early age, and she taught and encouraged me to learn to read as soon as I could.

(She also said that I was “an open book”; she could read me like a book … )

Family myth has me giving a “public reading” (to a group of extended family members) when I was an impossibly young age.

Can it really be that at the age of three, or four, I could already read?

I doubt it.

But certainly I began to read alone when still relatively young, and I could read more or less well by the time I began my formal schooling.

I am aware that in those days this may not have been something in any way exceptional; it was perhaps quite normal.

There is a Russian-language expression that says that, “A book makes the best gift”.

And, if so, with what gratitude must we thank those who teach us to read?

(A book may be a source of great knowledge and wisdom.)

Anyway …

To read.

To read alone.

I could read before I could walk, as the saying goes.

But after years of dim reflection, I realized that the upshot of all this ridiculous reading precocity was that, as a walker, I was a late developer.

Indeed, my reading skills had outpaced my walking abilities from the outset. And like many an Oxford baby, I fear that I quickly concluded that the body existed only as a way of transporting the brain from one place to another. And apart from an ability to pick up and carry three or four books at a time, I possessed no great physical or sporting prowess as a young man. And now, as an old man, matters have gone from bad to worse.

And basically I’ve been “running behind” since the outset, out of shape, out of breath and, to all but the most compassionate, patient, and forgiving, quite out of mind.

And is it then any wonder that I never quite made it to the status of “walking encyclopaedia”.

I think again to my father, who spent many years working on building sites. He occasionally commented to me that he had spent his life carrying around bricks, whereas in my case I carried books.

And, like Gorky, I can say that all that is good in me is thanks to books.

But the habit of reading alone, a passion for reading, also condemned me from an early age to a life of deep solitude and at all times a preference for silence over speech, reflection over action; in other words, it condemned me, to some extent, to the life of someone socially inept, slow in thought and a terrible bore.

But listen to this.

Around the time that I began to attend school I became excessively self-conscious. And with that excessive self-consciousness I came to realize that something terrible had happened to me in my early and formative years. I was no longer a normal, human boy. I had turned into a worm. A book worm. And from that moment on I realized that my destiny was to be pulled, squeezed, or outright crushed. And all of these experiences I would view with the distorted vision of someone absurdly short-sighted, hopelessly myopic. It was to be a worm’s life for me.

But it wasn’t all bad, of course, and life as a worm seemed in fact at first quite juicy. Indeed, in my gilded youth, and in my solitary bookishness, and long before the days of smartphones and e-readers, I grew for a time, and on many a thick tome, quite fat. It was a diet that I could maintain while a schoolboy, while a student, while a young man, but one that tragically became impossible to sustain once I’d been distracted into the wicked world of work where no consideration whatsoever was given to my limitations, as a worm, or to my wormlike needs. And almost no time at all was allowed, or left over, at the end of each agitated, exhausting day, for reading, or at least, not for reading as an expansion of the mind, and the imagination, and the soul. Since then, I’ve grown thin, terribly thin. And whereas once upon a time I had devoured a book a day, it’s now a major achievement for me to finish reading one book in even a whole, long year. In short, I am dying …

And the glory days of regular reading, when my reading seemed almost to fatten me up at times to something of the status of the young poet, and aspiring writer, comfortably sorrowful on his reading couch, are now long, long gone.

Indeed, I reflect often to myself, if a little bitterly, that:

“The more we read, and study, and learn, the more we know. The more we know, the more we forget. The more we forget, the less we know. So, why read, why study, why learn?”

And “The less you know, the fewer problems you have … and the better you sleep”, right?

Even so, and like so many fellow worms, I draw comfort, a little comfort from the single, distant, rather doubtful, far-off longing and hope, that one day, perhaps in retirement, I shall reach again the promised land of my library (to me a dukedom), and find time, enjoy time, again, to read.

But will I really reach this Shangri-La before realizing my last defiant act of punctuation, my last and very final full stop, before going again into the earth, there buried six feet under, but a worm among worms?

(Although one should “never judge a book by its cover”.)

Oh dear, oh dear.

To be, or not to be … ?

(A worm).

And yet I remain somehow and absurdly thankful for small mercies.

And so with what fondness, then, do I recall those long hours absorbed in books …

And no wonder that books became in some sense my life, or at least my path into life, and understanding …

A book may be a source of great knowledge and wisdom.

And all that is good in me is thanks to books.

Books, and their writers, were my travelling companions, and some became my dearest friends …

And on this long journey I have been blessed with many extraordinary and wonderful companions, and friends, so many, so very many, indeed, and each and every one of them of such unique quality, that it seems beggarly to try to name but one or two …

They have all been my teachers, my masters; and I hold them all dear.

At most, I could perhaps confess quietly to an especial fondness for those writers and thinkers most sympathetic to worms like me, to lost souls, bedraggled and pathetic; I’m thinking, for example, of Franz Kafka, Robert Walser, Hermann Hesse, Fernando Pessoa, Bohumil Hrabal, Samuel Beckett and, a man I consider to be in a category all his own, my most cherished master, at once father, and friend, John Berger.

And if I were to name just one book of special importance to me from my younger reading days – and how could I? – it would perhaps be Hesse’s story of Knulp, the poet-vagabond, the gypsy-scholar, the wandering minstrel-mystic, loving and being loved but never settling, never belonging, and ever the restless, solitary soul, simply searching, searching, searching …

(And perhaps this has been my own problem, too, and all along. Instead of being so fixated on the act of searching, I should simply have found some “thing”, “my thing”, and done something with it, my dear God!)

Yes, indeed.

Lectio Divina …

Readings of the world …

(With death at all times before your eyes).

And in case the moment has now come, not entirely unwelcome, to drop dead, allow me then the thought of just one last sentence to this my pretty speech, to be used as epitaph, and written upon a stone beneath which I’ll find my most profound stillness, solitude, and silence:

“Here lies a bookworm, crushed into silence by a great weight of words, a closed book. May he rest in peace.”

LOVE IS BLIND

Love is blind, they say.
And this indeed was the first and most important lesson that love taught me.
I was just sixteen years old.
Young, naïve, innocent.
And in love.
In love with a girl from the local all girls’ school, up the road from the all boys’ school that I attended at that time.
We had met at the “Christmas Ball”, had danced, and laughed, had laughed, and danced, and kissed.
And now, several intensive weeks of negotiations later, we were “official”, “an item”, and we would meet again for a tryst, an assignation, in the local park.
A mild spring day.
I arrived early, she a little late.
I waited, and waited.
Then suddenly, there she was!
(‘What beauty’, I thought!)
(For of this I had convinced myself).
And she was walking towards me, she was walking towards me … towards ME!
And this, then, was surely it … IT WAS LOVE!
But, as she walked towards me, her focus seemed to be on some other, more distant love.
(Or distant spot, at any rate, her eyes squinting awkwardly, awkward, like her posture, as she walked, somewhat crookedly, in the full and magnificent beauty of that midday sun.)
And it was then that I knew, and understood …
You see, she walked right past me.
And I stood there, unnoticed, unloved, stood up, and dumbstruck.
For love was blind.
Or she was, at any rate – without her contact lenses, or glasses.
For on this fateful day–perhaps from vanity–she wore neither contact lenses, nor glasses, and was so terribly short-sighted from squandering her tender young life, and beauty, on book learning, that she walked right past me, as if I didn’t even exist.
And this, then, was love.
And love was blind.

SONGS OF THE SILK ROAD

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”.
These words of St Augustine remind me of a popular Chinese expression, that runs: “Read 10,000 books, travel 10,000 miles”.
In Russia it used to be said that, “A man in his lifetime should do three things: plant a tree, build a house, raise a son”.
I am not sure that I have done any of these things; arguably I have done the last of the three, although I am not confident even of that. And even if one accepts that I have indeed raised a family, and specifically a son … well, maybe; but, can I say that I have been a good father?
Possibly I have been too busy trying (and mostly failing) to work through my ever growing list of books to read, and music to discover, and hear, and other cultures with which to familiarize myself, and explore.
But, you know, the more languages and cultures with which I try to become a little bit familiar, the more confused, incoherent, and even idiotic a person I seem to be; the terrible irony of it!
And it is certainly fair to say that the longer I study, for example, Russian, as for the moment I do, then the less of the Russian language and “language culture” I feel as if really, and truly, I understand.
True, there is a tendency when learning languages to focus above all on aspects of grammar, for these at least can be “taught”. But in this way there is a real risk also of losing the wood for the trees. One becomes short-sighted, like a man who spends too much time in his library, reading, reading, reading, but knows next to nothing of real life.
And certainly I dream often, like many a poor poet, of a rather romantic version of what, outside my book-lined room, I might wish that “real life” to be, and right now, in my daydream of today, it’s a reality that sees me sitting by a campfire, listening to the tales and music of my companions, accompanied by here a succulent morsel of flesh, here a sip of wine, here a friend, and here a lover, as the sound of the most beautiful human music resonates around me, its sound lifting up and out across the great echoing chamber of the night sky, that night sky whose many sparkling eyes gaze down on us, myself, and my friends, in our feast, and celebration, and that do so, perhaps, with no less joy, and wonder, than is revealed in the sparkle of our own star struck eyes, opened wide, in astonishment, and delight.
True, we are taught at school (or should be) that to learn a new language is to discover a whole new world. Or, as has been my case while learning Russian, it is to discover many new worlds. And I would challenge you to prove for yourself the truth of this teaching.
I would like to share a little of my immense excitement at these privileged glimpses into other worlds that I have enjoyed thanks to my study of Russian.
What do I mean?
Well, perhaps it goes without saying that I am thinking more about the Russian Federation itself than I have ever done before.
But the Russian Federation is so huge, so vast, and seemingly so wild, that frankly it scares me a bit. It’s like a bear! And in the media representations (and no doubt sometimes distortions) of the West, so much of what we see and hear about Russia can appear ambiguous, whether it be at the level of international politics, or simply at street level, with assassinations, bike and mafia gangs, bullies and bandits. The Wild East!
Or is it that I’m a little eccentric, and prefer to discover a whole new, “VAST” region of the world, as it were, from its extremities, its edges, before travelling inwards, circling inwards, turning deeply inwards, such that my thoughts, “booked out” at last, and with a brain exhausted from too much reading, turn to the southern borders of the Russian speaking world, and to dreams of Central Asia.
It’s a loose manner of speaking, not to be taken too seriously. But you understand.
In any case, since beginning my study of Russian, I have been astonished, utterly astonished, to hear people I know, many of whom are now dear to me, saying to me with conviction, as if trying still to convince me, that yes, and yes, and yes, you’re my friend, we’re friends, and so you do indeed, I do indeed, have friends, now, not only in Moscow, and St Petersburg, in Minsk, and in Kiev, and in Odessa, but also in Astana, and Almaty, and even in Bishkek, Tashkent, Dushanbe, Ashgabat, and Baku, and that yes, and yes, and yes indeed, of course I must come to visit – and the sooner, the better!
Unimaginable!
Unbelievable!
And simply extraordinary, and marvellous, and wonderful!
And on my first such adventure, a few years back, I visited Kazakhstan.
In many Turkic languages, “Kazakh” is a word whose meaning and resonance evokes thoughts of the “free and independent man”, a traveller, an adventurer, a wanderer, a vagabond, and perhaps also a poet.
(Poor poet!)
And since that first trip I have often been armchair travelling along stretches of the old Silk Road, and asking myself if I shall at last find some liberation from the library of the mind in the empty, hypnotic beauty of the Steppe, and beneath the vast skies of Central Asia.
For it was there, in Almaty, city of apple orchards and seduction, that I first heard, with heart and soul, the sound of galloping horses, the mysterious and bewitching music of the magical Kobyz, the warming and spirited melodies of the Dombra, and the trance-inducing throat-songs of the shamans, as they lifted their eyes and the sounds of their voices up to the great Tengri, God of the Sky.
And, since first opening my ears, my hearing, in the land of the Kazakhs, to that new world of sound–new world of sound, that is, to me–I have carried those same ears all over Central Asia, listening at times to the timeless tales recited in Kyrgyz songs from the epic “Manas”, at times to Sufi, Turkmen songs, so deeply inspired, and at times to the great Tajik musicians in the Pamir mountains, and …
Well, ours is a world of music, and song.
And with a willingness to listen comes so much to hear.
(So come, let’s sound our way, together, spirit, and soul, and sound our way, together, across the steppe, drawing the horizon in the breeze of our direction, and walking, together, along the river, and around the lake, and through the waterfall, and into the forest, and over the hills, and on to the distant mountains, crossing landscapes, and histories, above which, above all, the sky, that sky, that seems, somehow, breathing, in its daytime light, and starry night, to expand a human heart, into … space … into vastness … of … empty … space … emptiness … and space … as nothing, but sounding, nothing, but sounding, and sounding, echo, and the ecstasy, of echo … that vastness … space … sounding, resounding, in fullness, in emptiness, the breath, and the heart, emptying out, filling up, and becoming, as if, becoming, as if, as if becoming, for a moment, like a sky, and an ocean, a vast sky, a vast ocean, blue sky, blue ocean, and emotion of bliss, vibration, voice, in sounding music, in song.)
(Let’s listen to our hearts beat now).
(Feel the pulse).
(Sound the breath).
(Inhalation. Exhalation.)
(Letting it all in. And letting it all out, letting it all go.)
(Finding the voice).
(Blue throat).
(And sounding so).
(And sounding so).
(And sounding so).

ALMATY

1.
Almaty is Kazakhstan’s largest city, and its former, historic, and cultural capital. It is Kazakhstan’s major financial centre and also boasts the country’s largest airport.
The city is located in the foothills of the Trans-Mi Alatu (or Zailiyskiy Alatau) in the extreme south-east.
The population of the city is about 2 million.
Almaty remains the largest, most developed, and most ethnically and culturally diverse city in Kazakhstan.
The city has also a significant population of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians.
Almaty has a relatively mild climate with warm summers and moderately cold winters.
Since the city is situated in a tectonically active area, there is an endemic risk of earthquakes; thankfully, most do not cause significant damage.
Almaty may derive its name from the Kazakh word for “apple” (“alma”), and the city, at least until recent times, was famed as “the city full of apples”.
“Alma” is also “apple” in other Turkic languages (as well as in Hungarian and Mongolian); and “Ata” in Turkic languages means “forefather”. For this reason, Almaty is believed by many to be the apple’s ancestral home and, as such, the sight of the Garden of Eden.
The city has a spectacular beauty, whether or not it was the Garden of Eden.
And the city’s mountain backdrop is certainly a dramatic and impressive sight.

2.
I write this sketch to serve as a verbal “snapshot”, or holiday photo, a recollection, a reminder, words scribbled on a postcard, a small souvenir.
I visited Almaty for the first time in 2015, in the company of a dear Kazakh friend and her youngest brother and sister, and various of her family and friends, and my own family, my wife and son.
And we were in Almaty for barely a week.
Nevertheless, I knew that I would feel at home in Almaty when, within a few minutes of arrival in the city, our taxi passed large statues of two old, dear friends: Krokodil Gena and Cheburashka!
Of course, I cannot claim to know the city well.
(But by thinking about Almaty again now, I hope to get to know the city a little better).
On my personalized map of the city there are for the moment perhaps four or five places or areas to where I can close my eyes and travel with ease.
And in my mind’s eye, I see these places very clearly and vividly and, from time to time, I haunt them in my imagination, walking there again.

3.
The first place on my imaginary itinerary is the Green Market, with its rich colours and smells, sights and sounds, fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, breads and pastries, drapes and furnishings, clothes and carpets, almost anything and everything, in fact, such that whatever it is you are looking for, you will probably find it there.
And as the imagination recognizes no limits but its own, and so simply because we can, let’s at once take a huge giant’s leap up from Green Market to Green Hill, with its marvellous views across the city and beyond; a place where the stunning photo opportunity competes only with the fun of all the brightly lit restaurants and amusement rides.
Far more to my liking, however, and certainly more to the liking of my son, were the many amusements of the Central Park, near the zoo, and situated just off Gogol street not far from the flat we had rented for the week. And I took it as a sign of just how at home and how completely relaxed my son felt in Almaty, as in Kazakhstan in general, that he wanted on this occasion to try out for the first time many of the larger and more adventurous fairground rides. He perhaps discovered there, or perhaps simply recognized, a taste for adventure and the extent of his courage. And he enjoyed himself immensely.
On another of our days, feeling in need of some relaxation after so much amusement, we walked across the “28 Park” (a park named after the 28 Almaty soldiers who died, along with so many “Panfilov Heros”, while defending Moscow from the Nazis), admiring on our way the Zenkov Cathedral, and booked ourselves a massage and private sauna in the “Arasan Spa”, or hot baths; sheer bliss!
And this was the same sense of deep relaxation, and taste of bliss, that I explored almost every day during our stay when I took classes in Kazakh-style “Khoomei”, a style of throat singing in low, deep, gravelly voice. Our classes were just along the street from where we were staying, at the Kazakh Museum of Folk Musical Instruments, an absolutely marvellous, magical museum, and for me a kind of “home from home”. And my teacher there, my master, my shamanic guide, was the wonderful Abzal Arykbayev.
This “voice work” was intensely stimulating not only to voice, but also to the entire body, and to the mind, too.
In the evenings, sitting on the balcony with my wife and our Kazakh friend, it was no wonder that we found ourselves dreaming of the wild beauty of the steppe with a longing to taste freedom within the vast, flowing expanse of Kazakh sky, and to allow our imaginations to take flight, as eagles … soaring across the skies … to the Big Almaty Lake, to Alpingrad, to Charyn, to the Assy Plateau, to the Altyn-Emel Park, to the Kolsai Lakes, and then farther, and farther still, away, and far away, and far away, the horizon, beyond …
(In Kazakhstan, it can be enough simply to lose one’s eyes in the heavens to gain some insight into “Tengri”).

4.
This for the moment is the extent of “my” fondly recalled city of Almaty, and the Almaty region.
Even so, it’s already a treasure of happy memory.
And, as such, it is indeed a kind of garden of Eden.
(And may I return there again, and soon, and not only in my imagination, but also in person.)

NAME CALLING

Tell me, little one: from deep within that echoing chamber of the body, Mother Earth, do you already hear the harmony of the heavens? And what music do you hear, to what music do you listen, that makes you wriggle about, so much, in the stillness of the night, reaching out, stretching out, with your hands, and kicking, with your feet?

Ah, I see: you are dancing. And with this dance you think to move the world, is that it?

Restless, it’s as if you must always be moving, twitching your fingers and feet to the powerful rhythms pulsating within. And that’s why you are here in the first place, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve come now. You’re on the move, on the way: and it’s your way, pilgrim soul.

Forgive me, your little voice remains for the moment so faint, so quiet, as if coming from somewhere far away: could you repeat that, please?

Ah, I see: and yes, of course I can understand you. You feel lonely when your mother stops moving, like someone abandoned, floating alone; and, from the depths of that solitude, your little world, uniquely familiar, seems suddenly daunting, and so big, so vast, so empty, like the sky. And you feel anxious, insecure: you are worried. And that’s understandable, that’s normal. And so, in this darkness, you feel your way, staring, straining, to make out some shape, or form, to see a familiar face, perhaps, like your own, as if looking, the inner eye, as in a mirror, soul’s mirror, your mother, own. And yet really what you perceive, perhaps–and all you have for company–are sensations, impulses, and infant thoughts, floating in space, like stars, a vast constellation of brightly shining stars, glittering, the night sky, like diamonds in the mind. And alone, do you ask: am I myself then a star?

And–bright spark that you are!–inspiration comes, a thought strikes and, once more excited, you give her a good dig in the ribs. That should wake her up. Mother!

And I say to you:

Relax, my child, be calm. You are not alone. Your mother is all around you, embracing you. And I am here too. And, as I sit here beside you, beside your mother, my hands gently resting on your mother’s tummy, I hold your little head, almost, in the palm of my right hand, your little feet, almost, in the palm of my left hand. And I call out to you, saying: you are not alone. Your mother is all around you, embracing you. And I am here too. Be calm, my little one, be confident. We are with you.

Yet can you hear us, let alone understand?

And how should we call you, for that matter?

To what call will you respond?

And what name, recognize?

And, until born, on the basis of what criteria must we choose your name?

Sound? Meaning? Fashion? Geography? Culture? Whim?

What name would you yourself choose, I wonder?

And really, to name a child feels like such a responsibility. What if we were to choose a name you don’t like? Something completely inappropriate, and entirely wrong? Or is it inevitable that a child grows up to dislike his or her given name? And what’s wrong with that? Does it really matter?

In any case, no name I have seen, or heard, and mulled over in my mind, sounding it first this way, then that, holding it in my thoughts, has seemed to me sufficient, so far, to express not only our impatience–that of your mother and I–to meet you, and to hear the sound of your voice, and to get to know you, little by little; nor our immense happiness at the thought of your arrival; nor our hopes and dreams for you; nor our confidence and trust in you; nor the joy we wish for you; nor all the love we have for you.

What’s to be done?

Perhaps I should reframe the question, asking: to what call, sounded out in the music of your mother and I, in blinking eyed bliss, have you already responded, in fact, in coming to us now, as if from nowhere, a gift, and a blessing?

All right, I agree: we need to relax, take it easy. All good things come to those who wait, or so they say.

Take you, for example. You are coming to us, very soon: you are on your way. And your name, too, sooner or later, sooner, or later, will come to us. And we shall recognize it when we hear it because it will feel right, sound true. And that name at that time–this name, this time–will be the right name to give to you.

And if, later in life, you are drawn to some other name that, to your mind, conveys better, more accurately, more authentically, the person you are, or wish to be, and if then you decide to change your given name–well, that’s fine, too; it’s absolutely okay. You are the one who responds to this or that name, or not. It’s your name, after all. And you can own it, if you will. And you certainly deserve to feel comfortable with it.

And think also of this. At the very beginning of life, a twinkle in my eye, a racing in your mother’s swollen heart, a deep, contented breath, you were, in any case, but an impulse to love. And look at you now: look how you’ve grown! And this talent for growth–and talent, too, for inspiring love–will see you successfully, I’m sure, through a long and happy life. Let’s see.

And once you’ve outgrown a childhood, what a trivial little detail to outgrow a name.

One thing is certain: in the course of your journey you will come occasionally to realize that you are no longer who you thought you were, so that even your name may seem suddenly too small for you. And that’s fine, too. That’s great, indeed. Be relaxed, be calm, be creative, be free. Flow with your change.

And know too that in these, the first months, the first few months, of your life, not all, surely not all, but many, so many, many names, so many names have already, at some point, or another, been loaned to you, tried out on you, called out to you, as if, at the end, you were some kind of soon to be every man, or every woman, or would be, perhaps, one day: open to all, all embracing, universal.

(Forgive me if I go too far, for not only as a parent, or as a soon to be parent, but as a human being, a simple, human, being, one hopes, one wishes, one dreams; and one gets so carried away; and, with good fortune, one even gets carried far, far, far away; for this is the journey, the adventure, of life; for this is life.)

And when all is said and done, perhaps what we call you–how we name you–is not necessarily of such importance, in and of itself, in the end; but that we do call you, as we call out to you now, and always shall do; that, yes, is important. And that call, and the rush of our racing blood, the rhythm of our hearts, the sound of our voices, all our hopes, dreams, and desires–conscious, and unconscious–that call, at least, you shall hear, and know, and recognize, and understand.

Please lend me then your ear, my dear child; your inner ear.

And know that the voice you heard earlier, the voice you hear so often, in fact, resonating all around you, so extraordinarily powerfully, is the voice of your mother, as you yourself well know, and, know so well, and so much better, know so much better, as you yourself, as you yourself know so much better than anyone, the voice, your mother.

And the voice that you hear now, somewhat deeper, calling out to you again, and again, saying “Come to me, my child”, is me, your father.

And together we love you.

MY RUSSIAN WINTER

MY RUSSIAN WINTER
(Don’t Worry, Be Happy)

When I can, I like to wake early in the morning.
It’s my habit at this time to sit on a floor cushion at a low, Japanese-style table. I sip on warm tea and trace my thoughts as they pass in time, floating as upon a dream, unanchored, and perhaps free. I try to keep my back straight and strong. I try to be alert to the movement and the quality of my breath. And, like a musician, I listen for rhythm and harmony. Mostly I am silent, simply listening. But then sometimes, at first almost without realizing it, I begin softly to hum to myself. And sometimes I also sing, with a full, strong voice. Whose is this voice? From where does it come? Who is this crazy man who sings sometimes love songs, teary-eyed, to the rising, new-day sun?
Today I barely recognize the man as me. At least, it is not the me of this current period in my life; it is not the me of today; it is not the man of this morning (far from it). The man of this morning is barely a man at all. Back no longer straight, spine no longer strong, breath no longer deep, he slumps exhausted across his table, feeling as pale and as empty and as devoid of meaning as the blank white page on which his weary head drops down to rest, and upon which he leaves no positive impression but only the shallow indentation of a deep depression. Besides being exhausted, this man is broken-hearted. And in his clenched fingers he clutches a pencil like a dagger, cutting from his thoughts only cruel and hurtful words. And, in this state, he feels completely overwhelmed by life; it is as if life has in some sense defeated him. And like a beggar who kicks his dog in rage, he curses himself for all his many failures and failings, but to no good purpose. And even the words he does find seem tired, predictable, clichéd. Why not simply erase them from the page and cut out all these useless, ugly stupidities, and start all over again, perhaps from scratch.
Suddenly, a sharp noise … my heart skips a beat … I hear a cry from the street … but I’m mistaken; it’s just the sound of despair ricocheting around the mind in a wild scattering of thoughts. What’s to be done? What to do?
(Do what you will, but trust, be calm, have confidence; sooner or later, that earlier lightness of spirit will again be yours, and all will be well).
I think again and again to the poem of Mayakovsky, “The Backbone Flute”.
For all of you,
Whom I’ve admired or still am admiring,
Hidden like icons in the cave of the soul,
Like a goblet of wine at a festive gathering,
I shall raise my heavy, verse-brimming skull.
More and more often, I’m wondering –
Why shouldn’t I place
The period of a bullet at the end of my stanza?
Today,
Just in case,
I am giving my final, farewell concert.

Memory!
Gather into the brain’s auditorium
The bottomless lines of those who are dear to me.
From eye to eye, pour mirth into all of them.
Light up the night with the by-gone festivity.
From body to body, pour the joyous mood.
Let no man forget this night.
Listen to me, I will play the flute
On my backbone tonight.

I am trying to learn Russian.

And I think now, too, to the several times repeated question of my Russian language teacher, Natasha: ‘Are you a pessimistic or an optimistic person?’ A curious question; my instinct is to challenge it, but it’s clear that to do so is tantamount to falling into a psychological trap; it reveals at the outset what a critical, negative person you are (I am). But, how should we understand this curious contemporary phenomena that posits that we must find everything to be good, if not great, if not wonderful? What is it all about, this desperate frenzy of positivism? Is it a kind of brainwashing? 1984? Control of the masses? Wake each morning, please, and say to yourself, “Ours is the best of all possible worlds”. And, “I am so happy today”. And, “Hoorah! Hoorah!” And, when in the street or at work you are asked, “How are you?” You answer: “Excellent, thank you; everything is great; fantastic!” (And you must mean it, too).
Or should Natasha’s question not more easily be understood in terms of the Russian speaker’s questioning of and conversation with their own melancholy soul?
Happily, I often feel very genuinely joyful. But, although I am often joyful, perhaps I have been so less often in the past few years, and most especially during this last long winter. And so what? If at times I know sadness, unhappiness, frustration, despair, does this mean that I am in some way at fault? Am I malfunctioning? Do I need to be mended? Must I seek out help? First a doctor and then a pharmacist?
I am as yet still looking forward to seeing the classic [1962] filmed version of Sholokhov’s “And Quiet Flows the Don”, but I read the book when I was perhaps 18 or 19 years old. I enjoyed it a lot.
The book’s title, “And Quiet Flows the Don”, makes me dream, for all the painful irony of such a dream, of a quietness that I feel I have lost, a quietness that I associate in my memory, no doubt quite falsely, with a lost childhood hope and optimism. And it is also a title that, on a purely personal note, I cannot help but associate with my dear “Uncle Don”, who is a wonderful, warm, kind, and gentle, man who, now in his 80s, finds himself, quite out of character, sometimes raging at old age, that old age that seems to be robbing him, in tiny increments, of the sharpness of his once brilliant mind, and causing him gradually to grow ever more physically tired, and weak, and mentally dense, light dimmed, and forgetful, increasingly forgetful, of so much precious thought.
My dear, dear Uncle Don: he was the man who first got me dreaming of Russia when I stayed with him as a young boy; perhaps I was only 8 or 9, or perhaps 10 or 11 years of age. I no longer remember exactly how old I was at the time. No matter. At his suggestion, we sat together and watched through the entirety of David Lean’s epic film adaptation of Pasternak’s “Dr Zhivago”. Was it this film that stirred in me the dream to be one day a poet? Or did I somehow sense in this film some strange parallels to life as it would one day be, like looking into a magic ball foretelling elements of my future?
“Nobody loves poetry like a Russian”, is a line that remains still now in my heart’s memory.
From Pasternak, let’s turn our thoughts now to Tolstoy; Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”, and specifically the image of the railway worker falling exhausted before the oncoming train, a prefiguring of Anna Karenina’s own death (like the rail tracks themselves, must we always draw parallels?). And I repeat: falling exhausted before the oncoming train; falling exhausted before the oncoming train; falling exhausted before the oncoming train.
Sometimes the rhythm of our repeated thoughts is mesmerizing, and we find ourselves locked in a train of thought that speeds relentlessly on, as if out of all control.
And is it then fate?
May one be fated?
May life be fatal?
I “work” in one city, alone, and with my wife and children, “live”, at least theoretically, in another city, these two cities separated for me, each week, by a three‑hour train journey and an ocean of heartache. How many are we in the world today who choose or feel no choice but to live in this way?
And I ask myself: how many times in a lifetime can one find oneself, as in a moment of eternal recurrence, yet again at a train platform, broken-spirited, exhausted by life, waiting always for the last train to depart? For how long can a soul endure such a life before it withers and dies?
My father himself was for some years a railway worker, sweeping the platform for hours on end with a stiff brush.
Why so many hours spent waiting on the platform? Waiting, thinking, thinking, waiting. For what? And what if you already missed your train? Is it already too late?
A train of thought.
(A train of thought, travelling from here to there, then back again, and then again, from here to there, there to here, always to and fro.)
My thoughts return to Pasternak.
I have heard that a number of the Pasternak family now live in Oxford, the city of my birth. I wonder if that’s true. And if it is, I might think: “fancy that; what a small world!”
Flicking through my memories of the last few years, I think to the hundreds, the literally hundreds, and hundreds of hours spent locked in a train, criss‑crossing Switzerland (not quite like Pavel Pavlovich Antipov, aka “Strelnikov”, from “Zhivago”, criss-crossing revolutionary Russia, but exhausting, all the same).
And I think, too, to all of my wife’s health problems, which in the summer of 2013 saw her seven times the subject of a surgeon’s knife. I think also to the constant agitation of the workplace, our work culture; indeed, our whole way of “modern life”. And I think, above all, to the death of my father, last November, 19 November 2013, and, barely three months later, early February, 1 February 2014, not at all a surprise, and yet somehow also a huge surprise, or rather a mystery, and at any rate a total shock, to the death of my mother. The Russians say that when one dies, the other soon follows. And the rest of us too, let’s face it; it’s only a question of time.
And sure, there are plenty of times, quite frankly, when I myself feel like I’ve had quite enough of this absurd business of life. Don’t you also feel sometimes this way? I think it’s normal.
And, like Zhivago, as finally he sees his opportunity to leave the brigade of red army communist partisans, whom for two years he has been forced to serve, I long to turn back, to ride away, to turn back the clock.
And what a long, dark winter.
I think of it now as “my Russian winter”.
In Pasternak’s poem, he writes in this way of “February”:
“It’s February. Weeping, take ink.
Find words in a sobbing rush
For February, while black spring
Burns through the rumbling slush.

And take a cab. Ride for a rouble
Through wheel racket and bells’ throbbing
To where the downpour makes more din
Than the sound of ink and sobbing;

Where rooks in thousands, like charred pears
Windfallen from their branching skies,
Drop into puddles and bring down
Desolation into deep eyes.

Thawed patches underneath show black,
The wind is furrowed with cries, and then,
The more suddenly the more surely,
Verses sob from the pen.”

Tolstoy formulates it in this way:
“My question – that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide – was the simplest of questions, a question lying in the soul of every person. It was: ‘What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my life? What is life for?’ Differently expressed, the question is: ‘Why should I live, why hope for anything, or do anything?’ It can also be expressed thus: ‘Does my life have any meaning that death cannot destroy?'”
Of course, this question, from a revolutionary perspective, may be purely individualistic, sentimental, and personal: it has little or no historical value. And to some extent I agree. It strikes me as absurd, absurdly human, to be digging into our own pathetic little pockets of anxiety and suffering, mostly over trivial and mortal concerns, when one has friends, for example, who are at that very same moment witnessing their lives being swept up in a grand historical narrative such as that of Russia’s recent “illegal occupation”, “theft”, “annexing”, or “historically justified reclamation” (depending on your standpoint), of the Crimea.
(And quiet flows the Don.)
Indeed, I have a “new friend”, “A”, whose mother lives in Moscow but whose father and half-sisters live in the Crimea. She is a “new friend” in the sense that I have known her for only a very short time. And yet, with what already I understand to be a typical Russian warmth, she feels somehow more like an “old friend”. And she has shared a few of her stories and worries concerning the situation in the Crimea, especially as it concerns her father and his family. For a while (perhaps still now), the Ukrainian government had frozen all assets held in the Crimea. “A”‘s father had literally no access to money. At the same time, local prices for basic goods had risen to match the prices one finds in Moscow. I tried to find some supportive and encouraging words for her, but how could I? I understand nothing of such things! They are beyond the scope of my beggarly imagination. In the end, I shared with her only some music of which I am fond, “Für Alina”, with the thought, if nothing else, either to distract her, or to help her in some way to release the tension of so much anguished emotion. Unsatisfied with my words, I dropped also into a kind of “silent prayer”. But who will ever hear this prayer?
(“Old believers”, I mutter; “or new ones … “).
But even if I’ve no‑one with whom to share this thought, let me say now that I am deeply grateful during this last year to have had the opportunity to begin a study of the Russian language. These Russian studies have at the very least been a helpful distraction from my own individualistic, selfish, sentimental, personal, but nonetheless in a sense also difficult, even desperate, and seemingly futile, search for life’s structure, purpose, meaning. And I have especially “enjoyed” (if that’s the right word) the challenge of replacing this desperate despair with the existential angst of knowing that, in spite of all the creative encouragement and cajoling on the part of my Russian teacher, I have still not submitted a simple student text, in Russian, on the combined themes of “the weather” and “holidays”.
But no wonder! For too much meditation on the meaning of life and death makes it a struggle for me even to write a simple shopping list, let alone to elaborate a fantasy of a wonderful holiday, in fine weather!
And if you ask me – me, an Englishman! – how is the weather (always a delicate subject, for an Englishman), I’ll tell you that, at least where I am, it’s not even weather. Indeed, it’s weather worse even than in England. The sun is not shining, the sky is not cloudless and blue, the trees give no fruit, the flowers are not in blossom, and the birds are not singing. Am I then a depressive type? Sorry to sound again so negative, but still I answer, no, no, no, and not at all. It’s just that I find myself somehow competing with “the Russian soul”, such that my thoughts, plumbing the dark depths, are like a dense fog, the weather in my head nothing but torrential rain and storms, and the mental landscape seemingly worse, even, than that found in the dark, post-apocalyptic vision that is Tarkovsky’s film, “Stalker”. In fact, this is a film that I like to watch from time to time for light relief. I see it as a kind of post-modern summer camp. Watching it has become for me comparable to flicking through the glossy pages of a holiday magazine over a coffee; it’s a dream of better days.
Let me observe, here, that the theme of “holidays” is also not too good right now. Indeed, if I think back through the last ten years, all family holidays, almost without exception, have been spent with my parents. And now my parents have gone off on another, and far longer, “extended” holiday, from which who knows when they will return, if ever, or when, one day all too soon, perhaps, we will ourselves be called to join them.
Although allow me to note here, “in passing”, as it were, that I find myself thinking about my parents more now than ever before. I feel also that they are in some sense “more present” to me now than ever before. And how curious, unexpected, sometimes startling it is. To give but one example: while trying to prepare for my most recent end of term Russian exam, I sat down to watch two one-hour biographical documentary films by Nikita Mikhalkov, the director of the acclaimed and Oscar-winning film, “Burnt by the Sun”. Only subsequently did I come to realize the full significance of my selection: a film called “Father”, and a film called “Mother”. The formula (or is it a prayer?), “A loved one never leaves the heart”, seems more true to my experience now than ever before.
My thoughts returning again to Tolstoy (there is a photo of the old starritz on the table before me, where I write), I ask myself: what purpose is there even to attempt to capture in words these confused and seemingly faithless, godless words, lacking as they do all confidence or courage?
And yet, as all these thoughts bleed out into words upon the page, so much spilled ink, it seems to me that perhaps they do in fact serve some purpose, albeit modest. And perhaps for you, dear reader (supposing you exist, that is – I am writing rather hypothetically), it is rather an awkward or even an embarrassing experience to read these words. You may find yourself feeling impatient or even irritated with me. You may think me a fine fool. (I think you not far wrong). Nevertheless, I feel on my side a little better for the process; just a little. And setting this all down in words is undeniably cheaper and quicker – probably also more effective – than visiting a therapist. And it enables me at last to turn my freed up thoughts to a holiday – and, goodness knows, I need one now more than ever.
So where shall we go?
I ask my son.
His wish is to travel again to Cornwall, in the south of England, to stay with Tim and Valerie on their farm, where we can feed and watch the farm animals, the sheep and goats and horses and donkeys and pigs and cows, play hide and seek, walk across the fields, climb on the rocks, walk on the sand, splash and swim in the sea, ride on a ferry boat, go fishing and, at least once or twice, in the evening, eat fish and chips (with ketchup and mayonnaise, adds my son).
I tell him that I, too, am looking forward to these days (and how much).
(And given that in recent years the Gazprom “new Russians” have been buying up much of England, including properties in Cornwall, perhaps I shall even speak some Russian while I am there).
And now that finally we are onto the subject of holidays, let me note here that, to the surprise of some, I am not so terribly fond of sitting around on a beach, feeling barbecued by an intense summer sun. This is another reason why I like to holiday in England. A Cornish summer can witness some glorious warm days, but there is often also a cooling breeze, and dramatic changes in the weather that add interest and variety, and often a wild sea. The countryside is always so vibrant and alive, the sky is huge, and the long horizon across the sea is restful to tired eyes. I look forward in the late afternoon to drinking tea, from water in a flask, and then to walking with my son along the beach, at the shore as the sun sets across the sea, as once my father did with me.
Thinking about that far horizon, I ask myself again: how to explain death to a child? And, for that matter, how to explain life when you yourself understand of it so little?
For life is not a walk across a field, as Pasternak observed in “Hamlet”.
And nor is it a walk along the beach.
And one long holiday it certainly isn’t, either.
Samuel Beckett writes that, “When you’re in the last ditch, there is nothing left to do but sing”.
And so I begin softly to sing a song, this time in Russian …
“Nature has no bad weather,
Each weather, a grace.
The rain, snow, at any time of year,
These we should gratefully accept.
The echoes of the soul of the weather,
In the heart of loneliness pining,
And insomnia, bitter harvest,
We should gratefully accept,
We should gratefully accept.
The death of desires, the years and misfortunes,
Every day all our baggage,
That you assigned to nature,
We should gratefully accept.
The shifting of the years, sunsets and sunrises,
And love, the last grace,
As well as the date of departure,
These we should gratefully accept,
All these we should gratefully accept.
For Nature has no bad weather,
The course of time cannot be stopped.
The autumn of life, like the autumn of the year.
We need not grieve, but count our blessings.
And we need not grieve, but count our blessings.
We need not grieve, but count our blessings.”

(And when it next rains, as during a summer holiday in England it surely will, at times, may it be for all of us a rain of blessings; a rain of blessings; a rain of blessings).

CRANE DANCE

Snow falling gently quietens the night’s mind, even as one’s night time body, frozen brittle as frosted bamboo, stands transfixed, eyes staring up, squinting, in disbelief. / There is subtle movement, even so; a pulse, a twitch, a blink. / The quietness clears a space for an anxiety of thought, as yet unsounded, as if perhaps the thought itself, or else the mind, or perhaps the instrument, the body’s flute, were as yet too immature, and inflexible, and unbending, to free itself of such a density of thought; the instrument, in short, unplayed, perhaps unplayable. / And the silence then not so much that of the unsaid, as that of the unexpressed because inexpressible. / And the lonely breath at a loss, that’s clear; there’s something lacking, as if something of the divine were absent, missing; and missing, some element. / Or perhaps what’s missing is only the heat of a fire, the glow of a hearth, a roof, a home, and some warmth of human company, some shared humanity. / Yet, shivering, alone, in this cold night, one recalls, even so, a distant sound, of bamboo, flute, of shakuhachi, and float up to the stars upon that sound, as one adrift, upon a sea, upon a sea, of tranquility; and an end to, perhaps a freedom, from longing. / My mind turns. / And I see then a pair of cranes, coupled, in dance. / I watch them for a while; admiring, yes, but also troubled by them, and by my lack of understanding; my tragic human argument with nature; peering as if through a glass, darkly; and staring out, feeling numb, somewhat dumb. / And then I turn away my thoughts, at last, walk on. / And these thoughts are little more than nothing, in any case. / I trace them in lines across a page, like shallow footprints into melting memory. / Dance soon over. / Dance eternal. / Love does not go on. / Love goes on. / Only time, will tell. / How to tell. / Only time, again, alone. / Be still. / My heart.

WALKING ON ALONE

Walking on alone.

Walking on alone, once more.

Walking on alone, once more, and asking: …

Is it an immense solitude, and loneliness, and melancholy, the magic mix of ingredients, the alchemy, that may make of a man, or of a woman, a poet, or a suicide?

Is it an immense solitude, and loneliness, and melancholy, the magic mix …

And walking once more, alone …

Walking once more, alone …

And walking once more, alone, and cutting, cutting through, the chill, in the night, walking alone, once more … I …

Walking once more alone, and cutting through, the chill in the night, cutting through, walking alone, once more … I …

Walking once more alone, in the night, cutting chill, all alone, in the night … I …

(Tiredness)

And, once more alone, in the night, walking on alone, in the night, I weep; I weep, with the rain, in the night, once more alone, a kind of conversation, dull, and familiar, too familiar … oppressive, somehow … like an act … act of … oppression … so deeply comforting, sometimes … yet no, not exactly … oppression … not exactly, a conversation … oppression … and not a conversation, exactly … and nor a dialogue … but at best a kind of listening, perhaps … a kind of listening … echo … listening … to … with … the deaf, the dumb, and the downtrodden … the silenced, the silent … the desolate, and the desperate … and yet somehow comforting, too, too strangely comforting, too, and somehow, in its way. And walking on alone, and asking …

(Is that you?)

(No; it’s only the rustle of the wind, whispering, in the trees; the wind, in the trees; the wind, the trees …).

(A creaking door, a little unhinged).

(Reflection in a window pane, roughly framed).

(Rattled).

(And footsteps of a stranger, gone on).

(Walking on alone).

(A passing shadow).

(Faint sigh).

(So sorry …

I mistook you, for … for someone else, perhaps …

You seemed … so … so … so … and so …

(I don’t know).

But how I hoped … )

(Dear father; dear son).

(Deceitful familiarity … false appearances … and family).

(Dashed hopes).

(Disappointed expectations).

(Empty promises).

(Promises, expectations, hopes, left suspended, left hanging … )

(Hanging, there, and here, left, and right, and here, and there … )

(Words suspended, hanging … kept hanging … )

(And everything tied up, and tangled).

(No good with hanging rope).

(Not even).

(Tied up, in a knot).

(All knotted up).

(All knotted up, somehow, like so much tripe; empty pit, of stomach, of rumbling stomach, forever hungry).

(Stomach in knots).

(Gut feeling).

(Hearing).

(Can’t hear you).

(Hearing).

(Condemned).

(As if condemned).

(Like a man, condemned).

(I know).

(I hear you).

(Walking on alone).

(Walking on).

(Alone).

Walking on alone.

Walking on alone, and asking …

What if I were to step out now, alone?

What if I were to step out?

What if?

(Standing on that bridge, eyes down, down, down, being low, being below, and just got to walk out, can’t take much more, more thinking, if thinking only to cross, to cross that bridge, time’s dreams, and whatever comes now, can go, and whatever comes now, can go, crossing over now, now going, river’s flowing, river’s flowing, but not giving, and not giving up, not giving … )

(Ah).

Walking on alone.

Walking on alone, and asking …

What if I were to step out now, alone?

What if I were to step out?

What if?

And would I fall?

I mean, if I were to step out now, what then?

What then?

And would I fall?

(Of course I’d fall! But then?)

(It’s no bungee jump, I guess; no bouncing back!) (No base jump; no sky suit; no parachute!)

And would it spell the end, or but a new beginning?

A death, or a resurrection?

A full stop?

End of a period of my life.

Or simply: end of my life. Period.

Or … ?

Maybe. Maybe. Just maybe …

(A moment of meditation).

A fuller life.

(In contemplation).

(Insight illuminating the mind, opening up thought, in meditation, to contemplation, and dissolving the self, into a union, with time … into a union … with time … itself … )

(Absent self … and Self … present … )

(And time has no importance; time does not exist!)

(Be present).

(Who can be present?)

(And only present).

(Only).

(You).

(Only … you … )

(And you).

(Only … )

And, I ask you …

How would the chill feel then, and the cold, the numbing cold, cutting through my body, falling, cutting, cutting, against my skin … ?

And would the mind be also cold, and numb, falling, failing, falling, failing, and at last, from the cruelties of this mortal coil, cut free?

Just in the nick, the cut, of time …

(The nick, the cut, of time).

(The nick, the cut).

(The nick … )

And would there be time still for thought, and thinking …

(On my deathbed, thinking).

(Time).

(Would there still be time?)

(On my deathbed).

(Thinking).

What?

Of what? Of thinking, of what?

What is it?

Loss, or liberation?

Sadness, or salvation?

(Maybe a doubt … ?)

(Regret?)

Of all that’s come before, life lived …

Or …

Of new life, yet to come?

(And, for your assessment, your evaluation, your examination, please step this way. I’m ready for you now.)

But … just supposing … and …

And, just supposing, that at last, at last, and that at last, I succeeded, and succeeded, and I succeeded, to give myself … that … one … big … final … push …

Who then to catch me?

Who there to break my fall?

(Or will Angels … the Angels … carry me … and carry me … away?)

(And so on silent wingbeats … the soul … departs … flies … flies … flies … from stench of life … to stench of death … away … to dream … of new life … and new life’s … sweetness … and … salvation … eternal … )

(And don’t you hear me?)

(And don’t you see?)

(I’m so down; I’m so down; I’m so down).

(Going under).

(Under).

(Watery depths; so much memory, dark; and dark, dark drowning memories; and so much memory, dark, for drowning).

(Please).

(Please lift me up; please lift me up, someone, please; someone please; please lift me up).

(Someone).

(Anyone).

(Please lift me up).

(Get me out of here!)

But really … but … really …

But what’s … really … the bloody …

… Hell …

The bloody point.

The bloody point …

The bloody …

… Hell …

(Fuck off!)

And … the bloody … point … even … to ask …

Why ask?

I mean, what’s the bloody point … in reading novels, or poetry, or philosophy … ?

What’s the bloody point, to shape the letters in the mind, to read the words, and lines, and … between the lines … ?

(To develop … try to develop … a reading … between the lines … and some … intelligence?)

And why read novels, or poetry, or philosophy … ?

Or anything at all, for that matter?

Why search for meaning?

Why try to read, between the lines?

Why even try, to make sense, why bother, making sense, the whole business, this whole, absurd, business, and why even bother, making sense, of life, this life, no sense, why even bother, why even try, to make sense, why try?

(And is that then the question?)

Why read?

Why ask?

Why try?

I mean: Why? And why? And why?

(And on your deathbed, what then?)

Some pattern …

Some purpose …

Some meaning …

(A meaningful life).

(A purposeful life).

(Some pattern, some structure).

(And perhaps, even, a beginning, a middle, and not just an end).

But …

Why?

What’s the bloody point?

And what do you think?

I ask you: why; and again, why?

Or, do you prefer not … not, no … not, no … to think …

(I wouldn’t blame you).

And I mean …

If it weren’t for this nervous asthma, this nervous, psychological, asthma, and … and this constant … struggle, to breathe … this constant struggle, against suffocation … and … to breathe … and this constant struggle, simply, to breathe … and to keep breathing … to keep breathing in, keep breathing out … only … I can’t breathe … I … cannot … breathe … and then, if it weren’t for this peculiar aversion … a kind of allergy, perhaps … of skin … of something under the skin … and peculiar aversion … strange distaste … taste … distaste … for plastic … and plastic bags, in particular … plastic food … and drinks … and people … and worried, as if I am, at our indifference, at our indifference, to some kind of … general … well … being … health, protection, salvation, future … the planet … and the revenge, the planet … of this, our planet … words … and deeds … … and indeed, some kind of, sort of, sort of, kind of … collective … collective … collective …

(Suicide).

(Mother earth; mother tongue).

(And how we loved you, once, you many daughters, of the earth, this fertile earth, so sweet, salvation, how once we loved you).

(You many daughters, of the earth).

(And sons).

(This fertile earth).

(So sweet).

(Salvation).

For you too are of the earth, don’t forget; you too, are of the earth; you too, the earth.

(Dust to dust).

(Ashes to ashes).

(You too … you too … are … )

(Being)

(In nature).

(Our nature).

(One nature).

(This fertile earth).

(And … is that you?)

(Or only?)

(Yes; and yes again … )

And if … and if I weren’t … and I weren’t … so pathetically … pacifistic … and so vehemently against … and against … bloodbaths … of all kinds … and, for that matter, if I weren’t so hopelessly squeamish, too … at the sight of blood … and really, just the thought … of all that blood … never cleansed from memory … history … feel so weak … it kills me … and, likewise, if I didn’t always gag on pills, or if my oven weren’t electric, like the car, too late, and if once I’d learned to swim, and weren’t so scared of heights … or if I’d got some mates, some friendly face, they’d surely help me out, show me a way … going down, are you? … coming down under … matey? … going down? … and they’d give me a hand, surely … or a push … or pull a trigger … perhaps … mate … my old mate … you’d do that for me, my friend, surely … for me … wouldn’t you? If only … if only to put me … out … the lights … out … of the misery … the darkness … and that way, an end to it … the exit … but … and then … what then? … what happens then? What next? And …

(To have and to hold; ’till death do us part … )

(And … )

(Life … mate … soul … partner … )

(Where are you?)

(Are you)

(And … could that … is that … you …?)

(No).

(No news).

(Good news).

(Fake news).

(Bad news).

(So bad).

(Fake news).

(So bad).

But at least then there’d be–rather than this pathetic, self pitying, same old, same old … and the usual bellyache … well, at least then there’d be … some incontrovertible evidence, incontrovertible evidence … of this … this existential … emptiness … the void … within … and some method, some method, in my madness …

And still that voice, that voice, at the back of the mind, the distant recesses of the mind, that voice, so quiet, yet screaming, yet somehow screaming, small, quiet voice, heard screaming, still screaming, and screaming, screaming out, screaming out, at me, to delete, to hit delete, and to hit delete all, all, all: Delete! Delete! Delete!

And should I then erase these words; or can I, must I, leave them, let them be?

(Bad).

(So bad).

(And such, then, that a startling new word, new sentence, not quite a new chapter, perhaps, but, for sure, a fine … or … at least … a fine … and a fine, finale, of a kind … “the end” … yes, “the end” … THE END … and, with that, a completion, some “closure”, upon the final report … the final, final report, of the dear, kind doctor … dear doctor, too kind … she/he … he/she … (trans … form … adapt … ) … (adapt as necessary) … (transform as necessary) … and so … who? … what? … so … human, so deeply human, so deeply, perfectly human … great of heart … full of compassion … and so … so understanding, too … so perfectly understanding … and sometimes almost too, too perfectly … too perfectly perfect, perhaps … from the low vantage point, that is, of I, a sinner … fallen, lost … and in the darkness, in any case … gone down … gone under … seeing nothing … beholding nothing … and so … Ecce Homo! … and that’s right … so perfect … and almost too, too perfect … perfectly kind … and understanding … and professional … punctual, too … impeccably so … and so polite … (or is that phoney? … no, no … just being professional … just “correct”, that’s all … like a courtesan) … pricey, of course … at least for me, for us … simply too expensive … for me, for us … for who can afford it? … not me … not I … not us … I … I cannot afford it … cannot afford … to go on … I cannot afford it, to go on … and you? … as if any of us could really afford it, to go on, this cost … the cost, this cost, this crazy world … wasted talent … potential … waste of wisdom, insight … words … and so many words … all suspended, hanging … upon the page … the psychiatrist’s page … deeply human … perfectly human … so great of heart … full of compassion … and so … understanding … dear, dear doctor … who understands so very much, it seems to me … so very much … and yet … not … just not … still not … even if … this … and … that’s right, of course … and yes … you’re late … again … and yes, I know … I’m sorry … and yes, you’re absolutely right … of course … and yes, of course I understand … and the rest can wait … the rest can wait … so thank you … thank you … for your time … your time … your time … and I’m sorry … so sorry … for your time … and your time … but your time now is up … time is up … and I’m afraid we’re out of time … your time … my time … my time is up … just in time … just out of time … just in the nick, the cut, of time … the end of time … and yes … yes, I know … my time is up … so sorry …)

(And have I a train to catch, perhaps?)

(A platform?)

(Or is this just the door?)

(Show me the way, the way out; please show me the way; do, do show me; please do).

(It’s marked, “Departures”).

(And if the door won’t open, break through it, break it down; and break down …)

(And, set to leave now, and, setting out, stepping off … )

And, well …

Well what?

And, well … all that … to say … that if it weren’t for that, all that, I mean, I’d already … and long … ago … long, long … ago … and long, long, long ago, already … be gone … and gone, good riddance … the end of me … I mean … for, there are … surely … so many ways to die … and yet still … I’m here, and here still I am, and here am I, still, still, and here too, and here, I am … still … but not at all still … still can’t sit still … can’t sit still, stand still … sitting still, standing still … nervous, restless energy … and got to go now, got to get up, got to get out, got to go … go take a walk …

And I’m hurting too!

(You too?)

(Me too).

(We mutter to ourselves, under the shallow breath).

And we’re all so sensitive!

We have also our feelings!

And …

Never again, you hear!

(And, don’t you … ever … )

(Ever again).

But …

And still that that voice, that voice, at the back of the mind, the distant recesses of the mind, that voice, so quiet, yet screaming, yet somehow screaming, small, quiet voice, heard screaming, still screaming, and screaming, screaming out, screaming out, at me, to delete, to hit delete, and to hit delete all, all, all: Delete! Delete! Delete!

And should I then erase these words; or can I, must I, leave them, let them be?

Walking on alone.

Walking on alone, once more.

Walking on alone, once more, and asking: …

Is it an immense solitude, and loneliness, and melancholy, the magic mix of ingredients, the alchemy, that may make of a man, or of a woman, a poet, or a suicide?

Is it an immense solitude, and loneliness, and melancholy, the magic mix …

And walking once more, alone …

Walking once more, alone …

And, walking once more, alone, and cutting, cutting through, the chill, in the night, walking alone, once more … I …

Walking once more alone, and cutting through, the chill in the night, cutting through, walking alone, once more … I …

Walking once more alone, in the night, cutting chill, all alone, in the night … I …

(Tiredness)

(Is that you?)

(No).

And can it really be that … I am unable … I cannot … cannot even … kill myself … cannot even kill myself, and … unable even to kill myself, still, not even … not even, upon the page … and upon the page … in words … in hanging words, cut from the language, my tongue … my tongue … my tongue cut from the language … cut out … without ever … to kill myself, with any success … or style, or grace … Good Grace of God! … and that … I … I cannot … cannot even … cannot … still … but of course, of course …

(But really … I mean, really? Is there really no getting rid of me?)

I blame the anti depressants … the mood enhancers … the uppers … and the lack of sleep … and the sleeping pills … and then again the downers … but then … but then … but then I would …

I mean, I would; wouldn’t I?

(And there again the same old, same old … the same old, same old … the usual bellyache …)

(Are you there?)

No.

Or yes, rather; still here …

In the mirror, only me.

Pulling out my hair.

(But present, all along … )

(I’m still here for you).

(Not a question of being on time; not a question of being late).

(But present, in time).

(Meditation … Contemplation … )

(Carrying you along, like a babe in arms, or a barque upon the stream …)

(My mother, my father … )

(My son). (My daughter).

(And present, all along … )

(Here I am).

(Still here for you).

(Waiting here for you).

(Present).

(A gift).

For this is the time of your life, my friend; the time of your life!

(Sands of time).

(Upon the sands of time, I walked … )

(Alone).

And …

No.

Just say no.

Just say no to drugs, we were told.

Just say NO!

(No … )

(No, I’ve had enough; stop this, please.)

(Just say NO).

And …

Doctor … ?

Are you still there?

Are you there?

(No … for I’m afraid that your time is up … my thoughts … already … elsewhere …)

(Bye then! See you … )

(And no … no need to be afraid).

(I’m ready).

And I light a short, cheap cigar.

I can smoke a bit, at least … and drink … and smoke a bit, at least, and drink … and drink, a lot … and try to smoke, and drink, a lot … and try to smoke, and drink, and dream, myself, to death …

To sleep, perchance, to dream … and to dream … and to dream …

And to dream of some other life, of something else, of something more, something better, more interesting, more meaningful … besides despair … and all this despair … this slow motion drowning, in sadness, and tears … and lamentation … and words … and all these words, all words … suspended, hanging … in the air … cut from the language, my tongue … cut from the language, my tongue … my tongue, my mother tongue … my mother … my father … tongue … and land … my motherland … father … land … and some small plot of land, at least … a little land, at the last … to call … to call it … (earth, ashes, dust) … my home …

(What a dream).

And these words, that seem to come from … God … knows … where … these inky thoughts, that bring down such dense black skies, heavy, and such desolation … upon … tense, tired eyes … a look of great strain … that screams out … screams out … screams out, in but a look – silently – screaming silently – to someone – who that? … that melancholy, friends, is murder … but … (screaming out) … so what? … so what? … so what? … and … who … what … that?

(And are you now there?)

(No, still not).

(Present).

(Calling out).

(What a loser!)

And yes … and yes, I know … I know … the same old, same old … … … same old, same old …

No other option then, for now, but to keep on walking … quiet, keep quiet … keep on quietly walking, for now, no other option, through the night, the dark night … struggling to see … and to see what happens next … and why?

And I ask myself:

(This life, as if suspended … The Great Work … as if, for a moment, eternal moment, suspended … and I … who am I? … the Hanged Man … perhaps … betrayer … and betrayed … suspended … between … the barely human … but present … and the … absent … my God! … and the Fully Divine, entranced … )

(Or the other way around?)

(Perhaps).

(Are you here?)

(Are you there?)

(We seek him here, we seek him there; we seek him here and everywhere!)

(Presence. Absence.)

(… NO …)

(Why? Why not?)

(Someone).

(No one).

(Breathing).

(Breathing on).

(Walking on).

(Eternal love).

(All one).

(Alone).

SO TO SPEAK

It’s most certainly not an habitual attitude, for me, or in any way typical, but still I confess that, sometimes, when tired, tense, and bad-tempered, I would wish everyone to go straight to heaven, so to speak, so that I myself could go alone to some quiet corner in hell – if such exists – and enjoy there some little peace, perhaps, in the bitter-sweet solitude of my private torments, and the modest pockets, in my heart, of bewilderment, and melancholy, and sadness, and suffering, all moods, and emotions, that are somehow so intimate, so comfortingly familiar to me that, while it may indeed not be paradise, this hell, it could at least feel a little, if ever so little, like home. So, please, I thank you; I thank you for your visit, and for your interest, and for your conversation; now leave me well alone, and go at once to heaven!

FRIDAY TRAIN

Mesmerized, absorbed, absent, kidnapped, hostage to deceptively simple, pared down, cut back, fragments, splinters, of dark, dark thought, which surface as word in sentences as yet, thank God, unwritten. A suffocating fog of unknowing, a total and totally overwhelming incomprehension, a falling forever into bottomless depths of despair. Who then, I? A shadow of my could have been … An indentation beneath life’s pressure … A sore and bruised depression, so tender and, to the distracted eye, so subtle, insubstantial, insignificant, and so easily missed … a face pressed lonely against the window pane … or the darkness beyond?
(Perhaps)
(I guess so).
Rest may help …
(Or it may not).
(May I rest in peace).
And sometimes despair has simply its own cruel rhythm; it comes and goes, beating you now here, now there …
The pain at the birth of thought.
(Yet even for the breadcrumbs of thought, I’m strangely grateful.)
(Like a crow, I’m attracted to the sparkle, the glitter of them, and in this way I jab nervously at the thoughts, then steal them away, my treasure).
(Cawing sound from the human animal throat).
These crumbs of thought seem sometimes to form a pattern in which I see perhaps a path.
(Or is this just my imagination?)
(Seeing things?)
(In the labyrinth of the mind).
(Crumbs).
(A sparkle of an idea).
(A thread of thought …)
(The seer, blind … )
(And Theseus, lost … )
(Thesaurus)
(So many words, sounding).
(In supplication).
(And the labyrinth, so lonely and yet also, beneath the din of echoing sound, in the quietness of the breath, so silent, somehow, still).
(Ariadne?)
(I call out).
(Ariadne!)
And my mind, lost, again lost, in the labyrinth.
Where is the thread?
Where is it?
Where?
And you, dear friend …
Dear friend, dear friend …
It really is you, is it not, waiting there, in the shadows?
(Dear friend).
And I thought I was alone!
Come then, and show me once more your great curiosity, and determination, and your joy, your energy, your delight, your light!
(Your love, and your compassion).
(Let’s lift ourselves up, and be like god, and goddess! Why not try, at least; we can do it; and give it a go – why not?)
(Perhaps yes, we whisper).
(Full of hope).
Pass me through a thread, then, a thought, a simple thought, and, one way or another, we’ll find our way out.
We’ll find our way.
(Out).
And we’ll find our …
And find, we …
Even we, weak, in our weakness …
Like so many shadows, shadows of our selves …
And yes; yes, of course!
We’re light, so full of light, dawning, blossoming … and tall, bursting suns of energy, we’re like giants!
(No wonder at times that our shadows loom large! Dispel them, light!)
(And what happiness, now, to … )
Happiness!
Together, gathering to …
The we …
The weak …
The weakened …
And the weekend, at least.
Ah, the weekend …
And so, so what?
So what?
Let’s dance, shall we?
Let’s dance again.
Once more.
Yes.
Yes.
Why not?

MONDAY TRAIN

You danced for me this night, making me realize that somewhere within me remained a dry, forgotten longing, still, for precisely this, this dance–your dance, and mine–and life, and love.

Open‑mouthed, wide‑eyed, your dancing, divine, quite took my breath away, setting me ablaze, a dance of fire that consumed me within a great white heat of passion, pure passion, liberating me from the heavy weight of sad memory, setting me free.

And the intensity of this vision turned my very eyes into red hot pools of energy, smouldering with a kind of passionate envy, and longing, to dance at your side, near you, with you, in you, our movement taking us into flight, as if from earth to air, and becoming as wind, becoming as fire.

(Earth. Dust. Ashes.)

(“Now let’s have the time of our lives!”, you told me.)

And on life’s journey, searching warmth in the cold solitude of the lonely night, I gazed at what for a moment seemed a camp side fire, in a dream of warmth, a kind of home and, absorbed in that ecstasy of dancing flame, I lost my thoughts, for a time, in timelessness, my heart on fire.

No words for such a dance, but dance.

KNOCK KNOCK

I know, now, that I no longer exist.
(You hear someone speak; perhaps it is you yourself.)
What exists instead, and terribly, is the night: black, substantial, ominous, heavy. And from the night, words: words appearing upon the page as of their own accord, the pen as if writing by itself, the author’s hand passing unnoticed, unseen, across the page; words forged in the silent darkness, emerging blind from the unseeing night; words ghostly, ethereal, coming as if from nowhere, belonging to no one.
The stillness listening, uncomprehending.
From the depths of the obscure, primitive mind, comes the sound of knocking: a knocking relentless, insistent. Its very urgency shocks: sounds dropping heavily into muffled, sleeping ears, barely hearing; falling like stones into a well; like a voice echoing lonely in a cave; like a child’s anxious heart, beating.
Then, as if in answer to a call, someone stirs, stirs slowly, slowly as from a sleep as deep as death itself.
Someone?
Yes: someone.
(You think: perhaps it is me.)
But for now there is no one.
And of this no one, ask nothing.
The stillness listening, uncomprehending.
The heavy silence punctuating sound.
And let’s describe it, then, in this way:
From where you sit, crouching, in this dark corner of your mind, you see everything. As strange as silence itself, you are as a spider weaving its fine gossamer web. At the same time you are a fly, all sticky-seeing, wide-eyed observance, caught upon a web of your own design, there trapped, condemned. A play of night and day, of darkness and light, you are at the same time the very sound, knocking, that smothers your silent sleep, knocking upon the doors of your dim perception, and knocking, with a terrific pounding noise, the gates of your consciousness. And it’s the very urgency of this noise that most startles you, that shocks you most. Its sound drops heavily into your muffled, sleeping ears, barely hearing; falling there like so many stones into a well; like a voice echoing lonely in a cave; like a child’s anxious heart, beating; softly, at first, then growing louder all the time, repetitive, insistent, relentless.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
The stillness still listening, uncomprehending, until, as if in answer to a call, someone stirs, at last, slowly, as from a sleep as deep, as profound, as death itself.
(You think again: it is me.)
At first the spirit alone rises from the bed, turning back to you, to your body, to your body with all its turbulent, troubled energy, and only later, as though an afterthought, pulling you after it, bodily, by the arms and legs. Reluctantly you follow. You drag yourself across the room to the door, fumbling in the darkness for the door handle. Finally you locate it, take the door handle in your hand, tighten slowly your grip, turn the handle, then, slowly, ever so slowly, then open slowly the door.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
An echo, perhaps: no more.
At first there is not even the hint of a shadow emerging faintly from the obscurity of this darkness.
There is only the echo of the sound of knocking: the echo of the sound of knocking, loud, upon the walls of your absent, sleeping mind.
Then suddenly you appear, you are there: little more than a pale, shadowy light, you seem at once fast asleep and wide awake, strange and contradictory like the night itself, a child, just a child, water-eyed with sadness, melancholy as the moon.
And: “What is it”, you ask of the child, ever so gently. “What’s wrong?”
But the child looks straight through you, over towards the bed.
Unreal, invisible, as if absent, elsewhere: you are not there; you do not exist.
And you ask yourself: is it me?
The stillness listening, uncomprehending.
The silence between each sound, timeless.
I do not exist.
And yet you hear someone speak: who?
“Mummy? Mummy … ?”
The full question is heard only implicitly in this anxious, pathetic voice: “Mummy, come to me, please, I’m scared”.
“Yes; yes, what is it? Yes; yes, I’m coming”, mutters another, older voice, sleepily, from the bed.
You step back, then, so that mother and child can be together, holding each other close, the child, in the arms of the mother, there finding a little solace, comfort, poor thing.
And you watch the scene unfold, a spectator in your own life, too, seemingly, its central drama a total mystery to you, by and large, its meaning and purpose at best obscure.
And it’s then that you know it for sure: it’s then that you know for sure that you don’t exist. It’s then that you know that you are no one, nowhere.
And yet you hear a voice, speaking.
And perhaps it is you yourself.
The stillness listening, too, uncomprehending.
The heavy silence punctuating sound.
Timelessness.
And still it goes on, you realize, it continues, as before, this sound, this noise, this infernal knocking, as though nothing has changed, or as though you are back, once more, to where once upon a time you started.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
And you realize, too, that essentially you’re alone: that you’ve always been alone. You tell yourself: it doesn’t matter, finally, whether you’re asleep or awake, whether you’re in company, or alone, it makes no difference, in the end. In the darkness of the night one cannot tell one thing apart from another. It’s all or nothing. And all the same.
And it’s then that finally you understand that this knocking, too, is you, somehow, and that the noise of this knocking is also the noise of your knocking, somehow, and that the noise of this knocking, relentless, insistent, is somehow a noise that you’re damned to hear forever, pleading: “Let me in! Let me in! Let me back in!”
And so you say to yourself that, more than alone, unseen, unreal, invisible, not there, you are no one, you are nowhere, in this night: you are lost, as if forever.
And it is as though this were your destiny: you were born to it.
And only the distant voice of your mother, finally, for company, whispering:
Sweet dreams, my child, sweet dreams: sleep tight, good night.
(And may your heart be forever a house of prayer).

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

Through a blaze of blinding light, from darkness to darkness, my time runs, and runs out, and I, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, run with it, as if I and my time were one.

For indeed, I was born, it seems, to run, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, running, at one and the same time, into time, and out of time, and that’s just life, I guess, and death.

I was born, then, a runner; and, at each and every moment, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, I run as for my life.

But if I run only a sprint, or else a marathon, and whether a single, double, marathon, or something longer still, some ultra-style ordeal, I know not yet.

Yet, if there is a running track, beneath my feet, it runs surely straight to my destination, my destiny, and my death, like time’s arrow; this, I know.

But for now, thankfully …

But what am I saying, “thankfully”?

For what, or where, the relief?

There’s seemingly no end to it!

It’s never ending!

So thanks. And no thanks.

And yes, thanks; and no thanks.

Yes, thankfully …

(Thankfully).

And for now, thankfully …

No end to it.

For now no end to it, as far as I can see, for I see no end to it, I cannot see an end to it, this runner’s track, running straight to my destination, my destiny, my death, thankfully, no, thankfully, thankfully, no, thank goodness; yet, how then, I ask you, can I pace myself, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing?

How far have I still to run?

For through a blaze of blinding light, from darkness to darkness, my time runs, and runs out, and I, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, run with it, as if I and my time were one.

And, breath, by panting breath, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, I run, heartbeat by heartbeat, breath by breath, stride by stride, step by step, footfall, by footfall.

And, to try to outrun the loneliness, and the blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, all of which at once express me and escape me and elude me, running away from me, forcing the pace, intensifying the race, but always ahead, always outrunning me, and outrunning me still, I count the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds.

And yet I’m running out of time, even so; and one day, or another, some day, soon, always too soon, never too soon, I shall be declared at once “winner” of this race, “winner” in the sense simply that I endured it to its end (not having been brave enough to turn my back and walk away, disgusted), and I shall then be briefly celebrated, at that time, perhaps, in a fittingly tight fit ceremony that will no doubt involve some passing, honourable mention, and kind words, no matter if so very far from what once was the truth, which was that I was also the loser of this race, who was lost at the end, for sure, but also lost at the beginning, and from the start. And then, blood circulating, pulsating, heart pumping, thoughts racing, in binary, one, two, rhythm, winning, and losing, winning, and losing, over and over and over and over again, running on, until then, you’re there, at last, that moment, when you’re there no longer, because it’s all over, and it’s all over, and it’s definitively all over, and out. Good night. Be gone.

Lost at the end.

Lost at the beginning.

Lost from the start.

And running each fleeting moment, out of time; out of time; out of time …

BLOODLINES - SKETCHES TOWARDS A FAMILY

Growing up in England, in a small town near Oxford, “family” –those most familiar to me– meant my Mother, my Father, and my elder sister.

My parents loved to dance; they were always the first to take to the floor at one of the “balls” and local dances that they attended often when they themselves were young. I think that they were in their early ’20s when they first met. Compared to my father, my mother was an urbanite, almost a “city girl”. My father came from a local village, very much a “country lad”. He only spent time in “the town”, the small market town, where my mother lived, when he had to come into town for work, and perhaps sometimes also when he wished to serenade some of the local ladies.

My parents were both 25 when they married. And the energy of those early days somehow kept them together, if not always dancing, during a marriage of 55 years.

Sadly, dancing became increasingly difficult for my mother after she developed severe Rheumatoid Arthritis when in her late twenties. She also had to give up her work as a hairdresser, for the scissors now cut too often her swollen, awkward fingers. And one early memory of mine is of visiting my mother in hospital after she had undergone surgery on her feet. Being mum to my sister and to me was in any case by then a full‑time occupation.

My father worked as an electrician. And one of my earliest and fondest memories of him is of an afternoon on which he had invited me to visit a house in Oxford on which he was working at the time. As a child, I didn’t see a lot of my father, not even in the evening; he was usually out at work. And so it felt like a huge honour to be asked now to join him “at work”; I felt terribly proud and suddenly very grown up and important. But “the job” in Oxford was in fact a ruse. We turned a side street and walked along to where “the house” turned out to be the Oxford Odeon Cinema, where the film “Star Wars” had just opened. My father was taking me to the cinema! Being suddenly plunged into “a galaxy, far, far away”, albeit in the protective company of my father, was an experience so extraordinary to the younger me that I question if even now I’ve fully recovered from it.

My sister is six years my elder; my arrival on the family scene thus ended six years in which she was the sole focus of my parents’ attention and affections. And I think that she’s somehow never forgiven me for that. When young, she would give me an occasional “friendly” tickle, but my sense is that she was, if not disinterested, exactly, then certainly rather cool and distant. I had barely begun my school career when she was already evolving into her teenage self. And her mind was surely preoccupied with more pressing matters than her “kid brother”. And that’s entirely understandable.

Like me, my sister has an interest in the arts, only in her case it’s above all the visual arts. She is an excellent painter. And she also likes music, and to dance.

(The links to Peter Gabriel songs on this site are thanks in large part to her inspiration).

In every other respect we are like “chalk and cheese”, as we say in English; two very different personalities.

My parents were both able to mark, if not really to celebrate, their 80th birthdays. My father’s 80th birthday was last summer, 17 August 2013, but by then he was already very sick with cancer. He died early in November and was buried on 19 November, the day before my mother’s 80th birthday. My mother couldn’t continue long without her “beloved Geoff”, such that earlier this year she too passed away, 1 February 2014, just a few months after my father. Naturally my parents are still very much in my thoughts; perhaps more so now than ever before. Indeed, a few weeks ago, to my great astonishment, I saw a vision of them. I returned home late from work that day, and when I got back to the flat and turned on the light, there they were, standing together, smiling and with open arms, waiting for me. It was as if I’d somehow brought them back to life. And I suppose that this is how it is when you think a lot about someone, as in this case about my parents; your thoughts draw them near, and keep them alive in your heart.

As a personality, my mother was very intelligent and witty, very sharp; she had a fabulous sense of humour. But she was also very emotional and moody, unpredictable, volatile. By contrast, my father was solid, dependable, but at times too “safe”, too cautious, too anxious. Both were very strict in their approach to raising children, rather old‑school and old‑fashioned. But of course they loved us deeply, myself and my sister, and were very proud of us both.

It is said that in a romantic relationship usually it is opposites that attract. Jung described it as being almost a universal law. And this has certainly been my experience with my wife. She and I are like two opposing forces of nature, and it is quite impossible either fully to reconcile or else to separate us.

Perhaps in the fruit of such relationships, in our children, we receive–as in a mirror–a vision of how these characteristics may be when held either in tension or else blended together. Such certainly am I, a blown‑up, and now life‑size composite picture of my parents’ character flaws, with unfortunately but a few of their qualities, and even those qualities, as it seems to me, rather diluted, disappointingly.
I can see this process at play also in my 15‑year old daughter; she has some of her father’s dreamy absent‑mindedness and certainly also much of his charm. But for the most part what I see reflected in her is her own mother’s tremendous kindness and gentleness, not to mention also her mother’s great beauty (and pride!). She will break many hearts.

Last but certainly not least, let me say something about my young son, so very dear.

Several weeks after his birth a midwife visited his mother and concluded her visit by observing that she couldn’t see much evidence of the young chap developing into an “English gentleman”, like perhaps his father; but, rather, his behaviour and attitudes already demonstrated that, thanks to his Italian mother, he was an “Italian Mafioso” through and through!

Our son is now almost six years old (going on twenty‑six), completely confident, utterly self‑assured, fiercely independent, like mum, but also at times very quiet, withdrawn and thoughtful, more like dad.

Also like dad, and granddad too, for that matter, the young beau cannot help but love the ladies. Given his young age, we can laugh and think of his spontaneous adoration of the fairer sex as something natural, innocent, charming, and beautiful. Only later in life do we tend to render and experience such affections as ambiguous, and feel ourselves troubled by the powerful instinctive call to love. Already at ages two and three, and already often at four and five, it has astonished me to observe my son’s many and multiple loves. And here too, thanks to my son, my own self‑understanding feels a little more nuanced and perhaps also more forgiving, ever so little. I ask myself–and my wife–what advice we should eventually give to such a young Casanova so as to help him successfully negotiate a future. How should one love? How should one live? It seems to me that we do not have any adequate or satisfactory answers to even these most basic of human questions. What disappointing parents!

(My mother’s advice to me was always … to take life as what it is … and to love … okay … but not to get too carried away … don’t get too serious, she often said … love them and leave them! … love them … and leave … love … and leave … )

(As I work in one city and, at least theoretically, at the weekend, “live” with my family in another city, I feel often as if I do nothing but love, and leave, and love, and leave … ; perhaps I misunderstood my mother’s instructions).

To return to my son, I should like to note that, physically, friends and relatives have often remarked that he most resembles his mum, I think in part because of his deep brown eyes. But I see in him –and very, very much so– the boy that I once was, both physically and temperamentally. My love for him, as for his sister, has no words; it is like an ocean of feeling that flows out in all directions, utterly boundless.

Of course we love our children, my wife and I, for the simply extraordinary and unique human persons that they are, at least to us; and as individuals appearing to us, as parents, as little creatures almost miraculous in their very existence.

Being myself now also a father to a son, I feel that my relationship to and love for my son has also helped me better to understand my own father, and father/son relationship, and thus somehow also to grow closer to him, to my own father, and to love and to respect him more now than ever. And it seems to me that, in our various fates, we may at times hold and support and at times we may be held and supported. And so it was that, our roles at the last reversed, in the closing days of my father’s life I held him often in my arms, and with all my love flowing out to him for once without so much as a single mental obstacle or emotional hindrance, and cradled him, in my arms, my dear father, as once he cradled me, which is to say, in other words, to cradle him in my arms as if he were but a tiny newborn, a babe in arms.

Very occasionally my fiercely independent five‑year old son again assents to me holding him in this way, in my arms, cradling him as I did when he was a baby; and when he does, I am in heaven.

And so I think about the ways in which my love for my son flows naturally both from and back to my love for my father.

And when I think to the relationship of my son, to his mother, and of my daughter, to her mother, and of course to the complex relationship that I had with my own mother, who was in so many ways so witty, and wonderful, but at times also extremely fierce, and emotionally unpredictable and, from the pain of her arthritis, sometimes unreachable, and physically untouchable, I am left feeling astonished, even speechless, by the ways in which, to a fortunate child, raised in a love both tender and firm … a mother may be the very universe itself; she is the world both from and into which you were born.

Such reflections as these, as they arise, feel sometimes like a sensation of time itself, rippling across the spirit in flowing wave upon wave of so much family blood, so much life, so many layers of patterning, of physical and emotional similarities, and parallels, echoes, and resonances.

And in so many different ways do our broken hearts learn love.

THE VOICE OF BLOOD - EXTRACT

In the later months I would watch the leaves, first as they fell, weeping towards the ground, and then, wet and rotting, as they were trampled into the sodden vegetation, a vivid autumnal red, at least for a while, as they bubbled around the tree stumps, a crude, soupy liquid. The trees, I thought, were bleeding: the darkness coming again.

And the nakedness of the windswept trees was in such stark contrast to their earlier leafy abundance that it seemed slightly shocking, too different to be credible: as if the trees had been forcibly stripped and violated, laid bare. And shivering in the wind seemed to madden them, to make them wild, screaming out for revenge, so that they lashed out their branches in every direction, cutting, screaming, swirling around and around. And I, too, felt the madness: I ran with the wind, my head held back, my mouth open wide, gasping at the air. And my eyes became wild: I saw the winter.

But there are no words for the winter. The trees are cold and exhausted. And everything becomes so hard and lifeless: frozen solid. Nothing moves: not really. Just the silence. And the silence moves with you, following you everywhere like a constant companion. It seems to be watching, waiting: itself a kind of warning, hushed, not to speak, not to disturb. ‘Don’t speak, don’t think, don’t feel, don’t look, don’t move,’ it says. Until you yourself, shocked, become frozen, stuck, sculpted into the scene.

And the earth seems to heap around you as you stand there, roots breaking out from your toes, forming foundations for your trunk as your human shape hardens slowly into the shape of a tree, your arms becoming branches, your fingers twigs, your skin crusting over into bark, your bones making way for solid wood and your blood slowing down, becoming thick and sticky like sap.

And then I realized that it exists, it is real: the winter. But that is not all: there is always something else, something behind the winter, driving it harder and harder, something stronger and more powerful. You can almost sense it in the air: a fear made tangible, icy on the breath.

And in the solitude of the woods my mind went mad.

A little mad: I’m sure of it.

But my games were glorious:

Always alone, I thought myself sometimes a lumberjack, out to chop wood, sometimes a hunter, setting traps for the hares and the rabbits, although there were none, of course, and sometimes I was a primitive, wild but free.

On other occasions I simply stood: looking, listening, feeling.

And I stood still for minutes on end, as if I myself were a tree, frozen stiff in the winter.

Or frozen stiff with fear.

As was the case at least once that I can think of.

I was alone beneath the trees, thinking myself adventurous, fighting through the brambles and the nettles, the undergrowth. But the skin of my hands and arms was soon a bright flaming red, hot with blisters and rashes, my legs likewise cut and torn. I thought to cool myself in the water of the stream.

I headed for the stretch where the mud bank formed a low natural wall, easy to perch from, legs dangling, to wash or to chase with a net the tiny minnows darting around beneath the footbridge.

On the opposite bank was a tree which, although it looked precarious, must have been standing there for at least one hundred years or more. It leaned over the stream like an old man bent double, attentive to the whispering words of the water flowing quietly beneath it, murmuring low in conversation.

I always felt that the tree was listening.

And what else had it overheard?

Or seen?

I wondered.

The wound of a sawn off branch, a woodpecker hole, these were the eyes …

Terrible things: I was sure.

Scheming and betrayal.

Murder.

And I could feel the shivering skin: the hurriedly buried dead …

And then I looked up …

How easy it must have been.

How easy to imagine the man, dangling down from the thickest of the branches – a corpse, rather, his neck caught tight in a noose, dropped a short distance on a rope, his head and body limp, the flesh as if slowly slipping away, leaving only the bones.

And so I did.

And there he was.

All the blood rushing from my head: my eyes pale and lifeless.

Black, eyeless sockets: two cavernous holes seizing hold of me, dragging me in, willing me to follow.

The dark sight of the blind.

Until at last he disappeared, fading away into nothingness.

I turned and fled: running for my life.

With the eyes always behind me: following.

I shot back a look …

But of course there was no one.

And one memory prompts another, I suppose.

And it must have been at around the same time.

A birthday party for one of the other boys from school …

I’m not sure why I was asked. We weren’t friends. Perhaps his mother had told him to invite me. An act of kindness.

By the time I arrived at the house – I was just old enough to have been allowed out unsupervised – there were already many children there, mostly boys, one or two girls, all of us around the same age, eight, nine, ten, I forget.

Once through the door I was shuffled into the main room and given a cursory introduction. I recognized only a couple of the faces. The rest of the kids must have come from various social and sporting clubs that met after normal school hours. For some reason I never attended any of these. Maybe they were disallowed by my father. Or simply didn’t interest me.

The children stood around awkwardly as if waiting instruction. And sure enough it wasn’t long before the three or four representative parents started fussing around, stand here, stand there, do this, do that, barking orders, bossing: as if the children were merely pawns in their excited nostalgic fantasy of a perfect childhood happiness.

But it transpired that the party had a theme.

No one had thought to tell me this.

Striped shirts, eye patches, fluffy toy parrots.

It was immediately obvious, but in my case too late, that we were to play at being pirates.

In class we’d been reading Treasure Island.

I should have guessed.

But as it was I was the only one not wearing appropriate clothing. I was dressed in pale beige trousers, polished brown boots, and a green checked shirt which scratched me around the neck and arms. I can remember very clearly what I was wearing that day as it was so utterly out of place.

And immediately I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed.

I thought to return home but hesitated too long.

My reflection in a glass window …

I felt ridiculous.

And waited for the children to start laughing.

But whether they did or not, whether they would or wouldn’t, didn’t matter.

In my head they were laughing already. And there was nothing I could do to stop them.

But the first games were innocent enough.

We passed around an imaginary eye-glass, for example, chanting: ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with the letter … ‘

One of the parents then produced a real telescope: a brass spy-glass dug up, no doubt, from the depths of an old junk box. It helped us believe that the games were for real …

Then drinks were handed around: small plastic beakers containing either root beer or blackcurrant cordial, noggins of rum …

And suddenly we were old sea dogs, drunk in a grog shop, singing:

‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest –

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest –

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’

I don’t suppose that any of us knew what rum really was, but still.

We must have been making a lot of noise.

And one of the parents, to quieten us, stood up and whispered ssssssh …

Come nearer.

Come close.

Be a part of this conspiracy …

Listen.

‘Mates!’, she said, in a low, plotting voice: ‘mates!’

‘Whatever you do …

Keep them open.

One of them, at least.

One of your good old weather-eyes.

Open them as wide as you can …

On the look out, of course: the look out for a blind seafaring man, jagged teeth and scarred face, a parrot on his shoulder and a great thick crutch … ‘

And with a low theatrical bow, swinging her arm towards the door, she directed our eyes …

And sure enough …

There, looming large at the door, terrifyingly tall but also stocky, big boned, was the surreal apparition – out of place, out of time – of a pirate. Black patches covered both his eyes and a long scar ran down the length of his face, as if cutting it in two.

He took a few swaggering steps into the room, then bellowed out:

‘Will any kind friend inform a poor blind man, a man, I might add, who has had the misfortune to lose the precious sight of both his eyes in the gracious defence of his native country, England – and God Bless King George! – where or in what part of this fair land he now finds himself?’

Struck dumb, not one of us ventured a word. We stood like idiots: staring in disbelief.

But even without the speech, delivered in a peculiar olde-worlde English and which I recognized immediately to have been cribbed directly, more or less, from Treasure Island, we were none of us sufficiently brave to speak up and to risk a word out of turn when faced with such a fearsome looking creature as was this man that stood before us.

After all: we were all of us very young, very impressionable.

I was, at least.

Otherwise I’d have laughed.

Especially at the awkward conflation of blind man Pew, Black Dog and Long John Silver!

Was he a resting actor: hired to entertain us?

I wonder.

But to his credit he must have spent some time on his appearance.

The fake cutlass scar, for example, was drawn from an inch above his right eye down across his cheek and nose to just above his upper lip. It looked quite real, of course. And must have taken ages to get just right.

A large gold ring hanged down from his left ear. And a bright red bandanna was tied tightly around the top of his head beneath which his long hair was combed back and arranged in a tarry tail which swished about around his shoulders when he moved. His sailor’s shirt was of broad blue and white stripes, similar in style to those worn by many of the boys. And over this he wore a great black seaman’s coat, complete with enormous cuffs and bright silver buttons. On his feet were gigantic leather boots which reached almost to his waist. And despite the fact that both his legs seemed in good working order, he carried a long wooden crutch beneath his left arm, which occasionally he would lift into the air and wave at us menacingly. But he never knocked anything down or hit anyone while he was hamming it up with his stick. And only later did I realize that his eye patches, too, were fake, and that, for a blind man, he could see well enough. He was, in short, very good at his job: he was a real professional.

But still more extraordinary than the man himself, however, was the live green parrot sitting calmly on his shoulder. The sight of it delighted us: our eyes extra round and wide, like saucers. Not once did it utter a sound, not even to cry ‘pieces of eight! pieces of eight!’ But we didn’t mind. Its presence convinced us more than anything else that standing here before us was a genuine old salt, a true gentleman of the sea. As if the bird were the man’s silent witness: the proof of his identity.

Once he’d finished milking the drama of his sudden and unexpected entrance, the pirate bored his way into the centre of the room and slumped down upon a stool. All the children rushed around him, getting as close as they dared. But I myself kept out of sight, right at the back behind the others, not so much because I was frightened of the man, although I was, but more because I still felt embarrassed by my clothes.

‘Now batten down your hatches awhile, me mates, and listen to my stories of deeds so wild and so dreadful, seas so deep and so dark, leading to places so unimaginably remote and hellish, that they’ll be sure to make you shiver and tremble from top to toe; stories, in fact, that’ll make you wish you’d not stepped one foot, this day, outside the warmth of your cosy morning bed.

Listen … ‘

He cleared his throat.

This blustering preamble was followed by several more minutes of rambling words, only a few of which I now remember, before finally, in his strongest and most intimidating manner, the man announced to us that, from this moment on, he would take over as captain of our little pirate ship. And either we would obey him strictly and without question, or take ourselves directly to the dogs, thus saving him the trouble of having to kick us there himself.

‘First things first!’, he said.

‘We must get ourselves a hostage. A pirate ship is not a proper pirate ship, for sure, without a hostage or two at which to poke and prod … ‘

Perhaps the others had sensed my lack of concentration: my discomfort. Or perhaps I was picked on because I was already the odd one out. The boy chosen as the hostage, in any case, was me: obviously.

‘For days now we’ve been at sea’, or so explained the new captain of our imaginary ship.

‘The waters have been squalling rough and often we’ve been up to our necks in wash, but still, with the sails well trimmed, we’ve made good progress and the boat has steadily picked out its lonely path across the wide open sea. The winds have been good to us. And likewise it was easy work, upon finally spotting a solitary treasure ship, to sneak up to her, as it were, in the misty quiet of the gently moving morning, then jump her and massacre all aboard before making off with a glittering ship load of stolen booty.

What delight!’

‘But in a moment of weakness, good Christian that I am’, he continued, ‘I decided to spare one soul from among the vanquished – for a while, at least. And I chose this young swab ‘ere as our captive. A prettier, more rosy-cheeked specimen I’ve never seen! It seems you second my choice … Am I right?’

‘Hoorah!’

The crew approved wholeheartedly …

Then the captain took up his story from where he’d stopped.

‘But now our ship’s in murky water’, he explained. ‘We’re barely ghosting along the sea’s surface. And the wind has almost entirely died and us soon to follow it, I shouldn’t wonder!’

A hushed silence.

‘And there are those on board – and who’s to say they’re wrong? – who believe that the ship has picked up a curse along its watery way, a curse in the shapely little form of this ‘ere boy, do you see? And that’s why the ship’s in the doldrums, or so they say …

Now I might look a little bristly on the surface, and it’s true my tongue sounds sharp from time to time, but at heart you must know that I’m just a kind and gentle man, a good honest Christian, that’s me. But these others – goodness nothing! – these others are really rough, I reckon (and after all these years at sea, trust me, I should know). So rough they are, in fact, that they’ll do anything that suits them, whether I’m there to stay their hands or not, no difference, they’ll do just whatever they like – and not a second thought, mind you, not one.

Anyway: these chaps reckon that unless our little lad here is tipped overboard, toppled out into the water, a little silvery splash in the moonlight, as it were, they’ll be no escaping from these damnable soupy waters and an end to us all, for sure! Of course I’ve given it some thought: weighed up the situation, this way and that. And between you and me, I’ve half a mind to agree with them – they’ve got some good points, I reckon. I mean, we was floating along so swimmingly until this little barrel of laughs dropped by to anchor us down, as it were, to the bottom of the sea. Don’t you think? That’s just a feeling, of course – and take no notice. Grave matters such as these must be decided right and proper. So we’ll put it to a vote …

And what says you, lads?

Is he to stay, to sink, or to swim?

And mind you tell me clearly now … ‘

I kept my arms at my sides.

But the vote was otherwise unanimous.

And a few moments later the crew had already pinioned me to the floor and were in the process of tying my wrists and ankles with cord (helpfully provided by one of the parents, now smiling, sadistically, against a far wall). A smaller group was busy rolling up squares of cloth – one of these they used to gag me while another served as a blindfold. The children needed little by way of encouragement.

And then they started chanting.

‘Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank!’

They were having a wonderful time: the best party they’d ever attended.

They didn’t seem to notice my discomfort: it didn’t trouble them, if they did.

Nor the parents, apparently, who contented themselves with remaining as shadows in the background, the children permitted to do as they wished.

Did they think that I too was acting?

The poor, defenceless hostage …

Locked behind a façade.

‘Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank!’

Desperate to get away, I could feel the fear, restless, in the pit of my stomach.

But how?

It seemed impossible: my wrists and ankles were firmly fastened, my eyes blinded, my tongue tied.

‘Well, that’s that then: your destiny’s clear, young chap, and that it is!’ exclaimed the captain.

‘The ugly lubber must walk the plank – and won’t he look pretty dropping down to the depths? – ha! to hell with him … !

But wait!’

The captain stopped, looked around, perhaps seemed puzzled for a second, then brightened with an idea.

‘Wait’, he said again.

‘Why don’t we have ourselves some fun and first tickle him a bit? Tickle him a tad with the prospect of a little light death … It can’t do no harm, surely. And it’d be mighty amusing. So what says you, mates?’

Another roar of encouragement.

‘Hoorah! Hoorah!’

‘I know: we’ll pluck out his eyes and give him dead lights, two empty black points like holes in the head, all the more clearly to see the sight of death – do you agree, my hearties?’

And so it went on – so many voices – all laughing and screaming and jeering and mocking.

The children began to spin me around.

And then I heard the captain saying to put me to sleep …

They were going to gouge out my eyes, he explained, then throw them out in front of me to guide my way towards the water …

I felt dizzy, sick.

Although I could also hear a little voice at the back of my mind, saying: everything will be all right; it’s just a game; keep calm; don’t worry …

But then, in all the noise and the clamour, I lost it …

Spinning around and around: around and around and around.

Going on and on …

Will it ever stop?

And I ask myself.

Again and again.

Going on and on.

These voices …

‘Now then, lads, the deed is done and we can wake him – slowly, mind you, very slowly, take care for the blood!’

And my body stopped spinning, but not my head, which continued of its own accord, spiralling away from my neck …

‘All crew to posts and a double helping of rum for they who’s quickest!’, barked out the captain.

‘You there, hoist up the Jolly Roger!

You lot prepare the plank …

And the rest of you gather around …

Gather around to feast your eyes upon a boy’s last moments …

Look sharp!’

‘Ay, ay, sir!’

‘Ay, ay, cap’n!’

‘Now look you here’, the captain continued.

‘This chap’s like me, a good Christian fellow, I reckon, and he’s a gentleman to boot I wouldn’t wonder – just look at his fine clothes! The least we can do is grant him a few final words, no?’

And so saying, he loosened my gag to let me speak.

But I’d nothing to say: I just stood there, like a fool, cut off by my silence.

‘What?!’, roared the captain, ‘is that a dead eye on your shoulders, or what? Where’s your voice, boy? Now speak up good and proper I tell you! Or else there’ll be trouble, d’you hear?’

But still I said nothing: I couldn’t speak.

‘Here’s a queer one if ever there was.

It seems he needs his eyes to find his tongue, so his eyes he shall have, you mark my words – his left eye in his left hand and his right eye in his right – there you go!’

A small, roundish object, neither exactly soft nor hard, was then placed in each of my hands.

‘These are your eyes, my friend … ‘, jeered the captain.

‘I trust that now you’ll see everything: is everything clear?’

He chuckled in a low, bass voice.

The children, too, were in hysterics. And still now I hear the sound of their laughing.

‘What’s that? Still can’t see, eh? Well in that case try squeezing them, squeeze them tighter and tighter, go on … ‘

At this the captain took my hands in his and clenched them up until they were as tight as two small, hard balls.

And I wonder even now at his maliciousness.

But no one stopped him: I heard no objections raised.

My hands hurt terribly.

But it was the sensation of jelly oozing vile through my fingers that most disturbed me. That and the sound of the children squealing at the sight of what they believed to be blood: blood dripping from my hands, my fingers …

‘These are your eyes! These are your eyes!’ cried out the captain, weirdly jubilant. ‘And now you’re as blind as I am! Ha!’

I listened to his words and understood what he said.

But at the same time I thought that he was wrong and that somehow I could still see my eyes.

They were there: before me.

Terrifying in the darkness.

Looking out …

And as if I could see them there …

No longer in my hands.

No.

But rather suspended: suspended in the air as if hovering, weightless – staring out like two sharp points of light in the darkness.

Blind, yes.

But staring out: still staring out and seeing all.

But what I actually held in my hands, of course, known only, at first, to the adults in the group, were two tomatoes, rotten and smelly – their juicy insides and red, glossy pulp making the children scream, who seemed to believe what they saw, my sight as if extinguished before their eyes.

But I wasn’t sure.

And I didn’t know what was going on.

And for a while I thought that perhaps I was blind.

As if they really were my eyes.

My bloody, torn out eyes.

These eyes now to haunt me forever …

‘Do you hear my voice?’, cried out the captain, standing behind me now, some distance away.

Yes. I hear you. But in the darkness a voice sounds only in the mind.

‘Do you hear my voice? Do you hear it?’, he repeated.

‘Or should I say: do you see my voice?’

Hilarious, isn’t it?

‘Yes, yes, but don’t laugh, my shipmates … ‘, he went on.

‘It’s not quite as crazy as it sounds …

You see, it’s like this: a blind man like me comes eventually to see voices as much as to hear them. The voice becomes visual, takes form, a shape, a spectral shape vibrating in the centre of the mind. And once that happens: it’s really the end. From then on they follow you everywhere: these voices. They’re like spirits. Spirits: have pity … ‘

And I could feel myself shivering.

‘But enough! It’s time now, mates! Are you ready? Draw out your blades and we’ll prick this blind young worm, prick him good and proper, that we will!’

And the children returned to their chanting:

‘Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank!’

When suddenly, the gag having now slipped down around my throat, I found my voice …

And I screamed out: ‘You can’t make me – you can’t make me do it! Not against my will … I shan’t die! I shan’t!’

The captain and his crew merely laughed all the louder.

Until my wrists and ankles were at last untied and with one great shove I was thrown out into the garden, with all the other children tumbling on top of me, one after the other.

And that was that.

I was thrown overboard.

Drowned.

Dead.

Being at the bottom of a great pile of bodies I was, of course, the last to clamber up onto my elbows and to begin to brush myself down. My blindfold had worked loose in the scrum and it seemed that I could see all right, to my relief. I sat on the grass in a daze and watched as all the other children rushed indoors: it was time to eat. But instead of following them I simply picked myself up, walked around the edge of the house, and then passed out into the street. A few yards from the house I broke into a run. And then I kept on running. I ran and I ran and I ran. Until finally I felt certain I was alone: that no one would find me. Although at the party I’d not be missed: I felt sure. As if I were invisible. Out of sight: out of mind.

Eventually I slowed down to a walk and decided to head off for the woods. I wanted to cry but I didn’t. I couldn’t. My eyes remained resolutely dry. Open wide. Staring. Looking out at me wherever I turned, no matter what my direction. Watching me. As if there were eyes everywhere. All eyes upon me: no matter where I looked. And insistent. Demanding. Everywhere. My eyes.

And every few steps I would touch them with my fingers, wondering if they were indeed still there. And again and again I ran my finger around their rims; then pressed hard, hard upon the eyeballs, measuring in increments the gradual deepening of my pain. And wondering whose eyes these really were: were they really mine? Or had mine been torn out? Torn out, after all? And then replaced. To look out anew. And everything seeming so strange. So different. As if the eyes alone had changed everything.

Who knows?

But I couldn’t stop myself: I just kept on thinking about them.

The feel of them: the look of them.

And I wondered what it would feel like to be behind the eye. And to touch myself there. To feel. To know. And then I imagined being behind them. Looking back. As if to see them from the other side, as it were. And to see myself there. To see myself upon the back wall of my own eye, as in a mirror. And then to look out at my seeing self. To see. To know that I was there.

And I thought to myself that really I wanted to be blind: to be blind, in fact, was really what I wanted. So that then I’d know. I’d know not to look back. Or even if I did, even if I did look back, I’d know it wouldn’t matter. I’d know it wouldn’t change anything. The looking: the looking back. Looking: lost. And the darkness would remain. And I’d be blinded, yes. But still I’d carry on: I’m sure. Going on and on. Going on and on forever.

And I wanted to cut them out, then and there. By my own hand. My eyes. As if in punishment. The looking. Lost.

And I wanted to hold them in my hands and squeeze them and squeeze them and squeeze them until my hands were covered in their gore, my fingers dripping wet with my own blind blood.

I headed for the edge of the stream and then sat down upon its bank.

From a side pocket in my trousers I drew out a small Swiss army knife.

I’d recently stolen this knife: I saw it and I knew that I had to have it and so I stole it. Simple. This wasn’t the first time that I’d stolen something, nor the last. But I didn’t care. Anyway: I didn’t steal just any old thing, like some kids do, for the thrill of it. I stole only the things that I really desired, the things that I felt that I really needed or wanted. Nothing was given to me so if I did want something I had no other choice but to take it for myself, I had to steal it. And steal it I did. It was easy. In any case, no one takes notice of you when you’re a child. No one took notice of me, for example: nobody paid me attention. Children are invisible: it’s as if no one sees you when you’re a child. And I’m sure that no one saw me: not really.

Children get away with murder.

(I’d heard someone say it).

I thought so too.

Murder.

Anyway.

This knife I soon thought of as my most prized possession. It went with me everywhere. And, whenever I could, I crept off in search of somewhere private where, pulling out all the different blades, the principal blade last of all, I could examine and clean them, test their sharpness on twigs and bark, keeping them glinting, bright, before again replacing them, thoughtfully, a little proud, one after another, snapping them shut. I spent hours cutting up fruit. An apple or a pear, for example, I would slowly peel, absorbed in concentration, into long, meandering spirals of skin, pleased at the ease with which a sharp blade cuts. But I was happiest when I had some small animals to dissect: sometimes I made use of some fish or a dead mouse and on at least one occasion, a dead bird, covered in fleas and maggots. I cut these animals to pieces, hoping to rearrange them in some mysterious way so that they would come back to life, with luck, so that they would once more live … But, although I liked to do it, although I liked the process of cutting things up into ever smaller and smaller pieces, it also made me feel at the same time very sad – as if this miserable, mutilated end were in some sense the inevitable conclusion to each and every life. And that there was no hope: there was nothing that could be done.

Cutting: cutting …

The knife would have been confiscated, of course, if my parents or any of the teachers had seen it. And then the same old questions …

Why do you this?

And why do you do that?

Why this?

Why that?

Why?

But I kept it secret, well hidden.

I looked at it now. How beautiful it seemed. Simple. Clean. And I pulled out the main blade with my fingernails and moved it around until it caught the little sun still sweating its weary way through the leafy canopy overhead. And then I flashed the light back up into the sky and wondered if it might perhaps be possible to blind the sun in its own reflection. And I loved the way that the silver blade sparkled like the twinkling surface of the water of the stream. It was like a dance.

And reclining in the apparent loss of time, that sweet state of calm, I simply sat there for a while, a warm daze, watching the play of light as it leapt from place to place.

It’s such a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun and truly the light is sweet …

And then I slept, a deep, dreamless sleep, for a change: quiet like the passing of the hours.

Until gently, opening my eyes, slowly, I dragged myself up and looked again at my knife, still clutched there in my hand.

The silver blade was dull now but if I moved it a little it sparkled once more.

And it felt so nice to touch it.

And slowly, very slowly, I moved the silver metal of the blade along the contours of my fingers, up and down, up and down. And I watched, transfixed, as the sharp point first appeared and then disappeared behind my hand. The blade felt so cool and sensual to the touch, exciting in a way. So that I unbuttoned the cuffs of my shirt sleeves then rolled them tightly to my elbows, exposing more of my skin. The touch of the knife over the soft hair of my arms was delicious. And now that my lower arms were bare, I could run it swiftly, with a quick switch of hands in the middle, from the elbow of my left arm to the elbow of my right and back again in one great arc. I concentrated hard on making this movement flow. Like the arc of a circle. Up and down. Up and down.

Then after a while I moved the knife to my face, pressing its broad, flat surface against my right cheek. It felt so good. Like a cool breeze. Or a caress, perhaps. Slowly, so slowly. And I drew the knife down my cheek and under my chin and then up to my left eye and across my forehead, as if removing my face, cutting it out. And then I skirted the point of the blade around the oval of my eyes. First the right eye: then the left. The right, the left. And again and again and again until finally I could see nothing but a blur of silver light criss-crossing before my eyes in a figure of eight.

‘I will cut out my eyes!’ I said to myself

‘I will cut out my eyes!’

I said.

Over and over again.

Like a chant.

‘I will cut out my eyes!’

And then I looked up.

I was crying now.

And I thought I couldn’t bear it.

This feeling of pain.

Going on and on.

I wanted it to stop.

That’s all.

And so I started scratching at my arms.

Scratching, slashing.

Then slowly, always slowly, I slid the knife along the back of my left hand, from a little below the wrist to the nail of the forefinger.

And my eyes opened.

I could feel it.

The pain.

At last …

The joy.

And I was crying.

Crying, laughing.

At last!

And I was crying.

Strange, but …

Smiling.

Like a weeping wound.

The sound of my laughter …

And I sat there and watched as my tears and my blood mingled together, dripping down towards the stream, my eyes at the same time turning red against their shadowy reflection, two swirling pools in the water. And I sat staring, still like the summer air, trying hard to understand, but failing. I tried to look up: to raise my head. And watched as a pair of watery eyes floated away with the current.

And still I looked. I kept on looking and looking. And I didn’t want it to stop. Not ever. But what I wanted, instead, was just for it to go on and on. This moment. With the stream flowing quietly past. My thoughts floating away with the water. My eyes … And the smell of the ferns and the trees. And the sounds of the birds singing high up in the branches above me: the woodland animals surrounding me. And the fading light. Gentle. Forgiving. The day imperceptibly giving way, at last, to night.

I began to feel faint.

And it was a while before I felt strong enough to get up from the ground. At first I just leaned against a tree and wrapped a handkerchief around my bleeding hand. I tried to brush the dirt from my trousers but with little success. And with my arm I wiped my face. And to begin with I turned my back towards the sun, and then slowly I began to walk away, snubbing it, back towards the direction from which I’d come. But my shadow grew nervous and jerky, appearing to pull away from me as I walked: and my eyes grew tired as I watched its neurotic dancing, leaping around on the ground. I stopped and looked back. Nothing. Just the heavy darkness dripping slowly down: the night gradually forming from the day. And I walked now towards the sunset. And I felt so pale. But also sure: sure to walk forever … the light, receding, like … like a memory. A memory of childhood, perhaps. A memory of a home that never was …

And the evening, sweating, seemed more humid than the day had been. And my head felt heavy as I walked, waiting, listening out, the thunder and the lightning. But I’d stopped thinking, at least. Idly, I mean. I couldn’t think: not really. I was just walking. One foot before the other. Still going on. Going on and on. And over the stream. And then out of the woods: beyond the grass and the flowers and the trees. And then out, at last, into the hard and real.

To the place where I lived.

‘Home’.

Was that it?

And it was a place where the sky seemed no longer clear and blue, as it had been, for a while, earlier in the day, but like the night into which I walked, grey and ragged with the smoky hopes of humankind. And a place where the air seemed thick with the bragging roar of souped-up cars and with the noise of screaming, brawling children, coming out to play with the darkness.

And where am I now?

They ask me …

I am not sure: I am not told.

‘D’you wan’ a fight?

D’you wan’ a fight then?

I’ll fuckin’ give you a fight.

I’ll fuckin’ … ‘

Yes.

This bloody life.

Bring your knives!

And come out to play, my children …

Why not?

Why ever not?

And the homes here are made from ashy breeze-blocks: the windows smashed then boarded up.

And the streets are from tarmacadam.

Fuck: this hurts.

Fuck: this really hurts.

Fuck.

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST – BEDE NIX

Dear … ,

I am a poet and storyteller who wishes you to feel welcome and at home in my words; at the same time, I seek your support and encouragement.

A selection of my writing and reading can be found here, at: www.bedenix.com

Among the words that you may find there is a self-description that reads as follows:

I am someone who devotes time, when time there is, to wondering about the world, in words. I try to take note of what I see and of what I hear and of what I taste and sense and feel, and of what I think about all this, by way of reaction. I try, too, to take note of what I have come to know and of what I have yet to learn. I write out these notes in words, in notebooks. And then I read these notebooks almost as musical notation, listening for the harmony. I try to make sense of my notes; I try to make some sense of my written-out world.

And elsewhere I make the following invitation to friends and readers:

If you would like me to write to you, or for you, or for us to think something through together, using different perspectives, mirrors, and reflections, and perhaps working things out, perhaps not, or if you would like that together we turn out thoughts to someone, and to hold that person dear, or if perhaps you would like to commission a specific text from me, some thoughts, in word, from me, to you, thinking things through, or even if it’s only, even only (never lonely), for us, simply, to find, some time (time), to sit quietly, together, in thought, and presence, then do please write, and do please write, please write to me, write to me, write now, at: info@bedenix.com

My hope is that you will also decide to write to me now, and to share with me your inspiration as to how best to encourage and to develop this, our shared writing life, shared words, shared labour of the imagination, shared adventure of the mind, and body, shared day in the sunlight, shared journey, shared human heart, and shared humanity.

And so I ask you: what is your reaction to these words?

What is your feeling?

Would you like to join other readers in becoming a sponsor, a patron, a fellow traveller, a friend?

Could you help me to cover certain of my basic living costs so as to encourage and allow me to liberate time and resources for further reading, further reflection, and further writing?

Or could we collaborate on a shared project, and work together?

Or are you inspired simply to teach me in some way, and to share with me your knowledge and experience? Or would you prefer that I come to you, to teach, and to learn?

Shall we talk?

Yes?

Okay, then; that’s excellent.

Thank you.

I am glad that we are now in contact, and look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Until then, I wish you insight, inspiration, and many moments of quiet happiness, and great joy.

All good things to you,
Bede Nix

ETYMOLOGIES OF A NAME - BEDE NIX

BEDE

Alternative forms: bead
Pronunciation: (UK) IPA(key): /biːd/

Etymology 1
From Middle English bēde (“prayer, request, supplication, order, command, rosary, bead”), from Old English gebed (“prayer, petition, supplication, religious service, an ordinance”), from Proto-Germanic *bedą (“prayer, entreaty”). Cognate with Dutch gebed and bede, German Gebet.

Noun
bede (plural bedes or beden)
prayer, request, supplication quotations
2011, Where Did Beaded Flowers Come From?:Because of the length of the original rosary, it became customary to pay someone, usually a resident of an almshouse, to recite the prayers. These people were referred to as bede women or men, and it was they who made the first bead flowers.
order, command
rosary

Etymology 2
From Middle English bēden (“to pray, offer, proffer, request, demand, order, command, forbid; proclaim, declare; present, counsel, advise, exhort”), from Old English bēodian (“to command, decree, summon, banish, declare, inform, announce, proclaim; threaten, offer, proffer, give, grant, surrender”), from Proto-Germanic *beudaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ-. Germanic cognates include Old Frisian biada, Old Saxon biodan (Low German beden), Dutch bieden, Old High German biotan (German bieten), Old Norse bjóða (Swedish bjuda (“command, show”)), Gothic *?????? (*biudan) (attested in compounds). The Indo-European root is also the source of Ancient Greek πευθεσθαι (peuthesthai, “ask for”), Sanskrit बोधयित (bodhayita, “wake”), Old Church Slavonic бъдети (bŭdeti) (Russian будить (budit’, “wake”)), Lithuanian budeti (“awake”).

Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bede

NIX

pronoun nothing.
– ORIGIN German, colloquial variant of nichts ‘nothing’.

Source: Oxford English Dictionary

INSPIRATION - BLUE SKY THINKING

BLUE SKY THINKING

Inspiration – Glimpses of Blue Sky Thinking – and Blue Sky Mind – A Book of Reflections Upon The Infinite Blue, of Bliss – A Book of Changes – to Awaken Mindfulness – A Sort of Template for Living, Or A Life Script – A Life Trip, High Flying – Emptiness Dancing – In Inspiration, Put Simply

‘Grant me a nature’, says Coleridge, ‘having two continuous forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely, while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity, and I will cause the world of intelligence to rise up before you’.

‘Through countless wandering

Hastening, lingering

From far I come

And pass from place to place

In a sleep-wandering pace

To seek my home …

(Edwin Muir)

‘Seeing the landscape, sketching a mindscape, gathering together the elements of a world …’

(Kenneth White)

‘There are so many dawns that have not yet shed their light’.

(The Rig Veda)

And still the sun seems new each day.

And does that strike a chord with you?

And so you say to yourself: these are letters to my unconscious, messages to myself. And, as I write these letters, just think of it – picture it – imagine it – in line with my words. Say to yourself: this is all so true. Self help, literally.

And listen for the sound of silence.

Deep silence.

And then, if you find it helpful, ring a mindfulness bell.

Think of it, if you will, as a call to prayer.

And as you pray, praise, too.

Adopt an attitude of gratitude.

And open your mind, and your heart.

Be free, to love.

And look, I am man. A woman. A transgender.

A transsexual man. A transsexual woman.

A little of one, and all.

But should you not wish to join me in being the best that you can possibly be, and in this way becoming a little like a god, then you would do me a wrong, failing, and disappointing me, for our lives are interwoven, my life, with yours, your life, with mine, and together we weave a whole.

Seek holiness, then.

Become A Whole.

Be whole.

Do all you can

With what you have

In the time you have

In the place you are

Do all you can

A life of prayer, in praise of all that is; holding everything dear.

And this everything, my dear reader, what is it?

It is what is, is what is meant to be; it is what needs to be; it is the ultimate reality trip; it is what is.

(The divine breath, without beginning or end).

And thanks to the English language we can in any case leap easily in imagination from “I” to “You” for this “You” is the “Youniverse”, if you will (and I do will), made up of all there is and, at one and the same time, made up only of (and by) you yourself, as if you were little more than an absolute expression of infinity, individually unique but collectively whole, the universe, a single verse of poetry, a humming hymn of thanks and praise, a whole hearted love.

Listen.

We sing because we have a song.

We are the song, and we are the singing.

And I have heard a zen koan described as follows:

The place and the time and the event where truth reveals itself.

So Be Here Now.

And as, curiously, you look around you, and as you discover and examine your world, know that what you see is your reality. Try to put into words what you see. Be honest: tell it as it is. For this, for now, is your reality. You not only form a part of it, if only in a modest way adding something, contributing something to that reality that you now perceive; you must also assume it, own it, take responsibility for it and, where necessary, change it. Do not stand back or stand by. Try, rather, to be an active part of the story as it unfolds: make it up, if you have to, invent a new story, then act it out, act up, act now. Get with the plot, step forward, enter the picture, take a stand, make it so.

In the words of Proust, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Draw upon inspiration like water from a bottomless well.

Be inspired

Thinking it up

Thinking it through

To think through ink

To put pen to paper

To write it all down

Write now

Tingling … tinkling … inkling … thinkling …

To be creative … free … inspired …

(And if you realized just how free you are, now, you would explode with joy!)

Einstein tells us that there are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing were a miracle; the other as though everything were a miracle.

And some say, like Eden Phillpotts, that the world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our eyes to grow sharper.

And what do you say?

What do you think?

What is your point of view?

And what, then, your part?

Listen:

Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you. (These words are attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne).

I say: surely it is foolish to pursue what the Japanese call “Karoshi”, or death by overwork; wiser would perhaps be to pursue a Zen path of non-activity. The Chinese call this “Wu Wei”. Learn to relax; to sit properly (“Seiza”); to sit still; to be still.

Come; sit; sit here beside me; come, sit with me; come sit with me, by my side; come sit with me, for a spell; be my company …

And simply let go of all the tension that has accumulated in your body.

Let go of all your thoughts, all your mental chatter.

Let go of your mind.

Let yourself fall!

(Surrender).

And now, if you’re following me, understand me, and all shall be yours.

For the whole universe bows down before a quiet mind.

The whole universe surrenders to a quiet mind.

The whole universe surrenders to the person of stillness.

Sit still, be calm, be patient, take your time.

“Do not expect full realization”, says Milarepa; “simply practice every day of your life”.

Do your practice and all is coming.

Practice makes perfect.

The gift of Truth conquers all gifts. The taste of Truth conquers all sweetness. The joy of Truth conquers all pleasures. The loss of desires conquers all sorrows.

The one of noble character, of virtue and vision, who follows the Path of Perfection, whose words are truth, and who does the work to be done – the world shall love such a man, such a woman.

And the man or woman whose mind, filled with determination, is longing for the infinite, and who is free from sensuous pleasures, is called uddham-soto, “he or she who goes upstream”, for against the current of passions and worldly life he or she is bound for the joy of infinite bliss …

And shall we set off together in a cheerful little boat, upstream, to a land of peace and tranquillity whose green gardens are watered always by running streams …

And we’re sure to sleep there upon a grass pillow.

And light of heart, to dream of wandering into a grove of flowering plums …

***

Arise! Raise thyself by thy Self; train thyself by thy Self. And, under the shelter of the Self, and ever watchful, bright like a moon free from clouds, thou shalt live in supreme joy …

For the person whose hands are controlled, whose feet are controlled, who is self‑controlled in all things, and who finds the inner joy, with a mind self‑possessed, who is one and who dwells in a perfect inner peace; this person, one might call a religious, intimately bound up with the ways of the universe, as if a monk.

Monos – Solitary – Alone – All One – Whole

Make, then, a splendid island for your self. Hasten and strive. Be wise. And, with the dust of impurities blown off, and free from sinful passions, come unto the glorious land of the great and the wise.

***

Show self-control and moderation in food.

Familiarize yourself with the solitude of your room and your bed.

Recall these words: Faith – Watchfulness – Energy – Contemplation – Vision

Do not do what should not be done; do not hurt by deed or word; do not what is evil.

Do what should be done; do what is good.

Overcome anger, by peacefulness; overcome evil, by good; overcome the mean, by generosity; and overcome the one who lies, by truth.

Speak the truth, yield not to anger, give what you can to whoever asks: these three steps alone will lead you to the feet of the gods.

Be wise; let your work be well done; live in love; and in truth, supreme, act in honour …

Keep your mind pure. Be awake. Know boundless joy.

For this is a search for highest consciousness.

Manifest, then, as your highest self, divine.

Asking: shall we then dance, you and I?

Dancing the Ananda Tandava, with Shiva and Paravati …

To connect the five senses: hearing; smell; sight; touch; taste.

To connect the five elements: fire; water; earth; wind; ether.

To dance the Cosmic Dance.

Happiness.

Bliss.

In making, and remaking

The World, as

Universe.

And as the bee takes the essence of a flower and flies away without destroying its beauty and its perfume, so let the sage wander freely in this life.

***

See the Way of life as a stream. A person floats easily, the way is smooth. Flowing in the deeper currents, you may well pass through. The same person, turning away from and struggling against the current, becomes quickly exhausted. To be One with the Universe, find your current, your flow, your stream, your path, your way, and surrender, as if only to follow.

***

Confucius tells us: The way of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind.

In meditation it is possible to dive deeply into the mind and to know a place where there is no disturbance but only an absolute quietness and solitude. Try, then, to live in this state of deep meditation and contemplation: make yourself familiar with the solitude of silence and the joy of quietness. It is here, and now, in single-pointedness, in the profound stillness of supreme contemplation, that the sound of the supreme mind itself is heard.

The word “Sesshin” refers to “gathering the mind” or “stilling your thoughts”.

In Soto Zen, “shikantaza” means simply “sitting … just sitting”. That is, it is a form of meditation with no object, no anchor, no content. You strive, without striving, simply to be aware of the stream of your thoughts, allowing thoughts to arise and pass away without interference, and thereby going beyond the stream of thoughts, and into a great silence.

And when you are sitting in meditation in this way, and a thought drifts into your mind, remind yourself that, “that’s not my business”, and let the thought go …

For we practice precisely to learn how to let go, knowing that enlightenment appears when your mind is no longer muddied by wants and desires. It follows, then, that if you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. And if you let go completely, you will have complete peace.

Know, then, that when desires go, joy comes.

Do not think, however, that practice means only sitting with the eyes closed. Steady practice means keeping mindful in every posture, whether sitting, walking, standing, or lying down. When coming out of sitting, do not think that you are coming out of meditation, only that you are changing postures. If you reflect in this way, you will surely find peace. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, try to maintain this attitude of awareness.

Know that “Samadhan” means “constant concentration of the mind”.

Be mindful, then.

Be here now.

Know, too, that you are your own best teacher. Investigate yourself to find the truth; go inside yourself. Knowing yourself is the most important thing. Read and reread the lines of your key text: the heart. Learn them by heart. Know them by heart. Look to your heart. Look through your heart. Keep close to your heart. Keep heart. And then speak from the heart. And, in this way, become self-enlightened and self-certified.

Says Watazumi Doso:

It’s fine that you are all deep into music. But there’s something deeper and if you would go deeper, if you go to the source of where the music is being made, you’ll find something even more interesting. At the source, everyone’s individual music is made. If you ask what the deep place is, it’s your own life, and it’s knowing your own life, that own way that you live. And when you hear some music or hear some sound, if for some reason you like it very well, the reason is that that sound is in balance or in harmony with your pulse. And so, making a sound, you try to make different sounds that imitate various different sounds of the universe, but what you are finally making is your own sound, the sound of yourself.

And recall the trial of Joseph Brodsky:

The judge asks: “And what is your profession?”

Brodsky answers: “I am a poet and a literary translator”.

The judge: “Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?”

Brodsky: “No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?”

Judge: “Did you study this?”

Brodsky: “This?”

Judge: “How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?”

Brodsky: “I didn’t think you could get this from school?”

Judge: “How then?”

Brodsky: “I think it comes … from God.”

Says Ajahn Chah:

The heart of the path is quite easy. There’s no need to explain anything at length. Let go of love and hate and simply let things be.

Breathe in deeply.

Then release, let go.

Exhale.

Relax.

Once upon a time in ancient Japan, a young man was studying martial arts under a famous teacher. Every day the young man would practise in a courtyard along with the other students. One day, as the master watched, he could see that the other students were consistently interfering with the young man’s technique. Sensing the student’s frustration, the master approached the student and tapped him on the shoulder. “What is wrong?”, enquired the teacher. “I cannot execute my technique and I do not understand why”, replied the student. “This is because you do not understand harmony. Please follow me”, said the master. Leaving the practice hall, the master and student walked a short distance into the woods until they came upon a stream. After standing silently beside the streambed for a few minutes, the master spoke. “Look at the water”, he instructed. “It does not slam into the rocks and stop out of frustration, but instead flows around them and continues down the stream. Become like the water and you will understand harmony.” Soon, the student learned to move and flow like the stream, and none of the other students could keep him from executing his techniques.

GO WITH THE FLOW

BE ZEN

Try to be mindful and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still. This is happiness.

When we observe things calmly we notice that all things have their fulfilment, says Basho Matsuo.

(It’s a cause for celebration).

(It calls for celebration).

(Okay, then; let’s celebrate, let’s have a party!)

And we see that certain messages appear, clothed in different words and phrases, again and again. They urge us to develop enthusiasms, to take action, to face up to fears, to never give up, to believe in ourselves, not to be daunted by the mistakes of the past, and to regard each new day as a miracle.

The great essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. (Joseph Addison)

And the cure for boredom is curiosity.

(There is no cure for curiosity).

Listen, then, to me.

If you find a man who is constant, awake to the inner light, learned, long-suffering, endowed with devotion, a noble man – follow this good and great man even as the moon follows the path of the stars.

AND OUR EYES ARE A WINDOW TO THE SOUL, they say.

LOOK INTO MY EYES!

LOOK INTO MY EYES, DEEPLY, GO DEEPLY, GO AS FAR AS YOU CAN, THEN GO FURTHER, THEN FURTHER STILL: LOOK INTO THE DEPTHS OF MY EYES; GO DEEPLY, DEEPLY DOWN, GO REALLY, REALLY DEEP; GO TO YOUR GREATEST DEPTHS, MY EYES.

And tell me:

WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THE DEPTHS OF MY EYES?

NOW WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THEM, THERE, AT THE VERY DISTANT LIMIT OF YOUR SEEING?

WHAT IS IT THAT NOW YOU SEE?

*****

No, don’t worry – I’m just teasing you.

This isn’t the movies you know!

This is for real.

And yet, what is this reality?

The world, after all, is but a canvas to our imagination.

And this reality is in my head, like a fabulous dream, full with emptiness: the world is in my head.

And this reality is in my body, inhabiting it with ease, like a familiar land: my body is in the world.

My body is in the world.

The world is in my head.

And if the eyes are a window to the soul, as they say, then the voice – this voice – is a passage to the heart.

My friend: go to the heart of what you want to say; speak always from the heart!

(Knowing that it’s not about how your voice compares with others; it’s about HOW SOUND YOU ARE, AND HOW YOU SOUND).

And, speaking from the heart – take these words to heart – and then read this text, aloud, then reread it, again and again, day after day, repeating time and time again: glimpses of blue sky mind, we call it. INSPIRATION.

For a person is what he or she deeply desires; as you think, so you are.

And wherever your mind goes, your self follows.

And the flower returns to its root;

Even as the echo answers to the voice;

And even as the shadow follows the shape.

And as it is written in the Dhammapada:

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow; our life is the creation of our mind.

(And as we have sown, so do we reap).

And if a man speaks but a few holy words and yet he lives the life of those words, free from passion and hate and illusion – with right vision and a mind free, craving for nothing both now and hereafter – the life of this man is a life of holiness.

So, I say to you: love not what you are but what you may become, for our aspirations are our potential, our possibilities, and our future.

And where some men see things as they are and say “why?”, I dream things that never were and say “why not?”

For a man or a woman is what he or she thinks about all day long.

And the greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitude of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven, says Milton.

Be mindful, then, of your thoughts.

Choose your path wisely.

Question your thinking and change the world; for these thoughts, too, these words, will change your life.

For it is said that, if you take an intention to your heart and repeat it there, 1,008 times a day for 45 days, your goal will be attained, your dream made manifest.

And you begin to achieve when you begin to believe.

Go confidently, then, in good faith, with trust, in the direction of your dreams.

Writing as in the sky, make manifest your dreams!

Live the life you have imagined and live it well, living completely in the present, launching yourself on every wave, finding your eternity in each and every moment.

(And know that our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. Dream, then, as on a bed of clouds; clouds, my pillow. Know that for you the sky is the limit!)

And with the remainder of your time, simply listen, and listen carefully, very carefully.

Now.

*****

As Blue walks into the labyrinth …

Absolute silence is demanded of all its visitors, so their presence does not disturb the poets who are directing the excavations. Digging can only proceed on the calmest of days as rain and wind destroy the finds.

The archaeology of sound has only just been undertaken and for the moment remains a somewhat haphazard discipline, more art than science.

Blue watches as a word or phrase materializes in scintillating sparks, a poetry of fire which casts everything into darkness with the brightness of its reflections.

Blue protects white from innocence.

Blue drags black with it

Blue is darkness made visible

And now I ask you in all seriousness:

Where are you placing your attention now that I distract you?

Recall that watchfulness is the path of immortality.

Watchful amongst the unwatchful, awake amongst those who sleep, the wise man like a swift horse runs his race, outrunning those who are slow.

And the monk who has the joy of watchfulness and who looks with fear on thoughtlessness, he goes on his path like a fire, burning all obstacles both great and small.

So, whatever you do, watch where you are going …

BE HERE NOW.

And now that you have collected yourself a little, please pay me some attention; heed my words.

Be conscious.

And I ask you: you can enjoy … how much … joy … do you think … you can … enjoy?

(And where are you placing your attention now, right now, this very moment?)

And listen …

I am sitting still.

I feel; I sense; I touch; I look; I watch; I listen; I learn.

I am quiet, calm, still, always observing, observing everything with the wide-eyed innocence of a child, seeking understanding.

And I know that the wise man removes impurities from himself even as a silversmith removes impurities from the silver: one by one, little by little, again and again.

I am alive.

And I am wide awake.

My mind is very alert.

My mind is clear.

And I know perfectly, in this moment, that energy is eternal delight, and that energy is something that I have in abundance, always.

The wise man straightens his mind as a maker of arrows makes his arrows straight.

Channel, then, your energy.

Burning bright, one-pointedness.

Eternal delight.

And I realize, now, that each thought rings out with the clarity and brightness of a bell.

Like a call to prayer.

And notice, too, how easily I move from I to You, ebbing and flowing, moving back and forth, easily, like the breath, like an inhalation to the ground of the self, a point lost in the infinite and then refound, and then an exhalation out to You, a point lost in the infinite and then again refound; breathing consciously; consciousness breathing.

May you experience loving kindness.

May you experience great compassion.

May you know happiness and the causes of happiness.

May you know great joy.

May you display great equanimity.

May you attain enlightenment.

***

For such is life.

And wherever I go …

There you are.

And here I am.

And wherever I go …

And wherever you are …

Be here now.

For here is the most exciting of places.

And this is where it’s all happening, right now.

And so there’s nowhere better to be …

On earth.

Now.

And so be it.

Good.

And listen.

Ethics is easy.

Ethics, too: easy; easy does it.

For that deed is not well done when being done one has to repent; and when one must reap with tears the bitter fruits of the wrong deed.

And, if you think about it, a fool who thinks he is wise in fact goes through life with himself as his enemy, and he ever does wrong deeds which in the end bear bitter fruit.

And if, then, on the great journey of life, a man cannot find one who is better or at least as good as himself, let him joyfully travel alone, like a king who has left his country, or like a great elephant alone in the forest: a fool cannot help him on his journey.

For it is better to go alone on the path of life than to have a fool for a companion. With few wishes and few cares, and leaving all sins behind, let a man travel alone, like a great elephant alone in the forest. For he who can be alone and rest alone is never weary of his great work, he can live in joy, when master of himself, by the edge of the forest of desires.

If, however, a fool can see his own folly, he is wise at least in this; but the fool who thinks he is wise, he indeed is a real fool.

And even if during the whole of his life a fool lives with a wise man, he never knows the path of wisdom as the spoon never knows the taste of the soup.

But if a man who watches and sees is only a moment with a wise man he soon knows the path of wisdom, as the tongue knows the taste of the soup.

Look, then, upon the man who tells thee thy faults, as if he told thee of a hidden treasure, for the wise man shows thee the dangers of life. Follow that man: he who follows him will see good and not evil.

Let him admonish and let him instruct, and let him restrain from what is wrong. He will be loved by those who are good and hated by those who are not.

Have not for friends those whose soul is ugly; go not with men who have an evil soul. Have for friends those whose soul is beautiful; go with men whose soul is good.

He who drinks of the waters of Truth, he rests in joy with mind serene. The wise find their delight in the DHARMA, in the Truth revealed by the great.

Good men, at all times, surrender in truth all attachments. The holy spend not idle words on things of desire. When pleasure or pain comes to them, the wise feel above pleasure and pain.

He who for himself or others craves not for sons or power or wealth, who puts not his own success before the success of righteousness, he is virtuous, and righteous, and wise.

Few cross the river of time and are able to reach NIRVANA. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river.

But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.

Leaving behind the path of darkness and following the path of light, let the wise man then leave his home life and go into a life of freedom. In solitude that few enjoy, let him find his joy supreme: free from possessions, free from desires, and free from whatever may darken his mind.

For he whose mind is well trained in the ways that lead to light, who surrenders the bondage of attachments and finds joy in his freedom from bondage, who free from the darkness of passions shines pure in a radiance of light, even in this mortal life he enjoys the immortal NIRVANA.

Aspire, then, to wisdom.

Asking:

Who are you?

This, at least.

Here, and now.

Present.

***

And you are a person who carries with you, at all times, a small cloth or leather bag in which you have pens and paper, and a number of blank cards; a writing board; some glue and a small pair of scissors; a camera; the book that you are currently reading; a notebook containing words to learn from the various languages that you are studying; a notebook of quotations to learn by heart; your journal; your latest story or manuscript, in loose leaf and notebook form; and, finally, a rather special notebook that, for ease of reference, we shall call here “inspiration”.

(The Songs of the Sage).

And this notebook, entitled “Inspiration” is one of many notebooks that you are continually revising and updating. You are a person, after all, who takes notice: you are a person who takes notice of everything. And as you notice everything, so too do you make a mental note of everything. And, moving swiftly from thought to action, you immediately put pen to paper, noting down all your thoughts and impressions in your notebooks and journals. You keep a journal, too, in the sense of a travel log or waybook, an account of a journey through life, or of a record of a life lived moment by moment, thought by thought, line by line, day by day. You attempt to map out the vast territories of the mind – majestic, magnificent, beautiful, blissful – that mind – your mind – that can do such marvellous things – that mind that knows –

INSPIRATION.

Human alchemy.

Thinking …

Think it up; think it through …

Think through ink.

Ink!

Write yourself, write the world.

Put pen to paper: write it down; write it up; write it out.

Write now.

***

INSPIRATION.

Human alchemy.

And now, going on with that inner journey, I want you to focus on your breath.

Be mindful of your breath.

Now …

This moment …

Make from your breath at once an anchor securing you to the bottom of the ocean and a springboard launching you high into the sky.

Make from your breath your sanctuary.

And you know, of course, that there is nothing more natural to you than breathing.

And, similarly, your heart continues to beat even when you are unaware of it doing so.

And of what else are you unaware?

Or of what else are you not yet aware?

And you have in fact been going further and further into trance your whole life: trance into transition into transformation.

And you have noticed that, when it needs to, your awareness migrates … automatically … following an inner voice, an inner awareness, a place, an inner space of quiet, comfort and effortless relaxation … where suddenly you know that the time is right for a change … and where suddenly you know the exact change needed … and you recognize that feeling now … an act of recognition … of re-knowing … of re-learning … of re-membering … that something needs to change … and that something needs to change … now … and naturally we can imagine what it might feel like to know without knowing what needs to be done, and to be told, without hearing, by an inner voice, an inner feeling, that you should … DO THIS NOW … and you, responding effortlessly, automatically, to this voice, observe the actions, the flow … of words … words forming associations … echoes … a galaxy of meaning … and this, an inner knowing … that tells you what to do, and when … and you, responding effortlessly, automatically, to this voice, observe the actions, the flow … of words … words forming associations … echoes … a galaxy of meaning … and this, an inner knowing … that tells you what to do, and when … and you … you are someone born with the knowledge … the awareness … the wisdom … to know … to trust that feeling … naturally … and at the same time to be so comfortably aware of yourself … that at last … all is easy … a migration of thought … a migration of awareness … as your mind moves effortlessly now towards those things needed …

And your mind is crystal clear.

Asking: what, then, is your plan of action? What is your life plan? And how do you wish, now, to proceed?

And I ask you, too: do you have any recollection, any recollection whatsoever, no matter how faint or vague, of how you learnt to learn? And have you any recollection, any recollection whatsoever, no matter how faint or vague, of how difficult it was for you to learn to recognize and to reach out for objects, for example, and likewise to learn to recognize the faces of those around you, and then to learn not only to cry but also how to make noises meaningfully, how to produce sounds with your breath, neck, tongue, mouth, voice, sounds in imitation of the sounds of nature, and sounds in imitation of the sounds, voices, you heard around you, and sounds that would soon form words to become speech, and then to learn how to eat without spilling all of your food down your chin, and to learn how to hold a knife and a fork, and to learn how to sleep quietly alone in your bed at night, tired but happy, and then to learn how to concentrate and focus, a concentration, a focus, on the strength of which you learn first how to raise your neck, then how to sit up, then how to stand up on your own two feet and to walk, and you learn how to ride your bicycle, and you learn how to read and write, and you learn, too, how to be patient, and how to listen, and how to hear, and how to look after things, and how to look after others, and how to love? And now you do not even know, I think, how you learned to remember to do any of those things, now, do you?

And I ask you: what do you have that you did not first receive?

Think of a sunbeam, a ray of outpouring light, a gift to see.

(And far away in that sunshine, beyond even the very farthest horizon, are my highest aspirations. I may not realize all of them but at least I can try to do so, as I look up and recognize their beauty, and believe in my dreams and aspirations, and follow them, and pursue them, saying:

Hold always near, and dear, to your heart, your hopes and dreams.

Listen. What you do remember perfectly – now – what you do now know – is that you can learn whatever it is that you need to learn, and that you can do whatever it is that you need and want to do, and that you can always go wherever you wish to go, and that you can think whatever you wish to think, and that you can write whatever you wish to write, and that you can be whatever you wish … to be … free … here … and now …

And you know full well that learning is easy when you are deeply relaxed.

And you are deeply relaxed.

For you know, now, what it feels like to be completely relaxed.

And condition your mind, then, to this state of deep relaxation.

And take any doubts and anxieties and delusions and false beliefs that you may have, and see them now for what they truly are, as foolishness, as triviality, as nothing … and let them go, then, now, and let them fade away completely, and let them disappear from your universe, forever.

And then set up a pattern … of letting go … so that your mind can follow naturally, easily, automatically.

Breathe freely.

Be relaxed, Blue.

Be Bliss.

And I wonder: have you not realized that every blade of grass in a meadow and, that’s to say, every single blade of grass in a glorious, idyllic summer meadow, is a subtly different shade of green?

Go take a look, my friend: look long and hard; look again and again.

And whatever you do, do not give up.

Recall the words of Thomas Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

And facing it, always facing it. That’s the way to get through it. Face it. Let’s face it.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

Step out: the support will be there, the wire will support, you will find your way.

Tighten the rope. Sleep walk, if you wish.

Man on wire, on fire.

Trust, have faith.

Step out.

And live, then, on the edge,

As if you were going to die tomorrow.

Throw yourself into life.

At the same time, study long and hard, day after day, as if you were going to live forever.

And remind yourself that …

Repetition is the key to success.

Practice makes perfect.

And:

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

And keep always in mind that even if you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start at any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.

And those things that hurt, instruct.

For some of the best lessons we ever learn, we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the success and the wisdom of the future. In any case, a mistake may sometimes be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

In the words of Charles Franklin Kettering: “I could do nothing without my problems; they toughen my mind. In fact, I tell my assistants not to bring me their successes for they weaken me; but rather to bring me their problems, for they strengthen me”.

For a positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the negative, he refuses to dwell on it. Positive thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worst conditions.

No failure, only feedback.

Keep in mind, then, the Buddhist sayings: “Expect nothing!” and “Suffer more!”

See it all as character building.

And say to yourself:

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we must walk over that path again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to guide our lives. Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

I’ll keep going, then, with all my courage and strength and focus and determination.

I’ll keep on going; I’ll keep on going, stubbornly.

And that’s just fine.

And, in the same way that a crystal is not fragile, but fine, be fine, my friend.

For you are doing just fine.

And everything is just fine.

So let go, again; just keep on letting go, refining, going deeper and deeper …

And do not hold your breath, ever.

Breathe freely, now and forever …

And I shall weave words from the winds; with these words, I shall give you wings, to fly; and upon these wings I shall write, among other words, the words “peace” and “love”, “trust” and “courage”, “forgiveness” and “openness”, “understanding” and “energy”, “joy” and “bliss”, “confidence”, “take heart”, “be bold”, and “go”; and with these words, like wings, you shall fly all over the world; and you shall love the feeling of freedom that the sensation of flying affords you; and you shall love to take wing, and to fly …

And you will listen to the sound of my voice, saying:

The time is always now.

So know, now, that this, then, is the right moment to begin …

To breathe your body into relaxation.

And:

A soft breeze …

Moisture in the air …

A deep breath …

A drop in the ocean:

Inspiration –

The mind’s ability to do amazing things.

A gateway to trance.

An arrival; an (en)trance; a beginning.

The moving mind; the mind, in motion.

And your mind may now wish to move, to wander, to travel.

And that’s fine, too, for you have surely noticed, now, that your awareness migrates always to there where you need to place your attention.

AND THIS IS WHERE WE MEET

Let’s simply go, trust.

Let’s be open, free.

Let’s lose ourselves in love.

For when you need something, there it is.

And when you look for something, you find it.

And when you look for this or that person, some / one / special, you find them, too.

And when someone is looking for you, well, likewise, they find you, if not immediately, at once, then very, very soon.

For wherever you go, there you are.

And you are always present, saying:

Be Here Now.

So stranger, if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?

( … for the riddle that other people represent has occupied me all my life: and that’s to say, I find you interesting! But I am not expecting a simple answer from you; what I seek is a deepening of understanding, a shared humanity, a sense of communion).

And you, Stranger: are you a sound in search of echo, or a call that seeks response, saying: come, let’s wonder about the world together; tell me about your world! Where is your earth, for example, your plot of land? And where, your roots? And what is your point of view? And from where have you come? Where do you hail from? And how far have you travelled to be here now? And where are you, now, in fact? Where are you on your travels? And where do you think to go next?

Or are you perhaps one who prefers not to know where you are going, simply enjoying the sensation of being a little lost, a little adrift, floating, swimming, in the river of life, and facing it, faceless, all faces, in motion, emotion, movement itself, a mystery, travelling always towards the over there, beyond, and beyond even I am That, in ecstasy, a hum.

Asking: what is your name? What mine? How shall we say? Who are you, then? And who do you say that I am?

(Knowing that the most important thing is not so much what you call me – and the possibility that you might be mistaken, getting my name quite wrong, like calling a wrong number; no, the important thing is simply that you call. So please, smile, say hello, establish contact, make a call, write a letter, be in touch, share a word, share a world …

And I am so happy that now our paths have crossed, for here is where we meet.

This day, this journey; and so many journeys, paths crossed, stories shared: a time to talk, break bread, sip tea; a time to keep silence; a time to move on.

It’s been a pleasure to meet you.

(Thank you).

May you know great happiness, in love, and gratitude.

Until next time: bon voyage, my friend, fare well.

And say to yourself: …

I am so happy that now our paths have crossed.

Crossed paths, shared journeys.

So much to say, to tell.

To give, to receive.

To live, and to learn.

Looking up; looking forwards; looking out.

And just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. (Albert Schweitzer)

Says Einstein: “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest … a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

And Dostoevsky: “Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all … “

A rain of blessings.

And this night, then – this night – shall be for us a night of storytelling, and the heavens above, for a little while, our home, and the stars, our company.

And from here, or there, wherever, floating freely, looking up, looking down, upon first a darkness, impenetrable, becoming slowly, gradually, the sound, whirling, like a breeze, a swirling mist, in the depths, vibrating, the voice, acting, refracting, like a light, so that, letting there be light, there is light, and this light, subtle, revealing to us, then, little by little, ourselves, to ourselves, so slowly, so subtly, at first, and as if we were floating upon an ocean, vast and beautiful, of faces, so many faces, now faint, now clear, and human faces, so many, to see, to see the sea, sounding, seeing, listening, hearing, feeling the humming voices, vibrating, and telling stories, so many stories, and what extraordinary, or simply ordinary, extraordinary, stories, indeed, vast, and beautiful, and boundless, they are, like an ocean, and each one a drop in a beautiful, boundless ocean, vast, and like an ocean of story, a sea of stories, to see, to hear, to tell.

And aren’t you going, then …

To see the sea?

To see the sea!

(The Far Horizon)

Imagine!

(For you have always know that imagination is more important than knowledge; fire your mind now; free your imagination).

And yet, how is it, then, that we

Journey

To wonder at

The might of the mountains

The surge of the seas

The roaming of the rivers

The awesome grandeur of the oceans

And the circling of the stars …

While at the same time we pass ourselves by without ever …

Wondering … ?

And from that thought, there, return, then, here, and now, to this time and place, the earth …

Take your bearings.

Stretch out your arms, the horizontal line, stretching out towards the far horizon.

You are here, now.

At a crossroads, the beginning of a path, a way.

(And always the centre of things; the middle way).

That way, North. That way, East. That way, South. That way, West.

The Great North. The Far East. The Deep South. The Wild West.

Breathe deeply, stand up straight, walk tall.

Be vertical, stretch up, reach up.

Try to touch the sky: heavens above.

And, suspended like a line between heaven and earth, vertical and horizontal, plumb the depths and soar up into the heights. Work on your poise, develop balance. Be at once earthed and heavenly. Human and divine. Know yourself. To be, becoming.

And hold this thought, like golden earth, in the palm of your hand.

And feel your roots, saying: let this thought be as our hearth.

(The base or ground note, the earth beneath our feet).

And let the fire burn bright.

Now.

Within.

Earth, Wind, Water, Air, Fire.

And please, gather around, for we’ll sit close together, now, this night, and for a while, at least, be warmed by …

The sound of the human voice, divine, saying …

Listen.

Whenever you feel inspired to do so, all the time, putting pen to paper, again and again, you write to me.

And what will you write?

That’s up to you.

Keeping only this in mind: hold everything dear.

And you shall begin, then, by writing:

To dear …

(Add names)

(Add words)

And be inspired, quite simply.

For your words, whatever you write, shall be wonderful, to me.

And your life, a life of words, true words.

(Shingon Buddhism)

Breath, rhythm, sound, song.

And what fabulous adventures you shall speak of, then, describing them in wonderful detail, and adventures, that’s to say, seeking expression, in words, in language, in sound speech, and in the music of the heavens, the songs of the soul, and … sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. And I tell you … then … that … here … in this place … sometimes …

… a thousand twanging instruments …

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again …

Knowing, then, that our minds, when dreaming near the dawn, are of the truth, and my thoughts, as the weaving …

… of a magical garment for my muse, of perfect workmanship.

For a goddess’s robe is seamless, woven entirely on the loom.

And the dream, the pattern, the story, always changing, unfolding …

To dream a dream, of …

A holy well.

And an ink well … thinking …

… of words … wondrous words … welling up, warm, like tears … tears of the moist, muddy earth … fruit of mother nature … a fabulous abundance … a magical, fabulous flow … of wondrous words … and energy … each word, a seed, a thought, becoming … a necessity, a karma, destiny, or fate … my word … my wyrd … and words … being … weaving … spun … woven … a voice, first thin, like mist … then reverberating … breeze, stirring … my voice, looming out from the dark depths … from the very breath of the winds, divine, that have blown us here, together, now, in service to the animating principle, the thin, spinning sunbeam thread, like golden flax, telling, tapestry of the tale, first found – picked out – plucked from thin air – then told – trouvere – troubadour – told, spun, woven – tantra, texare – weather woven words, worn … into text, weaving, being … an image, a vision, a story … spun … of writing a world to be, calling out, obscurely, world writing, in mind – sound searching echo, question, and response …

… Kotodama …

(The land where the mysterious workings of language bring bliss).

My self, your self.

(Atman).

And you know full well, now, always, that your very greatest adventures are interior, when perhaps on the outside not much appears to be happening, and there is only stillness, and silence, and on the inside, by contrast, all is in motion, in e-motion, and the breath, animating the mind, that moves, dances, trances, and always being the centre of a boundless knowledge, understanding, imagination, creativity, beauty, bliss, being here and now.

To sound true.

And to hit always the right note.

For you have realized – haven’t you? – that our soul is composed of harmony, and this, the music of life …

Twelve (or … goodness knows … how many?) tones, like the steps of a ladder, ascending to heaven …

To sound true.

And to hit always the right note.

And, that’s to say, to be in tune, to be in harmony: to be in tune, in harmony, with all the people around you, your community, to be in tune, in harmony, with your environment, to be in tune, in harmony, in accord, one single, multi-layered chord, with your own nature, and to be in tune, in harmony, then, as a natural consequence, with the world, and to be in tune, in harmony, too, with me, right now, this moment, listening to the sound of my voice, your voice, our voices singing out, clearly, beautifully, producing such a lovely, wonderful sound, and a sound that takes us away with it, now, as in the most magnificent dream, a sound creating sacred space, sound space, a beautiful music to the ears, like singing with angels, the sound moving, dancing, flying, soaring upwards to heaven, a paradise of bliss.

And reach out, make contact, feel free.

And be bold, in touch, and sound, in word and deed.

Have no fear.

Take heart.

Brave heart.

Find your voice.

And sing.

Indeed, and above all, have confidence: forget about the rest of the world for a minute. Go within: this is your true reality. Listen to the music of the mind, then dance to it.

(And what I say may be perfectly true. It certainly sounds true.)

And this, according to Diogenes, is why philosophy is useful:

“If nothing else, to ensure that we are ready for any destiny.”

And you know that all human beings share the same basic wish to be happy and to avoid suffering.

We are not so very different, you and i.

My friend, you have nothing to fear.

Be calm.

I give you inspiration and encouragement.

And this, now: a meeting of minds.

(A community).

And I ask you, then:

Where should I look for you?

Where will I find you?

Where do you belong?

And I tell you:

I do not belong anywhere, in particular.

I belong everywhere.

And where do you happen to be living, just now?

On the planet earth, mostly.

Oh yes?

Yes.

For truly I aspire TO BE a citizen of the world, a citizen of the cosmos, a true cosmopolitan: universal man and woman, parts of a whole. For my intention is to make all feel familiar, so that wherever I am, and wherever I go in the world, I open my mind and allow myself all at once to feel everything around me as extraordinarily and beautifully familiar and intimate to me. So I call, then, not as if for the very first time; rather, I re-call, little by little remembering everything. And I say to myself: “Yes, I recognize this place and these people. It all feels so familiar. And in fact I feel completely at home here, as if I’ve been here always. I am among my family.”

Draw near, then, my friend, come close: make all feel familiar, hold everything dear.

Asking: for what are you seeking?

What is it that really and truly you want?

And: is it useful? Does it work? And is your thinking sound? And are your thoughts in conformity with reality? And is your world in harmony?

And remember, too, that if at all possible – whenever you can – and that’s to say, at all times – always – you must call each thing by its true name. Adam, the ground, the earth. Be always honest: tell it as it is. And watch your tongue, then, watch your language, pay attention. For your words not only reflect the world, as it is – tell it – as it is – they also create the world. So always be sound, true, sound, be, always. And attend to your breath, ENERGY, draw in inspiration, follow your genius, ETERNAL, go with the flow, map the wyrd songlines of your inner world, map your mind, DELIGHT, make music, dreaming.

And if you are looking for answers, ask questions, asking:

Why do you not simply explore the world – yes, this world, the one you’re standing on, and the here and now, as it is, or appears to be, right now?

For you know that although on your passport it says this or that, in truth you are a Hyperborean. And the Hyperborean is engaged on an erratic path to a far-out something. What people see are the erratics (the stones he leaves on his path), what he sees are flashes of the far-out thing. Or so says Kenneth White. And he may again be quite right.

In a state of ecstasy, then, or of far-outness, move first towards what you value, then explore your limits, then try to stretch those limits and to develop the courage simply to let go, and to lose yourself completely, and to be completely relaxed, completely open, and to be in selflessness, bliss.

(Be Zen)

(No limits)

(No boundaries)

(No solutions)

(No names)

And then, in tranquillity, return to your centre, be restored.

And your mind, then, is as a miniature world. And yet your body is at the same time in and of the world. Let go, then, of the need to understand, and to control. Nor look down to test the ground before taking your next step, for only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road. Let go, then, of all fear and trembling, doubt and hesitation. Let go of everything, indeed. Be free.

And in your imagination you travel often, and easily, from north to south and from east to west, and from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

And likewise you move with ease between the left and the right hemispheres of your brain.

And your brain itself is like a miniature world and perhaps, to you, it is the only world that you shall ever know; and in your throat, stuck there, a testament not only to love, and to desire, but a testament, too, to your curiosity, a piece of Adam’s Apple; and your heart, too, wilful, independent, a law unto itself, a world apart and it, too, a little like a brain, a centre of feeling and emotion, intuition and insight; and, lower in the body, the intestines, the stomach, the serpent of the knowledge of good and evil, the great power of the Kundalini; and, lower still, going down, you begin to lose your discrete sense of self; and you lose yourself in the joy, the delirium, of the body; and in the joy of sex, you lose your self.

And so whenever, losing yourself, you are feeling down, move your energy up, from the pit of the stomach to first the heart, and then the brain, and find yourself again.

Imagine it’s the movies, now MOVE!

(You look a million dollars, by the way; a real star!)

Move from depression to expression.

Express the thoughts that arise in the mind.

Reach out, communicate.

Make of your experience a storehouse for one and all.

Make of it a story house; a story …

And, through this story, transform the maze, the labyrinth of the mind, into a mandala.

And, rocking a little from right to left, from left to right, a very slow, circular motion, circling clockwise to turn inwards, anticlockwise to turn outwards, achieve balance and harmony.

Allow yourself some space and time.

To get to know yourself, better.

Try, too, always, to think honestly, and to speak truly, going always to the heart of what you wish to say; and above all be true to yourself. Have the courage of conviction in everything you do. Focus on the beautiful, the extraordinary, the exceptional. Or rather, learn to see the beautiful, the extraordinary, the exceptional, in everything. Approach work, as life, in a spirit of total abandon. Live each second as though it were your last. Live well.

And do not be afraid to take a big step where one is indicated. A significant result requires a large ambition. And, as David Lloyd Georges once observed, you cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps.

And follow “The Way” (The Tao, or Zen).

That’s to say, be open to the learning of all arts.

Be curious about all professions.

Know the difference between gain and loss.

Pay attention to your conscious awareness.

Pay attention to those things that are beyond consciousness.

Pay attention to the smallest details.

Yet concern yourself only with what is useful.

And move always towards what you value.

Focus on the beautiful, the extraordinary, the exceptional.

Know that whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

And from here on, and now, and always, you shall be resonant, vibrant, energetic.

And your voice shall sing out clearly, in love and truth and beauty.

And if life seems sometimes simply too complicated, remember, it needn’t be complicated, so keep it simple, saying to yourself:

Just direct your thoughts usefully.

One thought at a time.

One thing at a time.

One step at a time.

Always one, at a time.

All is one, at a time.

And what a time, of oneness.

That was.

It was, that …

All One.

Time.

And I am.

The truth.

To tell …

Numbers, numbingly … counting up, counting down … the clock, ticking … counting the years, the months, the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds … and telling the time … of your life … and counting … on time … and counting … on you … being … always … on time … and counting … on you … being always … in time … in right, close up, intimate, rhythm … beating … time … to …

One …

Two …

Three …

For, like a migrating bird, you yourself know where to go, and when to go, responding always to an inner voice, responding always to an inner voice that calls out to you, that calls out your name, and to an inner voice that is, even now, calling out to you, in emotion, setting all in motion.

A voice, listen …

And your awareness, your mind, naturally migrates, then, towards those things that require your attention.

And you just seem to know where to go, and when, and what to do to take care of yourself.

And you are totally at ease.

And you are doing just fine.

And an inner voice, an inner awareness, drawing your attention, setting you in motion, moves you (in emotion) towards a place, an inner space, a sanctuary, of quiet comfort and effortless relaxation, and there to know, all of a sudden, just like that, that the time is right for change. And to know, all of a sudden, just like that, the exact nature of the change that is needed. And to recognize that that feeling is an inner awareness, and a recognition that something needs to change, and that that something needs to change now, now change.

For nothing really endures, but change: change is the only constant.

In the words of William Arthur Ward:

The goal of life is to grow.

The nature of life is to change.

The challenge of life is to overcome.

The essence of life is to dare.

The beauty of life is to give.

The joy of life is to love.

Keeping always clearly in mind, that:

To achieve change, think first to exchange.

To move away from confusion, fuse with that which is there, that which is true.

Make of yourself a useful sacrifice: surrender your mind to that which is now.

And to move away from depression, move towards expression.

Express yourself, then.

Be open, brave, bold.

For thanks to change there is growth.

And deep change can only be brought about when first you choose to change yourself, so change yourself now; be the change you seek!

And you know that you can achieve that change.

You are your own boss.

You are the ruler of your world.

You are yourself responsible.

So make it so.

Naturally, effortlessly.

For naturally you flow with that change.

For naturally you flow with change.

And naturally you flow, and change.

And naturally you flow easily, and grow easily, and change, knowing and understanding completely that all growth takes place through change, and naturally you flow easily, and grow easily, and change, knowing and understanding completely that all growth takes place thanks to change …

And so you flow, and change, always in harmony with nature.

And you flow, and change.

And you flow with change.

And you become change.

And you are change.

And all change, in constant motion.

A book of changes, life.

Change, exchange.

Give and receive.

For energy is eternal delight.

And dance, then, wherever you may be – Dance! Dance! Dance! – deep delight, within.

And cleanse out all doubt.

For I am the Lord of the Dance, said He.

And this, my house, full of delight, in which the dancer, dances, and the songbird, sings …

Be bliss.

And transform – trance/form – your life.

-Always dancing!

And what a dance!-

Trance …

For my voice, and these words, shall go with you, always.

So listen to this, my voice, and to these, my words, with an open mind and an open heart.

Be clear in your understanding.

For this NOW is the (En)trance to transition into trance/formation in transformation.

So, from now on, change your chances of success: take a chance on change.

And to do so, first relax, then follow your nose, follow your gut feeling, and go with your feelings, go with your intuition, go with your emotions, follow your heart.

And be bold.

For fortune favours the bold, so they say.

And: no guts, no glory.

So they say:

A game of …

Go!

Take a chance, let go.

Take a chance, go with the flow.

Take a chance on change.

All change.

So take a chance.

On chance.

Take a chance.

On me.

A chance …

On …

Chants, singing –

Chants, of a lifetime.

Om chants.

(En)trance.

Seeking …

… in trance …

A heart of gold, with which …

To love.

Says St Teresa of Avila:

“Remember: if you want to make progress on the path and ascend to places you have longed for, the important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”

To come in, be welcome.

To step out, fare well.

To be on your way …

Impermanent are all compound things.

With mindfulness, strive on.

And, can you imagine?

Once upon a time, everybody “knew” that the earth went around the sun, and that something heavier than air could not fly, and that to run a mile in less than four minutes was of course a physiological impossibility.

To refresh your view of the world, change the way you see things: twist the kaleidoscope around and around until the pattern that is taking shape before your eyes comes to please you.

Look out for a new perspective: if needs be, buy new glasses.

Change is the only constant.

Be the change, then, that you seek.

And naturally we can imagine how it might feel to know without knowing what needs to be done, and to be told without hearing, by an inner voice, an inner feeling, do this now! And you can imagine how it might feel to have actions flow from those feelings, responding effortlessly, automatically, to an inner awareness, an inner knowing that tells you what to do and when and how to do it. To be born with the knowledge, to trust that feeling, and to be so comfortably aware of oneself that everything becomes easier. A decision, a knowing, that is part of each human and other being and that guides and directs automatically towards those things needed, a migration of thought or awareness that presents memories, ideas, understanding, for you to use, for you, so that, even as you relax, your mind moves towards those things needed. And your unconscious provides that awareness that you can use later on or right now, as you wish.

And why not use it now?

Why not do it now?

For a journey, after all, begins in the mind, in the imagination.

Right now.

And it begins as a movement of thought, a stirring, an impulse, a curiosity, a faint whispering, growing then into a desire to experience, to learn, to understand, a calling, a response, a changing of the mind, a turning of the mind, a placing of one’s attention, with focus, a vocation, a path of the spirit, starting out, stepping out, a beginning …

For in the beginning was the Word.

And words come easily …

And inspiration, too, comes easily …

And inspiration comes all the time … to me, whoever he (or she, s/he, ssshhh!) might be …

For I am indeed an inspiration!

Indeed, I hold it in my hands, look: “INSPIRATION!”

Look, listen!

Staring, at first silently, into the darkness, thoughts form, fresh, glistening silver, like the moon, like the early morning dew, into words, sparkling silver, then gold, the rising of the sun, the blue ink of the day’s new sky, bright light, and song, and your body then vibrating to all the glorious colours … of a rainbow … at the end of which … you shall find … a heart-shaped pot … of pure gold …

A heart of gold!

And all this but a breeze of thought flowing out, upon the breath, into action.

Says Lao Tzu: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Your journey begins with an inspiration in the mind translated into an impulse to move.

And there is always a moment when someone must make the first move, take the first step. Let that someone be you!

And your journey begins with your feet: so take the first step, just go!

Life itself, a journey.

Listen:

I travel not to go anywhere in particular, as it were, but, more simply, simply to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Be here now.

Now go away!

And for what it may be worth, be one of those people who try the limits and the extent of their ability and their potential.

First clear your mind of all that is unhelpful and then go out of your way and, that’s to say, get out more, look around you, explore a bit, discover the world.

Learn to hold your head high; learn to sit up straight; learn to stand up straight; bind fast the tight rope of life; then learn to walk on it; just learn to walk upright upon the earth; then learn to run; learn to skip; learn to jump; learn to dance; learn to ride; learn to swim; learn to sail; learn to climb; and learn to fly.

Take a walk; jump on your bike; hitch a lift; saddle up; jump on a boat; ship passage; celebrate a holiday; fly away; and, failing all that, keep it simple, and just do as you’ve heard them all say: walk it! On your bike! Get lost! Be gone! Go!

To help you, keep clearly in mind the thought that energy begets energy. Have confidence, then: the path will become clearer to you with each step taken. In confidence, walk on.

And so I ask you: what is stopping you?

Nothing!

Okay, so …

You must start from somewhere.

So let’s begin.

Begin here and now, immediately, at once, this very moment.

And recall the Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga:

The Law of Pure Potentiality

(All is possible; anything can happen; all is to play for!)

The Law of Giving and Receiving.

(Circles of virtue)

The Law of Karma

(Cause and effect)

The Law of Least Effort

(Minimize effort and maximize effect)

The Law of Intention and Desire

(Know what you want; want it with all your heart and mind; articulate the thought, write it down; picture it so; then go for it; make it so!)

The Law of Detachment

(Think of your children … )

The Law of Dharma

(Know yourself. What is your purpose in life? What is your vocation? Who are you, finally?)

And recall, too, the Rules of Engagement:

Choose your territory.

Centre yourself.

Discard all unnecessary things.

Remember that the Breath of Life resides in your inspiration, so connect to a Higher Power.

Free yourself of your conscious thoughts.

Slow down time.

Finally, engage.

And I say to you: be always enthusiastic, be passionate.

And consciously reflect, often, upon the qualities that you admire in certain special people or animals or places or things, then reflect consciously upon the qualities, in and of themselves, and then consciously imitate those good examples, those models, those heroes and heroines, then be the change you wish to see, be the change, and then, as it were, become your heroes, and your heroines, until at last you can be a hero or a heroine to yourself, the person you’ve always dreamt of being, your ideal self or, so to speak, the person you’ve always had in mind, from the very beginning, and the person you are meant to be.

And know, then, that from now on you shall be a mirror held up to the very best that you can be.

And, put simply, you shall be the very best person that you can possibly be.

The person you’ve always had in mind.

And everything about you shall be fit and meet, fit and strong.

And you shall always show great poise:

Standing up straight, looking straight ahead, standing tall and walking tall, a giant among men.

You shall be as an old oak tree.

And, standing firm, as solid as rock.

And as unmovable as a mountain.

When necessary.

Saying:

Look straight ahead

Go all the way

You can!

And observe and hold and respect your body as if it were a temple to life itself, as indeed it is.

Recall the Latin tag, “mens sana in corpore sano”, a healthy mind in a healthy body, or sound of mind and body.

The words are those of the Roman poet Juvenal, in Satire X:

It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body. Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death, which places the length of life last among nature’s blessings, which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings, does not know anger, lusts for nothing, and believes the hardships and savage labours of Hercules better than the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king.

You always eat simply and healthily.

You think lean.

You attend carefully to the needs of your body.

You listen carefully to what your body is telling you.

You remain always in tune, in harmony, knowing that a positive frame of mind is half the battle.

So that you sound always …

True.

Sound in mind and body.

Fit in mind and body.

And you love resistance, for you love a challenge; indeed, you adore a challenge, for it is only under difficult and challenging circumstances that you can feel your full strength of mind and body, spirit and purpose.

(Do not remain at home, safe and sound. Go out into the world. Sit naked upon a mountaintop. Feel the wind in your hair. Let go!)

And so, whenever you can, you walk, and run, and leap, and skip, and jump, and dance …

Even so, you know that your body has been sculpted using dust, earth, water, mud, clay, air, breath. It is limited, defined, definite.

But no vessel shall ever be large enough to contain your mind. No attempt at definition will ever limit your mind’s scope, or diminish its mysteries, or exhaust its potential and power.

Know, then, that your mind is limitless.

And so develop an intention towards perfection.

And this, then, the art of living well, named: well being.

Says Lao-Tzu: “He who is open-eyed is open-minded. He who is open-minded is open-hearted. He who is open-hearted is kingly. He who is kingly is Godly. He who is Godly is useful. He who is useful is infinite. He who is infinite is immune. He who is immune is immortal.”

And I define my body in the following ways: relaxed, at ease, yet at the same time bursting with energy.

Listen, then, to the body, as it hums, vibrates, resonates, sounding out this vessel of life breath, making the soul, in turn, ring out, and sing.

I am perfectly balanced, perfectly in tune, perfectly pitched.

I am in harmony with myself, with those around me, with the universe as a whole.

(And this is “just” intonation).

And think and reflect: be silent, for a moment, be still, sit still, sit up straight, or stand tall, then slowly, surely, extend yourself, stretch out, reach up, grow, let the spirit soar, reach up to and touch the sky, then fly.

And I walk tall, like a giant.

Place a mountain in my way and I shall move it.

For my mind clears a path, finds a way …

And my mind, clears …

Keeping always a clear mind.

So that your mind, now, is crystal clear.

And it goes almost without saying: try not to let yourself down; try not to fall. But should you do so, don’t worry, for that, too, is normal. Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. We learn by our mistakes. We learn by a process of trial and error. And we always learn from our mistakes. So that …

When I lose, at least I don’t lose the lesson.

And if you fall, say, seven times, just make sure you stand up eight times. And when, inevitably, and from time to time, you find yourself unexpectedly on the floor, simply pause for a moment, enjoy the sensation, the moment, then rise again, pick yourself up, brush yourself down, then carry on, and on, and on …

For the flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful.

And things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.

And every cloud has a silver lining.

Have faith, then: a faith that allows you strength even to err, to wander off the well trodden paths, to wander into the unknown … and there …

… there simply to go on, then, for as far as you possibly can.

And, possessing the patience of Job, never giving up …

And, like a happy Sisyphus …

Going on, right to the end.

(And knowing, too, that if you fall into a ditch it will take you great effort to get yourself out again. Far better to avoid the ditch in the first place. Keep positive.)

Says Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an Angel, in apprehension how like a God: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

Man know thyself and thou shalt know the Universe.

“To thine one self be true; thou canst not then be false to any man.”

A truly Herculean task.

A life’s work.

And that’s okay, too, for you have a life, time, and you are doing just fine.

And simply relax now: enjoy the journey, go with the flow.

And from now on, as and when you need to do so, you will hear all that you need to hear.

And you will see all that you need to see.

For your unconscious will see all that it needs to see, and hear all that it needs to hear, and understand all that it needs to understand.

So see hear now.

Understand.

(Tune in to your intuition).

And you may open your eyes now, look up.

A light breeze, drifting through the mind.

And the mind, clearing.

Thoughts giving light.

Now.

To enlightenment.

A cloudless, clear blue sky.

Heavens above, earth below.

Asking: where are you?

Asking: who are you?

Asking: why?

Then saying: open the hand of thought, revealing diamonds in the mind.

See; hear; understand; now …

And now …

BE the light.

And a voice, moving across the waters, calling out in the wilderness.

Words scattered, like seeds; seeds planted, to grow.

Relax.

And who can be muddy and yet, settling, slowly become limpid?

Who can be at rest and yet, stirring, come slowly to life?

Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?

And can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?

The Master does not seek fulfilment; not seeking, not expecting, he is present, and welcomes all things.

Be also an island, then, unto yourself: a refuge to yourself and no other. Have the courage of your convictions. Show strength of purpose. Show character.

Know, too, that right and wrong are situational.

In the appropriate situation, nothing is wrong.

Without the appropriate situation, nothing is right.

What is right in one case is not what is right in another.

What is wrong in one case is not what is wrong in another.

Rules, in any case, are made to be broken: this itself is a deeper rule.

Say to yourself: “I know the rules but the rules do not know me.”

So let there be much method, too, in your seeming madness, saying:

“Good heavens, no, I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!”

Live fast and furiously.

Work hard, play hard.

Be brave, be bold, take risks.

And be sure to break every barrier and taboo: break out of the box; break the mould.

Above all, let go of all the norms: be enormous!

And know that fear is the only darkness.

But when you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is at once absolutely certain.

Kill the fear, at once.

And instead show strength of mind; show strength of purpose.

For fortune favours the bold.

And no guts, no glory.

Breathing in.

Inhalation.

And with it, inspiration.

Shugendo, the path of training and testing.

(Tuition, training, keen observation, study, practice, repetition, ongoing learning, and discipline; these build the bridge between goals and accomplishments).

And you, a yatri, a pilgrim soul, on a journey of pilgrimage, a yatra.

So turn your thoughts again, perhaps now to Budo, or to Shambhala, the Way of the Warrior, the Solar Warrior, practising Aikido, the Art of Peace, Kinomichi, the Way of Energy, and I Ching, the Way of Change.

And it is said that the pen is mightier than the sword; a smart but weak scholar is nevertheless not the ideal. And a strong but ignorant warrior is likewise not the ideal. One must strive to be not only a scholar monk, or poet, but also and above all a warrior monk – a Sohei – and a warrior poet, combining strength and intelligence so as to wield well both pen and sword. Be both a gentle and a noble person wherever you find yourself: a person of culture and learning; a person of strength and speed; hard in body and purpose, subtle and gentle in mind and spirit; both a warrior and a writer. Dedicate yourself totally, then, to the way of the pen and the sword; wield well both pen and sword.

Recall the words of The Wanderer.

“Therefore man cannot call himself wise, before he has a share of years in the world. A wise man must be patient. He must never be too impulsive nor too hasty of speech, nor too weak a warrior nor too reckless, nor too fearful, nor too cheerful, nor too greedy for goods, nor ever too eager for boasts, before he sees clearly.”

And:

“A man must wait when he speaks oaths, until the proud-hearted one sees clearly whither the intent of his heart will turn.”

Listen.

A dancer, dances.

A singer, sings.

A writer, writes …

And you: what do you do? What is your field of work? Where do you till or plough the land? And what would you most like to do, if given the choice? And when, and where – and doing what – makes you feel that now, at last, you are really in your element? And what then will be your most meaningful and contribution?

Ah, I see.

Your condition is hypergraphia, the overwhelming urge and need to write.

In that case, as you are a person who writes, a writer, practise Shodo, or calligraphy, literally “beauty writing”, meaning beautiful letters, or the art of writing beautifully, making your strokes dance, a choreography of beautiful words, spinning, singing, woven into text; penmanship, or the art of writing well; the way of writing, Bunbu Ryodo, the ideal of the warrior poet: a person educated, sophisticated, cultivated, cultured.

And breathing out now, once more: exhalation, contact, feeling.

And follow your words, your WYRD, writing out the world.

The art of conscious living, of living well, in the ways of the world, along the world’s way, where you practise yoga, or union.

You put your shoulder to the wheel, and turn it.

And your attitude to Dharma parallels what ancient cultures called “warrior knowledge” – the knowledge that comes from developing skills in difficult situations – as opposed to “scribe knowledge” that people sitting in relative security and ease can set down in words. Of course, warriors need to use words in their training, but they view a text as authoritative only if its teachings are borne out in practice. The Canon itself encourages this attitude when it quotes the Buddha explaining that: “As for the teachings of which you may know, ‘These teachings led to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to divesting, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome’: You may definitely hold, ‘This is the Dharma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher’s instruction.”

Thus the ultimate authority in judging a teaching is not whether the teaching can be found in a text. It lies in each person’s relentless honesty in putting the Dharma to the test and carefully monitoring the results.

Pilgrim soul.

Parivrajaka, Wandering Monk.

For there is a pleasure in the pathless woods; there is a rupture on the lonely shore; there is society, where none intrudes; by the deep sea, and music its roar. I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

So saying, seek silence, seclusion, stillness, emptiness – sunyata, tranquillity, peace.

Leave your cave, take a walk, go into the woods, go into the forest, wander through the woods and forests, go on a journey into the mountains, the high places, the land of the gods, to dwell in time, among them; Shugendo; Shugenja; Yamabushi, one who lies in the mountains; a hermit among the hills; mountain monk, mountain mind, breath of the moon in the heart, mountains of the moon in the mind, as gods.

And take a deep breath now, inhaling very, very deeply, to help you get there: breathe in deeply.

(A sound upon the air, in the breeze, whispering to you, like a mother; listen then to the wind, your mother.)

And, from being first an ascetic, be now an ecstatic.

Set yourself aside, enjoy an ecstatic freedom from your self, know bliss.

NIGHT

Sinking thoughts, fading, dimming, in the dusk, that blackens, into night,
Some peace, perhaps, at last, or perhaps, no more,
This fragile earth, spinning, revolving, orbiting,
In its own tremendous turbulence, turning, being.

During that dark journey, night,
Ears, straining, listening … for … a faint, distant echo,
Beating pulse slowed, energy earthed, shared source, survival,
A murmur, soothing, like soft words, a kindly mother,
Sweet breath, breathing, rising, and falling.

A clock ticks on but time has ceased, here,
In the beauty of deep silence, and solitude;
The ecstasy coming face to face with its one self, being
All that matters.

Enter then into the stillness of that which is unchanging
And yet always in motion and never the same.

Direct your eyes within, to be witness, one self, to one, who calls out,
Calling out, in the darkness, of the night.

JAQUE MATE

Me gusta mucho levantarme temprano, con los pájaros. Y en la madrugada–normalmente sentado sobre un colchón en el suelo y disfrutando de la ilusión de que la tierra, allí abajo, está quieta, en calma–bebo mate mientras pienso que estoy pensando, o a lo mejor es que sigo soñando sueños, como un sonámbulo perdido, y nada más.
Soñando o no, la madrugada me parece la parte más “verdadera”, la más extraordinaria del día. A veces me encuentro cantando, ¡estoy tan contento! A veces me siento obligado a ponerme de pie (a pararme) para bailar un poco en la habitación. A veces me río a carcajadas. Y a veces me río tan fuerte que pareciera que mis ojos se abren y que mi cara desborda de lágrimas. Y en momentos como esos me invade el asombro: siento como si todo lo que toco, miro y siento, fuera extraordinario, fabuloso y maravilloso.
¡Me siento como Adán en el paraíso!
(Aunque todavía me falta Eva).
Tal vez no sea más que uno de los efectos del mate. O quizás es que tengo pájaros en la cabeza, ¿quién sabe?

_______________

¿Quién sabe?
No lo sabe nadie, me parece, ni siquiera yo, que no sé nada, o muy poco.
No sé, por ejemplo, ni siquiera quién soy. Y no sé, tampoco, ni siquiera adónde voy. (Considerando, si acaso, que se pueda decir que hay alguien en relación con quien un tal–fulano–él mismo–yo, si Usted quiere–también pueda decir, y con toda la razón, que está yendo a tal o cual lugar, a un cierto punto “x”–tal vez, no sé–Usted tampoco, supongo–y tal … )
Ahora el paraíso parece muy lejano, estamos más bien en una especie de purgatorio donde la mente se convierte en laberinto, y donde todo parece ser también una ficción, un sueño.
Y lo digo en serio.
Como si la vida fuera sueño, nada más.

Sueña el rey que es rey, y vive
con este engaño mandando,
disponiendo y gobernando;
y este aplauso, que recibe
prestado, en el viento escribe,
y en cenizas le convierte
la muerte, ¡desdicha fuerte!
¿Que hay quien intente reinar,
viendo que ha de despertar
en el sueño de la muerte?
Sueña el rico en su riqueza,
que más cuidados le ofrece;
sueña el pobre que padece
su miseria y su pobreza;
sueña el que a medrar empieza,
sueña el que afana y pretende,
sueña el que agravia y ofende,
y en el mundo, en conclusión,
todos sueñan lo que son,
aunque ninguno lo entiende.
Yo sueño que estoy aquí
destas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

(Para ayudarme a escapar del laberinto, dejo caer yerba en el suelo, escuchando siempre un eco, una voz, una voz explicando … una razón.)

“Cuenta de un sabio que un día
Tan pobre y mísero andaba
Que solo se sustentaba
De las hierbas que cogía
¿Habrá otro? entre sí decía
¿Más pobre y triste que yo?
Y cuando el rostro volvió
Celló la respuesta viendo
A otro sabio recogiendo
Las hierbas que él desechó.”

Preocúpense del sonido, dice Borges, y dejen al sentido preocuparse de sí mismo.
La verdad es que, estos días, he estado pensando mucho sobre la posibilidad de hacer una distinción entre la realidad y la fantasía, y nuestras maneras individuales de evadirnos del mundo cotidiano en favor de fantasías interiores más ricas y bellas. Yo, sin embargo, no me fío mucho de una tal distinción porque me parece obvio que todo lo que es consciente pasa por la mente y entonces es todo más o menos interpretativo. Lo más importante, tal vez, es escribir una ficción–elegir una realidad, si Usted prefiere–que sea lo más rica, lo más bella, lo más creativa, lo más generosa, lo más sabrosa, lo más intensa posible.
Dice el Buddha (el Dhammapada): “La vida es la creación de la mente.”
Por eso tenemos también el famoso Quijote como modelo, cuya manera brillante de creer en su propio mundo, a pesar de los demás, me parece una lección muy saludable.
Imagínese, por último, que todo es ficción y que en cierto modo somos todos cuentacuentos, entretejiendo la fábula de nuestras vidas gracias a una imaginación y una creatividad sin límites.
Entonces, aunque sin ninguna razón especial, ¿por qué no dedicar algunos minutos a un tipo tal –fulano–fantaseador total, sin ningún sentido común, un sonámbulo, que tiene pájaros en la cabeza, y que está casi completamente loco–un tío en un lío, si Usted quiere–que al levantarse temprano para beber mate, sigue soñando, pensando que hoy, como quisiera escribir un pequeño texto en español, y como se toma a veces por un verdadero gaucho, aunque sea inglés, puede muy bien escribir algo sobre el mate, una de sus evasiones favoritas, cuando …
¡Ras!–y–de manera totalmente misteriosa–el mate está lavado, se agotó el mate–y con esto, ¡adiós!

¡VIVA MÉXICO, HIJOS DE LA CHINGADA!

Según algunos –siguiendo las teorías de Freud ‑ el machismo es una especie de reacción frente a la inseguridad que sienten algunos dentro de sí mismos. Puede ser una inseguridad en relación con su identidad sexual como hombre, o con su papel dentro de la familia o dentro de la sociedad en general.
Pero a decir verdad, el “machismo” es un concepto demasiado amplio y por lo tanto muy difícil de definir.
El machismo puede ser, por ejemplo, el rechazo de todas “las virtudes femeninas” como amabilidad, delicadeza, sensibilidad, fragilidad, etc. Entonces un machista puede ser un hombre desconfiado, envidioso, celoso, malicioso, vindicativo, brutal. También un hombre que denigra sistemáticamente a las mujeres. Las mujeres existen solamente para servir a los hombres. Sobre todo, son objetos del deseo sexual del hombre, un deseo por el cual el machista no tolera ninguna limitación en su expresión y libertad. Así pues, el machista considera que tiene el derecho de tener relaciones sexuales con todas las mujeres que le gustan, sin justificar eso en ninguna parte y ante nadie (el machista es capaz de mentir sin el más mínimo reparo). La prueba de su virilidad es entonces su capacidad de dominar completamente a su mujer y a sus hijos. La imagen de su virilidad, igualmente, tiene una importancia absoluta: el machista no acepta ninguna duda en relación con ella. Falsa imagen o algo propio del hombre, su virilidad es una marca de su propia identidad como hombre. De esa manera es sagrada, intocable. Cuando alguien duda de ella, de cualquier manera, el machista siempre está dispuesto a luchar, a pelear en su defensa –es decir, efectivamente, en defensa de su honor- y –lo que es aún peor- siente una constante presión por exhibir su virilidad, de manera que siempre está buscando situaciones en las que pueda demostrarla, como por ejemplo, buscar y tener peleas con otros hombres.
El machista siempre debe mantenerse a la cabeza.
Pienso que es correcto decir que los mexicanos –al igual que los argentinos [tal vez como los argentinos]- o si no como los latinos en general- tienen la reputación de ser muy machistas –[o si no que] al menos Octavio Paz, el célebre escritor mexicano y premio Nobel, se equivoca completamente en su famosa obra, “El laberinto de la soledad”.
En esta obra, Paz trata sobre “los hijos de la Malinche” y en gran parte, por supuesto, de su reputación de ser machistas, y en relación con esto habla mucho, y de manera muy interesante, de la jerga de los machistas mexicanos, es decir, del lenguaje de “la Chingada”.
¡Ya chingué!
¡Qué chingón!
¡Qué pinche chingón!
¡Qué chingoncito!
¡Qué chingaquedito!
¡No chingues!
¡No estás chingando, cabrón! (¡Y qué cabrón!)
¡Qué pinche cabrón de la chingada, no chingues, huevón!
¡Chingas a tu puta madre, pinche pendejo, hijo de la chingada!
¡Qué pinche pendejo loco de un pinche puta madre, no chingues, cabrón!
Etcétera, etcétera …
El extenso chingamadral del uso de los chingao chingadas en México es realmente impresionante, y en las calles de México casi cada dos palabras lo que escuchas es una chingada. Sin un conocimiento por lo menos básico de la manera en que hablan los mexicanos es verdad que a veces sería excusable pensar que el idioma de los mexicanos no es el español.
¿Pero qué o quién es “la Chingada”?
Octavio Paz opina que originalmente la Chingada es la Madre en el sentido de la Madre primordial, la Madre mítica del pueblo. La Chingada representa entonces la maternidad de una manera tal vez similar a la Llorona, la típica madre mexicana llena de sufrimiento y lágrimas. Así que la Chingada también es la madre que ha sufrido mucho.
(He aquí dos tipos clásicos de mujer producidos por los machistas: la Madre mítica –la Chingada más que venerada e intocable, poco real, como un dios, cuya réplica en cierto momento, por supuesto, es la Virgen María- y la Llorona, una mujer más de la realidad, infra-venerada, una mujer de sufrimientos, una mujer de la calle, transformada a veces, también, en una figura de puta, una figura de dolencia, enfermedad y muerte.)
Las palabras nacidas a partir de la chingada, según la interpretación de Octavio Paz, son palabras prohibidas, secretas, y sin significaciones estrictas. Son palabras mágicas que tienen una amplitud de significaciones que casi no tiene límites.
Sin embargo, dentro de esta amplitud de significación hay siempre, según Paz, una agresión, una especie de violencia, así que el verbo sugiere una idea de laceración, de violación, de penetración –de objetos, de cuerpos, de almas, etc.- y también la idea de una destrucción. Cuando algo se rompe se dice: “se chingó”. Cuando alguien transgrede las reglas, se dice que “hizo una chingadera”. Entonces el chingón es el machista, el varón, y la chingada, la hembra, la mujer, que representa una pasividad total, indefensa frente al mundo.
De cierta manera, chingadas son palabras que dicen todo y nada.
Esta característica es perfecta para el machista. El machista nunca quiere hablar de su vida real o su vida interior, su propia identidad. No puede correr el riesgo. Y para defender su virilidad, en realidad, debe esconder su propia “realidad” dentro de sí mismo y tras palabras ambiguas. Por eso su imagen proyectada en el mundo es tan frágil y cerrada como agresiva. Y la vida social es un lugar de luchas constantes, o sea: chingar a los démas o ser chingado.
He aquí el mundo del machista: un mundo lleno de ambigüedades verbales, sexuales, sociales, de conflictos psicológicos numerosos y de agresividad por todas partes. Y he aquí el machista: aislado, emocionalmente inmaduro, constantemente amenazado por todos lados, a menudo borracho (el alcohol –o el “chínguere”- le permite olvidar todas sus penas), agresivo, violento, bruto, animal.
¡Pobrecito!
El machista.
Ojalá la situación en México esté cambiando y que ahora haya muchos menos machistas que hace 20 ó 50 años …
Pero ¡escucha, hermano!
¡Qué sé yo!
Sí, de acuerdo, porque yo también soy hijo de la chingada …
Y ¡viva México, hijos de la chingada!
(Cabrón).

هنا حيث نلتقي

بروحٍ من الاعتداد بالنفس والثقة وحسن النية، دعونا ننسى ما مضى. دعونا نكون منفتحين، ونفكر بحرية. دعونا نسَّرح أنفسنا قليلاً (كما لو كنا وقعنا في الحب). / لأنه عندما تحتاجُ شيئاً ما، تجدهُ هناك؛ وعندما تبحثُ عن شيءٍ ما، تجد ذلك الشيء؛ وعندما تبحث عن هذا الشخص أو ذاك، شخصاً ما/ أحداً / ذو خصوصية، سيجدك، أو أنتَ تجدهُ،ٍ إن لم يكن على الفور، وفي الحال، فثمة في وقت قريب. /لأنه حيثما ذهبتَ، تكونُ هناك، حاضراً دائماً، وأنتَ تقول: / كن هنا الآن. / وهكذا إذا كنتُ أنا، أمرُ، وألتقي بك، ولدي الرغبة في الكلام معك، فلماذا لا أتكلم معك؟ وأنت تتكلم معي، لأنك أنتَ لغزُ عالمٍ آخر، ساحرٌ إلى حدٍ بالغ، تدعو إلى فهمٍ أعمق، شيئاً من الشعور بالتواصل بإنسانية مشتركة، صوتاً يبحثُ عن صدى، دعوةً تسعى إلى رد، سؤالاً، وأحياناً ربما، جواباً. فدعنا كلانا نتوقف، ولو لمجرد لحظة واحدة، ونتساءل عن العالم، سويةً. قل لي، أين ما تسميه وطنك؟ من أين أتيت؟ وأين جذورك؟ وما هي وجهة نظرك؟ على أي حال، كنتَ أنتَ قد سافرتَ بالتأكيد من مكان بعيد لتكون هنا الآن. فماذا الآن؟ ماذا بعد؟ وإلى أين؟ أو ربما أنت شخص ٌ يفضل ألاّ يعرف وجهته، ببساطة يستمتع بالإحساس بكونه فقد طريقه قليلاً، قليلاً على غير هدى، طافياً على نهر الحياة الراقص… مع وعيه بأن هذه طاقة حياة كبرى، روح حياة كبرى، تسعى إلى عدم كبح جماحنا، بأي شكل من الأشكال، ولكن ترفعنا إلى العلو، بدلاً من ذلك، مرحلةً بمرحلة، إلى مساحاتٍ أوسعُ وأكثرُ انفتاحاً … مساحات مفتوحة، ودفء، انفتاح، وجوه … وجوه، وجوه، وجوه، والعديد من الوجوه، وكثيراً جداً من الوجوه، وجوه كثيرة، ووجوه، تواجهها، ومجرد تواجهها وجوه، تواجه، مثل هذا الجمال، بحركة، وبعاطفة، وبحركة الحركة ذاتها، وقت يتحرك، وقت يتدفق، غموض، وسفر دائما نحو ما هناك، وما بعده، وحتى ما بعد الأنا، والأنت، والذاك، نحو نوعٍ من النشوة، أوه، أوم، هوو، همهم، ترنيمة، هاه، لماذا، الذي. / (ابتسامتك تجلب الفرح) / يسأل: ما اسمك؟ من أنت؟ / ومن أنا، لتلك المسألة؟ من أنا، بالنسبة لك؟ / (هل أنا واحد فقط، أو واحد من عديدين، ربما، أو لا أحد؟. / بالطبع، الشيء المقصود هو لا يهم كثيراً ما نسمي به بعضنا البعض، أو الحقيقة التي مفادها أننا قد نكون مخطئين ونخطأ في تسمية أسماءنا تماما، مثل الاتصال برقم خاطئ … لا؛ فالشيء المهم … حسناً … من يعرف حقا؟ … من الذي يعرف حقا … العقل الوحيد … ذو موقف متواضع، وحتى التقديس … يقف تحت … وربما أيضا يفهم … أحياناً … قليلاً … إلاّ القليل … في الاعتداد بالنفس والثقة وحسن النية … لإسقاط الزمام تماماً …لننسى ما مضى… ونتخلى عن … نترك كل شيء … نكون منفتحين ونفكر بحرية … ونفقد أنفسنا مرة أخرى، قليلاً، ثم مرة أخرى، لا يزال أكثر (كما لو كان وقعنا في الحب) … دعونا نبتسم، ونقول مرحباً، ننشئ الاتصال، نجري مكالمة، نكتب رسالة، نكون على اتصال … بهذه الطريقة، نحن سوف نتشارك ربما بكلمة، وربما بعالم … / وأنا سعيدٌ أن مساراتنا الآن قد تعاقبت، حيث أنه هنا هو أين نلتقي. / هذا اليوم، هذه الرحلة؛ تعاقبت المسارات، تبودلت القصص: وقت للحفاظ على الصمت، نعم، ولكن أيضاً وقت للحديث، نكسر الخبز، نرتشف الشاي. وقت للجلوس بسكون، لفترة من الوقت، للراحة، للاسترخاء، ووقت للتحرك. / لقد كان من دواعي سروري البالغ أن ألتقي بك والتحدث معك هذا اليوم، لتبادل القصص والرحلات. /(شكراً). لعلك تعلم السعادة العظيمة، في الحب، والامتنان. / و، حتى المرة القادمة، نفس المكان، أو مكان آخر، مثل غريب في الطريق، مسافر حكيم، يمشي دائماً باعتداد بالنفس، وبثقة، وبحسن نية، سواء في مصاحبة، أو على ما يبدو، وحيداً: رحلة سعيدة، يا صديقي .ووداعاً.

الكَلِمَة

فِي البَدْءِ كَانَتْ الكَلِمَة، صَوْتَ الوَحْيِ وَالمُسْتَلْهَمَة مِنَّ ذَاكِرَة بَعِيدَة.فِي هَذِهِ اللَّحْظَة لاَ تَتَرَدَدْ بِأَنْ تَرْفَعَ صَوْتَكَ بِهَذِهِ الأَفْكَارَ بِكُلِّ بَسَاطَة، وَتُخْرِجُهَا إِلَى المَلَأْ.

وَكَوْنَهَا مُلْهَمَة أَوْ مُسْتَوْحَاةْ مِنْ تَنَفُسِكَ فَهْيَ تَعُودُ إِلَى دَاخِلِكَ. أَطْلِقْ لِنَفْسِكَ العِنَانَ بِكِتَابَةِ هَذِهِ الأَفْكَارْ بِكُلِ سُهُولَةٍ وَيُسْرٍ كَمَا تَأْتِيكَ، إِنْ كَانَتْ كَلِمَة أَوْ كَلِمَاتْ أَوْ جُمَلْ. وَبِهَذِهِ الطَّرِيقَة تَتَعَلَّمْ أَنْ تَجْعَلْ أَفْكَارِكَ مَكْتُوبَة، وَتَعَلَّمْ القَلِيلَ عَنْ عَقْلِكَ وَأَفْكَارِكَ، وَبِكُلِّ بَسَّاطَة تُبْحِرُ فِي أَفْكَارِكَ لِتَقْتَفِي أَثَرَ صَفْحَة أَوْ رِحْلَة فِي انْعِكَاساتِ أَفْكَارِكَ وَتَتَنَفَّسْ وَتَكْتُبْ، وَبِكُلِّ بَسَّاطَة تَتَنَفَّسْ ثُمَّ تَكْتُبْ وَاضِّعاً قَلَّمُكَ عَلَّى الوَرَّقَة لِتَجْعَلْ الحِبْرَ يَفِيضُ بِأَفْكَارِكَ بِكُلِّ سُهُولَة. وَمَهْمَا كَانَ إِلْهَامُكَ تَكْتُبْهُ فِي فِكْرِكَ ثُمَّ تَكْتُبْهُ عَلَّى الوَرَقَةِ وَتُخْرِجَهُ لِلْعَالَمِ.أُكْتُبْ الآَنَّ فَوْراً حَتَّى تَجِّدْ صَدىً لِصَّوْتِكَ،وَبِفِّعْلِ هَذَا تُطْلِّقْ لِأَفْكَارِكَ وَإِلْهَامُكَ العِنَانَ وَتَسْمَعْ ذَلِكَ الصَّوْتَ يَعُودُ إِلَيْكَ مِنَّ الصَّمْتِ مِنْ أَعْمَاقِ الصَّمْتِ،صَوْتُ صَلاةٍ، شَكْلُ صَلاةٍ مِنَّ اللَّا شَيْءٍ مِنَّ العَدَّمِ، شَكْلُ صَلَاةٍ مِنَّ الفَّرَاغِ وَكَحِلْمٍ لِلْأَيَّامِ وَاللَّيَالِي.

Ահա այստեղ կհանդիպենք

Հանուն ինքնավստահության, վստահության և բարի հավատքի, սկսենք։ Լինենք անկեղծ և ազատ։ Թող անջատվենք մի քիչ սիրահարված մարդկանց նման։ / Քանի որ այն ժամանակ, որ մի բանի կարիք ունես, ահա այդտեղ է և երբ որ մի բան ես փնտրում, գտնում ես և, երբ փնտրում ես այս կամ այն անձնավորությանը,այդ հատուկ անձնավորությանը, նա գտնում է քեզ կամ դու ես իրեն գտնում։ Թեկուզ և ոչ անմիջպաես և միանգամից, բայց շուտ։ / Քանի որ ուր էլ գնաս, դու այդտեղ ես, միշտ ներկա և ասում ես «Հիմա այստեղ եղիր»։ / և այսպես, եթե ես անցնելու պահին քեզ հանդիպեմ և ցանկություն ունենամ քեզ հետ խոսելու, ի՞նչու պետք է քեզ հետ չխոսեմ և ի՞նչու պետք է ինձ հետ չխոսես։ Քանի որ դու ուրիշ աշխարհի պատկանող մի հանելուկ ես, հավերժ հրապուրիչ և փնտրում ես խորը իմաստը, որտեղ ներկա է մարդասիրական մի զգացմունք, որը ներկա է ամբողջ մարդկության մեջ, ձայն, որը փնտրում է իր արձագանգը, կոչը, որը պատասխանի է սպասում, մի հարց և ժամանակ առ ժամանակ գուցե լսես մի պատասխան։ Թող մի պահ կանգ առնենք և միայան մի վայրկյան միասին մտածենք աշխարհի մասին։ Ասա ինձ, քեզ համար ո՞րտեղ է օջախ համարվում։ Որտեղի՞ց ես գալիս։ Քո արմատները որտեղի՞ց են, ի՞նչ է քո տեսանկյունը։ Համենայն դեպս դու այստեղ հասնելու համար երկար ճանապարհ ես անցել։ Ուրեմն հիմա ի՞նչ։ Հետո ի՞նչ և դեպի ու՞ր։ Կամ մի գուցե դու նախընտրում ես նպատակիդ մասին տեղյակ չլինել և պարզապես սիրում ես լինել անջատված, հոսանքի մեջ և լողանալ կյանքի գետի մեջ․․․ Իմանալով, որ հոյակապ կյանքի էներգիան, հոգին չի աշխատում մեզ զսպել որևէ կերպով, բայց աշխատում է բարձրացնել մեզ, այսպես աստիճան աստիճան դեպի ավելի լայն և ավելի ազատ տարածքներ ․․․․ ազատ տարածքներ և ջերմ, սրտաբաց դեմքեր․․․․ և դեմքեր, և դեմքեր , և դեմքեր, և բազմազան դեմքեր, և բազմազան բազմազան դեմքեր և դեմքեր, դիմակայելով, միայն դիմակայելով, միայն դիմակայելով, դեմքեր, դիմակայելով այսպիսի գեղեցկություն, շարժման մեջ, զգացմունքներով և շարժման ընտացքում, տեղափոխելով ժամանակը, սահունացնելով ժամանակը, գաղտնիքը և հավիտյան ճամբորդելով դեպի այնտեղ՝ հեռու նույնիսկ «ես»- ից այնկողմ, «դու»- ից այնկողմ, «այն», դեպի զմայլանք, մի Օ, մի Օմ, Հօ, Համ, Հա, ինչու՞ն և ո՞վ-ը։ (Քո ծիծաղը ինձ հրճվանք է պատճառում) / Հարցնելով ի՞նչ ե քո անունը, դու ո՞վ ես։ /և այդ հարցով ես ո՞վ եմ։ Ո՞վ եմ ես քեզ համար։ / (Արդյո՞ք ես միակ հոգին եմ, թե արդյո՞ք բազմաթիվ մարդկանցից մեկը, կամ էլ ոչ ոք։) / Պարզապես այն հարցը, թե մենք իրար ինչ ենք կոչում, թե այն հարցը, որ մենք կարող է սխալմամբ իրար սխալ անունով կոչենք, ինչպես սխալմամբ հավաքում ենք համարը, … ոչ, կարևոր հարցը․․․ո՞վ գիտի․․․․ո՞վ ճիշտը գիտի․․․․․մի հոգու համար․․․ով խոնարհ է և հարգանքով․․․․ներքևում կանգնել․․․․և մի գուցե իրար հասկանալը․․․․ երբեմն․․․մի քիչ․․․գոնե մի քիչ․․․վստահելով, բարի հավատքով․․․այսպես ձգելով սանձը ամբողջովին․․․ ուրեմն ձգիր․․․․և ձգելը․․․բոլորը ձգելը․․․ ազատամիտ լինելը, ազատ․․․և կրկին անգամ անջատվենք, մի քիչ, և կրկին, և ավելի շատ, (սիրահարվածների նման) … ուրեմն եկեք ժպտանք, բարևենք միմյանց, կապ հաստատենք, զանգահարենք միմյանց, նամակ գրենք և կապի մեջ մնանք․․․քանի որ այսպիսով, միգուցե կիսվենք մի բառով, կամ կիսենք մեր աշխարհը․․․/ և այժմ երբ անցել ենք նույն ուղիով, ես շատ ուրախ եմ, քանի որ այստեղ մենք հանդիպում ենք։ / Այս օրը, այս ճանապարհը, որը ընթացել ենք միասին, ապրած վաjրկյանները, այժմ ժամանակն է լռել մի պահ, այո, բայց նույնպես խոսել մի պահ, միասին ուտել աղ ու հաց, խմել թեյ , մնալ հանգիստ մի պահ, մի պահ, հանգստանալ, և կրկին շարժվել։/ Ձեզ հետ հանդիպելը և ձեզ հետ խոսելը և նույնիսկ հուշերով ապրելը շատ հաճելի էր։ / (Շնորհակալություն)։ /Թող արժանի լինեք մեծ երջանկության, լինեք սիրով և երջանիկ։ / և մինչև մյուս անգամ, նույն տեղում, կամ մի ուրիշ տեղում, որպես օտարական ճամբորդ, իմաստուն ճամբորդ, միշտ ինքնավստահությամբ,վստահությամբ, բարի հավատքով քայլենք միասին, կամ միայնակ՝, բարի ճանապարհ, իմ ընկեր, ցտեսություն։

ওয়ার্ড

শুরুতে শব্দ ছিল – অনুপ্রেরণা এর শব্দ। এবং, এই মুহূর্তে একটি দূরবর্তী মেমরি দ্বারা অনুপ্রাণিত, এই (আপনার) ক্রমবর্ধমান চিন্তা, (আমাদের) ক্রমবর্ধমান চিন্তা, (অথবা) চিন্তা, খুব সহজভাবে, এবং তাদের শব্দ আউট, এবং অনুপ্রাণিত করা হচ্ছে আপনার শ্বাস শুরু, ঘুরিয়ে, এই চিন্তাধারা লিখতে অনুপ্রাণিত করা, এবং শব্দগুলি, শব্দের মত শব্দ হিসাবে, আসা হিসাবে, সহজে এবং আরাম সঙ্গে, চিন্তা নিচে লিখতে অনুপ্রাণিত করা।
এবং এই ভাবে শিখতে আপনার চিন্তাধারা শব্দগুলি সেট করতে এবং একটু (আমাদের) মন, (আমাদের) ক্রমবর্ধমান চিন্তাধারা, (অথবা) মন, (অথবা) চিন্তা, খুব সহজেই (আপনার নিজের) (অনেক ভালো একটি অন্যের) মন, এবং, মস্তিষ্কের মধ্যে শিথিল, সেখানে ট্রেস, পৃষ্ঠায়, একক মন এর প্রতিচ্ছবি যাত্রা,
এবং শ্বাস ফেলা এবং লিখতে – এবং কেবল শ্বাস ফেলা এবং লিখতে,
এবং, কাগজ কলম স্থাপন, সহজভাবে কালি প্রবাহ, কালি প্রবাহিত করা যাতে সহজে, যাতে,
আপনার অনুপ্রেরণা যাই হোক না কেন,
আপনি এটি লিখুন,
এবং এটি লিখুন,
এবং এটি লিখুন, একবার লিখুন, একবার,
তাই আপনার কন্ঠ খুঁজে পেতে তাই,
এবং আপনার ব্যবসা, এবং, তাই করছেন,
আপনার অনুপ্রেরণা মুক্ত, এবং যে ভয়েস resound শুনতে, হিসাবে যদি
নীরবতা থেকে একটি শব্দ, অনুরণন, নীরবতা গভীরতা, একটি শব্দ, একটি প্রার্থনা,
প্রার্থনা একটি ফর্ম, কিছুই বাইরে,
প্রার্থনা একটি ফর্ম, শূন্যতা থেকে,
এবং একটি স্বপ্ন, দিন, এবং রাত, ঐশ্বরিক

SHABDO
Surute sabda chila – anuprerane era sabda. Ebam, e’i muhurte ekati durabarti memari dbara anupranita, e’i (apanara) kramabardhamana cinta, (amadera) kramabardhamana cinta, (athaba) cinta, khuba sahajabhabe, ebam tadera sabda a’uta, ebam anupranita kara hacche apanara sbasa suru, ghuriye, e’i cintadhara likhate anupranita kara, ebam sabdaguli, sabdera mata sabda hisabe, asa hisabe, sahaje ebam arama sange, cinta nice likhate anupranita kara.
Ebam e’i bhabe sikhate apanara cintadhara sabdaguli seta karate ebam ekatu (amadera) mana, (amadera) kramabardhamana cintadhara, (athaba) mana, (athaba) cinta, khuba sahaje’i (apanara nijera) (aneka bhalo ekati an’yera) mana, ebam, mastiskera madhye sithila, sekhane tresa, prsthaya, ekaka mana era praticchabi yatra,
ebam sbasa phela ebam likhate – ebam kebala sbasa phela ebam likhate,
ebam, kagaja kalama sthapana, sahajabhabe kali prabaha, kali prabahita kara yate sahaje, yate,
apanara anuprerana ya’i hoka na kena,
apani eti likhuna,
ebam eti likhuna,
ebam eti likhuna, ekabara likhuna, ekabara,
ta’i apanara kanṭha khummje pete ta’i,
ebam apanara byabasa, ebam, ta’i karachena,
apanara anuprerana mukta, ebam ye bhayesa sunate, hisabe yadi
nirabata theke ekati sabda, anuranana, nirabata gabhirata, ekati sabda, ekati prarthana,
prarthana ekati pharma, kichu’i ba’ire,
prarthana ekati pharma, śun’yata theke,
ebam ekaṭ sapna, dina, ebam rata, aisbarika.

এখানে যেখানে আমরা পূরণ

আস্থা একটি আত্মবিশ্বাসের মধ্যে, বিশ্বাস, বিশ্বাস, চলুন শুরু করা যাক চলুন খোলা, বিনামূল্যে। আসুন কিছুটা হারাতে পারি (ভালোবাসার ক্ষেত্রে) / যখন আপনি কিছু প্রয়োজন, সেখানে এটি; এবং আপনি কিছু সন্ধান করার সময়, আপনি এটি খুঁজে; এবং যখন আপনি এই বা সেই ব্যক্তির সন্ধান করেন, কিছু / এক / বিশেষ, তারা আপনাকে খুঁজে পায়, অথবা আপনি তাদের খুঁজে পান, অবিলম্বে না, একবার, তারপর শীঘ্রই / আপনি যেখানেই যান সেখানে, সেখানে আপনি সবসময় উপস্থিত, বলছেন: / এখানে এখনই থাকুন / এবং যদি আমি পাশ দিয়ে যাই, তোমার সাথে সাক্ষাত করি এবং কথা বলতে চাই, তবে কেন আমি তোমার সাথে কথা বলব না? তুমিও আমার প্রতি. আপনি অন্য বিশ্বের ধাঁধা, অসীম চিত্তাকর্ষক, একটি গভীর বোঝার জন্য আহ্বান, একটি ভাগ মানবতার মধ্যে আলাপন এর কিছু ধারণা, প্রতিধ্বনি মধ্যে একটি শব্দ, একটি কল যা প্রতিক্রিয়া, একটি প্রশ্ন, এবং কখনও কখনও, সম্ভবত, একটি উত্তর. চলুন দুটি তারপর বিরতি এবং, যদি শুধুমাত্র একটি মুহূর্ত জন্য, বিশ্বের সম্পর্কে আশ্চর্য, একসঙ্গে। আমাকে বলুন, বাড়ি কোথায়? তুমি কোথা থেকে এসেছ? কোথায়, আপনার শিকড়? এবং আপনার দৃষ্টিকোণ কি? যে কোনও ক্ষেত্রে, আপনি নিশ্চয় এখানে এখন পর্যন্ত ভ্রমণ করেছেন। এখন কি? এরপর কী? এবং কোথায়? অথবা সম্ভবত আপনি এমন একজন যিনি আপনার গন্তব্যে জানাতে পছন্দ করেন না, কেবল একটু নষ্ট হয়ে যাওয়ার সামান্য অনুভূতি উপভোগ করছেন, যা জীবনের নৃত্য নদীর উপর প্রবাহিত হয় … এই মহান জীবন শক্তি, মহান জীবন আত্মা, নিয়ন্ত্রণ করা না চায় আমাদের, কোন ভাবেই, বরং আমাদের মঞ্চে পর্যায়ক্রমে, বৃহত্তর এবং আরও খোলা স্পেসগুলি … খোলা স্পেস এবং উষ্ণ, খোলা, মুখমুখী … এবং মুখ, এবং মুখ, এবং মুখ, এবং অনেকগুলি মুখ , অনেক মুখ, এবং মুখ, এটি সম্মুখীন, এবং শুধু এটি সম্মুখীন, এটি মুখোমুখি, মুখ, সম্মুখীন, যেমন সৌন্দর্য, গতি, আবেগ, এবং আন্দোলন নিজেই গতি সময়, প্রবাহিত সময়, একটি রহস্য, এবং সবসময় ভ্রমণ ওভার, পার্কে, এবং এমনকি আমি, এবং আপনি, এবং এর বাইরেও এক ধরনের আনন্দ, একটি ও, একটি ওম, একটি হও, একটি হুম, একটি স্তবক, একটি হু, কেন, একটি যারা এ। / (আপনার হাসি আনতে আনন্দ)
প্রশ্ন: আপনার নাম কি? তুমি কে? / এবং আমি কে, যে বিষয়ে জন্য? আমি তোমার কে? / (আমি কি একমাত্র, বা একেরও বেশি, সম্ভবত, বা না কেউ?)। / অবশ্যই, জিনিস আমরা একে অপরের কল কি না, বা আমরা ভুল এবং আমাদের নাম বেশ ভুল পেয়েছিলাম হতে পারে যে, একটি ভুল নম্বর কলিং মত … না; গুরুত্বপূর্ণ জিনিস … ভাল … কে সত্যিই জানে? … কে সত্যিই জানে … এক মন … নম্রতার মনোভাব, এমনকি শ্রদ্ধার সাথে …… দাঁড়িয়ে দাঁড়িয়ে … এবং সম্ভবতও বোঝা যায় … মাঝে মাঝে … একটু … যদি আস্থা, বিশ্বাস, ভালো বিশ্বাস … একটু কম … সম্পূর্ণভাবে … ছেড়ে দেওয়া … এবং, যেতে দেওয়া … এটি সব যেতে … খোলা, বিনামূল্যে … এবং নিজেকে আবার হারাতে, একটি বিট, এবং তারপর আবার, এখনও আরো (প্রেম হিসাবে যদি) … তাই হাসি যাক, হ্যালো বলুন, যোগাযোগ স্থাপন করুন, একটি কল করুন, চিঠি লিখুন, স্পর্শ করুন … এইভাবে, আমরা সম্ভবত একটি শব্দ এবং সম্ভবত একটি বিশ্ব ভাগ করব … /
এবং আমি আনন্দিত যে এখন আমাদের পথ অতিক্রম করা হয়েছে, এখানে আমরা যেখানে দেখা হয় / এই দিন, এই যাত্রা; পাথ অতিক্রম, গল্প ভাগ: নীরবতা রাখা একটি সময়, হ্যাঁ, কিন্তু একটি সময় কথা বলতে, বিরতি বিরতি, সোঁতা চা; একটি সময় বসতে, সময় জন্য, বিশ্রাম, শিথিল করা, এবং একটি সময় সরানোর সময়। / গল্প এবং যাত্রা ভাগ করার জন্য, এই দিন আপনার সাথে দেখা এবং আপনার সাথে কথা বলতে খুব আনন্দিত হয়েছে। / (ধন্যবাদ). / আপনি মহান সুখ জানাতে পারেন, প্রেম, এবং কৃতজ্ঞতা। / এবং, পরের বার পর্যন্ত, একই স্থান বা অন্য কোন স্থানে অন্য কোন পথভ্রষ্ট পর্যটক, একজন জ্ঞানী যাত্রী, সর্বদা আস্থা, বিশ্বাস, সততা, এবং কোম্পানিতে হোক বা অপেক্ষাকৃতই হোক, একা হাঁটা: বন ভ্রমণ, আমার বন্ধু ; ভাল ভাড়া

EKHANE AMADER DEKHA
Astha ekati atmabisbasera madhye, bisbasa, bisbasa, caluna suru kara yaka caluna khola, binamulye. Asuna kichuta harate pari (bhalobasara ksetre)/ yakhana apani kichu prayojana, sekhane eti; ebam apani kichu sandhana karara samaya, apani eti khumje; ebam yakhana apani e'i ba se'i byaktira sandhana karena, kichu/ eka/ bisesa, tara apanake khummje paya, athaba apani tadera khummje pana, abilambe na, ekabara, tarapara sighra'i/ apani yekhane'i yana sekhane, sekhane apani sabasamaya upasthita, balachena / Ekhane ekhana'i thakuna/ ebam yadi ami pasa diye ya'i, tomara sathe saksata kari ebam katha balate ca'i, tabe kena ami tomara sathe katha balaba na? Tumi'o amara prati. Apani an'ya bisbera dhamdha, asima cittakarsaka, ekati gabhira bojhara jan'ya ahbana, ekati bhaga manabatara madhye alapana era kichu dharana, pratidhbani madhye ekati sabda, ekati kala ye pratikriya, ekati prasna, ebam kakhana'o kakhana'o, sambhabata, ekati uttara. Caluna duti tarapara birati ebam, yadi sudhumatra ekati muhurta jan'ya, bisbera samparke ascarya, ekasange.

Amake baluna, bari kothaya? Tumi kotha theke esecha? Kothaya, apanara sikara? Ebam apanara drstikona ki? Ye kona'o ksetre, apani niscaya ekhane ekhana paryanta bhramana karechena. Ekhana ki? Erapara ki? Ebam kothaya? Athaba sambhabata apani emana ekajana yini apanara gantabye janate pachanda karena na, kebala ekatu naṣta haye ya'oyara saman'ya anubhuti upabhoga karachena, ya jibanera nrtya nadira upara prabahita haya... E'i mahana jibana sakti, mahana jibana atma, niyantrana kara na caya amadera, kona bhabe'i, baram amadera mance paryayakrame, brhattara ebam ara'o khola spesaguli... Khola spesa ebam usna, khola, mukhamukhi... Ebam mukha, ebam mukha, ebam mukha, ebam anekaguli mukha, aneka mukha, ebam mukha, eti sam'mukhina, ebam sudhu eti sam'mukhina, eti mukhomukhi, mukha, sam'mukhina, yemana saundarya, gati, abega, ebam andolana nije'i gati samaya, prabahita samaya, ekati rahasya, ebam sabasamaya bhramana obhara, parke, ebam emanaki ami, ebam apani, ebam era ba'ire'o eka dharanera ananda, ekati o, ekati oma, ekati ha'o, ekati huma, ekati stabaka, ekati hu, kena, ekati yara e. / (Apanara hasi anate ananda)/ Prasna: Āpanara nama ki? Tumi ke? / Ebam ami ke, ye bisaye jan'ya? Āmi tomara ke? / (Ami ki ekamatra, ba ekera'o besi, sambhabata, ba na ke'u?). / Abasya'i, jinisa amara eke aparera kala ki na, ba amara bhula ebam amadera nama besa bhula peyechilama hate pare ye, ekati bhula nambara kalim mata... Na; gurutbapurna jinisa... Bhala... Ke satyi'i jane? ... Ke satyi'i jane... Eka mana... Namratara manobhaba, emanaki srad'dhara sathe...... Damriye damriye... Ebam sambhabata'o bojha yaya... Majhe majhe... Ekatu... Yadi astha, bisbasa, bhalo bisbasa... Ekatu kama... Sampurṇabhabe... Chere de'oya... Ebam, yete de'oya... Eti saba yete... Khola, binamulye... Ebam nijeke abara harate, ekati bita, ebam tarapara abara, ekhana'o aro (prema hisabe yadi)... Ta'i hasi yaka, hyalo baluna, yogayoga sthapana karuna, ekati kala karuna, cithi likhuna, sparsa karuna... E'ibhabe, amara sambhabata ekati sabda ebam sambhabata ekati bisba bhaga karaba... /Ebam ami anandita ye ekhana amadera patha atikrama kara hayeche, ekhane amara yekhane dekha haya/ e'i dina, e'i yatra; patha atikrama, galpa bhaga: Nirabata rakha ekati samaya, hyam, kintu ekati samaya katha balate, birati birati, somta ca; ekati samaya basate, samaya jan'ya, bisrama, sithila kara, ebam ekati samaya saranora samaya. / Galpa ebam yatra bhaga karara jan'ya, e'i dina apanara sathe dekha ebam apanara sathe katha balate khuba anandita hayeche. / (Dhan'yabada). / Apani mahana sukha janate parena, prema, ebam krtajnata. / Ebam, parera bara paryanta, eka'i sthana ba an'ya kona sthana, pathabhrasta nabajatakera mato, ekajana jnani yatri, sarbada astha, bisbasa, satata ebam hamta, kompanira madhye, ba apatadrstite, eka: Bona yatra, amara bandhu; bhala bhara.

হৃদয়ের শব্দ

যদি আমরা সাবধানে শুনি, আমরা “হৃদয়” শব্দটি কি শুনতে পাব বা কমপক্ষে নিজের জন্য নিজের জন্য বলি, আমার মতামত এবং নিজেকে এইভাবে প্রকাশ করার চেষ্টা করি, আমার নিজের “মা” জিহ্বা, আমার নিজের প্রথম ভাষা, আমি কি শুনতে পারি, এখন, এখানে, এখানে, এবং এখানে, এখানে, আপনি, এই শব্দে, শব্দের এই জগতে, ইংরেজি, “হৃদয়”, যা আমরা কল, শুনতে?
কিন্তু অপেক্ষা করো! আমরা সম্ভবত আমাদের চিন্তা এগিয়ে দৌড়ে হয়। অথবা আমি অন্তত, অন্তত। সেখানে নতুন কিছু নেই কিন্তু আমরা বরং ধীরে ধীরে যেতে চাই না, এক সময়ে একটি ছোট পদক্ষেপ গ্রহণ করা, এবং প্রথমে আমাদেরকে নিম্নলিখিত প্রশ্ন জিজ্ঞাসা করা, বা প্রশ্নগুলি।
আমরা কিভাবে সত্যিই সাবধানে শোনা হয় যখন আমরা কিভাবে জানতে পারি?
আমরা কিভাবে এটা করতে পারি?
কীভাবে আমরা মনোযোগ সহকারে শুনতে পারি, যেমন হৃদয় দিয়ে, সব হৃদয় দিয়ে, সব মানুষের মন দিয়ে?
আমরা কীভাবে শুনি?
(শব্দ শুনতে এবং শব্দ শুনতে, সঙ্গীত শুনতে)।
আমি নিশ্চিত যে আমার কাছে কোনও সন্তোষজনক বা পরিতৃপ্তি নেই – এই প্রশ্নগুলির উত্তর
তোমার আছে?
কিছু মনে করো না; কোনো ব্যাপার না …
চলুন শুরু করা যাক একসাথে শান্তভাবে একসঙ্গে বসুন, এবং চেষ্টা করুন, যদি শুধুমাত্র একটি মুহূর্ত জন্য, এটি মাধ্যমে চিন্তা।
– আমি কি তোমাকে কিছু চা দিতে পারি?
এবং, সময় দ্বারা এটি চিন্তা করার মাধ্যমে এটি চিন্তা করে, চিন্তাভাবনা দিয়ে চিন্তা, নিজের চিন্তাভাবনা, চিন্তাভাবনার মাধ্যমে এবং চুপচাপ বসে থাকার মাধ্যমে আমাদের চিন্তাভাবনা শুরু করার চিন্তাভাবনা, মনকে মীমাংসা করতে শুরু করে, একটু সামান্য করে, পুরোপুরি শান্ত হয়ে উঠতে , এবং এখনও; এবং এই মুহুর্তে সেখানে যে, প্রথম এবং সর্বাগ্রে, আমরা একে অপরের কাছে আমাদের প্রত্যাহার করা হতে পারে, আমাদের ভাগ রহস্য, এবং সম্ভাব্য, এবং কেবল উপস্থিত হতে পারে; সম্ভবত এটি একটি আইন বা সিদ্ধান্ত; সম্ভবত এটি একটি মনোভাব, বা কেবল একটি প্রতিক্রিয়া, স্বীকৃতি; সম্ভবত এটি একটি অনুপ্রেরণা; অথবা সম্ভবত এটি ইতিমধ্যেই এর শুরু, আমাদের উত্তর।
(প্রতিটি মানুষের অন্যান্য আমাদের উত্তর শুরু)।
(একটি সভা; একটি সাক্ষাত্কার; একটি আবিষ্কার)।
(একটি কথোপকথন).
(একটি সংলাপ)।
(প্রতিটি মানুষের প্রতি আমাদের উত্তরের শুরুতে)
– কিছু চা?
এবং, এই, আমাদের অনুপ্রেরণা, আমরা একসঙ্গে বসতে, যেমন মন আমাদের বৈঠক নিজেই একটি বাসস্থানের জায়গা ছিল, কোথাও বাড়িতে একটি মুহূর্ত জন্য বোধ।
এবং তারপর, একটু শান্ত সময়, আমরা একসঙ্গে আরো একটু ঘনিষ্ঠভাবে, একটু, কখনও কখনও সামান্য; আমরা একটু কাছাকাছি আসা, এবং একটু কাছাকাছি বোধ, অন্য এক; এবং, বন্ধ বসা, আমাদের দৃষ্টিকোণ একত্রিত হয়ে; এবং, এই ভাবে, কখনও কখনও ধীরে ধীরে, এবং কখনও কখনও তাই subtly, আমরা এই মুহূর্তে fleetingly সচেতন হয়ে, একটি সামান্য, কখনও এত সামান্য, যে আমরা একসঙ্গে এখন শ্বাস হয়, আরও কম, সময়, এবং আমাদের শ্বাস হিসাবে, সত্য, এক ছিল, শুধুমাত্র এক শ্বাস ছিল, এবং আমাদের এখন শান্ত চিন্তা, একক বর্তমান মুহূর্ত জন্য, সাদৃশ্য মধ্যে।
এবং, একসঙ্গে শান্তভাবে একসঙ্গে বসা, এই একক বর্তমান মুহুর্তে, এখন আমরা বুঝতে পারি, এমনকি যদি পুরোপুরি পুরোপুরি না এবং সম্পূর্ণ সচেতনভাবে, কিছু অসাধারণ কিছু, যা হয়তো আমরা এখানে একটি ভাল শব্দ, “বোঝার” চাইলে, এখানে কল করব; কিন্তু “বোঝার” খুব নম্রভাবে বোঝা যায়, “দাঁড়িয়ে থাকা” মত কিছু বোঝা যায়, উদাহরণস্বরূপ, উদাহরণস্বরূপ, একটি বিশাল এবং মহৎ আকাশ, উপরে আকাশ, এবং একটি মনোভাব যা সম্পূর্ণ খোলা আছে, আশ্চর্যের, বিশ্বের , নিজেই, এবং সম্পূর্ণ খোলা, রহস্যের একটি গভীর অনুভূতি, এবং বুদ্ধিমান না, এবং তারপর, প্রকৃতপক্ষে, প্রকৃতপক্ষে তার কিছুই জানি না, এবং সত্যিই কিছু এ সব বুঝতে, না সব, বা সম্পূর্ণভাবে না , এবং পরিবর্তে কিছু কোম্পানির জন্য একটি সামান্য স্থান ছেড়ে, এক, কিছু, জিনিস, অন্য
তুমি কি বুঝতে পেরেছো?
এবং এই, আমাদের বুদ্ধি, এবং এই, আমাদের স্বীকৃতি, আমাদের অভাব, বোঝার, এবং আমাদের অসমতা, আমাদের অসম্পূর্ণতা, আমাদের শালীনতা, আমরা সম্ভবত আরও ঘনিষ্ঠভাবে একসঙ্গে বসতে, আরো ঘনিষ্ঠভাবে একসাথে বসতে, একটু , কখনও এত সামান্য; এবং আমরা একটু কাছাকাছি আসা, এবং একটু কাছাকাছি বোধ, অন্য এক; এবং, বসা বন্ধ, আমরা আমাদের দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি একসঙ্গে গঠিত হতে পারে, বোঝার অভাব, বোঝার মধ্যে; এবং, এই ভাবে, কখনও কখনও ধীরে ধীরে, এবং কখনও কখনও তাই, আমরা এই মুহূর্তে সচেতন হয়ে, একটি সামান্য, কখনও এত সামান্য, যে আমরা একসঙ্গে এখন শ্বাস হয়, আরও কম, সময়, এবং আমাদের শ্বাস হিসাবে, সত্য, এক ছিল, শুধুমাত্র এক শ্বাস ছিল, এবং আমাদের এখন শান্ত চিন্তা, একক বর্তমান মুহূর্ত জন্য, সাদৃশ্য মধ্যে।
এবং, শান্তভাবে একসঙ্গে বসা, এই একক বর্তমান মুহুর্তে, আমরা এখন এতটাই ঘনিষ্ঠ হয়েছি যে, আপনি এবং আমি, যে আপনার শ্বাস শ্বাসের মত, আপনি আমার, এবং এইভাবে, আমরা আবারও ফিরে আসি, শুনুন এবং মনোযোগ সহকারে শ্রবণ করুন, যা আমরা শুনতে পাই, যখন আমরা শ্রবণ করি, খুব মনোযোগ দিয়ে হৃদয়ে, মানুষের হৃদয়, আপনার মারাত্মক হৃদয়, আমার হৃদয়কে আঘাত করছি, যেমনটা, মনোযোগ সহকারে শুনছি, আমরা খোদার উপর শুনছি একটি স্পন্দন, একটি পালস, একটি ছন্দ, একটি ছন্দ, একটি দ্রুতগতি, এখন একটু দ্রুত, এখন একটু ধীরে ধীরে, স্পন্দিত, প্রতিহতকারী, এবং ধ্বনি, মনোযোগ শোনা, স্পন্দিত, গুটাতে, একটি হৃদস্পন্দন, একটি হৃদস্পন্দন, পিটুনি, স্পন্দিত, একসঙ্গে, এক হিসাবে, এক গান, হিসাবে এটি ধুত ছিল, একসঙ্গে, ইউনিফাইড হিসাবে, যেমন এক হৃদয়, এক ভয়েস, একটি গান, হৃদয়, একসঙ্গে, কোম্পানির মধ্যে, গায়কদল মধ্যে, খুলতে পারে, এই একক বর্তমান মুহুর্তে, এখন, একটি সুবিশাল, স্বর্গীয় ক্যাথিড্রাল, বা গম্বুজ, মহৎ শব্দের মতো, যেমন আকাশের স্বর্গের গানের মত, সোয়ামে মানুষে হৃদয়; এবং এই তারপর, হচ্ছে, একবার, শব্দ, এবং শোনা, নিখুঁত মানুষের হৃদয় হয়, সঙ্গীত শুনতে; নিখুঁত মানুষের হৃদয় জন্য সুখী এক হিসাবে খুশি
(এবং, প্রায় একপাশে হিসাবে, আমি আপনাকে জিজ্ঞাসা: ভাষা যদি না জিহ্বা একটি সঙ্গীত? এবং কি সংস্কৃতি – এবং বিশেষ করে শিল্প, সঙ্গীত, এবং নাচ একটি সংস্কৃতি – যদি না একটি স্থল, একটি সাইট, যেখানে এবং যেখানে থেকে উত্সাহিত করা এবং বৃদ্ধি চাষ, একটি ভূমিকা যা বৃদ্ধির জন্য উত্সাহ দেয় এমন একটি মনোভাব, যা বৃদ্ধিকে উত্সাহ দেয়, এবং একটি স্থল যা উপযুক্ত, প্রত্যাহার এবং আমাদের আবর্তিত মনোযোগ এবং প্রশংসা)।
সুতরাং আসুন এখন সাহস গ্রহণ করা, হৃদয় মহিমা চাইতে, এবং নিজেকে একটি গভীর শোনা, এবং শ্রবণ, এবং বোঝার, এবং সমবেদনা উত্সাহিত। কারণ, আমরা যদি খুব সাবধানে শুনতে পাই, তাহলে আমরা যা শুনে থাকি তা হৃদয় দিয়ে শ্রবণ করা, শ্রবণশক্তি, শ্রবণ, শ্রবণ, শ্রদ্ধা, অনুভূতি, হৃদয় দিয়ে এবং কেবলমাত্র হৃদয় – হৃদয় শিল্প!
এবং আমরা মানুষ, আনন্দের সঙ্গে গুমোট, বাড়িতে আসুন, হৃদয়ের শব্দ।

সুইজারল্যান্ডে আমার পায়ে লেগেছে, ওমানের আমার কানে, মেঘে আবার আমার মাথায়, আকাশের চিন্তাভাবনা, এবং আমার হৃদয় সব জায়গায়। কি চমৎকার সৌভাগ্য!
জেনেভা, 21 নভেম্বর 2017 – আমরা এটি মঙ্গলবার আহ্বান

AMAR HRYDYA'R SHABDO
Yadi amara sabadhane suni, amara’hridaya sabdati ki sunate paba ba kamapakse nijera jan'ya nijera jan'ya bali, amara matamata ebam nijeke e'ibhabe prakasa karara cesta kari, amara nijera’ma jihba, amara nijera prathama bhasa, ami ki sunate pari, ekhana, ekhane, ekhane, ebam ekhane, ekhane, apani, e'i sabde, sabdera e'i jagate, inreji, hrdaya, ya amara kala, sunate?

Kintu apeksa karo! Amara sambhabata amadera cinta egiye daure haya. Athaba ami antata, antata. Sekhane natuna kichu ne'i kintu amara baram dhire dhire yete ca'i na, eka samaye ekati chota padaksepa grahana kara, ebam prathame nijera kache nimnalikhita prasnati jijnasa kara, ba prasnaguli.

Amara kibhabe satyi'i sabadhane sona haya yakhana amara kibhabe janate pari?

Amara kibhabe eta karate pari?

Kibhabe amara manoyoga sahakare sunate pari, yemana hrdaya diye, saba hrdaya diẏe, saba manusera mana diye?

Amara kibhabe suni?

(Sabda sunate ebam sabda sunate, sangita sunate).

Ami niscita ye amara kache kona'o santosajanaka ba paritrpti ne'i - e'i prasnagulira uttara

tomara ache?

Kichu mane karo na; kono byapara na…

caluna suru kara yaka ekasathe santabhabe ekasange basuna, ebam cesta karuna, yadi sudhumatra ekati muhurta jan'ya, eti madhyame cinta.

Ami ki tomake kichu ca dite pari?

Ebam, samaya dbara eti cinta karara madhyame eti cinta kare, cintabhabana diye cinta, nijera cintabhabana, cintabhabanara madhyame ebam cupacapa base thakara madhyame amadera cintabhabana suru karara cintabhabana, manake mimansa karate suru kare, ekatu saman'ya kare, puropuri santa haye uthate, ebam ekhana'o; ebam e'i muhurte sekhane ye, prathama ebam sarbagre, amara eke aparera kache amadera pratyahara kara hate pare, amadera bhaga rahasya, ebam sambhabya, ebam kebala upasthita hate pare; sambhabata eti ekati a'ina ba sid'dhanta; sambhabata eti ekati manobhaba, ba kebala ekati pratikriya, sbikrti; sambhabata eti ekati anuprerana; athaba sambhabata eti itimadhye'i era suru, amadera uttara.

(Pratiti manusera an'yan'ya amadera uttara suru).

(Ekati sabha; ekati saksatkara; ekati abiskara).

(Ekati kathopakathana).

(Ekati sanlapa).

(Pratiti manusera prati amadera uttarera surute)

kichu cha?

Ebam, e'i, amadera anuprerana, amara ekasange basate, yemana mana amadera baithaka nije'i ekati basasthanera jayaga chila, kotha'o barite ekati muhurta jan'ya bodha.

Ebam tarapara, ektu santa samaya, amara ekasange aro ektu ghanisthabhabe, ektu, kakhana'o kakhana'o saman'ya; amara ekatu kachakachi asa, ebam ektu kachakachi bodha, an'ya eka; ebam, bandha basa, amadera drstikona ekatrita haye; ebam, e'i bhabe, kakhana'o kakhana'o dhire dhire, ebam kakhana'o kakhana'o ta'i chotur bhabe, amara e'i muhurte khonnokale sacetana haye, ekati saman'ya, kakhana'o eta saman'ya, amara ekasange ekhana sbasa haya, ara'o kama, samaya, ebam amadera sbasa hisabe, satya, eka chila, sudhumatra eka sbasa chila, ebam amadera ekhana santa cinta, ekaka bartamana muhurta jan'ya, sadrsya madhye.

Ebam, ekasange santabhabe ekasange basa, e'i ekaka bartamana muhurte, ekhana amara bujhate pari, emanaki yadi puropuri puropuri na ebam sampurna sacetanabhabe, kichu asadharana kichu, ya hayato amara ekhane ekati bhala sabda, bojhara ca'ile, ekhane kala karaba; kintu bojhara khuba namrabhabe bojha yaya, damriye thaka mata kichu bojha yaya, udaharanasbarupa, udaharanasbarupa, ekati bisala ebam mahat akasa, upare akasa, ebam ekati manobhaba ya sampurna khola ache, ascaryera bisaya, bisbera samparke, nije'i, ebam sampurna khola, rahasyera ekati gabhira anubhuti, ebam bud'dhimana na, ebam tarapara, prakrtapakṣe, prakrtapakse tara kichu'i jani na, ebam satyi'i kichu e saba bujhate, na saba, ba sampurnabhabe na, ebam paribarte kichu kompanira jan'ya ekati saman'ya sthana chere, eka, kichu, jinisa, an'ya

tumi ki bujhate perecho?

Ebam e'i, amadera bud'dhi, ebam e'i, amadera sbikrti, amadera abhaba, bojhara, ebam amadera asamata, amadera asampurnata, amadera salinata, amara sambhabata ara'o ghanisthabhabe ekasange basate, aro ghanisthabhabe ekasathe basate, ekatu, kakhana'o eta saman'ya; ebam amara ektu kachakachi asa, ebam ektu kachakachi bodha, an'ya eka; ebam, basa bandha, amara amadera drstibhangi ekasange gathita hate pare, bojhara abhaba, bojhara madhye; ebam, e'i bhabe, kakhana'o kakhana'o dhire dhire, ebam kakhana'o kakhana'o ta'i choturbhabe, amara e'i muhurte khonnokale sacetana haye, ekati saman'ya, kakhana'o eta saman'ya, amara ekasange ekhana sbasa haya, ara'o kama, samaya, ebam amadera sbasa hisabe, satya, eka chila, sudhumatra eka sbasa chila, ebam amadera ekhana santa cinta, ekaka bartamana muhurta jan'ya, sadrsya madhye.

Ebam, santabhabe ekasange basa, e'i ekaka bartamana muhurte, amara ekhana etata'i ghanistha hayechi ye, apani ebam ami, ye apanara sbasa sbasera mata, apani amara, ebam e'ibhabe, amara abara'o phire asi, sununa ebam manoyoga sahakare srabana karuna, ya amara sunate pa'i, yakhana amara srabana kari, khuba manoyoga diye hrdaye, manusera hrdaya, apanara maratmaka hrdaya, amara hrdayake aghata karachi, yemanata, manoyoga sahakare sunachi, amara khodara upara sunachi ekati spandana, ekti palasa, ekati chanda, ekati chanda, ekti drutagati, ekhana ekatu druta, ekhana ektu dhire dhire, spondito, pratihatakari, ebam dhbani, manoyoga sona, spandita, gutate, ekati hrdaspandana, ekati hrdaspandana, pituni, spondito, ekasange, eka hisabe, eka gana, hisabe eti dhuto chilo, ekasange, i'unipha'ida hisabe, yemana eka hrdaya, eka bhayesa, ekati gana, hrdaya, ekasange, kompanira madhye, gayakadala madhye, khulate pare, e'i ekaka bartamana muhurte, ekhana, ekati subisala, sbargiya kyathidrala, ba gambuja, mahat sabdera mato, yemana akasera sbargera ganera mata, soyame manuse hrdaya; ebam e'i tarapara, hacche, ekabara, sabda, ebam sona, nikhumta manusera hrdaya haya, sangita sunate; nikhumta manusera hrdaaa jan'ya sukhi eka hisabe khusi.

(Ebam, praya ekapase hisabe, ami apanake jijnasa: Bhasa yadi na jihba ekati sangita? Ebam ki sanskriti - ebam bisesa kare silpa, sangita, ebam naca ekati sanskriti - yadi na ekati sthala, ekati sa'ita, yekhane ebam yekhane theke utsahita kara ebam brd'dhi casa, ekti bhumika ya brd'dhira janya utsaha deya emana ekati manobhaba, ya brd'dhike utsaha deya, ebam emana ekati sthala ya pratyahara kara, ebam amadera abartita manoyoga ebam prasansa).

Sutaram asuna ekhana sahasa grahana kara, hrdaya mahima ca'ite, ebam nijeke ekati gabhira sona, ebam srabana, ebam bojhara, ebam samabedana utsshita. Karana, amara yadi khuba sabadhane sunate pa'i, tahale amara ya sune thaki ta hrdaya diye srabana kara, srabanasakti, srabana, srabana, srad'dha, anubhuti, hrdaya diye ebam kebalamatra hrdaya - hrdaya silpa!

Ebam amara manusa, anandera sange gumota, barite asuna, hrdayera sabda.

 Suijaralyande amara paye legeche, omanera amara kane, meghe abara amara mathaya, akasera cintabhabana, ebam amara hrdaya saba jayagaya. Ki camatkara saubhagya!

Jenebha, 21 nabhembara 2017 - amara eti mangalabara ahbana.

© Bede Nix, 2017. All rights reserved.

ТУК Е МЯСТОТО, КЪДЕТО СЕ СРЕЩАМЕ

С вяра, надежда и добри намерения нека да се отпуснем. Нека бъдем откровени, свободни. Нека изгубим себе си малко (сякаш сме влюбени). / Защото когато се нуждаеш от нещо, ето го; и когато търсиш нещо, ще го намериш; и когато търсиш този или онзи човек, някой /единствения / специален, той ще те намери или ти ще го намериш, ако не мигом, веднага, то тогава скоро. / Защото където и да отидеш, винаги ще си казваш: / Бъди тук и сега. / И така, ако аз, минавайки, те срещна и искам да говоря, тогава защо да не говоря с теб? И ти с мен. Защото ти си загадката на един друг свят, безкрайно интересен, който призовава към по-задълбочено разбиране, някакво чувство за общение в една споделена човечност, един звук в търсене на ехо, един повик, който търси отклик, един въпрос, а понякога, може би, един отговор. Нека и двамата тогава спрем и, дори само за миг, да поразмишляваме върху света заедно. Кажи ми, кое място наричаш дом? Откъде идваш? Къде са твоите корени? И каква е твоята гледна точка? Във всеки случай със сигурност си пътувал доста, за да си тук сега. И сега какво? Какво следва? И накъде? Или може би си някой, който предпочита да не знае накъде се е запътил, наслаждавайки се просто на усещането, че е малко изгубен, малко без посока, носейки се върху танцуващата река на живота … знаейки, че този велика жизнена енергия, тази голяма жажда за живот, не се стреми да ни възпира по никакъв начин, а стъпка по стъпка ни въздига до по-обширни и по-отворени пространства … отворени пространства, и топли, открити лица… и лица, и лица, и лица, и толкова много лица, толкова много, много лица, и лица, които срещат, и просто срещат, просто срещат, лица, които срещат, такава красота, в ход, емоция, и хода на самото движение, премествайки времето, преминавайки през времето, една мистерия, и пътувайки винаги някъде натам, отвъд и извън Аз, Ти, Това към един вид екстаз, едно „о“, едно „ом“, едно „хо“, един „хъм“, един химн, едно „нали“, едно „защо“, едно „кой“. / (Твоята усмивка носи радост) / Питайки: как се казваш? Кой си ти? / И кой съм аз всъщност? Кой съм аз за теб? / (Аз единствен ли съм или един от многото, може би, или никой?). / Разбира се, не е толкова важно как се наричаме помежду си, или факта, че може би сме се объркали и сме разбрали доста погрешно как да се обръщаме един към друг, както когато се обадите на грешен номер … не; важното е … ами … кой наистина знае? … Кой наистина опознава … универсалния разум … в смиреност, дори благоговение … който се подразбира… а може би и разбира … понякога … малко … дори само малко … с вяра, надежда и добри намерения… така че да свали оковите напълно … за да се отпусне … и забравяйки, да забрави всичкото това… да бъдем открити, свободни … и да изгубим себе си още веднъж, малко, а след това отново, още повече (сякаш сме влюбени) … така че нека наистина да се усмихнем, да кажем „Здравей“, да установим връзка, да се обадим, да напишем писмо, да сме в контакт… защото по този начин може би ще споделим една дума, а може би един свят … / И се радвам, че сега пътищата ни се пресичат, защото това е мястото, където се срещаме. / Този ден, това пътешествие; пресечени пътища, споделени истории: време за мълчание, да, но също така и време за разговор, за разчупване на хляб, глътка чай; време да поседнем спокойно, за известно време, за да си починем, да се отпуснем и време да продължим. / За мен бе голямо удоволствие да се запознаем и да разговарям с теб днес, да си споделяме истории и пътешествия. / (Благодаря ти). / Пожелавам ти много щастие, в любов и признателност. / И до следващия път, на същото място, или някое друго място, подобно на скитащ странник, мъдър пътешественик, крачейки винаги с вяра, надежда и добри намерения, и, независимо дали с компания, или привидно, сам: Приятен път, приятелю; На добър път.

LE MOT

Au commencement était le Mot – le son de l’inspiration. Et, inspiré par le lointain souvenir d’un tel instant, sois libre de donner la parole à ces pensées émergentes, (tes) pensées émergentes, (ou) tes pensées, tout simplement, et les laisser résonner et, trouver l’inspiration dans ton souffle, approcher ton âme, inspiré dans la projection de ces pensées, les écrire avec aisance, facilement, juste comme elles viennent, comme un mot, tels des mots dans des mots.
Et apprendre ainsi à transcrire tes pensées en mots, et à dévoiler ton esprit, tes pensées émergentes, (ou) esprit, (ou) pensées, tout simplement (ton) (tout comme celui d’un autre) esprit, et, par la grâce de ta conscience, dessiner ici, sur la page, les méandres de la pensée d’un seul esprit.
Et respirer, et écrire – et simplement respirer et écrire.
Et, en posant le stylo sur le papier, laisser l’encre couler, l’écoulement de l’encre, si facile, de sorte que,
Quelle que soit ton inspiration,
Tu l’écris
Tu la projettes,
Tu la transcris, tu écris maintenant, immédiatement,
Afin de trouver enfin ta voix,
Et ta vocation, et, peu à peu,
Libérer ton inspiration, et entendre cette voix résonner, comme
Un son, retentissant, venu du silence, des profondeurs du silence, un son, une prière,
Une esquisse de prière venue de rien,
Une forme de prière venue du vide
Et un rêve de jours et de nuits, divin.

C'EST ICI QUE NOUS NOUS RENCONTRONS

Remplis d’espoir, de confiance et de bonne foi, allons-y … soyons ouverts, libres … et … oublions-nous un peu ensemble … comme en amour … // Car, lorsque tu as besoin de quelque chose, c’est là ; et quand tu cherches quelque chose, tu le trouves ; et quand tu cherches telle ou telle personne, quelques / une / spéciale, elle te trouve, ou tu la trouves et, si pas immédiatement, à l’instant, bientôt alors. // Car où que tu ailles, tu y es déjà, toujours présent, disant  : sois ici maintenant. // Et si, en passant, je te rencontre, et désire te parler, alors pourquoi ne te parlerais-je pas ? Et toi à moi. Car tu es une énigme d’un autre monde, infiniment fascinant, appelant à une compréhension plus profonde, à un certain sens de la communion dans une humanité partagée, un son en mal de son écho, un appel qui espère une réaction, une question et parfois, peut-être, une réponse. Posons-nous tous les deux et, même pour un instant, interrogeons-nous sur le monde, ensemble. Et dis-moi, où est-ce chez toi ? D’où es-tu venu ? Où sont tes racines ? Et quelle est ta vision du monde ? Quoi qu’il en soit, tu as certainement voyagé longtemps pour être ici maintenant. Quoi donc à présent ? Quelle est la suite ? Et vers où ? Ou peut-être, comme certains, ne souhaites-tu pas connaître ta destination, afin de simplement apprécier la sensation d’être un peu perdu, à la dérive, flottant sur la rivière dansante de la vie … car tu sais déjà très bien que cette grande énergie de vie, ce grand esprit de vie, ne cherche à nous restreindre en aucune façon mais nous élève plutôt, étape par étape, vers des espaces plus vastes et plus ouverts… espaces ouverts, et chaleureux, visages ouverts … et des visages, et des visages, et des visages, et tant de visages, tellement, tellement de visages, et des visages, se faisant face, se confrontant, des visages, faisant face, une telle beauté, en mouvement, tout en émotion et le geste du mouvement lui-même, le temps en marche, un temps fluide, un mystère, et voyageant toujours vers le plus ou moins lointain, au-delà, au-delà même de Je, et de Tu, et ce, vers une sorte d’extase, un O, un OM, un ho, un hum, un hymne, a huh, un pour, en quoi, un qui. // (Ton sourire apporte la joie). // Tu demandes : quel est ton nom ? Qui es-tu ? // Et qui suis-je, d’ailleurs ? Qui suis-je pour toi ? (Suis-je le seul ? un parmi beaucoup, peut-être, ou personne ?) // Et il est évident que l’important n’est pas tant de savoir comment nous nous appelons, ou le fait même que nous pouvons nous tromper et garder en mémoire des noms erronés, comme appeler un mauvais numéro … non ; la chose importante … et bien … qui sait vraiment ? qui le sait vraiment … seul l’esprit … avec une attitude d’humilité, de révérence même … rester humble … et peut-être aussi comprendre … parfois … un peu … si seulement un peu … tout en espérance, confiance et bonne foi … de façon à lâcher les rênes complètement … laisser aller … et laisser aller … tout laisser aller … être ouvert, libre … et nous perdre nous-mêmes encore une fois, un peu, et puis encore, plus encore (comme en amour) … alors sourions, saluons-nous, établissons le contact, appelons-nous, écrivons-nous une lettre, devenons intimes … Et, de cette façon, nous partagerons peut-être un mot, et peut-être un monde … // Et je suis heureux que nos chemins se soient croisés maintenant, à l’instant où nous nous rencontrons. // Ce jour, ce périple ; chemins croisés, histoires partagées : le moment de rester silencieux, oui, mais aussi un temps pour parler, rompre le pain, goûter au thé ; un temps pour rester assis, un moment, pour se reposer, se relaxer, et un temps pour poursuivre son chemin. // Cela a été un grand plaisir de te rencontrer et de parler avec toi aujourd’hui, de partager des histoires et des voyages. (Merci). // Puisses-tu connaître le bonheur de l’amour, et la gratitude. // Et, jusqu’à la prochaine fois, à la même place, ou à un autre endroit, comme un voyageur étranger, prudent, cheminant toujours, tout en espoir et confiance, et dans la foi, semblant seul ou bien accompagné : bon voyage, mon ami, adieu.

ადგილი, სადაც ერთმანეთს შევხვდებით

მოდით დავემშვიდობოთ ნდობით, რწმენით, პატიოსნებით. ვიყოთ თავისუფლები და გახსნილები. მივეცეთ თავდავიწყებას ცოტა ხნით მაინც (როგორც შეყვარებული).

/როცა რამე გჭირდება იქვეა, როცა რამეს ეძებ, იპოვნი; როცა ეძებ სასურველ პიროვნებას, ვინმეს/ერთადერთს/განსაკუთრებულს, ისინი გიპოვნიან შენ, ან შენ იპოვნი მათ. თუ ეს არ მოხდება უმალვე, მყისვე, მაშინ მოხდება მალე. /სადაც არ უნდა წახვიდე, შენ იქ ყოველთვის წარმოდგენილი ხარ, რომელიც ამბობს: /იყავი ახლა აქ. / და თუ მე გავლით შეგხვდები და შენთან საუბრის სურვილი მექნება, რატომ არ უნდა გაგესაუბრო? და შენ კი მე. შენ ხარ გამოცანა სხვა სამყაროში, უსაზღვროდ მომხიბვლელი, სიღმისეული გაგებით, საერთო ადამიანური თვისებებით, ხმა ექოს ძიებისას, გამოძახილი რომელიც ეძებს პასუხს, შეკითხვას და ზოგჯერ, ალბათ გამოსავალსაც. მოდი ორივე შევჩერდეთ, თუნდაც ერთი წუთით, ერთად შევიმეცნოთ სამყარო. მითხარი, შენთვის სახლი რომელია? საიდან ჩამოხვედი? საიდან არის შენი ფესვები? როგორია შენი თვალთახედვა? თქვენ მართლაც ბევრი იმგზავრეთ, რომ აქ ყოფილიხავით ეხლა. და ეხლა რა ვქნათ? რა არის შემდეგი? და სად? ან თქვენ შესაძლებელია ის ხართ ვისაც ურჩევნია არ იცოდნენ მისი ადგილსამყოფელი, რომელსაც სიამოვნებს დაკარგვის შეგრძნება, დინებით სვლა, ცხოვრების მდინარის მიმართულებით ტივტივი, რომელმაც იცის ცხოვრებაში ეს დიდებული ენერგია, დიდებული ცხოვრებისეული სულისკვეთება ნებისმიერ შემთხვევაში ეძებს თავისუფლებას, გვამაღლებს ეტაპობრივად, უფრო ვრცელ და ღია სივრცეებში… ღია სივრცეებში, თბილი და გახსნილი სახეები… და სახეები, სახეები, ძალიან ბევრი სახე, ძალიან, ძალიან ბევრი სახე, და სახეები ერთმანეთის პირისპირ, მხოლოდ ერთმანეთის პირისპირ, მხოლოდ ერთმანეთის პირისპირ, ერთმანეთის პირისპირ ესეთი სილამაზე, მოძრაობაში, ემოცია და თავად მოძრაობა, დროის გადატანა, დროში ცურვა, მისტიკა, იმოგზაურო მუდმივად სადღაც იქეთ, მიღმა, მეს მიღმაც კი, და შენს და მის მიღმა, ექსტაზისკენ. მმმ, ჰო, ჰმ, ეჰ რატო, ვინ. / (შენს ღიმილს სიხარული მოაქვს) / გეკითხები: რა გქვია შენ? ვინ ხარ შენ? /და ვინ ვარ მე ამ ვითარებაში? / ვინ ვარ შენთვის? /ვარ ერთადერთი, თუ ბევრიდან ერთ-ერთი, მგონი, ან არც არავინ?)

/რასაკვირველია საქმე იმაში არ არის თუ რას დავუძახებთ ერთმანეთს, ან ის რომ შესაძლებელია შეცდომით წარმოვთქვათ ჩვენი სახელები, არასწორ ნომერზე დარეკვის მსგავსად… არა; მნიშვნელოვანი რამ… კარგი … ნეტა ვინ იცის?

… ნეტა ვინ იცის… ერთი გონება… თავმდაბლობით, პატივისცემითაც კი… დგას… და ალბათ ესმის…ზოგჯერ… ცოტა….თუ მხოლოდ ცოტა… ნდობით, რწმენით, პატიოსნებით… სადავის სრულად მიშვებით… მისცე წასვლის ნება… და გაუშვა… ყველა გაუშვა… იყო ღია, თავისუფალი… მივეცეთ თავდავიწყებას კიდევ ერთხელ, ცოტახნით, და შემდეგ კვლავ უფრო მეტად (როგორც შეყვარებული) … მოდი გავიღიმოთ, მივესალმოთ, დავამყაროთ კონტაქტები, დავრეკოთ, მივწეროთ წერილი, არ დავივიწყოთ… ამ გზით შევძლებთ უბრალოდ სიტყვის ან მთლიანი სამყაროს გაზიარებას. / მიხარია, რომ ჩვენი გზები გადაიკვეთა, რადგან ეს არის ადგილი, სადაც ჩვენ ვხვდებით ერთმანეთ. /ეს დღე, ეს მოგზაურობა; გზები გადაიკვეთა, ამბავი საერთო გახდა; სიჩუმის დროა, დიახ, თუმცა ასევე ჩაისთან ერთად საუბრის დროც; მშვიდად ყოფნის დროა, ცოტახნით, დროა დასვენების, და დროა წინ მოძრაობის. დიდი პატივი იყო შენთან შეხვედრა და საუბარი, ამბებისა და თავგადასავლების გაზიარება. /(მადლობა).

მოგენიჭოს ბედნიერება, სიყვარული და პატივისცემა. და შემდეგ შეხვედრამდე, იგივე ადგილას, ან სხვაგან, უცნობო მოგზაურო, მცოდნევ, ყოველთვის თვითდარწმუნებულო, სანდო, პატიოსანო, სხვებთან ერთად თუ მარტო: გზა მშვიდობისა, ჩემო მეგობარო; გემშვიდობები.

HIER IST ES, WO WIR ZUSAMMENKOMMEN

Im Geiste von Vertrauen, Zuversicht und guten Willens, lass uns zusammen gehen. Lass uns offen sein, und frei. Verlieren wir uns ein wenig (als seien wir verliebt). / Denn wenn Du etwas brauchst, dann ist es da. Und wenn Du etwas suchst, dann findest du es. Und wenn Du nach dieser oder jener Person suchst, nach jemand/ Besonderes, dann wirst Du gefunden, oder Du findest – wenn nicht sofort, nicht augenblicklich, so doch bald. / Denn was auch immer Dein Pfad, Du bist immer präsent und sagst: / Sei hier im Jetzt. / Wenn ich Dir, auf meinem Weg begegne und mit Dir zu sprechen wünsche, warum sollte ich es nicht? Und Du zu mir. Denn Du bist das Rätsel einer andern Welt, unendlich faszinierend und voll des Verlangens nach einem tieferen Verständnis, nach einem Gefühl der Gemeinschaft in kollektiver Menschlichkeit, wie Klang auf Suche nach Echo, wie ein Ruf auf Suche nach Resonanz, eine Frage und vielleicht eine Antwort. Lass uns denn innehalten, auch wenn nur kurz, und gemeinsam der Welt gedenken. Was ist Dein Zuhause? Wo kommst Du her? Wo sind Deine Wurzeln? Was ist Deine Perspektive? Wie dem auch sei, Du bist auf jeden Fall einen langen Weg gekommen, um nun hier zu sein. Was nun? Was folgt? Wohin? Oder bist Du einer jener, der nicht nach dem Ziel fragt und es genießt, ein wenig verloren zu sein, treibend im quirligen Fluss des Lebens…wissend, dass die Energie des Lebens keine Fessel an uns legt, uns vielmehr in die Höhe schwingt, Schritt für Schritt in größere und weitere Freiräume…Räume mit Wärme, Offenheit, Gesichtern…Gesichter und Gesichter, so viele, so eine große Zahl, Auge in Auge, sie sehen sich, das Angesicht, das Antlitz und Gesichter… so viel Schönheit, Bewegung und Gefühl, Bewegung ihrer selbst willen im Fluss der Zeit, ein Mysterium und stets auf Reise, in das Jenseits und das Dort, auf dem Weg selbst jenseits des Ich und des Du und der Dinge… auf Reise zu einer Art der Ekstase, einem Oh und einem Ohm, einem Hoh und einem Hm, einer Hymne, einem Warum und einem Wer. / (Dein Lächeln bringt Freude) / Fragend: Wie ist Dein Name? Wer bist Du? / Und wer eigentlich bin ich? Wer bin ich für Dich? / (Bin ich nur einer, oder vielleicht einer von vielen, oder niemand?). / Natürlich geht es nicht so sehr darum, wie wir uns gegenseitig nennen oder die Tatsache, dass wir uns irren und unsere Namen falsch verstehen, als würden wir eine falsche Nummer wählen. Nein, das Wichtige ist…na ja…wer weiß das schon? …wer weiß es wirklich…der eine Geist…mit Demut und sogar Ehrfurcht…vielleicht auch Verständnis…manchmal…ein wenig, wenn auch nur ein wenig…mit Vertrauen und Zuversicht, in gutem Glauben…die Zügel loslassen und gehen lassen, sich gehen lassen, offen und frei sein, sich erneut verlieren, erst nur ein wenig und dann nochmal und mehr (als seien wir verliebt)…lass uns also lächeln, Hallo sagen und Kontakt aufnehmen, einen Anruf machen oder Brief schreiben, schlichtweg in Kontakt kommen, so dass wir so vielleicht ein Wort, vielleicht eine Welt teilen… / Ich bin froh, dass sich nun unsere Wege gekreuzt haben, denn hier ist es, wo wir uns treffen. / An diesem Tag, auf dieser Reise, als sich Wege und Geschichten kreuzten: eine Zeit zum Schweigen, aber auch eine Zeit zum Austausch, Brot zu brechen, Tee zu trinken, innezuhalten und zu entspannen, eine Zeit zum Aufbruch. / Es war mir eine große Freude, Dich heute zu treffen und mit Dir zu sprechen, Geschichten und Reisen auszutauschen. (Vielen Dank) / Möge Dir großes Glück geschehen, Du Liebe und Dankbarkeit erfahren. / Bis zum nächsten Mal, hier oder an einem anderen Ort, wie ein Wandervogel, ein weiser Reisender, der immerzu Vertrauen hat, mit Zuversicht und gutem Glauben, ob in Gesellschaft oder scheinbar allein: Bon Voyage, mein Freund, lebe wohl.

ΕΔΩ ΣΥΝΑΝΤΙΟΜΑΣΤΕ

Πάμε. Με πνεύμα αυτοπεποίθησης, εμπιστοσύνης, καλής πίστης. Ας είμαστε ανοιχτοί, ελεύθεροι. Ας χάσουμε λίγο τους εαυτούς μας (σαν να είμαστε ερωτευμένοι). / Γιατί όταν χρειάζεσαι κάτι, εκεί είναι. Και όταν ψάχνεις κάτι, το βρίσκεις. Και όταν ψάχνεις για κάποιο άτομο, κάποιο / ένα / ξεχωριστό άτομο, θα σε βρει ή θα το βρεις, αν όχι αμέσως, τότε σύντομα. Οπού και να πας, εκεί είσαι, πάντα παρόν και λες: / Να είσαι εδώ τώρα. / Και αν σε συναντήσω καθώς θα περνάω και θελήσω να σου μιλήσω, τότε γιατί να μην σου μιλήσω; Και εσύ σε μένα. Γιατί είσαι το αίνιγμα ενός άλλου κόσμου, απείρως συναρπαστικού, που ζητά μια βαθύτερη κατανόηση, μια αίσθηση επικοινωνίας σε μια κοινή ανθρωπότητα, έναν ήχο σε αναζήτηση ηχούς, ένα κάλεσμα που αναζητά απάντηση, μια ερώτηση, και μερικές φορές, ίσως, μια απάντηση. Ας σταματήσουμε για λίγο και οι δύο και ας αναρωτηθούμε για τον κόσμο. Μαζί. Πες μου, τι θεωρείς σπίτι σου; Από πού ήρθες; Οι ρίζες σου πού είναι; Και πώς βλέπεις τα πράγματα; Όπως και να’χει, σίγουρα ταξίδεψες πολύ για να φτάσεις εδώ τώρα. Και τώρα, τι γίνεται; Τι κάνουμε; Και πού; Ή είσαι μήπως από αυτούς που προτιμούν να μην γνωρίζουν τον προορισμό τους και απολαμβάνουν την αίσθηση του να είναι λίγο χαμένοι, χωρίς κατεύθυνση, επιπλέοντας στο χορό του ποταμιού που λέγεται ζωή… Γνωρίζοντας ότι αυτή η εξαιρετική ενέργεια ζωής, αυτό το εξαιρετικό πνεύμα ζωής δεν επιδιώκει να μας περιορίζει με οποιονδήποτε τρόπο, αλλά μας ανυψώνει σταδιακά σε ευρύτερους και πιο ανοιχτούς χώρους…. ανοιχτούς χώρους και ζεστά, ανοιχτά πρόσωπα … και πρόσωπα, και πρόσωπα, και πρόσωπα, και τόσα πολλά πρόσωπα, τόσα πολλά, πολλά πρόσωπα, και πρόσωπα, που βλέπουν, και απλά βλέπουν, απλά βλέπουν, πρόσωπα, που βλέπουν, τόση ομορφιά, στις κινήσεις, στα συναισθήματα, και στην κίνηση της ίδιας της κίνησης, στο χρόνο που κινείται, στο χρόνο που ρέει, ένα μυστήριο, και ταξιδεύεις πάντα προς την άλλη μεριά, το παραπέρα, ακόμα παραπέρα από το εγώ και το εσύ και το αυτό, προς ένα είδος έκστασης, ένα ο, ένα ομ, ένα χο, ένα βουητό, έναν ύμνο, ένα «ε, πώς;», ένα γιατί, ένα ποιος. / (Το χαμόγελό σου φέρνει χαρά) / Ρωτάς: Πώς σε λένε; Ποιος είσαι; / Και εδώ που τα λέμε, ποιος είμαι εγώ; Ποιος είμαι εγώ για σένα; / Είμαι μόνο ένας, ή μήπως ένας ανάμεσα στους πολλούς, ή μήπως κανένας;). / Φυσικά το θέμα δεν είναι τόσο το πώς φωνάζουμε ο ένας τον άλλο ή το ότι μπορεί να κάνουμε λάθη και να μπερδεύουμε εντελώς τα ονόματά μας, σαν να παίρνουνε λάθος αριθμό… όχι, το σημαντικό είναι … χμμ … ποιος να ξέρει αλήθεια; … ποιος να ξέρει αλήθεια … αυτό το μυαλό … με μια στάση ταπεινοφροσύνης, ακόμα και ευλάβειας … που αντιστέκεται … και ίσως και να κατανοεί … ορισμένες φορές … λίγο … και αν … με αυτοπεποίθηση, εμπιστοσύνη, καλή πίστη … για να αφήσει εντελώς τα ηνία … να ξεχνάει… και να ξεχνάει … να ξεχνάει τα πάντα … να είναι ανοιχτό, ελεύθερο … και να χάνουμε τους εαυτούς μας για άλλη μια φορά, λίγο, και ξανά, ακόμα περισσότερο (σαν να είμαστε ερωτευμένοι) … ας χαμογελάσουμε, ας χαιρετηθούμε, ας αρχίσουμε να έχουμε επαφή, ας τηλεφωνήσουμε, ας γράψουμε ένα γράμμα, ας έχουμε επικοινωνία …. γιατί με αυτό τον τρόπο θα μοιραστούμε μια λέξη, και ίσως έναν κόσμο … / Και χαίρομαι που έχουν συναντηθεί τώρα οι δρόμοι μας, γιατί εδώ συναντιόμαστε. / Αυτή τη μέρα, σε αυτό το ταξίδι. Συναντιούνται οι δρόμοι μας, μοιραζόμαστε ιστορίες: είναι η ώρα να παραμείνουμε σιωπηλοί, αλλά και να μιλήσουμε, να φάμε μαζί, να πιούμε έναν καφέ, να καθίσουμε ακίνητοι για λίγο, να ξεκουραστούμε, να χαλαρώσουμε, αλλά και να προχωρήσουμε. / Χάρηκα πάρα πολύ που σε γνώρισα και που μιλήσαμε σήμερα, που μοιραστήκαμε ιστορίες και ταξίδια. / (Ευχαριστώ). / Εύχομαι να βιώσεις μεγάλη ευτυχία, αγάπη και ευγνωμοσύνη. / Και, μέχρι την επόμενη φορά, στο ίδιο μέρος ή και σε άλλο μέρος, σαν ένας άγνωστος, ένας σοφός ταξιδιώτης, που περπατά πάντα με αυτοπεποίθηση, εμπιστοσύνη, καλή πίστη και είτε βρίσκεται με παρέα είτε – φαινομενικά – μόνος του: καλό ταξίδι, φίλε μου, έχε γεια.

כאן הוא המקום בו אנו נפגשים

ברוח בוטחת, מתוך אמון ותום לב בואו נשחרר. בואו נהיה פתוחים, חופשיים. בואו נלך קצת לאיבוד (כאילו אנחנו מאוהבים). / כי כשאתה זקוק לדבר מה, הוא נמצא שם; וכשאתה מחפש דבר מה, אתה מוצא אותו; וכשאתה מחפש אדם כזה או אחר, מי /שהוא / האחד / המיוחד, אותו אדם מוצא אותך, או שאתה מוצא אותו, אם לא מיד, בבת אחת, אז בקרוב./ כי באשר תלך, הנה אתה שם, תמיד נוכח, ואומר: / היה כאן עכשיו./ וכך, אם אני פוגש אותך, בעוברי, ומשתוקק לדבר, אז למה שלא אדבר אלייך? ואתה אליי? אתה חידה מעולם אחר, מרתקת לבלי סוף, הקוראת להבנה עמוקה יותר, לתחושה של אחווה באנושות אחת לכולנו, צליל בחיפוש אחר הד, קריאה המחפשת מענה, שאלה, ולעיתים, אולי, תשובה. בוא אם כן נעצור שנינו, ולו אף לרגע, ונתהה על מהות העולם, ביחד. אמור לי, מהו המקום לו אתה קורא בית? מאיפה באת? היכן השורשים שלך? ומהי נקודת הראות שלך? בכל מקרה, גמעת מרחק רב, מן הסתם, כדי להיות כאן עכשיו. אז מה עכשיו? מה הלאה? ולאן? או שמא אתה אדם המעדיף שלא לדעת מהו יעדך, ופשוט נהנה מהתחושה של ללכת קצת לאיבוד, להיסחף קצת, לצוף על פני נהר החיים הרוקד…לדעת שאנרגיית החיים האדירה הזו, רוח החיים האדירה, לא מבקשת להגביל אותנו בכל צורה שהיא, אלא נושאת אותנו מעלה, שלב אחר שלב, אל מרחבים עצומים ופתוחים יותר… מרחבים פתוחים, ופנים חמות ומאירות, ….ועוד פנים, ופנים, ופנים, ופנים כה רבות, ועוד פנים כה רבות, ופנים, הפונות אל אותם מרחבים, ורק פונות נכחן, רק מביטות נכחן, פונות, אל היופי הזה, המצוי בתנועה, ברגש, והתנועה של התנועה עצמה, הזמן העובר, הזמן הזורם, תעלומה, ונע תמיד אל האי-שם, ומעבר לכך, ואפילו מעבר לאני, ולאתה, ולזה, לעבר סוג של אקסטזה, כמו הוויה, הארה, המהום, המנון, היות. / (החיוך שלך מסב אושר). / ושואל: מה שמך? מי אתה? / ומי אני, לטובת העניין? מי אני, עבורך? (האם אני אחד ויחיד, או אולי אחד מני רבים, או אף אחד?)./ לא כל כך משנה איך אנו קוראים אחד לשני, או העובדה שייתכן ואנו טועים ומשתמשים בשמות שגויים, כפי שמחייגים אל מספר שגוי … כלל לא; הדבר החשוב הוא…ובכן… מי באמת יודע? …מי באמת יודע?… תודעה אחת … המתייחסת בענווה, אפילו ביראת כבוד… ואולי גם הבנה … לעיתים… מעט… ולו מעט הבנה… מתוך בטחון עצמי, אמון ותום לב … כדי שאפשר יהיה לשחרר לגמרי את המושכות … לשחרר … ותוך כדי השחרור… השחרור המוחלט… להיות בלב פתוח, חופשי… ולתת לעצמנו ללכת לאיבוד שוב, מעט, ואז שוב, קצת יותר (כאילו אנו מאוהבים)… אז בוא נחייך, נגיד שלום, ניצור קשר, נתקשר, נכתוב מכתב, נהיה בקשר… כי בדרך זו, נוכל אולי לחלוק מילים, ואולי גם עולמות…/ ואני שמח שעכשיו דרכינו הצטלבו, משום שכאן הוא המקום בו אנו נפגשים. / היום הזה, המסע הזה; דרכים מצטלבות, סיפורים שאנו חולקים בינינו: כן, עת לשמור על דממה, אך גם עת לדבר, לבצוע לחם, ללגום תה; זמן לשבת ללא ניע, לנוח, להירגע, וזמן לנוע הלאה. / היה לי לעונג רב לפגוש אותך ולדבר איתך היום, לחלוק סיפורים ומסעות. / (תודה לך). / הלוואי שהאושר יהיה מנת חלקך, באהבה והודיה. / ועד לפגישה הבאה, באותו מקום, או במקום אחר, כמו זר נודד, או מטייל חכם, ההולך תמיד בבטחון, באמון, ברצון טוב, ובין אם בחברה, או לבד, לכאורה: דרך צלחה, ידידי, היה שלום.

A HELY, AHOL TALÁLKOZUNK

Engedjük elszállni a dolgokat, magabiztosan, bizalommal és reménnyel. Legyünk nyitottak és szabadok. Engedjük el magunkat egy kicsit (mintha szerelmesek lennénk). / Mert ahol a szükség, ott a segítség, ha keresel, találsz, ha keresel valakit, valamit / valami különlegest, akkor az rád talál vagy te találsz rá, ha nem is azonnal, rögvest, akkor hamarosan. / Bárhová mész, ott lesz, mindig jelen van és azt mondja: / Legyél az „itt és most”-ban. / És ha én, áthaladóban, találkozom veled és feltámad bennem a vágy, hogy szóljak, miért ne szólhatnék hozzád? Te pedig hozzám. Mert előtted egy másik világ rejtvénye áll, egy végtelenül izgalmas világ, amely mélyebb megértést kíván, közös emberi létünk érzése, egy visszavert hang a keresőradaron, egy kérdés, ami válaszra vár, és néha-néha, talán – egy válasz. Álljunk meg mindketten, ha csak egy pillanatra is, gondolkodjunk el a együtt a világon. Mondd el, mit nevezel otthonodnak? Honnét jöttél? Hol vannak a gyökereid? És hogyan látod a világot? Bárhonnét is érkeztél, az biztos, hogy hosszú utat jártál be, amíg idáig elértél. És hogyan tovább? Mi következik? Hová visz el? Esetleg olyan ember vagy, aki nem szeretné ismerni az úti célt, egyszerűen csak élvezi, hogy kicsit elveszett, sodródik, viteti magát az életfolyó táncoló hullámain … abban a tudatban, hogy ez a nagyszerű életenergia nem akar semmilyen módon visszafogni minket, inkább felemel, fokról fokra magasabbra, tágasabb és nyitottabb terekbe visz el … nyitott terek, és kedves, nyitott arcok, sok arc, sok-sok arc, fordítsd feléjük te is az arcod, érezd az arcodon az arcokat, ezt a szépséget, az áradó érzést, a mozgás áramlását, az áramló időt, a rejtélyt, a mindig máshová tartó utazást, ami túlvezet, túl az Énen és túl a Másikon, egy sajátos eksztázis felé, zengő, bongó, zümmögő ének, egy értelem, egy személyiség. / (A mosolyod örömet fakaszt) / Kérdezed: mi a neved? Ki vagy? / És ki vagyok én, ha már itt tartunk? Ki vagyok én neked? / (Én vagyok az egyetlen, vagy egy vagyok a sok közül, talán egyik sem vagyok?). / A lényeg persze nem az, hogy minek nevezzük egymást, nem is az, hogy esetleg hibáztunk és rosszul betűztük neveket, mintha csak rossz számot tárcsáztunk volna … nem, ami igazán fontos … nos … ki tudja, mi az, ami fontos? … és aki igazán tudja … az egyetlen tudat … a szelídség, akár a hódolat gesztusával … megértően … és talán megértve is … néha … egy kicsit … még ha csak egy kicsit is … magabiztosan, bizalommal és reménnyel … mintha teljesen elengednénk a gyeplőt … hadd menjen minden … a maga útján … engedjünk el mindent … hogy nyitottak és szabadok legyünk … engedjünk el magunkat újra, egy kicsit, majd újra, még jobban (mintha szerelmesek lennénk) … ne féljünk köszönni, felvenni a kapcsolatot, felvenni a telefont, a tollat, kapcsolatban lenni … mivel ezzel megosztunk egy gondolatot, talán egy egész világot … / Én örülök, hogy útjaink összefutottak ezen a helyen, ahol találkozunk. / Ez a nap, ez az utazás; összefutó ösvények, megosztott történetek: itt az idő, hogy csendben maradjunk, igen, és arra is, hogy beszéljünk, megosszuk az ételünket, teát kortyoljunk, egy kicsit nyugodtan üljünk, megpihenjünk és elengedjük magunkat, és itt az idő, hogy tovább lépjünk. / Nagy öröm számomra, hogy találkoztunk és beszéltünk egymással ezen a napon, hogy megosztottuk történeteinket és utazásainkat. / (Köszönöm)! / Kívánom, hogy a szeretetben és hálában megismerd az elsöprő boldogságot. / Addig is, amíg újra találkozunk, ugyanitt vagy máshol, mint egy vándorló zarándok, egy bölcs utazó, aki mindig magabiztosan, bizalommal és reménnyel lépked, akár társaival, akár – látszólag – egyedül: jó utat, barátom, Isten veled!

ECCO DOVE CI INCONTRIAMO

In uno spirito di confidenza, fiducia, buona fede, lasciamoci andare. Siamo aperti, liberi. Perdiamoci un po’ (come se fossimo innamorati). / Poichè quando hai bisogno di qualcosa, eccola lì; e quando cerchi qualcosa, la trovi; e quando cerchi questa o quella persona, qualcuno / uno / speciale, essi ti trovano, o li trovi tu, se non immediatamente, subito, poi presto. / Poichè ovunque tu vada, eccoti, sempre presente, dicendo: / Sono qui ora. / E quindi se io, passando, ti incontro e desidero parlare, allora perché non dovrei parlarti? E così tu a me. Perché tu sei l’enigma di un altro mondo, infinitamente affascinante, che richiede una comprensione più profonda, un senso di comunione in un’umanità condivisa, un suono in cerca di eco, una chiamata che cerca risposta, una domanda, e qualche volta, forse, una risposta. Facciamo, dunque, entrambi una pausa e, anche se solo per un momento, meravigliamoci del mondo, insieme. Dimmi, quale luogo consideri come casa? Da dove vieni? Dove sono le tue radici? E qual è il tuo punto di vista? In ogni caso, hai sicuramente viaggiato molto per essere qui ora. E adesso? Cosa succederà? E verso dove? O forse sei uno che preferisce non conoscere la propria destinazione, godendoti semplicemente la sensazione di essere un po ‘smarrito, un po’ alla deriva, a galla sul fiume danzante della vita … sapendo che questa grande energia vitale, grande spirito di vita, cerca di non frenarci, in alcun modo, ma piuttosto ci solleva, piano piano, in spazi più ampi e più aperti … spazi aperti e caldi, aperti, volti … e volti, e ancora volti, volti e così tanti volti, così tanti , molte facce e volti, e appena lo guardano, appena lo vedono, volti, che guardano, tale bellezza, in movimento, emozione, e il movimento stesso del movimento, il tempo che trascorre, il tempo che scorre, un mistero, e viaggiare sempre più lontano, più in la, e oltre anche l’io, e il tu e il che, verso una sorta di estasi, un ah, un om, un oh, un ehm, un inno, un uh, un perché, un chi. / (Il tuo sorriso infonde gioia) / Chiedendo: qual è il tuo nome? Chi sei? / E chi sono io, del resto? Chi sono io per te? / (Sono solo uno, o uno dei tanti, forse, o nessuno?). / Naturalmente, la cosa non è tanto ciò che consideriamo l’un l’altro, o il fatto che potremmo sbagliarci e afferrare i nostri nomi in modo sbagliato, come chiamare un numero sbagliato … no; la cosa importante … beh … chi lo sa davvero? … chissà … l’unica mente … con un atteggiamento di umiltà, persino di riverenza … in obbligo … e forse anche di comprensione … a volte … un po ‘… se solo un po’ … in confidenza, fiducia, buona fede … in modo da abbandonare le redini completamente … lasciare andare … e, lasciando andare … lasciando andare tutto … essere aperti, liberi … e perdersi ancora una volta, un po ‘, e poi ancora, ancora di più (come se innamorati) … quindi sorridiamo, salutiamo, stabiliamo contatti, facciamo una telefonata, scriviamo una lettera, teniamoci in contatto … poiché, in questo modo, condivideremo forse una parola, e forse un mondo … / E sono lieto che ora le nostre strade si siano incrociate, perché qui è dove ci incontriamo. / Questo giorno, questo viaggio; percorsi incrociati, storie condivise: un tempo per tacere, sì, ma anche un tempo per parlare, spezzare il pane, sorseggiare un tè; un tempo per stare fermi, per un po ‘, per riposare, per rilassarsi, e un tempo per andare avanti. / E ‘stato un grande piacere incontrarti e parlare con te oggi, per condividere storie e viaggi. / (Grazie). / Possa tu conoscere una grande felicità, amore e gratitudine. / E, fino alla prossima volta, nello stesso posto, o in qualche altro posto, come un viaggiatore straniero, un viaggiatore saggio, che cammina sempre con confidenza, fiducia, buona fede e, sia in compagnia che, apparentemente, da solo: buon viaggio, amico mio; addio.

Алматы (Қазақшa)

1.
Алматы немесе Алма-Ата (немесе «Алмата») Қазақстандағы ең үлкен қаласы болып табылады, сонымен қатар,ол елдің бұрынғы тарихи және мәдени астанасы. Бұл Қазақстанның ең ірі әуежайымен мақтана алатын Қазақстанның ірі қаржы орталығы.
Қала Іле Алатауының оңтүстік-шығыс бөктерінде орналасқан.
Қаланың халқы шамамен екі миллион адамға жуық.
Алматы – Қазақстандағы ең ірі, ең дамыған этникалық және мәдениеті алуан болып келетін қала.
Қалада сондай-ақ, этникалық орыстар және украин халықтарының саны көп.
Алматыда жылы жаз бен орташа суық қысы бар салыстырмалы түрде жұмсақ климат.
Қала тектоникалық белсенді аймақта болғандықтан, жер сілкінісі қаупі бар; Бақытымызға орай, олардың көпшілігі айтарлықтай зиян келтірмейді.
Алматының атауы «алма» деген сөзден алынғаны жайлы болжам бар, ал қала, кем дегенде, таяу уақытқа дейін, «алмаға толы қала» деп аталды.
«Алма» сөзі басқа да түркі тілдерінде (сондай-ақ венгр және моңғол) ұқсас мән береді; және «Ата» түркі тілдерінде «бабалар» дегенді білдіреді. Алматы Алма және Эдем бағының ата-баба үйі болғаны жайлы болжамдар бар.
Бұл ғажап, әдемі қала, және де, басқаша айтқанда, бұл Жұмақ бағы.
Қаланың ең драмалық және көрнекті көрінісі – таулар.

2.
Мен осы эскизді ауызша «суретке түсіру» немесе мерекелік фото, есте қаларлық көрініс, ашықхатта жазылған сөздер, шағын кәдесый ретінде жазып отырмын.
Алматыға алғаш рет келген кезімде қасымда қымбатты қазақстандық досым, оның кіші інісі мен әпкесімен бірге оның отбасы мен достары, менің отбасым: әйелім және ұлым болған.
Біз Алматыда бір апта ғана болған едік.
Дегенмен, Алматыға келісімен бірнеше минуттан кейін-ақ, біздің такси екі ескі, қымбатты достардың: Гена қолтырауын мен Чебурашканың үлкен мүсіндерінің қасынан өткенде, осы қаланы туған үйім ретінде сезінетінімді білдім!
Әрине, мен қаланы жақсы білемін деп айта алмаймын.
(Бірақ, Алматы туралы қайта ойланып, енді оралып, қаланы жақсы білуге үміттенемін).
Қазіргі уақытта қаланың жеке картамда мен көздерімді жауып, оңай жүре алатын төрт-бес шақты орын және аудан бар.
Және өз қиялдарымда бұл жерлерді өте айқын және жарқын көріп, кейде оларды ойымда зерттеп, сонда қайта-қайта оралып отырамын.

3.
Менің маршрутымдағы алғашқы танысу – бұл түрлі иістерге, дыбыстарға, гүлдерге, жемістер мен көкөністерге, балық және етке, нан және кондитерлік бұйымдарға, перделер және тұрмыстық заттарға, киім және кілемдерге, іс жүзінде бар барлық нәрселерге толы Жасыл Базар (Орталық Базар) . Шын мәнінде, сіз іздеген нәрселердің барлығын сонда таба аласыз.
Енді, қиял ешқандай шектеулерді мойындамаған кезде, барлығы оңай болып, біз бәрін жасай аламыз, Жасыл базардан қала мен қала маңындағы әдемі көріністерге толы, таңғажайып фотосуреттер түсіруге болатын, жарқын жарықтандырылған мейрамханалар мен көрікті жерлерді тамашалай алатын “Грин Хиллға” дейін үлкен саналы секіріс жасайық!
Алайда, маған және менің ұлыма біз Гоголь көшесінде бір аптаға жалған пәтердің маңында орналасқан хайуанаттар бағының қасындағы Орталық саябақтағы ойын-сауықтар жанымызға жақын болды. Мен бұны үйде болғанымдай түсіндім, ал менің ұлым Алматыда да, жалпы алғанда Қазақстанда да өзін соншалықты еркін сезініп, бұл жолы көптеген үлкен және керемет авантюрды аттракциондарға баруға тырысты. Мүмкін, ұлым ол жерде қызықты оқиғаларға деген қызуғышылықты, және олардың ерлік дәрежесін тауып түсінген шығар. Және онымен қатты рақаттанды.
Келесі күні, біз көптеген көңіл көтеретін ойын-сауықтардың түрлерінен кейін біраз демалуға мұқтаж екенімізді сезініп, 28 панфиловшылар саябағында қыдырдық (парк Мәскеуді фашистерден қорғаған көптеген панфиловшыларымен бірге қайтыс болған 28 алматылықтардың есімімен атанған), Зенков соборын тамашалап, «Арасан СПА-да» массаж, сауна және ыстық ваннаға тапсырыс бердік. Не деген бақыт!
Дәл сондай терең рахат сезімі және бақыт дәмін сыйлаған, өзім қазақтың халық «Хоомей» стилінде, төмен, терең, шуды дауыста ән айтудың сабақ алған кездерім. Біздің сабақтар біз тоқтаған, Қазақ музыкалық аспаптар мұражайы бар орналасқан көшеде өтен болатын. Бұл тамаша, сиқырлы мұражай. Мен үшін бұл «үйімнен қашық екінші үйіме» айналды. Менің мұғалімім, ұстазым, менің шаманистік гидім ретінде керемет адам Абзал Арықбаев болды.
Бұл «дауыспен жұмыс» – тек дауыс емес, бүкіл дене мен ақыл-ойының стимуляторы болып келеді.
Күн батқанда, әйелім мен қазақстандық досыммен бірге балконға отырып, біз қазақтың шексіз, кең даласының еркіндік дәмін қимай, жабайы даланың сұлулығын еске алып, армандайтынбыз. Біздің қиялдарымыз қырандай самғады.
Әйеліммен және қазақстандық досымызбен балконға отыратын кештерде біздің қазақтың ашық аспан кеңістігіндегі еркіндікті сезінуге ұмтылған қиялдарымыз бүркіттер сияқты ұшып, даланың жабайы сұлулығын армандағанымыз таңқаларлық емес. Қиялдарымыз қырандай Үлкен Алматы көліне, Алпинградқа, Шарынға, Плато Ассыға, Алтын Емел паркіне, Кольсай көлдеріне дейін, сосын одан әрі қарай да, көкжиектен асып шарықтады … (Қазақстанда жай ғана «Тәңір» туралы түсінік алу үшін, көкке көз көтеріп, жоғалып кету оңай).

4.
Қазіргі сәтте бұл есімде қалған Алматы қаласы мен Алматы облысына деген махаббатымның «өз» масштабым.
Алайда, бұл менің бақытты есімдегі баға жетпейтін қазынам.
Бұл шын мәнінде Эдем бағы.
(Мен жақында қиялдарымда ғана емес, шынайы түрде де оған орала аламын ба?).

GOTINA

Di destpêkê de Peyv – dengê soz bû. Û, ji hêla bîranîna vê demek dirêj ve, bi bîr xuya dike ku hûn bi fikrên xwe bilind bikin, ((me) fikrên xweşbikin, (an) fikrên xweş, hêsan, û ji wan re bisekinin, û, dişitînin xwişka te, paşê veguherin, ji bo van fikrên nivîsandinê binivîsin, û bi ramanên di bin peyvan de wekhev, bi hêsanî, bi hêsanî, binivîse, binivîse.
Di vê awayê de fêr bibin ku fikrên xwe bi gotinên xwe re biaxivînin, û fikrên min ên me, (me) fikrên rûbirû, (an) hişk, kesê din), hişk û dilfikir, lêgerîn li wir, li rûpelê, rêwîtiyek ramanên mizgîn,
Û xwarinê, û binivîsin – û bi hêsanî bixwe û bi xwe re binivîse,
Û, pen to paper, bi hêsanî da ku bila barkê barkêş, bila bêkêş, hêsantir, da ku,
Çi riya we
Hûn xwe binivîsin,
Û binivîse,
Û jê re binivîse, niha di nav xwe de binivîse,
Ji ber ku hûn dengê te bibînin,
Û tezmînata we, û di vê yekê de,
Ji bo veguhestina we belaş bike, û dengê dengê bihîstin, wek ku
Dengek ji nû ve, dengdan, ji bêdengiyê, kûrbûna bêdeng, dengek, dengek dua,
Forma dua, ji derveyî tiştek din,
Forma dua, ji zehfiyê,
Û xewn, roj, û şev, dînê.

我们相遇在这里

带着信心、信赖和善的信念，让我们放下吧。让我们敞开胸怀，自由自在吧。让我们稍微放松一下自己吧（就如同恋爱中一样）。

当你需要某一样东西的时候，它就在那里；当你寻找某一样东西的时候，就找得到它；当你追寻这个人那个人的时候，追寻专属于你的那些人的时候，要么他们会找得到你，要么你找得到他们，即使不会马上找得到，也会指日可待。

不管你走到哪里，你都在那里，总在那里，在说着：此刻在这里。

若某日，不经意间邂逅街头，我想要跟你说话，那为什么不说呢？你跟我也是一样。你是另一个世界的迷，永远让人着迷，呼唤着更深入的心之交融。你是人性相通中那种亲如一家的感觉。你是在寻找知音过程中的那种共鸣。你是等待应答的呼唤。你是问题。而有时候，你就是答案。让我们彼此暂作停留，哪怕只有短短一刻，一起思索。告诉我，哪里才称得上是家？你从哪里来？你的根在哪里？你的观点是什么呢？无论如何，你之所以能在这里必然是已走过千里万里。那么，现在是什么？下一刻是什么？到哪里去？你可能是那个不在乎终点的人，只是想在生命这条起伏波折的长河中享受着有点迷茫，有点漂泊，又有点浮沉的那种感觉……

你知道，生命有着巨大的能量，生命有着伟大的精神，不管以任何的方式，都不想画地为牢，把我们自己困在那里，而更愿意一步步地将我们自己提升到更宽广更开阔的空间中去……

敞开空间，暖暖地，露出脸面……

脸面，脸面，脸面，那么多的脸面啊，那么多那么多的脸面啊，面对它吧，面对这一张张脸面吧，就去面对它，就去面对它吧，面对这一张张脸面吧，面对这种美吧，面对一举一动，面对心情波动，面对运动本身的千变万化。时间在移动，时间在流逝，有一个秘密，一直不停地走向那里，走向更远的地方，走向我，走向你，走向彼岸，走向一种狂喜，走向一声“哦”，走向一声“嗯”，走向一声“吼”，走向一声“哼”，走向一个赞美，走向一个惊诧，走向一个“为什么”，走向一个“谁”。

（你的微笑带来快乐）

请问：你的名字是什么？你是谁？

我是谁，这个问题重要吗？问你自己，我是谁？

（我是唯一呢？是众生呢？还是可能我谁都不是？）

诚然，万物并不仅为名字而存在；事实上，我们可能被自己的名字弄错了，把我们的名字带入了歧途，就像是打错了电话号码……不；那重要的是，我们真的就明白吗？……

谁真的明白……有时候……一颗心……带着谦卑的姿态，甚至敬畏的姿态……承受着……可能也去体谅着……一点儿……哪怕就一点儿……信心、信赖、善的信念……好比将五脏六腑全部放下……要放下……放下……把一切都放下……要敞开胸怀，自由自在……要再一次让自己放松一点儿，再放松一点，再更放松一点（就如同恋爱中一样）……让我们一起微笑吧，相互问候吧，建立联系吧，打个电话吧，写封信吧，保持联系吧……因为用这种方式，我们就可能可以分享一句话，就可能可以分享一个世界……

现在我们的路有了交集，我很高兴，因为我们相遇在这里。

这一天，这个旅程；走过的路，分享过的故事：花点儿时间去沉默，对，但也花点儿时间去说话，吃吃面包，品品茶；花点儿时间静静地坐上一会儿，去休息，去放松，也花点儿时间去运动。

这一天遇上你，跟你说上话，分享故事和旅程，即是大喜。

（谢谢你）。

但愿你明白，爱情中有大幸福，感恩中有大幸福。

直到下一刻在相同的地方，或者某个其他的地方，像同行的陌生人，智慧的路客，一直带着信心、信赖和善的信念走下去，结伴而行也好，踽踽而行也罢：朋友，一路顺风；再见吧。

A PALAVRA

No princípio havia a Palavra – o som da inspiração. E, inspirado(a) por uma longínqua memória deste momento,
sinta-se livre para dar voz a estes (vossos) pensamentos novos, (nossos) pensamentos novos, (ou) pensamentos,
plena e simplesmente, e verbalizá-los, e, inspirando-se em sua respiração, voltado a seu âmago, inspire-se a expor
esses pensamentos, e a escrever esses pensamentos, com facilidade, à vontade, tal como eles chegam a você,
como palavra, como palavras, em palavras.
E aprenda assim a expressar seus pensamentos em palavras, e a conhecer um pouco de (nossa) mente, (nossos) novos pensamentos, (ou) mente, (ou) pensamentos, plena e simplesmente (sua própria) (parecida com a de outra) mente, e, relaxando em meditação, traçar ali, na folha, a jornada das reflexões de uma mente singular,
E respirar, e escrever – e apenas respirar, e escrever,
E, repousando a caneta no papel, apenas permita a tinta fluir, ao fluxo da tinta, tão facilmente, de modo que,
Seja qual for a sua inspiração,
Você a transcreve,
E a anota,
E a escreve, a escreve agora, de um só fôlego.
De modo a descobrir a sua voz,
E sua vocação, e, fazendo isso,
Libertar sua inspiração, e escutar essa voz que ressoa, como
Um som, ecoando, do silêncio, das profundezas do silêncio, um som, uma oração,
Uma forma de oração, oriunda do nada,
Uma forma de oração, oriunda do vazio,
E um sonho, de dias, e noites, divinos.

AQUI É ONDE NOS ENCONTRAMOS

Em um espírito de confiança, certeza e boa-fé, vamos nos deixar levar. Sejamos abertos, livres. Vamos nos perder um pouquinho (como se estivéssemos enamorados)./ Pois quando você precisa de algo, ali está ele; e quando você procura algo, você o encontra; e quando você procura esta ou aquela pessoa, um certo/ alguém/especial, elas o encontram, ou você as encontra, talvez não logo, de imediato, mas em breve. / Pois seja lá aonde você for, lá está você, sempre presente, dizendo: / Esteja Aqui Agora. / E então se eu, ao passar, me deparar com você, e quiser falar com você, então por que não deveria falar com você? E você comigo. Pois você é o enigma de outro mundo, infinitamente fascinante, rogando por uma compreensão mais profunda, um certo senso de comunhão em uma humanidade compartilhada, som em busca de eco, chamado que busca reflexo, pergunta, e, às vezes, resposta. Então vamos nós dois fazer uma pausa e, nem que seja por um átimo, divagarmos sobre o mundo, juntos. Diga-me, onde fica o que você chama de lar? De onde é que você vem? Onde ficam suas raízes? E qual é o seu ponto de vista? Seja lá como for, sem dúvida você percorreu um longo caminho para estar aqui agora. Mas e agora? O que vem depois? Qual é o seu rumo? Ou, talvez, você seja alguém que prefere não saber o seu destino, apenas desfrutar da sensação de estar meio perdido(a), meio à deriva, flutuando no rio dançante da vida… sabendo que essa ótima energia vital, esse ótimo espírito vital, não almeja nos restringir, de modo algum, mas sim nos elevar, etapa após etapa, a espaços mais amplos e mais abertos… espaços abertos, e rostos ternos, abertos… e rostos, e rostos, e rostos, e tantos rostos, tantos e muitos rostos, e rostos, mirando, só mirando, só mirando, rostos, mirando, tamanha beleza, movendo, comovendo, e o próprio mover do movimento, tempo se movendo, tempo fluindo, um mistério, e viajando sempre rumo a outro lugar, a além, e além mesmo até Mim, e de Você, e do Aquilo, rumo a uma espécie de êxtase, um ah, um ai, um ar, uma cor, um canto, um cantarolar, um porquê, um quem. / (Seu sorriso evoca alegria) / E indaga: qual é o seu nome? Quem é você? / E quem sou eu, aliás? Quem sou eu, para você? / (Sou apenas um, ou um entre muitos, talvez, ou ninguém?). / Claro: o que importa não são os nossos nomes, ou o fato de que podemos nos confundir e entender mal nossos nomes, como quem disca o número errado… não; o que importa… bem… quem sabe ao certo?… quem sabe ao certo… a mente única… com postura de humildade, até reverência… em posição inferior… e talvez também entendendo… às vezes… um pouco… ao menos um pouco… em confiança, certeza, boa-fé… para soltar as rédeas plenamente… para se deixar levar… e, ao se deixar levar… abrir mão de tudo… ser aberto, livre… e nos perdermos outra vez, um pouquinho, e depois outra vez, ainda mais (como se estivéssemos enamorados)… então vamos sorrir, dar um olá, travar amizade, ligar para alguém, escrever uma carta, manter contato… pois, assim, vamos compartilhar talvez um verso, talvez um universo… / E estou alegre porque nossos rumos se cruzaram, pois aqui é onde nos encontramos. / Neste dia, nesta jornada; rumos cruzados, histórias compartilhadas: um tempo para ficar em silêncio, sim, mas também um tempo para conversar, repartir o pão, beber o chá; um tempo para ficar calado em seu canto, um tempinho para descansar, relaxar, e um tempo para seguir em frente./ Foi um grande prazer conhecer você e falar com você no dia de hoje, compartilhar histórias e jornadas. / (Obrigado). / Que você encontre grande felicidade, no amor e na gratidão. / E, até uma próxima, no mesmo lugar, ou em outro lugar, como forasteiro itinerante, sábio viajante, sempre andando com confiança, certeza e boa-fé, quer seja acompanhado, ou, aparentemente, solitário: bon voyage, meu amigo; boa viagem.

СЛОВО

В начале было Слово – звук вдохновения. И, будучи вдохновленными далекой памятью такого момента, не стесняйтесь озвучивать ваши всплывающие мысли, наши всплывающие мысли или просто мысли, и не стесняйтесь произносить их вслух и, чувствуя вдохновение через дыхание, обращаясь к своему внутреннему «я», вдохновляйтесь записывать эти мысли и записывайте мысли с легкостью, непринужденностью, также, как они всплывают, как слово, как слова, словами.
И научитесь таким способом передавать свои мысли словами и постепенно познавать (наш) ум, (наши) всплывающие мысли, (или) просто ваш собственный ум, (или) мысли или ум, (почти не отличающийся от других) и, расслабляясь в задумчивости, проследите на листе бумаги путешествие каждого из образов своего ума,
И научитесь дышать и писать – и просто дышать, и писать,
И, прикоснувшись ручкой к листу бумаги, просто позвольте чернилам струиться;
Чернила струятся, настолько легко, что
Каким бы ни было ваше вдохновение,
Вы пишете
И записываете это,
И запишите это прямо сейчас, незамедлительно,
Чтобы найти ваш голос,
И ваше призвание, и, поступая так,
Вы освободите ваше вдохновение и услышите свой звучащий голос, как будто
Звук, резонирующий из тишины, из глубинной тишины, звук, молитва,
Форма молитвы, возникла из ничего,
Форма молитвы, возникла из пустоты,
И мечта о днях и ночи божественна.

ЗДЕСЬ МЫ И ВСТРЕТИЛИСЬ

Наберитесь уверенности, доверия и веры и отпустите все. Станьте открытыми и свободными. Забудьте обо всем, как будто бы Вы влюбились. Если Вам что-нибудь понадобится, оно придет к Вам; и если Вы будете что-нибудь искать, Вы найдете это; и если Вы ищете того или иного человека, он или кто-либо другой найдет Вас, или Вы найдете его, если не сразу, то позднее. Куда бы Вы ни шли, говорите себе: „Будь здесь и сейчас». И если я, проходя мимо и увидев Вас, захочу поговорить с Вами, то что мне помешает? А Вам? Вы загадка другого мира, бесконечно увлекательная, призывающая к более глубокому пониманию, частица всего общечеловеческого, звук в поисках эха, зов, жаждущий ответа, вопрос, а иногда, возможно, и ответ. Давайте оба остановимся и, хотя бы на мгновение, вместе задумаемся о мире. Скажите мне, что Вы называете домом? Откуда Вы пришли? Где ваши корни? И какова ваша точка зрения? В любом случае Вы, наверняка, много путешествовали, чтобы оказаться здесь. А что теперь? Что дальше? И куда? А может быть, Вы тот, кто предпочитает не знать своей конечной цели путешествия, и Вы просто наслаждаетесь ощущением того, что вы затерялись, что плывете по течению, как плот по танцующей реке жизни … зная, что эта великая жизненная энергия, великий жизненный дух, стремящийся не сдерживать нас, а скорее поднимающий нас, все в более широкие и более открытые пространства …, открытые пространства и к теплым, открытым лицам … и к лицам, лицам, лицам и так много-много лиц, и Вам открываются такие красоты, все в движении, в эмоциях и движение самого движения, движения времени, текущего времени, тайна и путешествие к чему-то, что находится за пределами всего, за пределами даже собственного „Я“, за пределами даже «Вас» и „всего“, к некоторому экстазу и к «о», и «ом», и «хо», и «хим», и «химн», и «ха», и «вай», и «ху». (Ваша улыбка дарит радость). Вы спрашиваете: „Как Вас зовут? Кто Вы? / А кто я, если на то пошло? Кто я для Вас (Я тот единственный, или один из многих, или даже никто?)“ Разумеется, дело не столько в том, как мы называем друг друга или что мы можем ошибиться и неправильно назвать наши имена, как например, при неправильно набранном номере … Нет. Важно то… А кто действительно знает, что важно? Не прибегайте к разуму, которому присущи смиренность и даже почитание, и который, возможно, иногда способен на постижение лишь немного. Наберитесь уверенности, доверия и веры, чтобы полностью отбросить бразды правления и все отпустить, отпустите все, чтобы стать открытым, свободным … и забудьте обо всем, а потом снова, еще раз (как будто бы вы влюбились) … Так давайте улыбнемся, поздороваемся, установим контакт, позвоним, напишем письмо, будем на связи … Таким образом мы поделимся словом, может быть, даже и миром … Как я рад, что сейчас наши пути пересеклись, потому что здесь мы и встретились. В этот день наши путешествия, наши пути пересеклись, рассказы переплелись; настало время, чтобы не только помолчать, но и поговорить, отломить хлеба, хлебнуть чая; время, чтобы недолго посидеть молча, время отдохнуть, расслабиться и время двигаться дальше. Мне было очень приятно повстречаться с Вами и поговорить с Вами в этот день, поделиться историями и разделить наше путешествие. (Спасибо). Желаю Вам великого счастья в любви и благодарности. И до следующего раза на том же месте или в другом месте; Вы – странствующий незнакомец, мудрый путешественник, шагающий с уверенностью, доверием и верой и, будь то Вы в компании или один: «Bon voyage», – мой друг. – «Счастливого пути».

Алматы

1.
Алматы или Алма-Ата (или “Алмата”) является крупнейшим городом Казахстана и его бывшей исторической и культурной столицей. Это крупный финансовый центр Казахстана, который также может похвастаться крупнейшим аэропортом страны.
Город расположен в предгорьях Заилийского Алатау на крайнем юго-востоке.
Население города составляет около двух миллионов.
Алматы остаëтся самым крупным, самым развитыми наиболее этнически и культурно разнообразным городом в Казахстане.
В городе проживает также значительное население этнических русских и украинцев.
В Алматы относительно мягкий климат с тëплым летом и умеренно холодной зимой.
Так как город находится в тектонически активной зоне, есть риск землетрясений; к счастью, большинство из них не наносят существенного ущерба. Есть версия что город Алматы получил своë название от казахского слова “яблоко” (“алма”), и город, по крайней мере, до недавнего времени был известен как “город, полный яблок”. “Алма” также “Яблоко” и в других тюркских языках (а также в венгерском и монгольском); и “Ата” в тюркских языках означает “предок”. Есть версия что Алматы является прародиной яблок и Эдемского сада.
Это неимоверной красоты город и, так или иначе, это райский сад.
Безусловно самым драматическим и впечатляющим зрелищем в городе являются горы.

Я пишу этот набросок, как словесный “снимок”, или праздничную фотографию, воспоминание, напоминание, написанные на открытке слова, небольшой сувенир.
В первый раз я побывал в Алматы в компании моей дорогой казахской подруги, еë младшего брата и сестры, а также всей еë семьи и друзей, и моей семьи: моей жены и моего сына.
И мы были в Алматы только неделю.
Тем не менее, я знал, что я буду чувствовать себя как дома в Алматы, когда в течение нескольких минут после прибытия в город, наше такси проехало большие статуи двух старых, дорогих друзей: Крокодила Гены и Чебурашки!
Конечно, я не могу утверждать, что хорошо знаю город.
(Но, думая об Алматы снова, теперь я надеюсь вернутся туда и немного лучше узнать город).
На моей персональной карте города есть на данный момент, возможно, четыре или пять мест и районов, где я могу, закрыв глаза, с лëгкостью путешествовать.
исследую их в моëм воображении, хожу там снова.

3.
Первое знакомство на моем маршруте – это Зелёный Базар (Центральный рынок) с его богатыми запахами, звуками, цветами, фруктами и овощами, рыбой и мясом, хлебом и кондитерскими изделиями, портьерами и предметами домашнего обихода, одеждой и коврами, практически со всем и вся. Hа самом деле, независимо от того, что вы ищете, вы, вероятно, найдете это там.
И теперь, когда воображение не признает никаких ограничений, все так по себе просто и мы всё можем, сделаем огромный, гигантский воображаемый скачок с Зелёного Базара в “Грин Хилл” с его прекрасным видом на город и пригород, где есть возможность сделать потрясающие фотографии и получить удовольствие от посещения ярко освещенных ресторанов и аттракционов.
Однако гораздо больше по душе мне и моему сыну были многие развлечения в Центральном парке, недалеко от зоопарка, который расположен в непосредственной близости от улицы Гоголя, где мы снимали квартиру в течении недели. Я принял это как знак того, что я у себя дома, а мой сын был так расслаблен, как в Алматы, так и в Казахстане в целом, что захотел по этому поводу попробовать в первый раз многие из более крупных и более рискованных аттракционов. Возможно, он обнаружил там или, может быть, просто осознал вкус к приключениям и степень его мужества. И он наслаждался им безмерно.
На другой день, почувствовав, что нуждаемся в некоторой релаксации после такого большого количества развлечений, мы погуляли в парке 28 панфиловцев (парк назван в честь 28 алматинцев, которые погибли вместе со многими другими “Героями-Панфиловцами”, защищая Москву от нацистов), с восхищением полюбовались собором Зенкова и заказали себе массаж, сауну и горячие ванны в “Арасан спа”. Блаженство!
И это было то же самое чувство глубокого расслабления и вкус блаженства, что я испытывал почти каждый день во время нашего пребывания, когда я брал уроки горлового пения в казахском стиле “Хоомей”, стиль горлового пения низким, глубоким, скрипучим голосом. Наши занятия проходили на той же улице, где мы остановились, там же находится Казахский музей одных музыкальных инструментов. Это абсолютно чудесный, волшебный музей. Для меня он стал своего рода “домом вдали от ома”. И моим учителем там, моим наставником, моим шаманским гидом был замечательный Абзал Арыкбаев.
Эта “работа голосом” является стимулятором не только голоса, но и всего тела и ума.
По вечерам, сидя на балконе с моей женой и моей казахской подругой, мы мечтали, вспоминали о красоте дикой степи, тосковали по вкусу свободы в обширной, бескрайней казахской степи. Наши фантазии летали как орлы.
Неудивительно, что по вечерам, сидя на балконе с моей женой и нашим казахским другом, мы мечтали о дикой красоте степи, желая испытать свободу в огромном, текущем пространстве казахского неба и позволить нашим фантазиям лететь, как орлы … парящие по небу … до Большого Алматинского озера, до Альпинграда, до Чарына, до Плато Ассы, до парка Алтын-Эмель, до Кольсайских озёр, а затем дальше и дальше, далеко за горизонт…
(В Казахстане достаточно просто потеряться, подняв свои глаза к небу, чтобы получить представление о “Тенгри”.)

4.
На данный момент это и есть масштабы «моего» с любовью вспоминаемого города Алматы и Алматинской области.
Тем не менее, это сокровище в моей счастливой памяти.
И это действительно своего рода Эдемский сад.
(Смогу ли я в ближайшее время вернуться туда снова, не только в моем воображении, но лично).

Моя жизнь червя

Я поедатель букв!
И как говорят, я начал читать раньше, чем начал ходить.
Моя мама читала мне и со мной с раннего детства; она научила и поощряла меня читать.
(Она также говорила, что я как открытая книга; она могла читать меня как открытую книгу)
Согласно семейному мифу, я проводил публичные чтения (группе родственников) в невероятно молодом возрасте.
Может ли это быть правдой, что я мог уже читать, когда мне было три – четыре года?
Я сомневаюсь в этом.
Но я точно начал читать в относительно молодом возрасте, и я мог более или менее читать к началу школы.
Я осознаю, что в те времена это не было чем-то исключительным; скорее всего это было нормой.
В русском языке есть выражение: “книга – это лучший подарок”.
В таком случае мы должны с благодарностью относиться к тем, кто нас учит читать.
(Книга – источник знаний.)
(Книга может быть источником всех знаний и мудрости).
В любом случае.
Читать.
Читать в одиночестве.
Как говорят, я начал читать раньше, чем начал ходить.
Но через несколько лет смутных размышлений я осознал, что итогом моей нелепой “книжной скороспелости” явилось то, что, как ходок, я развился поздно.
Однако послушайте вот что.
Действительно, с самого начала моя способность к чтению опередила мою способность ходить. Боюсь, что, как многие оксфордские дети, я быстро пришёл в выводу, что моё тело существует только для того, чтобы транспортировать мозг из одного места в другое. Кроме способности поднимать и носить 3-4 книги одновременно, в молодости я не отличался какими-либо физическими или спортивными достижениями. А сейчас, когда я постарел, это только усугубилось.
С тех пор я так и “бегу позади”, отстав, потеряв форму, и с одышкой, и для всех, кроме самых сострадательных, терпеливых и прощающих, это сумасшедствие.
Поэтому и не удивляет то, что я так никогда и не достиг статуса “ходячей энциклопедии”.
Я опять задумываюсь о моем отце, который провёл много лет работая на стройках. Он иногда говорил мне, что тогда как он провёл свою жизнь таская кирпичи, я повёл её таская книги.
И как Горький, я могу сказать, что всем хорошим во мне я обязан книгам.
Но привычка читать в одиночестве, страсть к чтению, также обрекла меня с ранних лет на жизнь в глубоком уединении и на предпочтение тишины нежели разговоров, размышлений нежели действий. Другими словами, это в какой-то степени превратило меня в социально не приспособленного и ужасно скучного человека.
Послушайте вот что.
Примерно тогда когда я начал ходить в школу, я стал застенчивым. И вместе с этим я осознал, что в мои ранние годы формирования со мной случилось что-то ужасное. Я больше не был нормальным мальчиком. Я превратился в червя. В книжного червя. И начиная с того момента я всегда осознавал, что моя судьба была растянута, сжата или вообще раздавлена. Весь этот опыт я рассматривал через искажённую призму кого-то абсурдно близорукого и недальновидного. Это была моя жизнь червя.
Но не все было так плохо, а жизнь червя вначале казалась даже сочной. Конечно, в моей золотой юности и в моем уединенном книголюбии, задолго до появления смартфонов и электронных ридеров, я стал на какой-то период достаточно упитанным как толстый том. Это была диета, которую я мог поддерживать пока я был школьником, студентом, молодым человеком, но которую было невозможно сохранить, когда я был поглощён злобным миром работы, где никого не заботили мои ограничения червя. И когда не было времени для чтения, по крайней мере, не такого чтения, которое бы расширило сознание, воображение и душу. С тех пор, я похудел, сильно похудел. И если раньше я мог поглотить одну книгу за день, то сейчас если я заканчиваю книгу за целый год, то даже это уже большое достижение. Словом , я умираю …
А те великолепные дни моего регулярного чтения, когда моё чтение иногда придавало мне что-то вроде статуса молодого поэта, целеустремленного писателя, который комфортен на своём читальном диване, давно сочтены.
Конечно, я часто с горечью размышляю про себя:
“Чем больше мы читаем, учимся и учим, тем больше мы знаем. Чем больше мы знаем, тем больше мы забываем. Чем больше мы забываем, тем меньше мы знаем. Так зачем же читать, учиться и учить?”
Тем более, чем меньше знаешь, тем лучше спишь, не правда ли?
А теперь, как и у многих товарищей червей, у меня еще остались единственныe, далекиe, сомнительныe желaниe и надежда, что однажды, возможно, когда я выйду на пенсию, я опять достигну обещанных земель библиотеки (для меня, герцогство), и у меня будет время, чтобы читать опять.
Но достигну ли я в действительности эту Шангри-Ла до того как я реализую моё непокорное действие в пунктуации,моя финальная точка и исчезну в земле, похороненный на глубине шести футов, где я буду червем среди червей?
Хотя никогда не стоит судить книгу по обложке.
О Боже, о Боже.
Быть или не быть?
(Червь)
И все же мне как-то удаётся оставаться благодарным за маленькие милости.
с какой любовью я вспоминаю те длинные часы, погружённые в книги …
Поэтому не удивляет, что книги стали в какой-то части моей жизнью, или по крайней мере моим путём к жизни и её пониманию…
(Книга – источник знаний.)
(Книга может быть источником всех знаний)
Всем хорошим во мне я обязан книгам.
Книги и их писатели были моими товарищами в путешествиях, а некоторые стали моими дражайшими друзьями…
И на этом долгом пути я благословлен тем, что имею много выдающихся и замечательных товарищей и друзей…их так много, и каждый из них настолько уникален, что было бы подло назвать одного или два.
Они все были моими учителями, мастерами; все они дороги мне.
Самое большее , я наверное могу тайно признать мою особую любовь к тем писателям и мыслителям, которые наиболее сочувственны к таким червям как я, к потерянным душам, запятнанным и жалким. Например, франц Кафка, Роберт Уолсер, Херман Хесс, Фернандо Песоа, Бохумил Храбал, Самуэл Бэкетт, а также человек, которого я считаю отдельной категорией, моего самого любимого мастера и даже отца и друга, Джон Бергер.
И если бы мне пришлось назвать одну книгу, которая была наиболее важна для меня в моей молодости – как я могу? – наверное, это была бы история Кналпа, написанная Хессом, поэта-бродяги, ученого цыгана, бродячего мистического менестреля, который любит и которого любят, но который никогда не обустраивается, никогда не принадлежит, и который навечно неугомонный, одинокая душа в постоянных поисках.
(И наверно это проблема касается и меня. Вместо того чтобы быть постоянно зацикленным на поиске, мне нужно было просто найти что-то свое и успокоиться, О Боже!)
Да.
Lectio Divina.
Чтения мира.
(Смерть постоянно перед глазами)
Если уже настал, в какой-то степени желанный, момент умереть, то позвольте мне тогда добавить ещё одно предложение к моей красивой речи, которое будет эпитафией, написанной на моем надгробном камне, под которым я найду мои абсолютные неподвижность, уединение и тишину:
“Здесь покоится книжный червь, погруженный в тишину под непомерным весом слов, закрытая книга. Мир праху его.”
(Теперь переверните страницу – и быстро!)

Любовь слепа

Любовь слепа, говорят они.
И это, действительно, был первый и самый важный урок, который преподала мне любовь.
Мне было всего шестнадцать лет.
Молодой, наивный, невинный.
И влюблённый.
Влюблённый в девушку из местной школы для девочек, которая находилась по дороге из школы для мальчиков, которую я посещал в то время.
Мы встретились на Рождественском балу, танцевали, смеялись, смеялись, и танцевали, и целовались.
И теперь, спустя несколько недель интенсивных переговоров, мы были вместе “официально”, “одним целым”, и мы должны были встретиться снова на назначенной встрече, свиданье, в местном парке.
Теплый весенний день.
Я пришёл рано, она опаздывала.
Я ждал, и ждал.
И вдруг появилась она!
( “Какая красота!” – подумал я.)
(Я убедил себя в этом).
И она шла ко мне, она шла ко мне … ко мне!
И это, конечно, было то самое… это была любовь!
Но, когда она шла ко мне, её внимание, казалось, сосредоточено на какой-то другой, более отдаленной любви.
(Или на удаленном пятне, во всяком случае, её глаза косили неловко, неудобно, как и её поза, когда она шла, немного криво, в полной и величественной красоте этого полуденного солнца.)
И это было то, что я узнал, и понял …
Видите ли, она прошла мимо меня.
А я стоял там, незамеченный, нелюбимый, брошенный и онемевший.
Ибо любовь была слепа.
Или она по меньшей мере была без её контактных линз или очков.
И в этот роковой день, возможно из-за суеты, она не надела ни контактных линз, ни очков, и была так ужасно близорука из-за расточительства её нежной молодой жизни и красоты на учебу, что она прошла мимо меня, словно меня и не существовало.
И это была любовь.
И любовь слепа.

Моя русская зима

(не переживай, будь счастлив)

Когда удается, я люблю проснуться рано утром.

В это время, у меня есть привычка сидеть на полу, на мягкой подстилке у японского столика. Я пью горячий чай и следую за своими мыслями, свободно парящими во времени – это редкое и наиболее роскошное из удовольствий. Я стараюсь держать спину прямой и сильной. Стараюсь следить за ходом и качеством дыхания. И, как музыкант, и я слушаю ритм и гармонию. Затем, почти не осознавая, я иногда начинаю напевать сам себе. А иногда пою в полный голос. Но чей это голос? Откуда он исходит? Кто этот безумец, который в слезах поет песню восходящему солнцу нового дня?

Я с трудом узнаю себя в этом человеке. По крайней мере, это не я в настоящий период своей жизни. Это не я сегодня. Это не тот человек, что был сегодня утром. Совсем нет. Этим утром, он вовсе не похож на человека. Спина больше не прямая, дыхание больше не глубокое. Он падает на стол, чувствуя себя таким же бледным, пустым и бессмысленным, как белый лист бумаги, на который его изнуренная голова падает в поисках отдыха. На который он не может произвести положительного впечатления, а лишь оставить мелкий отпечаток глубокой депрессии. Кроме утомления, у человека разбито сердце. Он держит карандаш в сжатых пальцах подобно кинжалу, вырезая из своих мыслей только жестокие и ранящие слова. И, будучи в этом состоянии, он чувствует себя абсолютно уставшим от жизни, как будто жизнь, в неком смысле, нанесла ему поражение. Как попрошайка, который в ярости пинает свою собаку, он винит себя за все многочисленные неудачи и ошибки, но без благородной цели. Он как провинциальный игрок, который проиграл и потерял все. Хотя сама по себе аналогия кажется надоевшей, предсказуемой, избитой. Почему бы просто не стереть это с листа, отрезать все эти бессмысленные, глупые, уродливые слова, и, может быть, начать все сначала. С нуля.

Неожиданно, резкий звук. Сердце замирает. Я слышу крик с улицы … Но я ошибся: это всего лишь звук отчаяния, отскочивший рикошетом от моего разума при неуправляемом выбросе мыслей и слов. Что надо делать? Что делать?

(Делай что хочешь, доверяй себе, будь спокоен, будь уверен. Раньше или позже, легкость вернется, и все будет хорошо).

Я вновь и вновь думаю о стихотворении Маяковского “Флейта-позвоночник”.

За всех вас,
которые нравились или нравятся,
хранимых иконами у души в пещере,
как чашу вина в застольной здравице,
подъемлю стихами наполненный череп.

Все чаще думаю –
не поставить ли лучше
точку пули в своем конце.
Сегодня я
на всякий случай
даю прощальный концерт.

Память!
Собери у мозга в зале
любимых неисчерпаемые очереди.
Смех из глаз в глаза лей.
Былыми свадьбами ночь ряди.
Из тела в тело веселье лейте.
Пусть не забудется ночь никем.
Я сегодня буду играть на флейте.
На собственном позвоночнике.

И я также думаю над вопросом, который мне неоднократно задавала Наташа, мой предподаватель по русскому языку: “ты пессимист или оптимист?”. Любопытный вопрос. Я инстинктивно стремлюсь оспорить его, хотя и ясно, что это равносильно попаданию в психологическую ловушку. Прежде всего, это выявляет насколько негативны вы (т.е. я) как личность. Но как нам следует понимать этот странный современный феномен, который предписывает, что мы должны все находить положительным, если не великолепным и прекрасным? Что это, отчаянное неистовство позитивизма? Промывка мозгов? 1984? Управление толпой? Пожалуйста, просыпайтесь каждое утро и говорите себе “наш мир лучший из всех возможных!”. И “я так счастлив сегодня”. Или “ура ура!”. И, когда на улице или на работе вас спросят “как дела?”, отвечайте “прекрасно, спасибо, все отлично, великолепно!” (И вы должны иметь это в виду!).

И не лучше ли интерпретировать вопрос через призму такого вопроса от русскоязычных и их собственной беседы с тоскующей душой?

Лично я часто чувствую себя по-настоящему счастливым. Но, хотя я часто бываю счастлив, это, возможно, происходило все реже в течение последних нескольких лет – особенно, в течение последних 15 месяцев или около того. Но, если иногда я бываю несчастлив и испытываю грусть, фрустрацию, отчаяние, значит ли это, что в этом мой недостаток? Я фунционирую неправильно? Меня надо починить? Мне следует искать помощи? Сначала у доктора, а потом, может быть, у аптекаря?

Я купил, но пока не смотрел, классический фильм по “Тихому Дону” Шолохова, 1962 года. Я читал эту книгу, когда мне было лет 18-19, и очень полюбил ее. И теперь очень хочу посмотреть знаменитую киноадаптацию.

Более того, заглавие “Тихий Дон” заставляет меня мечтать о спокойствии, которое я, кажется, потерял. Спокойствии, которое я ассоциирую в своей памяти – скорее всего, ошибочно – с утерянной мечтой детства и оптимизмом. И это также заглавие, от которого я не могу удержаться от ассоциации, очень личной, с моим дорогим “дядей Доном”. Он прекрасный, искренний, добрый и мягкий. Сейчас ему около восьмидесяти, и, я думаю, он иногда гневится на свой возраст, что не совсем в его характере, так как возраст постепенно забирает остроту его блестящего ума, делает его физически все более слабым, менее сообразительным, его сознание затуманивается, и он забывает свои ценные мысли.

Мой дорогой дядя Дон. Он был человеком, с которым я впервые мечтал о России, когда, будучи маленьким мальчиком, я оставался у него. Может быть, мне было 8 или 9, или 10 или 11. Я не помню точно, сколько мне тогда было. Во всяком случае, я был очень юн. И, по его предложению, мы вместе сидели и смотрели киноадаптацию Дэвида Лина по «Доктору Живаго» Бориса Пастернака. Был ли это фильм, который зародил во мне мечту однажды стать поэтом? Или я каким-то образом почувствовал в этом фильме странные параллели с моей будущей жизнью, как будто глядя в магический шар, предсказывающий части моего будущего?

«Никто не любит поэзию так, как русский человек». Эта цитата до сих пор остается в памяти моего сердца.

От Пастернака к Толстому, к «Анне Карениной» Толстого, и, в частности, к образу железнодорожного рабочего, падающего измотанным перед приближающимся поездом, предрекающим смерть самой Анны Карениной (как железнодорожные рельсы, должны ли мы всегда проводить параллели?). И я повторяю: падающий измотанным перед приближающимся поездом, падающий измотанным перед приближающимся поездом, падающий измотанным перед приближающимся поездом…

Иногда ритм наших повторяемых мыслей гипнотизирует, и мы находим себя запертыми в поезде мыслей, который неумолимо мчится, как будто бы бесконтрольно.

Тогда, это судьба?

Надо ли подчиняться судьбе?

Является ли судьба роковой?

И я спрашиваю себя: сколько раз в жизни, постоянно возвращаясь, можно снова оказываться на платформе, духовно разбитым, уставшим от жизни, вечно ждущим отправления последнего поезда? Как долго душа может выдерживать такую жизнь, прежде чем она ослабнет и умрет?

Мой отец был в течение нескольких лет железнодорожным рабочим, часами подметая платформу жесткой щеткой.

Почему столько часов проведено в ожидании на платформе? Ожидая, думая, думая, ожидая … Чего? Чего ожидать, если ты уже пропустил свой поезд? Что если уже слишком поздно?

Поезд мыслей.

Пастернак, еще раз.

И, пролистывая воспоминания о последних нескольких годах, я вспоминаю о сотнях, действительно сотнях часов, проведенных запертым в поезде, как Павел Павлович Антипов, Стрельников из «Живаго», объездивший революционную Россию вдоль и поперек. И я думаю о проблемах моей жены со здоровьем, которые только летом 2013 года заставили ее лечь под нож хирурга семь раз. Я думаю о постоянной агитации на рабочем месте, нескольких изменениях в работе, и стараюсь отвлечься от своих мыслей, внося вклад в работу совета персонала. И поверх всего, конечно, я думаю о смерти моего отца, в прошлом ноябре, ноябре 2013-го, и, спустя всего три месяца, в начале февраля 2014-го, ставшей неожиданностью, даже большой неожиданностью, загадочной, и, в любом случае, ставшей полным шоком, смерти моей матери. Русские говорят, что когда один умирает, за ним скоро уходит и второй …

И сколько раз я сам чувствовал, что с меня достаточно этой абсурдной жизни.

Как Живаго, когда он наконец видит возможность покинуть бригаду красных коммунистов-партизан, которым его заставили служить в течение двух лет, я стремлюсь развернуться и уехать.

Какая длинная, темная зима.

Я думаю о ней теперь как о «моей русской зиме».

В стихотворении Пастернака это «Февраль»:

Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать!
Писать о феврале навзрыд,
Пока грохочущая слякоть
Весною черною горит.

Достать пролетку. За шесть гривен,
Чрез благовест, чрез клик колес,
Перенестись туда, где ливень
Еще шумней чернил и слез.

Где, как обугленные груши,
С деревьев тысячи грачей
Сорвутся в лужи и обрушат
Сухую грусть на дно очей.

Под ней проталины чернеют,
И ветер криками изрыт,
И чем случайней, тем вернее
Слагаются стихи навзрыд.

Толстой формулирует это так:

“Вопрос мой – тот, который в пятьдесят лет привёл меня к самоубийству, был самый простой вопрос, лежащий в душе каждого человека, от глупого ребёнка до мудрейшего старца, – тот вопрос, без которого жизнь невозможна, как я и испытал это на деле. Вопрос состоит в том: “Что выйдет из того, что я делаю нынче, что буду делать завтра, – что выйдет из всей моей жизни?” Иначе выраженный, вопрос будет такой: “Зачем же мне жить, зачем чего-нибудь желать, зачем что-нибудь делать?” Ещё иначе выразить вопрос можно так: “Есть ли в моей жизни такой смысл, который не уничтожался бы неизбежно предстоящей мне смертью?”

Конечно, с революционной точки зрения, этот вопрос, без сомнения, чисто индивидуалистический, сентиментальный, личный: он мало (либо вовсе не) ценен с точки зрения истории. В некоторой степени, я согласен. Мне кажется абсурдным, абсурдно человеческим, копаться в своем жалком маленьком кармашке тревог и страданий, задаваясь тривиальными и томительными вопросами, когда, например, твоя друзья становятся свидетелями того, как их жизни сметаются в большом историческом повествовании, таком как, например, недавний “незаконный захват”, “кража”, “аннексия” или “исторически обусловленное возвращение” (в зависимости от вашей точки зрения) Россией Крыма.

У меня есть “новый друг”, коллега, “А”, ее семья живет в Крыму. Она мой “новый друг” в том смысле, что я знаю ее очень недолго. И все же, с тем, что, как я теперь понимаю, является типичной русской теплотой, она ощущается мной больше как “старый друг”. И она поделилась со мной некоторыми из своих историй и тревогой по поводу ситуации в Крыму, особенно поскольку это касается ее семьи. На какое-то время (возможно, до сих пор), украинские банки заморозили все вклады в Крыму. У ее семьи нет доступа к деньгам. Я пытался найти какие-нибудь поддерживающие и подбадривающие слова для “А”, но какие? Я ничего не понимаю в таких вещах! Они за пределами моего нищенского воображения. В конце концов, я поделился с ней одним музыкальным произведением, которое очень люблю, в надежде, по крайней мере, отвлечь ее или помочь как-то выпустить напряжение от такой мучительной эмоции. Недовольный своими словами, я пал в “беззвучной молитве”. Но кто услышит эту молитву?

Даже если я делюсь этой мыслью только с собой, дайте мне сказать, как я благодарен весь последний год за возможность начать учить русский. Изучение русского языка, по меньшей мере, стало полезным отвлечением от моего индивидуалистического, эгоистического, сентиментального, личного, но, тем не менее, трудного, отчаянного, часто кажущегося бесполезным, поиска структуры, цели и смысла жизни. И я практически ощущал удовольствие от попытки замещения этой отчаянной безысходности экзистенциальной тоской знания о том, что, несмотря на все изобретательное подбадривание и упрашивание моего предподавателя по русскому языку, я до сих пор не сдал простой текст по совмещенным темам “погода” и “каникулы”.

Но неудивительно! Mедитация над смыслами жизни и смерти в таком количестве делает сложной задачей даже написание списка покупок, не говоря уже о фантазировании о прекрасных выходных с прекрасной погодой!

Если вы спросите меня – меня, англичанина! – какая сейчас погода (всегда уместная тема для англичанина), я вам скажу, что, по крайней мере, там, где я, это вообще не погода. Кроме того, эта погода даже еще хуже, чем в Англии. Солнце не светит, небо не безоблачное и голубое, деревья не плодоносят, цветы не распускаются, и птицы не поют. Я депрессивный? Прошу прощения, что снова звучу негативно, но я все так же отвечаю – нет, нет, нет, вообще нет. Но я нахожу себя в состоянии конкуренции с “русской душой”, так что мои мысли, проникающие в темные глубины, подобны густому туману, погода в моей голове – это только проливной дождь и шторм, а мысленный ландшафт – как будто еще хуже, чем тот, который был представлен в темном, постапокалиптическом “Сталкере” Тарковского. На самом деле, это фильм для легкого расслабления, который я люблю смотреть время от времени. Я его воспринимаю как некий постмодернистский летний лагерь. Для меня смотреть его стало сопоставимо с пролистыванием глянцевых страниц журнала путешествий за чашкой кофе. Это мечты о лучших днях.

Позвольте мне заметить здесь, что тема “каникулы” не то, чтобы идеально мне подходит сейчас. Вообще, если подумать о последних десяти годах, все семейные праздники, почти без исключения, проводились с моими родителями. А теперь мои родители уехали на другие, более длинные, каникулы, с которых кто знает, когда они вернутся (если вообще вернутся), и когда-то, однажды и слишком скоро, возможно, мы к ним присоединимся.

И, позвольте заметить, с их “уходом”, когда он случился, я стал думать о родителях чаще, чем когда-либо до этого. Я также чувствую, что они, в каком-то смысле, стали более “настоящими” для меня сейчас, чего когда-либо раньше. И как курьезно, неожиданно, иногда пугающе это. Просто один пример: пытаясь готовиться к моему последнему письменному экзамену по русскому, я сел посмотреть два часовых фильма Никиты Михалкова, режиссера признанного и награжденного Оскаром фильма “Утомленные солнцем”. Только потом я осознал всю значимость моего выбора: один фильм назывался “Отец”, а другой – “Мать”. Формула (или молитва?) “любимые никогда не покидают наших сердец” кажется более реальной, чем когда-либо до этого.

Мои мысли снова возвращаются к Толстому (у меня на столе, за которым я пишу, стоит фото старца), и я спрашиваю себя: какой смысл даже пытаться что-то запечатлеть в словах – этих сбивающих с толку, и как будто бы безбожных, греховных словах, не дающих уверенности или мужества?

И все же, когда эти мысли выливаются в слова на странице – сколько пролитых чернил! – мне кажется, что у них на самом деле есть какая-то цель, хотя и может быть очень скромная. Возможно, что для тебя, дорогой читатель (представим, что ты существуешь, – что я пишу чисто теоретически), чтение этих слов станет неловким, или даже смущающим, опытом. Ты можешь почувствовать нетерпение или даже раздражение по отношению ко мне. Ты можешь подумать, что я изрядный дурак. (И не будешь так уж неправ). Тем не менее, я чувствую себя немного лучше после этого процесса. И упорядочивание всего в словах, несомненно, дешевле и быстрее – а может быть, и более эффективно, – чем поход к терапевту. И это позволяет мне наконец повернуть мои освобожденные мысли в сторону каникул – и, бог видит, каникулы мне нужны больше, чем когда-либо.

Так что, куда поедем?

Я спрашиваю своего сына.

Он снова хочет поехать в Корнуэлл, на юг Англии, на ферму к Тиму и Валери, где мы можем можем кормить и смотреть на сельскохозяйственных животных, овец и коз, лошадей и ослов, свиней и коров, играть в прядки, плыть на пароме, рыбачить и, раз или два, вечером, есть рыбу с картошкой (“С кетчупом и майонезом,” – добавляет сын).

Я говорю ему, что тоже с нетерпением жду этих дней (и как!).

(И, учитывая, что “новые русские” из Газпрома, кажется, скупают всю Англию, включая крупную недвижимость в Корнуэлле, возможно, у меня будет больше возможностей, покуда я буду там, попрактиковать мой русский!)

Сейчас, когда мы наконец подошли к теме каникул, позвольте заметить, что, к удивлению некоторых, я не любитель сидеть и жариться на горячем и сильном летнем солнце. Это еще одна причина, по которой я люблю проводить отпуск в Англии. Корнуэльское солнце видало восхитительные теплые дни, но здесь всегда присутствует охлаждающий бриз и драматические изменения в погоде, которые добавляют интереса и разнообразия, а также безумное море. Сельская местность всегда полна жизни, небо огромно, и длинный горизонт вдоль моря – отдых для усталых глаз. Я с нетерпением жду возможности выпить послеполуденный чай из фляжки на скамейке на берегу, и пойти с сыном вдоль кромки моря, как мой отец со мной когда-то, пока солнце садится за море.

Думая о том далеком горизонте, я спрашиваю себя снова: как объяснить смерть ребенку? И, если уж на то пошло, как объяснить жизнь, когда ты сам понимаешь в этом так мало?

“Жизнь прожить – не поле перейти”.

И она не просто длинный выходной.

Самуэль Беккет пишет, что: “Когда ты на последнем рубеже, остается только петь”.

И я начинаю тихо напевать песню, по-русски …

У природы нет плохой погоды –
Каждая погода благодать.
Дождь ли снег – любое время года
Надо благодарно принимать,

Отзвуки душевной непогоды,
В сердце одиночества печать,
И бессонниц горестные всходы
Надо благодарно принимать,

Надо благодарно принимать.

Смерть желаний, годы и невзгоды –
С каждым днем все непосильней кладь,
Что тебе назначено природой
Надо благодарно принимать.

Смену лет, закаты и восходы,
И любви последней благодать,
Как и дату своего ухода
Надо благодарно принимать,

Надо благодарно принимать.

У природы нет плохой погоды,
Ход времен нельзя остановить.
Осень жизни, как и осень года,
Надо, не скорбя, благословить.

Надо, не скорбя, благословить,
Надо, не скорбя, благословить.

(И когда в следующий раз пойдет дождь, а во время летнего отпуска в Англии он конечно пойдет, пусть он для всех нас станет благодатным дождем, благодатным дождем, благодатным дождем … ).

SHOKO RACHO

Kumavambo kwaiva neshoko – Manzwi ekufuridzira. Uye, kufuridzirwa nendangariro yenguva iri kure, iva wakasununguka kupa inzwi kune idzo (dzako) pfungwa dzinouya, (dzedu) pfungwa dzinouya, (kana) pfungwa, zvakareruka, nekutaura zvinzwike, uye, ukafuridzirwa mukufema, kutendeukira mukati, iva akafuridzirwa kunyora passi mifungo iyi, uye kunyora pasi mifungo yacho, nekugadzikika, wakagadzikika, sekuuya kwadzinoita, seshoko, semashoko, mumashoko.
Uye dzidza munzira iyi kuisa mifungo yako pasi mumashoko, nekuziva zvishoma zve (yedu) pfungwa, (yedu) mufungo inosimuka, (kana) pfungwa, (kana) mifingo, zviri nyore (yako wega) (sokunge youmwe) ffungwa, uye wozororera mukuziva, kuteedza ikoko, pane rugwaro, rwendo rwemafungiro epfungwa imwe chete,
Uye kufema, nekunyora – uye zviri nyore kufema, nekunyora,
Uye, kuisa chinyoreso pabepa, zviri nyore kuti chinyoreso chinyore, chichinyora, zviri nyore nyore, kuitira kuti,
Chero chinofuridzira,
Nyora uchikwidza,
Wonyora uchidzika,
Wonyora zvibude, nyora ikozvino, chiriporipotyo,
Kuitira kuti uwane rako izwi,
Nerako basa, uye, mukudaro,
Wosunungura kufuridzirwa kwako, wonzwa iro izwi rotaura zvakare, sokunge,
Kurira, anoberekwa, kubva murunyararo, udzamhu hwerunyararo, neizwi, munamato,
Mhando yemunamato, inobuda pasina zvinhu,
Mhando yemunamato, inobuda musina chinhu
Zviroto, zvemazuva, nousiku, humwari.

APA NDIPO PATINOSANGANA

Tiri mumweya wekutendana, kuvimbika, netarisiro yakanaka, handei tione. Ngatifungei zvizere, takasununguka. Ngatimbovai sekunge tarasika (sezvinoita murudo). / Nokuti paunoda chimwe chinhu, chinovapo; uye paunotsvaga chinhu, unochiwana; uye ukatsvaga munhu upi neupi, vamwe / umwe chete / akakosha, vanokuwana, kana kuti ndiwe unovawana, kana chisiri chiriporipotyo, kamwechete, pozotiwo nenguva isipi. / Nokuti kwose kwaunoenda, apo unenge uri, uripo panguva iyoyo, uchiti: / Ivapano ikozvino. / Mukudaro iyeni, ndichipfuura, ndosangana newe, ndova nechishuwo chokutaura newe, nemhaka yei ndisingafanire kuti nditaure newe? Kana kuti iwe utaure neni. Nokuti uri mubvunzo usiri wepasi rino, chishamiso chisingaperi, chiri kuda kunzwisisa kwakadzama, ane pfungwa dzokunzwisisana mukurarama kwevanhu, kurira kunotsvaga maungira, kushevedzera kunotsvaga mhinduro, mubvunzo, dzimwe nguva, pamwe, imhinduro. Tiri vaviri ngatimbomirai takadaro, kwenguva pfupi chete, timbofunga zvepasirose, pamwechete. Ndiudze, ndekupi kwaunoti kumba? Ndekupi kwawakabva? Ndekupi, kumusha kwako? Ndeapi mafungiro ako? Neipi zvayo nzira, wafamba nhambwe ndefu kuti usvike pano nhasi. Zvichavei zvino? Ndezvipi zvichatevera? Uye zvakanangepi? Kana kuti nepamwe ndiwe unosarudza kusaziva kwawakananga, unonzwa manyukunyuku ekunzwa kunge wakarasika kwawakananga, uchiita kunzvenga nzira zvishoma, kuyangarara uchiyeredzwa nekunoenda dziva … uchiziva kuti masimba ehupenyu, mweya yehupenyu, haipo pakuda kutibatira kumashure, neipi zvayo nzira, asi kutisimudzira, nezvimwe, chinhambwe nechinhambwe, kutiendesa kunzvimbo dzakafara dzakavhurika, nzvimbo dzakavhurika, kunodziya, kwakavhurika, zviso .. nezviso, nezviso, nezviso, uye nezviso zvakawanda, zvakawanda wanda, zviso zvakawanda, uye nezviso, zvakatarisana nazvo, uye zvichitarisana nazvo, zvichitarisana nazvo, zviso, zvakatarira, irwo runako, zviri kufamba, kuzarirwa, uye kufamba kwemafambiro kwacho, kufamba kwenguva, nguva ichifamba, chisaizikanwa, tichifamba nguva dzose takananga ikoko, kunopfuurikidza, kunopfuurikidza kuti Ini, nekuti Iwe, uye kuti Izvo, takananga kune nhapi-tapi inosiya uchizipirwa, wongoita kudzvovera, wonanzvirira, rwova rwiyo, wokatyamadzwa, kuita kuti nendava yechii, kuti ndiani. / (kusekerera kwako kunounza mufaro) / Mubvunzo: zita rako unonzi ani? Ndiwe ani? / Uye ini ndiri ani, maererano neizvozvo? Ini ndini ani, kwauri? (Ndiri ndega here, kana kuti ndiri umwe pane vazhinji, nepamwe, kana kuti hapana zvandiri?). / Zviri pachena, hazvinei nekuti ndezvipi zvatinoshevedzana, kana chokwadi chekuti tinenge tiri kukanganisa kugona kushevedza mazita edu, sokunge kuridza runhare pakero isiriyo … kwete; chakakosha chacho … kwete; chinokosha chacho … kwete; chakakosha chacho … zvino … ndiani anonatsa kuziva? … Ndiani anonatsa kuziva … pfungwa imwe chete yacho … nekuita kwakazvininipisa, zvine rukudzo … kuzviisa pasi … pamwe pacho zvimwe kunzwisisa … dzimwe dzenguva … zvishoma … kudai tadaro zvishoma … mukutendana, neruvimbo, uye nevimbo yekutenda … kusiya kuchengera zvachose … kuregedzera … kuita kuregedzera zvose … kuva wakasununguka, pasina kumanikidzika … kwave kusiya torasika zvakare, zvishoma, topamha zvakare, kwava kudzokorora zvekare (sokunge murudo) … zvino ngatiite tichisekerera, tokwazisana, pova nenhaurirano, toridza nhare, tonyora tsamba, tova tinotaudzana … sokuti nenzira iyi, zvichida topanana mashoko, pamwe nepanyika pose … / Uye zvino ndinotenda kuti nzira dzedu dzafambirana, nekuti pano ndipo patasangana. / Zuva rino, rwendo rwuno; nzira dzapfuudzana, nyaya dzataururanwa: nguva yekuva nerunyararo, hongu, asi iri nguva yokutaura, kutsemurirana chidyo, kunwa svutu gadzike; nguva yekugadzikana, kwekanguvana, tizorore, nenguva yekufambira mberi. / Aiwa wakava mufaro mukuru kusangana newe nokutaura newe zuva rino, kuita nhaurirano kuudzana nyaya nenzendo dzatafamba tose. / (Ndinotenda). / Dai ukawana mufaro mukuru, murudo, uye mukutenda. / Kusvikira nguva inotevera yavapano, kana mune imwe nzvimbo, somufambi wenzira, mufambi akachengera, anofamba nokutenda, nevimbo, zvine rutendo, uye, kungave nevamwe, kana zvichiita kunge, woga: Famba zvakanaka, shamwari yangu; tinoonana.

LA PALABRA

En el principio existía la Palabra – el sonido de la inspiración. Inspirado por un recuerdo distante de ese momento, siéntete libre para dar voz a esos (tus) pensamientos nacientes, (nuestros) pensamientos nacientes, (o) pensamientos, simplemente, y hacer que retumben, e, inspirado por tu respiración, volviendo la atención hacia el interior, encuentra la inspiración para escribir esos pensamientos, y escribir los pensamientos con facilidad, tranquilo, tal como surgen, como una palabra, como palabras, en palabras. Y aprende de este modo a convertir tus pensamientos en palabras, y a conocer un poco la (nuestra) mente, (nuestros) pensamientos nacientes, (o) mente, (o) pensamientos, simplemente (tu propia) (como la de cualquier otro) mente, y, sumido en una relajación contemplativa, aprende a trazar, ahí, en el papel, el viaje de las reflexiones de una única mente,
Y a respirar, y a escribir – y simplemente a respirar, y a escribir,
Y, al poner la pluma sobre el papel, simplemente a dejar que la tinta fluya, tinta fluyendo, tan fácil, de modo que,
Sea cual sea tu inspiración,
La escribas,
La escribas de nuevo,
Y la vuelvas a escribir, escribir ahora, de inmediato,
Para encontrar tu voz,
Y tu vocación, y, al hacerlo,
Liberar tu inspiración, y escuchar esa voz retumbar, como
Un sonido, que resuena, desde el silencio, las profundidades del silencio, un sonido, una oración,
Una forma de oración, que nace de la nada,
Una forma de oración, que nace del vacío,
Y un sueño, de días, y noches, divino.

AQUÍ ES DONDE NOS ENCONTRAMOS

Con una actitud de seguridad, confianza, buena fe, dejémonos llevar. Seamos abiertos y libres. Perdámonos un poco, casi como cuando se está enamorado. / Para que cuando necesites algo, ahí esté; y cuando busques algo, lo encuentres; y cuando busques a esta o aquella persona … una … alguna … especial … te encuentre o la encuentres, si no inmediatamente, o en seguida, pues pronto. / Para que, vayas a donde vayas, ahí estés, siempre presente, diciendo: / Estar Aquí Ahora. / Y por lo tanto si, de paso, yo me encuentro contigo, y deseo hablarte, ¿por qué no lo haría? Y tú a mí. Pues eres el misterio de un mundo diferente, infinitamente fascinante, pidiendo una comprensión más profunda, un sentido de comunión en una humanidad compartida, un sonido en busca de su eco, una llamada que espera una respuesta, una pregunta y, en ocasiones, quizás, una respuesta. Detengámonos los dos, entonces, y aunque solo sea por un momento, maravillémonos con el mundo, juntos. Dime, ¿a qué llamas hogar? ¿De dónde vienes? ¿Cuáles son tus raíces? Y, ¿cuál es tu punto de vista? En cualquier caso, seguramente has viajado desde lejos para estar aquí ahora. ¿Y ahora qué? ¿Qué es lo próximo? ¿Y a dónde? O quizás prefieras no conocer tu destino, disfrutando simplemente de la sensación de estar un poco perdido, un poco a la deriva, a flote sobre el danzante río de la vida … sabiendo que esta gran energía vital, este gran espíritu vital, no desea refrenarnos, de ningún modo, sino elevarnos, más bien, paso a paso, hacia espacios más amplios, y abiertos … espacios más amplios, y abiertos … y rostros cálidos, y abiertos … y rostros cálidos, y abiertos … y rostros, y rostros, y rostros … y tantos rostros, tantos, tantos rostros, y rostros, observando, y solo observando, observando, rostros, y tanta belleza, la emoción, en movimiento, y la movilidad del movimiento en sí mismo, y el tiempo, que fluye, un misterio y, viajando siempre hacia el allá, el más allá, e incluso más allá del yo, y del tú, y del ello, hacia un tipo de éxtasis, un o, y un om, y un … hom … (bre) y un … muj … her … y un hym … no, y un ah, y un por, y un qué, y un quién. / (Tu sonrisa brinda alegría) / Preguntando: ¿cómo te llamas? ¿Quién eres? / Es más, ¿quién soy yo? ¿Quién soy yo para ti? / (¿Soy uno más, o uno de tantos, o quizás, nadie?). / Obviamente, no se trata tanto de saber cómo nos llamamos los unos a los otros, o del hecho de que podemos estar equivocados y que quizás nuestros nombres no sean los correctos, como cuando se llama a un número erróneo … no; lo importante … no; lo importante … no; lo importante … y bueno … ¿quién sabe, quién entiende, en realidad? … ¿quién sabe, quién entiende, en realidad? … la … única … mente … y, con una actitud, de humildad, incluso de reverencia … y quizás también … soportando … entendiendo … a veces … un poco … o sea muy poco … pero con seguridad, confianza, buena fe … para soltar las riendas totalmente … para dejar ir … y, dejando ir … dejando todo ir … estar abierto, libre … y perdernos una vez más, un poco, y de nuevo, un poco más, casi como cuando se está enamorado … así pues, sonriamos, saludemos, establezcamos contacto, hagamos una llamada, escribamos una carta, permanezcamos en contacto … porque de este modo, compartiremos quizás una palabra, y quizás un mundo … / Y me alegro de que nuestros caminos se hayan cruzado ahora, porque aquí es donde nos encontramos. / Este día, este viaje; caminos cruzados, historias compartidas: un momento para estar en silencio, sí, pero también un momento para hablar, ir a comer algo, tomar un té; un momento para sentarse tranquilo, un rato, para descansar, relajarse, y un momento para seguir adelante. / Ha sido un placer conocerte y hablar contigo este día, y compartir historias, y viajes. / (Gracias). / Que seas muy feliz, con amor, y gratitud. / Y, hasta que nos volvamos a ver, en el mismo lugar, o en alguna otra parte, como un extranjero de viaje, un viajero sabio, caminando siempre con seguridad, confianza, buena fe, y ya sea acompañado o aparentemente solo: buen viaje, amigo mío; y que te vaya muy bien.

NENO

Hapo mwanzo kulikuwa na Neno – sauti – ihamasishayo. Na, kuhamasishwa na kumbukumbu ya mbali ya wakati huo jisikie huru kuipa sauti hii mawazo yako,mawazo (yetu), (au) kwa urahisi, mawazo, na uyape sauti (uyaelezee) ukihamasishwa na pumzi yako, ukijichunguza moyoni, ukihamasika kuyaandaa haya mawazo, uyaandike, kwa urahisi, bila wasiwasi kama yanavyokujia, neno baada neno, kama maneno.
Na kwa njia hii ujifunze jinsi ya kupanga mawazo yako kwa maneno, na kujua akili zetu na mawazo yetu yanayotujia, au akili au mawazo, ya kwako mwenyewe (kwa urahisi zaidi), tena zaidi sana kama akili ya mwingine, na kujiachilia katika fikra, kufuatilia, kwa ukurasa, safari ya fikra za akili moja moja.
Na kupumua, na kuandika – na kupumua pekee na kuandika,
Na ukiwa unadondosha maandishi, kuachia wino umwagike, wino ukimwagika, kirahisi, ili
Chochote kinachokupa hamasa
Na Unakiandika,
Na ukiandika, sasa hivi, mara moja
Ili uweze kupata uwezo wako
Na mwito wako na katika kufanya hivyo,
Kuachilia hamasa yako na kusikia sauti ile ikilia kama vile
Sauti inayolia kwenye ukimya, kina cha ukimya, na sauti, na sala
Aina ya sala, isiyoanzishwa na chochote
Aina ya sala, itokayo kwenye utupu
Na ndoto, za mchana na usiku, peponi.

HAPA NDIPO TWAKUTANA

HAPA NDIPO TUNAPOKUTANA

Kwa roho ya ujasiri, imani, imani nzuri, hebu tujiachilie. Hebu tuwe wazi tujiachilie kama pale tunapokuwa kwenye mapenzi Ili unapohitaji chochote, kiwe kipo tayari, na unapotafuta chochote, unakipata; na ukimtafuta mtu, mtu ambaye unampenda, utampata, na atakupata, hata kama sio kwa wakati huo lakini karibuni. / Kwani popote unapoenda, utajikuta, ukisema: /uwepo hapa sasa. /Na kwa hivyo, nikiwa napita, nikikutana na wewe, na nitake kuzungumza. kwanini nisizungumze na wewe? Nawe uzungumze nami

Wewe ndiwe kitendawili cha ulimwengu mwingine, unaeshangaza sana, unayetafuta uelewa yakinifu, umoja kwenye jamii inayoshirikiana sauti inayotafuta mwangwi, wito unaotafuta mwitikio. tutulie hapo kidogo, na hata kwa muda mfupi, tuyafikirie maajabu ya dunia pamoja. Hebu niambie unapaita wapi nyumbani? Ni wapi ulipotekea? Chimbuko lako ni wapi? Na msimamo wako je? kwa hali yoyote lazima utakuwa umepitia mengi. Sasa ni

vipi? Nini kinachofuata? Na je? kuelekea wapi? Au pengine wewe ni mtu ambaye hapendi kujua hatima yake/mwisho wa safari yake, unafurahia pale unapopotea kidogo, ukielea kwenye mto wa uhai/maisha… tukijua kwamba nguvu hizi za uhai, na roho yenye uhai , hazitafuti kutukataza kwa njia yoyote, lakini hutuinua, hatua kwa hatua, mpaka kwenye nafasi kubwa na huru…… ……sehemu za wazi, na nyuso zenye furaha ….. na nyuso, na nyuso, na nyuso, na nyuso , nyingi sana, nyuso nyingi, na nyuso. zikiangalia na kuangaliana, nyuso, zikiangalia urembo wa kiasi hiki, ukisogea, na hisia na uwezo wa kusogea, ukisogeza muda, siri ikielekea kwenda upande ule, ule wa mbele, na ule wa mbele hata ule wa kwangu, na wako na wa yule, ukielekea aina Fulani ya furaha wa o, na om na ho, na hum, na wimbo, a huh na kwanini na nani. Tabasamu lako laleta furaha. / ukiuliza: Jina lako ni nani? mimi ni nani kwako? / (Niko peke yangu, au mmoja kati ya wengi, labda , au sio mtu yeyote) Bila shaka sio kwa jinsi tunavyo itana au jinsi tunaweza kukosea majina yetu. Ni kama kukosea namba ya simu ukipiga……. Hapana; kilicho muhimu ….. nani anajua…. Akili moja…. Na tabia ya uvumilivu na hata heshima …. ukijishusha …. Na pengine kuelewa …. Saa zingine …. Kidogo …. Hata kidogo ….. kwa ujasiri na Imani na Imani njema ….. ili kuachilia nanga kabisa …. Kuachilia ….. kuachilia yote …… kuwa wazi na huru ….. na kujiachilia tena, kidogo, na baadaye tena, zaidi (ni kama ukiwa kwenye mapenzi) …. Kwahivyo tutabasamu, tusalimiane, tuwe na mawasiliano, piga simu, andika baura wasiliana …. Kwani kwa njia hii, tutachangia pengine wazo, au hata ulimwengu,/ Na Nafurahia kwamba sasa njia zetu zimekutana, kwa sababu hapa ndipo tunakutana. Siku hii, safari hii,, njia zimekutana, hadithi tumesimuliana: wakati wa kukaa kimya, ndio, lakini pia wakati wa kuzungumza, kushirikiana chakula, kunywa chai; wakati wa kukaa kimya, kwa muda, kupumzika, na wakati wa kuendelea. / Nimefurahi kukutana nawe na kuzungumza nawe siku hii ya leo, kusimuliana hadithi na yale tuliyoyapitia. / (Asante), / Nakuombea furaha, upendo, na shukrani. / Na hadi wakati ujao, mahali hapa, au pengine, kama msafiri mwenye hekima, anayetembea kwakujiamini, uaminifu, na imani, na kama uko na wengine au peke yako, safari njema, rafiki; na kwaheri.

İŞTE TANIŞTIĞIMIZ YER

İnanç, güven ve iyiniyet ruhuyla hadi gidelim. Açık ve özgür olalım. Biraz kendimizi kaybedelim (aşıkmış gibi). / İhtiyaç duyduğun anda birşeyler olur; ve sen birşeyler aradığında onu bulursun; o veya bu kişiyi aradığında çok özel birileri / birisi seni bulur veya sen onları bulursun, hemen olmasa da olur, yakın zamanda. / Nereye gidersen git sen hep oradasın ve şöyle diyorsun: / Hemen Burada Ol. / Ve ben, eğer geçerken seninle karşılaşırsam ve konuşmayı arzularsam niye seninle konuşmayayım ki? Ve sen de benimle. Çünkü sen başka bir dünyanın gizemisin, sonsuza kadar aklımı başımdan alan, daha derin bir kavrayışı gerekli kılan, paylaştığımız insanlığımızda birliktelik duygusu, yankısını arayan bir ses, yanıtını arayan bir çağrı, bir soru ve bazen de belki bir yanıt. Öyleyse her ikimiz de bir an duralım ve bir anlık da olsa birlikte dünyayı düşünelim. Söyle bana, nereye ‘evim’ dersin? Nereden geldin? Köklerin nerede? Ve bakış açın ne? Eminim, buraya kadar gelmek için yol katetmişsindir. Pekiyi şimdi ne olacak? Bir sonraki adımda ne var? Ve gidiş nereye? Veya belki de varış yerini bilmek istemeyen birisindir, sadece kaybolmuşluk duygusunun keyfini çıkararak, biraz yoldan çıkmış, hayat nehrinin akışına kendini bırakmış… bu inanılmaz yaşam enerjisinin, harika yaşama ruhunun bizi hiçbir şekilde kısıtlamayacağını ama kademe kademe yücelteceğini, uçsuz bucaksız yerlere taşıyacağını bilerek… uçsuz bucaksız yerler ve sıcak, ve sıcak, açık yürekli yüzler… ve yüzler, yüzler, yüzler ve birçok yüzler, birçok yüzler ve yüzler, bakıyor, ve sadece bakıyor, yüzler, bakıyor, öylesine bir güzellik, yerinde durmuyor, heyecan verici, ve hareketin de devinimde olması, zamanın hareket ediyor olması, zamanın akışı, bir gizem ve hep oraya giden bir yolculuk, ötelere, ve hatta Benim ve Senin ve de Onun ötelerine, bir tür kendinden geçmişlik haline doğru, tam, tum, tararam, bir şiire, bir niçine, bir kime. / (Gülümsemen neşe veriyor) / Soruyorum: Adın ne? Sen kimsin? / Ve ben kimim, dolayısıyla? Ben senin için kimim? / (Tek ben miyim, birçoktan biri mi, belki de hiçkimse?) / Tabii ki, önemli olan birbirimizi nasıl adlandırdığımız değil, veya hata yapmış olabileceğimiz, yanlış bir numarayı aramak gibi isimlerimizi yanlış söylememiz de değil… hayır; önemli olan… yani… kim bilir? … gerçekten kim bilebilir… tek bir zihin… alçakgönüllü, hatta derinden saygılı bir tavırla… altında bekleyen… belki de anlayan… bazen de… biraz… olursa biraz… kendine güvenle, inanarak, iyiniyetle… dizginleri tamamen bırakırmış gibi… salıverirmiş gibi… ve salıvermiş gibi… salıverirken… açık ve özgür olmak… ve kendimizi bir kez daha, birazcık ve sonra biraz daha, (aşıkmış gibi) daha fazlasıyla kaybetmek… öyleyse gülümseyelim, merhaba diyelim, temas kuralım, birbirimizi arayalım, mektup yazalım, temasta olalım… böylece belki de bir kelimeyi ve hatta bir dünyayı paylaşırız… / Yollarımız kesiştiği için çok mutluyum, işte tanıştığımız yer. / Bugün, bu yolculukta; yollarımız kesişti, öykülerimizi paylaştık: sessizlik zamanı, evet ama aynı zamanda da konuşma, aynı ekmeği paylaşma, bir yudum çay içme zamanı; bir süre öylesine oturma, dinlenme, rahatlama ve sonrasında da yola koyulma zamanı. / Bugün seninle tanışmak ve seninle konuşmak, öyküleri, yolculukları paylaşmak büyük bir zevkti. / (Teşekkür ederim). / Koskoca mutluluklarla tanış ol, aşkla, minnetle. / Ve aynı yerde veya başka bir yerde bir sonraki buluşmamıza kadar, yola koyulmuş bir yabancı, aklı başında bir yolcu gibi her zaman güvenle, inançla, iyiniyetle yürüyen, eşlik eden birileri olsun ya da olmasın, veya tek başına görünüyor ol: iyi yolculuklar arkadaşım; hoşça kal.

DISCLAIMER AND COPYRIGHT

Hildegard von Bingen describes her inspiration in this way:

“I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries … [that] I heard and received … in the heavenly places. And … I heard a voice … from Heaven … saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus!’”

For my part (who me?), I’ve little or no idea from where these [my] words are harvested and gathered.

Nor am I sure even of how to read a word; how to read a word at all, at times.

I am rarely sure of when a word should be read as literally true or when as a leap of the imagination, and when a word should be understood as fact, and when as fiction, and when a memory is reliable, and when not. And the same doubts exist for me with regard to the mind that may claim to contain such memories, and with regard to the person who may claim to be the owner or the author or the identity of such a mind. Who is that person, actually?

Who me?

And who are you, for that matter?

But then, what do any of us truly know and understand of our “reality”?

Isn’t it all in some sense a reading of the mind?

(And isn’t there always something mysterious, unfathomable, unreachable.)

Who are you?

And who me?

It’s all in some sense a fiction, isn’t it?

And a little like a dream.

And therefore the names, the characters, the places, the events, and all the myriad incidents described in these [my] fabricated mosaic of patched together words are either entirely the products of this make believe author’s disturbed imagination or else persons, places, and events, seemingly real, but used in a way as to render that seeming reality entirely fictitious, such that any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual places, standing or in ruins, or to actual events, contemporaneous or historical, is little more than the play of chance; it’s purely coincidental.

What I (who he/she?) do know with confidence (faith), is that even a collection of words that on their surface may be read as fiction or “merely” story may in their depths possess a resonance of meaning whose force may be experienced and known as luminously meaningful, in words profoundly true when read by the opened human heart, and of a power that may at the same time open one’s eyes, ears, hands, arms, mind, and do so rudely, all at once, as in a blink of realization, and awareness.

(Be opened, human heart).

And words collected here on this website [my] [words] are words written entirely in a personal capacity, as one specific example within a great variety of human person, and just that one who, in essays, in thinking, recalls freedom, in considered thought, speech, and action, and one who, modestly exercising a basic human freedom of expression, evolves hopefully to be a human person a little more expansive, in heart, and mind, and a little more generous, and forgiving, and understanding, in his thinking, and his words, and his actions, and all this evolution perhaps to some purpose and benefit.

And if sometimes, very occasionally, I succeed in these [my] words to express some truth or wisdom it is thanks only and always to the example, instruction, and guidance of my teachers. But when I err – as more often than not I do – I err entirely alone, under my own misguided responsibility. And on those many latter occasions, when I find myself again in error, please be patient with me, and forgiving. Please help me to develop a clearer understanding.

Sometimes the things that you might think would go without saying are precisely the things most needing to be said. And now I’ve said it, a disclaimer, of a kind.

For what to make of the rest, it’s up to you.

Whoever you think you are.

Who me?

What?

Why?

© Bede Nix, 2017. Not for publication or quotation without permission. All rights reserved.
No part of this website may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied form without written permission of the author.

THE VOICE OF BLOOD

‘Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror’.
Rainer Maria Rilke

‘I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back.
Endless, would it be mine, form of my form?
Who watches me here?
Who ever anywhere will read these written words?
Signs on a white field …’
James Joyce

‘For you.
For someone or something I’d recognize.
A person, a moment.
A sign you were there.
Or had been; or were going to be, soon.’
Robert Lax

—–

Once more the blood …

—

And I found all this stuff, all these papers, all these old notes and jottings, along with your letters.

I wrote to you too: I wrote to you too, do you remember?

And these are my words …

—

Or these were my words.

I forget.

And I say to you: read each one very carefully, each word, each sentence, think about them for a second or two, don’t rush but take your time.

—

To share.

Share …

A portion that a person receives from or gives to a common account.
A part contributed by an individual to an enterprise or commitment.
A part received from an individual from this.
Have a share.
Be a sharer.

And shall I share with you?
Have I something to share?
I wonder.

And yet …

—

To love …

To love is to hurt.

Oneself.

Others.

There is no beauty without the wound.

Or so they say.

And to love one must first feel the hurt, the hunger.

The absence, the loss …

Isn’t that right?

—

So do I dare?

Do I dare?

Go on …

—

Yes.

I love you.

I am blind with love for you.

And yet still I look back.

I see.

And at the same time I see nothing.

I see …

And I do not see.

As if I’m blind with looking.

With looking: with love.

My love.

Imagine …

My eye is bleeding.

Look left.

Look right.

Up.

Down.

The blood.

I feel it.

Once more the blood.

And suddenly the voices, too, are near: they recede as quickly, dying quietly away. Now loud, then soft. Here it’s like a chamber of echoes: cold and dark. I cannot escape them: these voices.

I am still: completely still. Although I’d like to move. I’d like, in particular, to move my arms: to draw them in close, myself. And my hands. My hands I’d like to move much nearer, much, much nearer, before my eyes, perhaps, or even touching: my face. I’d like that, I know. But I can’t: it’s impossible now.

Once more the blood.

This phrase still sticks, in my mind, as I think of you. I’m not sure where it’s from or what it means. It just seems to bubble up, as if from nowhere, breaking through to the surface of my thinking like a lingering dream, as bold as you please. Again I’m surprised, caught unawares: I draw my breath. I look. I listen. And the words are so lush that at times I seem to feel them as images: mesmerizing images, glorious in red, growing large in my eyes, awash with blood, dazzling. So that now it’s how I see you: you above all. You, like me. And I think to myself: it’s blood, it’s only blood. As if it’s all that we are, you and I: blood, flowing blood. Finally. And each time it’s the same: the same whenever I look back. The blood: do you remember? I look back and everything is red: bleeding. I close my eyes: it’s how I see.

‘Keep going’, I told you. ‘Keep going’.

‘Keep going’, you said then as well, repeating me, as if saying it for the first time, something new, your sole response.

But how?

And why?

I try to remain calm. It’s an exercise in mental control, an attempt to lull the mind’s eye into oblivion, finally. And the opposite of what previously I’d thought: let go, let go. Don’t follow.

A succession of pictures processing back through the past, a painting in image: to this I’m now reduced. And I watch as these images pass by me, silent and sombre, stills from a dead life. Happy days, they were. Happy days: the past.

Like laughter.

Were they?

Just a breath or a touch of the hand was sometimes enough, I remember, a naked smile, a kiss.

And then the changing of the seasons: the bright light of the mornings in spring, the warm summer sun, the fall of leaves in the autumn, the sound of snow in winter. Childish laughter, running free. And your voice, like water. A song.

Until the fog descends upon me once again, smothering me in its embrace like a mother her child, coming then too close, the darkness, suffocating, leaving me crying in its arms.

And I listen as still I breathe: breathing in, breathing out. And the sound of my breath, to my ears, takes on the pulse of a quiet drumming, uneven, broken, an echo of a heart like a soft whispering from far within, seeming so faint and so distant and yet still as if forever.

And my eyes begin to smart and water and my head feels heavy: blurred and bleary I seem now, vague and ethereal, as if haloed in smoke. And I think: my body must be fire, my body must be fire. The rhythm is wonderful: the ritual repetition of my words delicious.

And then the voices speak: ‘I am going away’, they say, ‘I am going away’.

And my eye is bleeding.

Look left.

Look right.

Up.

Down.

The blood.

I feel it.

Once more the blood.

And at last I am lost.

And it seems so long now since I last shared human company.

To speak.

To feel.

To touch.

When was the last time?

Do you remember?

It’s been a while, certainly: a few days, a week, perhaps, a month.

Maybe it was the man in the takeaway who didn’t understand me when I tried to place an order. His fingernails were dirty and his hair looked greasy. He looked as tired as I did. Sweating away. Working.

Fast food friends.

He handed me my meal in a white plastic bag. And back in my room, when I took it from its plastic bag, I ate it from a plastic dish. It was a plastic dish that could be placed in a microwave for reheating.

I ate it with a plastic knife and a plastic fork.

(And I thought to myself: this meal will last forever …)

And it was perhaps inevitable that the food itself tasted plastic. But still I’d hoped for something better.

And as I ate I wondered: when did I last eat food prepared by hands I’d recognize? A meal prepared by my own hands, for example? Slowly, with patience? Or by the hands of someone who is dear to me? By the hands of someone that I know or by the hands, at least, of someone that I’ve seen with my own eyes, that I’ve at least set my eyes upon? You know: a meal prepared exclusively for me – with care, with love … ?

It’s all seems so unclear: so pointless, perhaps.

Life, I mean: life.

The contact, reaching out …

And for once I can’t remember.

And you: do you remember?

But I was scared of wasting time: every moment seemed precious and so easily lost.

So I didn’t bother much with myself: taking time out properly to eat, to look after myself, relax, rest, sleep – no, not really.

And …

‘Every book is a postponed suicide’.

Who said that?

A voice.

Was it Cioran?

I forget.

But I wanted so badly to write.

You must try to understand this.

It was all I could ever think of.

Just to write – a few words, at least …

And yet writing meant waiting.

And what can you do when you’re waiting? How to pass the time?

And I ask you: am I forbidden to see?

I hear nothing by way of answer.

There is no response.

Only silence.

Imagine.

It was as if the sighs of death encircled me.

The sorrows of hell surrounded me.

And in my tribulation I cried out.

Once more the blood.

And I got into the habit of waking early: a little before dawn. I tried to write but when I couldn’t, which was often, I paced around without purpose, tried to sleep when my sleep was already broken, or else went for long solitary walks in the dwindling darkness of the night.

Occasionally, scrutinizing hard their faces, looking for some sign, some signal, I’d blindly pass someone, peering at their shape in the small, shrivelled hours, wondering how the night was affecting them, thinking: is it the same for them, or different?

They never spoke, these others: not once.

The silence, still then, was never broken.

And in any case it was only rarely that I saw another.

As if the night I shared with no one.

Although for company and for courage it’s true I sometimes spoke aloud: articulating my thoughts as I roamed about in them, hearing them, lingering in the air, listening to them as if to the words of another, or else my own words heard again, unexpectedly, in echo. So from the night I learnt the sound of my language but not its meaning: its meaning escaped me. Until at last I’d grow scared and turn back. Although the light always comes when you least expect it. It’s in the darkest part of the night: gathering in the distance.

The voices.

But it seems to me now as if I’ve scarcely lived.

I tell you: listen …

All things are full of labour: man cannot utter it.

The eye is not satisfied with seeing: nor the ear filled with hearing.

And in the small hours before the morning I tried to write.

A discipline which of course left me little energy for the rest of the day.

And I was generally tired and lethargic.

For a while I’d been a student.

But I was a bad student.

‘Highly unpromising’ as one tutor had so succinctly put it.

I wanted answers but instead was offered career paths: number crunching; law bending; middle management; higher management; fucking over the poor and underprivileged; arsing around on television; tosspot academic excellence; wine and greasy pole studies … At one stage or another all of these options were trundled out for my inspection: dumb, anodyne looking beauties in a surrealist fashion parade, a job fair of such tremendous pomp and splendour it made me sick.

I preferred to drink. It amounted to the same thing but tasted better, if only marginally. Pissing against the wall. A whole bloody country down the drain …

Got to get on! Got to get on!

Tough luck: you cunt!

Cutting; how cutting …

And my blood: this is my blood.

(Take it: drink it).

And my body: this is my body …

Cutting.

What oblivion!

A rather average degree in “European Critical Thought” kept my field of expertise rather narrowly focused: dissatisfaction. But consultancy positions (for highly skilled professionals) were, in this area, at least, notoriously difficult to come by.

So I took to doing odd jobs, travelling here and there, doing this, doing that.

At first I worked in a supermarket, stacking shelves. In a factory after that. Then in a hospital as a porter. Then a driver. Then I drifted into the larger cities. Anonymous office jobs. Answering phone calls. Buying. Selling. Some learning: some teaching … Until at last I slipped out of the country to carry on my wandering elsewhere. Years and years of grinding poverty. Getting by. A little money here. A little there. Occasionally enough to buy a book. A pair of shoes. A drink. Now and then the time to think. A new experience. But for what? What has any of it ever amounted to? I thought that I’d hear great stories: experience great things. Or else that I’d live these stories for myself: and only afterwards set them down in print. I thought that I’d somehow be a writer. A dream …

Surely.

And a dream from which I’ve never woken up.

Not yet.

Not now.

Not ever.

But I stir, I shift, I move, I turn …

Awake!

And I shall enter, I shall enter! I shall, I shall! I shall enter – yes! And gates of the dark world: open! Open up at once! I say. This is the path – my path: I shall follow it to wherever it takes me. And so I must: I must go on … Going down into that dark world, as if it’s written in the heavens above: you must go down, down and down and down and down … Into a black pit. An infinite black pit, deep, resonating like a voice from within you, lost to itself: speaking, like a poet. And going on and on: this voice. Slowly. Slowly. It seems so gentle and so delicate, from a distance, reaching out towards you with the foggy familiarity of memory: beguiling, like a song, encouraging nearness, an enticing, seductive sound. And do you hear it? No, never? So why not listen? And enter, enter in … I shall!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

These voices deafen me.

They chatter incessantly within me, biting at me like thousands of tiny, sharp teeth, guardians at the entrance to a blackened cave, denying me its admittance, its maddened mouth ringed with slicing blades, cutting like devils.

I snap at my tongue: pray!

Prayers for the living and the dying: say them all, one after another, continuously.

You will need them.

I know.

You will need them.

And keep open your eyes: your eyes open.

That too: I remember.

Then just trust to go on.

Going on. Going on.

Your eyes open and wide, looking straight ahead and keeping them as focused as possible, your back erect, your hands and arms open and relaxed, falling loosely at your sides, and your head held high, breathing as calmly and as deeply as you can, under the circumstances, until at last you begin: beginning slowly to remember, little by little, letting everything return. Yes. That’s right: try to remember it all. Slowly. Slowly. So much remembering.

And I think: at times it’s as if I really do remember everything, like a great blessing or curse heaped down upon my shoulders, as if the fitful air were itself loaded down, heavy with memory, like time, appearing to pant beneath its weight.

And I think of the days of darkness: for they shall be many.

And then I ask: ‘What are you looking for?’

And: ‘Is anybody there?’

‘You, for example … Are you there? Are you there? Where are you, my love? Where are you? And do you dare to follow?’

There is no response.

But still the questions echo.

Where is she?

And where, for that matter, am I?

I feel so lost: lost like a shadow in absolute darkness.

And it’s like waking into a terrible dream: a dream which remains vivid even when sleep itself has ended.

The solitude: this awful solitude.

And it’s like a fear blown up to form a tangible, crooked shape, flickering at the edge of my field of vision: like a dark, dripping colour, a shadow, stained upon the eye.

And I wonder: am I, too, to suffer a thousand pangs?

My hell lies within me like a wilderness: the inner landscape a nightmare. A nightmare in the deepest and the darkest depths of the heart.

Do you see it?

Do you see, my heart?

And understand?

Take courage!

Because I must keep going, my love: somehow, to love.

And going on and on.

Screaming: NO!

But I shall enter, I shall enter! I shall knock and knock and knock! And I shall enter! I shall, I shall! Enter! Enter in … I shall!

But listen.

I’m like a sleepwalker clambering blind across the uppermost surfaces of the mind: a miniature dreamer, entering by the ear or the mouth, wandering freely, perhaps too freely, by far, in thought.

And the eyes are open and yet still he sleeps.

He sees nothing, then.

No: nothing.

He’s blind.

And you mustn’t wake him.

Do you understand?

He’ll go mad if you do that.

He’ll go mad if you wake him …

And I pause for breath: I’m panting.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

A thousand noes … So many voices!

But …

They are meaningless, surely: even pain must have its limits.

And …

I must try to suppress my fear, passing through it as though it doesn’t exist, deaf to its denials. I must find courage: the courage to go on. And say I, say …

Cannot go on, go on …

Cannot.

Must!

It’s just a test: you know it. Simply one after another: a test and a test and then another test. Test after test. Test after test after test.

And you are not a coward: you are not to think it …

But …

Get out of my way! Get out of my way!

Open up! Open up!

And only then shall you enter, my love. Only then …

You shall enter.

At last.

I shall.

I shall, I know it.

I shall enter, I shall enter! I must, I must! Let me in, let me in, let me in!

But can I?

Can I enter?

And can I enter alive?

And alone?

I am, after all …

Alone.

Am I not, gentle reader … ?

Am I not?

Alone.

Yes: yes I think it must be so.

And yet: do you follow?

Yes, but …

I think it’s too late: I think that already it’s too late.

And you see: I’m much alone.

And too much alone, in fact. As if marked by all this time: stained, ruined. Cut off and now adrift. And reeking of solitude. The smell of it! The faint, musty smell of solitude. I would recognize it anywhere, immediately. And it’s a lonely stench which makes, of isolation, an inevitability, it seems. Except that it’s as if this loneliness were somehow necessary: necessary to all that is to follow. And I’ve created it myself. Alone, I know: this loneliness. And unimaginable, it seems: to others. Not precisely. Not fully. Not in all its horror … Not even to you, my love, as you begin, already, to forget. And perhaps not even to me, I myself. Not yet. And it’s this that I fail to understand. Going on and on. It frightens me, do you see? Like a forlorn anxiety worrying away at my scrambled nerves: an intense longing, lonely, for my death.

For mine and for yours.

Yes.

So must I die, the darkness pulling me into it, closing in around me, all around me, closer, closer still, closing in?

And shall I?

Can I?

Must I?

Now?

Or in a moment?

Five bells: the morning. And soon I’ll be awake.

Tin-tin – – tin – – tin-tin.

Too late!

But wait …

Open the doors, damn it, and knock knock knock forever! I shall, I shall! Enter! Enter in … I shall!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Yes!

Let me pass and go on entering quietly in …

But don’t look, don’t look! Don’t look back, don’t look back!

I remember.

But …

Look!

And my nerves are in their infancy: it’s as if I cannot help it.

And I move, I turn, I look.

Don’t look! Don’t look!

But now I do look: and I look again.

And what is it that I see?

This time: my eyes, out there …

In the darkness of all that lies beyond.

What do I see?

I …

I have suffered with those that I saw suffer.

Yes: I think, I think …

And for a moment my eyes are closed.

Open.

Then closed.

But at first I see nothing: my eyes dark in the absence of light.

But then, slowly, I do begin to see, I think …

I see a pair of eyes: a pair of eyes opening in the darkness.

A pair of eyes looking this way and that, rolling around and around as in some dreadful storm. Not still, not calm. But now here, now there. Darting this way and that and from side to side. Going round and round and up and down. On the surface and then submerged. And for a moment seeming near before once more lost. Near and then far and then never again so soon to see or seen. Those eyes: floating. As if the darkness were a kind of empty ocean: a blind sea.

And …?

Yes: I look, I see.

And those eyes seem so like my own: looking where I look and seeing my seeing. And those eyes, like mirrors, reflecting back the empty sadness of this blind, absent looking, which now, finally, I see: this looking lost.

And I hate this separation – this dreadful distance.

I can see so far, but …

I wish I were blind!

Looking, always looking.

My eyes rolling this way and that. And still I try to open them: wider, larger. I try to open my eyes, to push them out and beyond: going ever further and further. I clench them tight like two fists. Fists squeezed tighter and tighter into tiny points. Grit in my ghostly eyes. Then fling them far away. Squeezing, squinting, straining. Out into the blind darkness. Away from me forever …

The question: what is it that I see?

Now, for example, right now: what can I see?

Out there …

In the darkness of the eyes I look through, like a dream.

What do I see?

I see nothing.

To begin with, as always, it’s as if I see nothing: as if again I see nothing.

And again: nothing.

But then, slowly …

Are you with me?

Slowly, very slowly …

I do begin to see …

Delirium, yes: a face.

Do you follow?

Or can you trace the lines, perhaps: cut them out?

A face.

So give me your hand, the knife …

And yes: yes …

Yes: this time it’s a face. A face, I’m sure: a face as if formed from my eyes. And I close my eyes: imagine.

Let’s say …

Let’s say it’s the face of a child: a young boy, perhaps four or five years old.

(And I ask myself: is it me?)

And then another, this time a man, the scene expanding.

(Me again?

As if always the same old story …

I am not told.

I do not know.)

(Although anything, it seems to me, is possible.

And in my mind I mould my memories from only the barest fragments of possibility, from nothing …)

Do you remember?

Yes.

But now again I’m alone.

And I sit at my desk: staring into space.

Silent except for the whirring of my thoughts: it’s my head inside the machine, making this noise, spinning around and around.

And when the screen goes blank I see stars.

As if I’ve closed my eyes.

Closing my eyes the better to keep watch.

A shadow of a shadow of a shadow.

Look …

My sleep is broken.

And I know that I have dreams.

And in these dreams I see things that I likewise know cannot be true.

And yet I believe them.

I watch.

And I follow.

And they stand together in what looks like a park: a city park, perhaps. There are swings and roundabouts, see-saws and rocking horses, logs and benches. A small field rolls out to one side, its grassy covering, otherwise an intense green, becoming, in places, bare and earthen, bruised by the constant running and jumping of young, sprightly feet, or else dry and parched, smoked yellow beneath a bright burning sun. Into one corner of the field, at the far end, drops a public swimming pool, clashing blue against the green, but covered and dirty looking, unused. And next to it, dug out into an unruly hole, is a pit of sand, sparkling gold.

There are children dashing around all over the place, in chaotic abandon, wild things which scream and shout, first leaping up into the air, then falling down, time and time again, like miniature dancers in a comic ballet. And their costumes, as they run through their steps, are the eyes of others, glittering upon their bodies like sunlight: parents, grandparents, siblings and friends, nurses and nannies. I am not the only one who sees them there: dancing.

But then, as I watch, that man, the same man, starts yelling at the child, the first, abruptly enraged, apparently, by something said or done, or not said, not done. The child lowers his head, looking forlorn, confused, suddenly terribly alone, like an orphan, and now isolated among his peers. Occasionally he throws quick glances towards the parents and guardians of some of the other children, their attention momentarily drawn in by the ugly, incongruous noise of the man’s shouting voice, so loud and so aggressive.

The boy looks pitiful, a powerless supplicant reduced to begging and pleading, appealing for some kind of support, some merciful assistance with his wide, teary eyes, which wander nervously and without purpose, as if lost, slipping uneasily across a long line of blurred, adult bodies: of those, that is, who remain, still lingering awkwardly nearby. The rest have quickly turned their backs, invisible. And even those who do remain, watching open mouthed, anxious, their eyes flicking to and fro, pretend they see nothing. They’re like a chorus cast from a Greek tragedy, crying: ‘We are blind! We are blind!’

And it’s only later, in secret, that they share some sad, frustrated sympathy: it’s a terrible business, life, muttering, I hear them, drawing near, one to the other. And one day that boy will be a man. Such a shame. He’ll soon start hitting back, the horror spreading like a contagion. For sure. For sure.

Imagine.

And I blink, blind.

I’m still in the same place, I think. But it’s later now, it’s night: all the youngest children have run away, hiding in the dark. Three youths are now the only figures standing out, silhouetted against the lights of the city, which keep on hurrying past, flashing on and off, it seems, at will, like night time eyes, blinking, like my own. This I choose to see. And this I will not see. For this I have eyes. And for this I am forever blind. Open. And closed. Open. And closed. Open. Closed.

And these boys, it looks to me, are dancing: a high spirited can-can with kicking feet and clapping hands to a dull, thudding beat. They form a tight circle, dancing around and around, first in one direction and then the other, their arms entwined: weavers of destiny.

Crouched in their centre, haloed in the dance, is a dark, bundled up ball. It’s an old man, in fact: a drunkard, bruised and battered by life and now bloody, vomiting.

I …

He’s trying to say something, to speak, but it’s lost, like a whisper. And I, too: I too am whispering, I realize, a futile mimic, as if mouthing the man’s words. The boys, of course, don’t hear him: they’re too busy laughing. Laughing and crying. The silvery sounds singing out across the air, the night seeming suddenly still, listening.

And dark thoughts, cold, appear to crystallize above my head. Dense, they form a cloud of despair, a black mist descending like a lover, piercing eyes in the darkness, silent and suffocating.

And I ask:

So am I dead already?

No: not quite yet.

Not quite …

And I blink, blind: my eyes still rolling, like film.

And how far can I look and yet still be said to see?

I don’t have an answer.

But I do my best.

Still looking …

And these clouds, potent, menacing, assemble on the horizon: they are restless like shadows moving in the dark.

And they seem to group and regroup, agitated, as if arguing among themselves.

And I look: I see.

Their flight appears swift: in a moment they’ll be here, over us, upon us.

And then we’ll be lost: trapped in a storm.

But I’m waiting: still waiting.

And, as I wait, a bus pulls up sharp, stopping abruptly beside me.

And the driver sits in shadow.

He speaks, but indistinctly, as if he’s mumbling at me in a foreign language. It sounds a bit like: ‘You’re coming with us. Get on …’

And I listen to my voice.

‘Yes, I know – I’ve known it all along. And yes of course I’m coming …’

I answer, automatically, as if the words, fully formed, were prepared earlier, already rehearsed and only waiting in my subconscious, like me, for the next available dream.

And here it is: I step on.

I move down the bus with my head straight before me, not looking to my left or right, my eyes as if closed yet staring out. Eventually I select a corner seat, crumpling into it as the bus lurches forward. I crunch up against the bulge of the wheel rim, trying to look small and inconcspicuous. Someone has left a newspaper on the adjacent seat. I pick it up and open it. It’s large enough to hide behind and I sit there trying to do so, like a spy in a cheap thriller, but in fact just feeling foolish. There’s a thin draft from a window behind me which tickles my neck and rustles the paper.

My eyes glance down at the lead story. American troops occupying a terrorist nation. Troops on full alert but morale still dangerously low. A massive and fully mobilized war machine needs an enemy. But an enemy can’t be found. ‘We’re here to kill people’, one senior officer is quoted as saying, ‘and instead we’re sitting around on our arses all day, getting f***** off and flabby’.

Quite.

I take a peak above the page.

The bus is nearly empty, to begin with at least, although it soon stops again, and then, afterwards, at short, regular intervals, for the collection of other passengers. None get off but many get on. Their movements mostly jerky, nervous, they traipse to their seats in single, orderly lines, heads down, cautious. They never look up. And I, too, find myself once again looking down, pretending to be engrossed in my paper, not looking, not listening.

I hear a voice, saying: ‘I am not here! I am not here!’

And we …

We are thin, like ghosts: and all of us as if absorbed, elsewhere.

All of us, that is, except for a couple sitting behind me. They are fighting both between themselves and with another man who sits nearby. The angry noise that they are making seems to render them real, these characters, strangely sharp in a world of sullen shadows as they pursue a drunken quarrel to which I cannot help but listen. Although for now, at least, I don’t turn around to look, to see who’s there. To me they remain as empty bursts of sound: people lost in voices. Voices speaking: I hear them. Only them …

Shit.

‘So why didn’t you fucking stick by me? Why didn’t you stick up for me?’ The voice is that of a man. Desperate. Enquiring. Savage. ‘You silly fucking cow! Fucking tart! Can’t get enough, is that it?’ It’s now a woman: ‘oh fucking shut up, will you?’ A woman’s voice. ‘And you can all shut the fuck up an’all! You can’t get a moment’s fucking peace in this place!’ Once more a man. Another. The accent foreign, across a border, it seems. The border. Sleep? Not far away: not far enough. For the first man, at least. ‘The fucking wanker!’, he says. ‘It’s my fucking country. I was fucking born here, wasn’t I? The fucking cunt!’ And so on and so on and so on. Then back to the woman. ‘Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you!’ Fucking and fucking and fucking. Like a right fucking mess. For sure. Going on and on. ‘To love and to cherish.’ He says, sarcastically. ‘Fuck you!’ ‘To have and to hold.’ She echoes, laughing now, desperate. ‘Fuck you!’ From this day forward … Then day after day. Night after night. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ The laughter now lost. There’s just the sound of dark thumping: the dull thud of punching fists rising up above the background hum of frightened, whispering voices caught up in the drone of the engine, itself pumping loud and then soft like a single beating heart above the breath. That fucking engine: the noise it makes is terrible. ‘It needs fixing’, I think to myself. ‘There’s something wrong with it. And to be heard we must all of us scream and shout … ‘

Fuck you!

The bus itself seems indifferent: it hears nothing. Hurrying on and on, it goes to god knows where. There is no direction. And none of it’s making much sense: it’s like a dream. Or rather: it is a dream. A dream of a dream.

Until another voice, asking: ‘Who cares?’

And I wonder.

And likewise: is the time passing?

It must be, I suppose.

But where is it going?

I do not know: I am not told.

Until at last we reach it: our final destination, the terminus, the end. And sure enough it’s like the very limit of nowhere.

And gradually we file out – all of us. One after another. We’re so many now: who would have thought it?

And was I sleeping?

The bus has picked up what I guess are hundreds and hundreds of other passengers. Although after a while it begins to feel almost as if there are more: thousands, millions. How was there room? I’ve no idea and no time to stop and think. Events are moving too swiftly and I’ve no choice but to follow the others, swept up among them, as I am, in wave after wave of blustering life, lost like a man at sea, drowning.

I take a deep breath: breathe in, breathe out, gulp, try to relax, then swallow …

Fucking Hell!

Tripping, I fall into the night.

And it’s so dark outside. And, although the air feels hot, sweating, I’m cold: I shiver.

I close my eyes.

I close my eyes but still I see.

And you: do you see?

Yes: yes I think so.

So that I look now into this the most strange of all landscapes: my scrambled sight squirming in its horrors and all my senses as if divided against themselves.

What can I say?

It’s like a sickness, a seizure.

A dream: a fever.

Imagine.

And whatever it is, in your imagination, that you think that you can see, right now, it’s worse, far worse: believe me.

It’s worse and it’s still worse and it’s ever worse.

Close up or from a distance: it makes no difference. So that my eyes seem populated: there are people everywhere. And it takes some time but at last I find some focus: my eyes settling for a moment, finally, upon a small young child. Abused. Abandoned. Looking up, I … Then a mother who is crying, alone. The specifics of brutality, I suppose. A rape. A murder. Then everywhere the eyes: killing. As they all lash out, all these people: one at another. So that I find myself watching as man after man, woman after woman, child after child, is beaten and killed: struck down, for life. It’s impossible to watch: to see. But my eyes are closed already: I do see.

And the numbers seem continually to escalate. First a group of family and friends, a street, perhaps, a tribe, a town, a city or a language, whole countries and continents: a mass of humanity. Going on and on. And it’s like a continual sacrifice: the shedding of blood. A sacred duty: paying homage to a world of chaos. And so many fall cold to the bottom of my dream: one upon another. As if they’ve been discarded, forgotten, left waiting, alone, until they’re one day washed away, their drowning mouths as if crying out in silence and their faces disfigured in the fear of death, the lost life. And their heads, bobbing slowly up and down, are twisted oddly, awkwardly, I notice, as if in all the wrong directions. And as their eyes grow ever larger and larger, swelling up like balloons, or seeming to, at least, I watch.

I watch for as long as I can.

But eventually they all roll back, once and for all, falling.

And I fall with them.

I know it’s happening.

I know it: I can sense it.

But it’s all too much, don’t you see?

I can’t bear it!

My eyes.

Falling.

As if falling so deeply: maddening the mind.

It drives me mad!

And …

My thoughts are bloody: I wish to die.

And you?

Are you still there?

And if you are: are your eyes still open?

Open: or closed?

Do you see?

Yes.

Yes I think so.

I think so.

At least.

And I look.

I look again.

Look here: look there …

Everywhere.

But still I cannot find you.

I cannot find you, my love.

I’m blind, I know: the light so dim, so dark.

I’m just a figure lying lonely on the floor.

And cutting: cutting …

The blood.

But where are you?

You and I.

Tell me: speak.

Where are you?

I cannot find you, my love.

I cannot hear your voice, your words.

I cannot hear …

A voice: voices …

Do you remember?

Blinking, blind.

And I look, I look: my eyes opening wide.

And now open, I think: fully open.

Open.

I look.

I look around at all these people: the inhabitants of my disturbed dream.

Everyone seems either to be shouting or screaming: bewildered, frenzied. No voice is calm or clear. And the words they speak are all mouthed in mumbles, blowing out scorched, melted, in the air, separated haphazardly into pieces and then snapped at by desperate, razored mouths. The yacking cackle babble of the immorality brigade in chorus with the shrieking torture screams of the living and the dying, the faithful and the infidel. That’s what it’s like. It’s like a ululating soul screeching. Like fluctuating spirits: quivering and restless. Restless beneath a constant bomboardment of noise. A noise which is entirely without shape or meaning: it’s utterly incoherent. And suffocating. Breathless.

I try to silence my ears, but there’s no escape from the noise. It’s incredible: like a wailing lust for blood in wave upon wave of barbaric dissonance. It takes a grip around my head like a vice: I hear it, the sounds now glued together, covering me all at once, sticking, relentless. Beginning first as a savage warble somewhere deep within the throat: then crowing and screeching and cawing and squawking and squealing, the sounds vomited out like a sickness.

And I hear the awful howling of the dogs: the hundred dog-headed, serpent-tailed, monstrous hell hounds. And then the ratatattat of artillery fire: body-jerking misery rhythms. And the noise from exploding bombs. Loud, angry pain in the trembling air while bitter rain drops fall like shrapnel, so much shit from the sky. And beneath it the sound of a grinding machinery: fire and sparks, lead and iron. And the low, mournful moan of a distant bell.

‘This is a war zone,’ I think. ‘I’m at war.’

And imagine: the noise. The extraordinary noise. Again and again the noise, banging against the walls of the mind. There’s no quiet here. No peace in the punishment pit: not for anyone, not a single soul.

And the stench: the stench is terrible.

And nor is there light: not much, at any rate. And what little is getting through is mostly lost, polluted in the murk, snubbed by shadow. And the rest seems to stall, stuck uneasily in the air, unmoving.

Although then, and even as I have these thoughts, there’s an unexpected flash of bright light: a fork of lightning, as if slicing it in two before tonguing out its middle, seems to sear my mind, opening it up. And for a moment I see the sky. It’s heavy, threatening: full of dark, thick clouds, varying in colour between dun grey and jet black. And there are no stars, or none, for the moment, that I can see, as if they’ve all burnt out. And the moon is lost in madness.

Continually jostled on every side, I try to concentrate on light: I look. Storms prowl around at the edge of my vision. A flicker, a flash: I clutch at one shard of light after another, the sky as if shattered, my eyes bleeding. A brief streak of illumination, floating ghostly in the air, offers hope. It’s like a path, inviting me to walk it. I follow: nothing. Just a return to the darkness.

The place is arid, sterile, desolate, and seeming as dead as the very air itself.

It’s a monstrous morphine vision, an infernal insomnia nightmare: a nasty, waking dream of lonely horror.

‘Do I still live?’, I wonder.

And …

‘Am I alive or dead?’

I think of the ground, of being buried, deep, beneath the ground.

And it moves: the ground appears to move.

‘It’s moving,’ I think.

Deeper: still deeper.

I look down for it: the darkness.

I look down.

And as I look down I begin to see a procession of semi-demented creatures rising up from the damp, boggy earth like so many bleary, bloated worms, writhing in the dirt. Their half-human forms throw vast shadows in the traces of light, glinting in their red, glaring eyes, a few of which, I notice, have been scratched out, left dangling from their sockets, red and bloody. Their teeth, bright, appear fanged against the darkness, their skin dark and shiny and covered with thick, greasy hair. They are more animal than human, I think, moving around in shadowy packs and almost rabid in their ear cutting snarls of sharp, anguished pain. They claw at the air, their knuckles white: their desperate, angry movements like some macabre dance of death.

And I look down: deeper.

Dark, empty, shapeless, formless shadow creatures. I watch as they are subjected, by tiny, darting devils, to a series of ever more ingenious tortures: maiming, mutilation, piercing and stoning, their bodies as if impaled upon their pain, agonized, groaning. It’s a loathsome, blood-gorged feast of sour, flesh licking foulness. A sewer of blood and filth as if trickling out from each of these horrible hallucinations …

And I watch as all their natural human wants and appetites are systematically twisted and transformed into a lurid dementia: communication tongue slicing, the lips singed with the enflaming kisses of dirtied desire, then sweating thirst and an immense, devouring hunger, deep down, inside, the guts as if nibbled gradually away from within, then gritty urination and chronic constipation, no never pleasure satisfaction and mock rituals sordid sex sanctity, marriage inverted perverted, baptism by immersion in boiling oil, orgiastic consecration desecration, down suffering soul depression, night sweats trepidation, and open eyes all human horror seeing.

And then I look down again: still deeper, staring still.

The darkness: moving.

Until at last there is light: first a warm orange glow and then, a moment or two later, as if everything were ablaze.

And I watch these darkened, fading people as slowly they begin to melt and burn, the blistered surfaces of their skin now hairless, naked, desquamating in the heat. And as layer after layer is stripped gradually away, I sense the blood boiling and watch as their bodies roast, the scorched flesh already fading, like memory, the white bones turning burn black, grave and skeletal. And I watch as black foam froths forth from wide, open mouths, and listen, likewise, to the sounds of bubbling brains, melted mind, popping against the eardrums with a noise like gunshot.

And I keep on watching as all these horror faces seem to leer up at me as I look at them, in turn, their collapsed bodies packed tightly together, propping each other up in belated fraternal embrace: standing absolutely still now, black candles alight, they are human torches, death on parade. And it’s a hatred hell holocaust, this vision: life turned to ashes.

And yet still I watch.

I watch as the flames turn blue.

‘Blue flames above a black grave,’ I whisper to myself.

Why?

I’m not sure …

I do not know: I am not told.

I close my eyes: blinking, blind.

And how this darkness creeps into the blood.

It seems.

Do you feel it?

Yes.

This darkness creeping into the blood, chilling it with its clutching obsidian fingers. Sun darkened and earth trembling: small people shivering in the cold of here seeming no hope, no end.

So here then is the grief, and here the laments, of a vale of tears. A vale of acid, bitter tears falling like an eternal, accursed rain – cold and heavy and stinking of foul fluids. And we are helpless in this rain: standing staring still in the night. It seems.

And I myself seem grim in this horror.

And the sun has turned black.

It’s like a hell on earth.

I think.

Truly: I can see it.

But it’s too much.

And I cannot go on, go on …

Cannot.

Must.

Do you hear?

There is no choice.

There is simply no choice.

So go on: go on.

And …

I shall enter, I shall enter! I must, I must! Let me in, let me in, let me in! And know not how or why but only that to enter now is obligatory for the going on …

So open the doors, damn it, and knock knock knock forever!

I shall enter, I shall enter! I shall, I shall! Enter! Enter in … I shall!

But no!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

And don’t you understand?

Don’t you understand, then?

No!

You are mortal: you must not enter.

And you shall not: you shall not enter …

Yes.

I listen.

And I hear your voice: an echo.

Thank you for this lovely sleep, my darling.

Although the morning will wake us: do not forget it.

The morning will surely wake us.

As if it’s time: it’s time to wake up.

So open your eyes!

Wake up!

And behold, thou art fair, my love; behold thou art fair; and thou hast the eyes of a dove.

But listen: if you’re going through hell, keep going.
If you’re going through hell: keep going.

And then …

Yes, let me pass and quietly enter, creeping in like a thief in the night – like a small black spider crawling silently upon the web of life – into the dark and deadly shadows of mind and memory. The gates creaking. And the darkness dropping down: descending ever lower and lower. So that finally I enter, enter in …

Screaming: …………………………. NO!!!!!

But …

This was the dream from my night.

And it’s enough.

For now.

Do you hear me?

Do you hear?

And do you remember?

Yes.

Yes: I remember.

But it’s no wonder that I didn’t find you.

And yet I looked for you everywhere.

But of course it was depressing: sure – of course it was.

What do you imagine?

I felt I failed you.

And I felt, failing you, that …

Well: what can I say?

It was a nightmare.

That’s all.

And I’m sorry.

But still: I suppose that in a sense I was used to it.

It was the only thing at which I’d ever been even remotely successful: failure. Men in general seem quite good at it, as if it comes to them more easily than to women. And as a man prone to failure I was brilliant. Eventually I developed a great pride in my talent for getting things wrong, for misunderstanding, messing up. I was defiant: perhaps perversely so. But still: I’ve travelled far in failure. It’s been my path.

It was harder when I was young.

Then I was full of anger.

Anger at being told that I was a failure.

At having it drummed into me.

Beaten into me.

Cutting into me.

My father.

And I blamed my father: thought him the real failure.

And it’s true that he hadn’t added up to much either. A low ranking officer in the professional army; often away from home; constantly banging on, when he was at home, about ‘doing one’s duty’; probably a bit of a coward at heart; a bully, certainly …

But even supposing that he’d failed me …

If …

This too was unexceptional.

No worse than he’d endured from his own father, I’m sure.

He followed the path before him, the footsteps gone before, that’s all.

Like me.

It matters little.

As if from one generation to another: the failure flushed through with blood.

It’s not my wish to judge him.

Only myself.

And yet …

There always seemed, in any case, something so false, unconvincing, about worldly success: something slightly cheap, even, or predictable. It was certainly miserly. People hoarded it to themselves, guarding it jealously with all the tremendous resources at their disposal. They wouldn’t lose it for the world: not on your life! And sure, puffed up with pride, big with their success, there was no question but that they showed themselves splendidly. And yet how stupid it all was. And unimaginably boring. I couldn’t bear it.

Still: it would have been better, I’m sure, easier, less complicated.

One understands success, naturally.

But failure: that’s a real shock to the system. It’s practically unforgivable. Unimaginable.

And I wish I hadn’t failed you.

Not you: at least.

Not you.

But it was the endless questions of my parents – my father, to be precise (my mother mostly silent) – and a few now very distant relatives that I found most trying, most hard to bear. ‘What are you going to do?’, they would ask, over and over again. ‘What are you going to do? What will you do with your life?’

The questions, after a while, began to answer themselves.

‘Are you really happy just to drift like this? And do you really want to end up without a proper job? Or alone? Unloved? On the streets, even? What on earth are you thinking? And what on earth will you amount to?’

Yes.

Nothing.

And it was lucky for me that the positive negative or the negative positive answers were already to some extent implied in these questions. I never had any answers of my own to hand out: I didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t a clue. And I’m not even sure if I cared. At any rate I came to believe that I didn’t: I’d finally been convinced of it by others, I suppose. The weight of rebuke.

Although to me their questions did indeed seem more or less meaningless. What did it matter? What did any of it really matter? And was there a choice? Is that what they imagined?

Disappearing into my books became a way of hiding from these irksome questions: the questions that seemed so unimportant, the questions that felt inappropriate, the wrong questions to be asking. And later on I would disappear in order to write so that writing then became my hiding, my favoured form of escape. Except that generally I didn’t write, of course. I was a failure, after all. Not a success. I couldn’t write, not really. I didn’t know how to write. And so I waited. Simply waited. For hours and hours. Days and days. Weeks and weeks. Months. Years. My life.

And I waited in the hope that the words would gradually emerge in my mind, would slowly sound in my ears, take shape before my eyes. And it may surprise you. But words did then appear. And these words, the few words that reached me in this way, I measured carefully on a scale, like a pharmacist: testing their sound and their resonance, the weight of their meaning, their purpose and significance. I was very slow: I did everything very slowly. But then I was dreaming. And everything in a dream is slow.

But I was always very grateful for my dreams.

They scrutinized my words, my language, and in this way they helped my writing.

And during those frequent periods when I felt that I couldn’t write at all, when I was blocked, for example, the words wrapped up within myself, stifled into silence, shut up, locked in, I always waited for a dream that, sooner or later, would liberate me, a dream that would open a door or a window, give me air so I could breathe and blood so I could move, and, in doing so, would loosen my tongue so I could speak, my hands to note down words, impressions, trace the lines of my life.

And it was as if the answer to the writing came always in a dream: as if the writing itself were just an extension or a continuation of the dreaming. As if the dreams did all the work …

Well: perhaps not all of the work.

Perhaps not all of it.

And besides these words that sometimes I seemed to hear, like a dream, from within, I also listened out for comments tossed aside by others, words from books and songs and films, sights and settings, language and music, mixed with the colour from paintings, the drama from life, so much verbal waste drawn from anywhere and everywhere, dragged up from a deaf, forgotten silence, as if brought back suddenly to life, kicking and screaming.

And eventually words gathered and took shape.

And from time to time I even managed to write them down and eventually to write quite a lot, in fact, assembling the words one by one, moving them around from here to there, sometimes the words as if heavy, in stone, chipping away at them as might a sculptor, at others light, ephemeral, testing their taste in my mouth, their sound in my ears, reading aloud and repeating them, over and over again, playing them through like music, the rhythms, the melodies, until eventually they began to form a structure of their own, distinct from how they’d seemed, at first, when I was working on them, becoming now like a life apart, in fact, like company.

Although it was never very long before the doubts would set back in: they always did, sooner or later. Especially when I tried to reread, to edit and to cut. Then they set in with a vengeance, these terrible doubts: they destroyed me.

Shit.

After all it didn’t take much for me to convince myself of the utter futility of all I’d done. The words were really nothing, seeming weak when looked at in the cold light of day, lacking form or purpose, merely a noise to be smothered in silence, patterns to be blanked out, rubbish rejected, demanding destruction: once and for all erased, in fact. And I agreed to everything. My doubts made many demands. And I assented to them all.

But of course I also needed it. I wanted the doubt. And I wanted the failure. And I wanted to go on. Further and further. Never stopping. Going on and on …

Until eventually my writing seemed all of it so bad that I even saved myself the bother of reading it: mentally I erased the words as soon as I thought them. So that eventually my writing became invisible and my words …

Well: my words were but silence and variations of silence.

But still I kept on dreaming. This, at least, continued. Although my dreams were largely nightmares.

Do you remember?

But yes.

Yes, yes: I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking that I’m being modest, that I’m fishing for a compliment.

But you’re wrong: that’s not it at all …

I’m not pretending.

And to prove it I say to you this …

Don’t bother: just don’t bother to read it.

That’s the best thing you can do.

Just stop right here: stop immediately.

There’s simply no point in going on with it: I realize this myself. And I say the same to you.

Don’t go on.

Do you hear me?

I don’t want to be read.

Perhaps I’m not even meant to be read.

And I ask for no audience.

I don’t really care to be honest.

It’s simply of no interest.

Whether to stop or go on.

But at least you’ve the choice.

To stop, I mean …

You can stop right now if you want to.

Go on …: I dare you!

(You’d miss the next bit, of course.)

But me …

I’ve no choice: no choice at all.

Go on: going on …

And how tedious it sometimes seems.

I know.

But listen …

I cut: I cut again and again.

I kill myself.

I kill myself in words.

And I kill myself in words so that in life I live …

So if you do go on, read slowly: read as slowly as you can.

As if you’re dying for these words …

As if you’re dying.

And still I dream: I’ve always kept on dreaming.

This, at least, has continued.

And how extraordinary these dreams have sometimes seemed.

I dreamed, for example, that one day I would draw together words so powerful, so bewitchingly beautiful, that they would render us all divine, washed up in a glory as perfect and as magnificent as silence or death.

And this was my dream.

To hear the music of the world …

The strangeness of its poetry.

I thought it possible.

Although often, it’s true, I got stuck, stopping suddenly, frozen dumb.

And a single word would seem unimaginably mysterious.

Almost unbearably so.

And I couldn’t bear it, in fact.

I couldn’t go on.

Go on.

And as for writing even one good sentence: even one good sentence felt likewise beyond me … A task for a lifetime. And this, I suppose, is how I saw my wish to write. It was a form of apprenticeship. Only it was an apprenticeship from which I’d never be released: an apprenticeship that would never reach its end. Asking: can I write? Can I really write? Not yet. Wait …

I had my masters.

But my masters were either already dead, or else as good as dead already, being distant, unreachable, living only, in my isolated imagination, in a semi-mythical land made up solely of the meeting of their words and mine.

I heard their voices.

This was what mattered.

A filtering of their voices …

Sometimes speaking so softly as to make it nearly impossible to hear them.

At others yelling with all the noise of a hundred demons, hostile to the habitual silence of my room and scaring me half out of my wits with fear.

Such is a master.

And their voices echoed in my mind: I listened to them with all the strength of my hearing, repeating their words, the sounds of their words, their voices, wondering always as to their meaning.

And begin …

They said.

Begin …

Enter.

Enter in …

But how could I begin?

How would I do it?

How would I enter the spirit of the words that I was seeking … And where would I seek them? What must I do? Where must I start?

And for a long time I found no answers to these questions.

But only still more silence.

The words …

Like a dream.

But listen.

My nerves are in their infancy: I cannot help it.

And I stir, I shift, I move, I turn, I look.

Don’t look! Don’t look!

Do you remember?

Yes.

Yes: I remember.

And I remember the words that you used.

Life goes on.

You said.

Hands open, palms up.

Touching the earth and the sky.

And going on …

That’s it.

It’s what’s going on inside …

The breath.

Flowing in, flowing out.

As if life still breathing …

And everything in motion.

Like a vast movement …

Fragmented.

Formless.

These memories.

So many merging colours.

And shapes.

And sounds.

The screaming and the shouting.

The crying out …

I remember.

As if everything moving …

Fluid.

Awash.

Like a vast ocean.

Or adrift in the air, like clouds.

Or floating in space.

Like being lost in time.

And coming and going.

Near and far.

Flowing in, flowing out.

And going on and on …

As if forever.

Like life.

It seems.

And breathing still.

Breathing in, breathing out.

And my breath is everywhere: flowing all around me, inside and out.

And it’s as if I’m transparent, invisible – a vapour.

Now this way, now that.

Like so many patterns in the air.

And like the blood, running …

This way, that.

And gasping out …

For air.

For life!

And still I breathe.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

Do you remember?

Yes.

And this is me. Born. Alive. Alive at last. In memory, at least. Like a ghost of myself: the brother behind me. And looking again and again. Looking this way and that. Looking back.

Don’t look back! Don’t look back!

Alone and looking.

Looking and lost.

Like playing hide and seek …

‘I shall shut my eyes and you must all of you disappear!

Get away from me, get away, get away!’

One, two, three, four …

Five, six, seven, eight …

Nine, ten …

So that now I’m alone. But the solitude makes me shiver. I feel cold. Lost. And I’m scared. I can feel it. I shouldn’t be, I know. It’s only a game: nothing more. A game. But my eyes are screwed shut. And I’m totally in the dark. As if entirely alone. As if there’s no one. And nothing. Except me: just me. All alone in the darkness. Except that I don’t even see myself. The light is so far, so distant. There is no moon. And only the occasional flickering of far away stars. As if deep in the depths of my eyes. A black night.

And still I’m counting.

Twenty.

Thirty.

Forty.

Fifty.

So many years from my beginning. Can it really be so many?

But I shall count to a hundred.

A thousand, if needs be. A million!

Waiting alone in the dark.

And looking out: looking back.

Into my mind’s eye.

My memory.

I’m lying alone.

Alone in my bed: I must be. And everything around me seems dark and heavy. And I’m alive but my eyes are not yet open: I see this. I roll around and around and from side to side, as if moulding my body into all its different shapes and forms, before curling myself up, finally, into a small, tight ball, lost beneath the sheets. My body, compressed beneath a great weight, like a heavy old blanket, the weight of a skin, shrinks shrivelling within: as if I’ve disappeared.

But no: my mouth falls open to throw out its contents, a voice, giving shape to sound in a strange, unfamiliar seeming song, new, unexpected, with long, drawn-out notes sliding up and down upon an indeterminable scale, the time passing. In one moment it’s little more than a moan: but then suddenly a melody. A curious litany. A child might understand it: not me. To me it’s only frightening: a cut, a scratch on the ears. And yet the mind clears.

And I want to enter. Once and for all I want to enter, and shall – no matter what. I want to open my eyes and enter.

And I shall.

I shall enter.

I know it.

Going on and on.

Cutting my way through …

Cut and cut and cut.

Running: the blood.

But now I feel locked within my dreams: the dreaming mind. As if my eyes see only sleep. Although slowly they do open, I think, so slowly they are opening: so slowly, I think. And only gradually awake: if one can tell. I try to look: I look. But for now they appear to mirror nothing: my eyes. Nothing but memory, in fact: these dreaming eyes, always reflecting memory. And so I catch myself again, in memory, looking back …

Don’t look back! Don’t look back!

The voice: an echo.

It’s like a dream waking slowly into life.

But softly, softly.

It’s just the sleep talking now: a whisper.

And the night: sweet, cloying, terrible.

Going on and on.

The voice: always the voice.

You must trust the voice: listen …

Awake!

It says.

Awake!

And in a moment I’m up and out, calling: ‘It’s time to get up! It’s time to get up!’

As if finally I really am awake. And for a moment I am: I am awake, I know it. I even run towards a mirror. I’ll take a good look, asking …

‘Will I be there? Will I really be there?’

And the mirror shows many things.

It sees me: I exist.

And in a blur of flailing limbs I’m dressed and away. My eyes are open and I begin the chase … I shout: I am alive! And I’m screaming and shouting and laughing and crying all at once … running and running and running. Turning this way and that. I was so light then, so fast. Little more than a spirit, in fact. Like a ray of the sun.

The blood.

And now I’m running in the fields and my mouth is wide open, open wide, gasping in the fresh clear air. And I’m alive: is it really true? Alive. And awake. Running on and on: my mouth … As if I’m singing. As if really I’m singing!

Do you hear?

Do you hear it?

It’s like a child singing – out there in the distance.

Singing song after song with every aimless, joyful word floating up into the air like so much morning mist, rising like incense, whispering in the sky and forming a halo of soft sounds around a young sun. And so I sing and I sing and I sing: I am the morning … I am alive!

And I run and run and run across the fields, and over the river, and out towards the woods and the forests: I’m rolling and leaping and turning and whirling. I’m like a bird about to leave the ground and soar up into the air. And I stretch out my arms and I’m like an aeroplane speeding along a runway. I’m like a rocket, taking off, bursting with energy!

And I jump up onto the playground swing – one long, smooth motion – and once again I’m a child: a child swinging high in the air. But I’m also reaching out to the sky – it seems so near! – singing the songs of the wind. And trying to become those songs: I am. And to lose myself in the singing. Passing higher and higher. Like a blur in the heavens. High up in the sky. So high.

Listen.

I had a dream that my childhood had been different.

So what?

You may well ask …

But I’ll tell you: I have to tell you.

It wasn’t really like that.

No: not at all.

But listen.

Let me think …

And I suppose that mine might be described as having been a difficult childhood.

I didn’t feel wanted.

I didn’t feel loved.

Either beaten or ignored.

My father: my mother.

I was driven into myself.

And lost to others.

Cut up, inside: cut adrift.

I was a misfit.

So that I began to invent an alternative childhood, running parallel in my memory to that which is the truth.

I remember, for example …

Yes.

Yes, I remember: looking back.

But wait.

There is so much in my memory that couldn’t possibly have happened that it all seems such a blur: it’s so unclear.

As if the reality is a blank.

A clear white page …

Yes: that’s it.

A clear white page cut now into a thousand tiny pieces …

And I’m at a loss.

A total loss.

But no.

No: I don’t think so.

It’s just not possible …

Looking back.

And I know what I’ll do.

I’ll set it down.

I’ll set it down: once and for all.

Right here and now: right here before I reach the end.

So bring me paper: pen and ink.

And hurry …

But no.

Be patient: go slowly.

Once again alone in my memory.

Imagine.

Home.

Home: a land of the living dead!

A phantom world.

And only occasionally did I see a passing figure …

Mother.

Father.

Hagridden: hopeless.

And I myself seemed ethereal: transparent in the light of the sun I was invisible in its absence. I was barely real. I was nothing.

And we were all of us like strangers.

Out of place.

Time.

As if peripheral to reality.

Like spirits of the past.

My memory.

And my parents had conceived me rather late in their lives.

Perhaps I was an accident: I’m certainly no miracle.

‘Oh, it’s a boy – what a beautiful baby boy!

Look at that, look here, look …

Why don’t you hold him, then?

What a lovely little chap!

Go on …

Yes you can, of course you can …

Why don’t you take him in your arms?

Of course …

Go on!

Why don’t you take him in your arms?

Take him in your arms.

That’s it …’

She must have held me at least that once, I suppose, the midwife standing there beside her, encouraging …

I can think of no other time.

My father once said that it had nearly killed my mother to give birth to me.

I didn’t understand.

I still don’t.

But directly after my birth she slipped into despair: plunged into it, rather, first submerged and then engulfed; for the rest of her life she was drowning in it. And, permanently bewitched by the enticing emptiness of those dark, murky waters, she discovered silence and this silence took a hold of her and never let go. Only very rarely can I recall her speaking. Screaming, shouting, squeaking, squawking: yes. A sudden burst of manic, sharp-eyed enthusiasm, terrifying in its unexpected intensity, erupted violently from time to time, it’s true … her voice then cutting me off, cutting me away, rising up from that mouth, a horrible bellowing hole … either excessively loving, suffocating me, or else stuffed full with anger and hatred … but straightforward speaking … calm, natural … almost never.

And she was so cold, so frigid: reserved, withdrawn, distant.

It was usually only my father who spoke: when he was there, that is …

He seemed to speak to himself.

‘Depression’, he called it.

The first of many: so many.

So many years …

Perhaps she threw herself head first.

(I’m wondering, that’s all).

And in any case …

She ‘gave way’.

That was the expression my father used.

‘She was lost’, he said, ‘like her own mother before her …’

And for many of those first few days she wanted nothing to do with me: absolutely nothing. She couldn’t stand the sight of me and turned her face away when the nurses tried to draw out from her some maternal affection. Her arms were kept closed. And the milky warm comfort of her breasts I was similarly denied. I was effectively motherless. Or so my father always said.

‘Motherless’.

That’s what he said.

It doesn’t bode well for you when the first person in life to whom you’re properly introduced, and she your own mother, turns away in disgust, appalled by the sight of you, disdaining to touch you in any way, to pick you up, to acknowledge you. All right: she was depressed. But so was I. Babies learn quickly, after all, and this was my very first lesson: I was ready and raring to go, eager to know the score. I soon calmed down. And also kept quiet, shut up, like my mother: I was an unnaturally silent little baby. A tiny little bundle of numbed indifference. And no wonder: my mother hit “reject” whenever she saw me. Well honestly: how would you feel?

From then on things were bound to go downhill.

And I, too, have been depressed ever since.

You think I’m joking, don’t you?

Wrong again: I’m not.

It may look as if I’m laughing.

But come a little closer: I’m crying my eyes out …

So of course I found it very easy, six or seven years later on, to convince myself that I was really an orphan: the man and woman I thought of as my parents had in fact only adopted me. And my real family were elsewhere. I imagined that I’d been separated from them by accident or even as the result of some mysterious crime. Perhaps I’d been abducted, moved to another country, sold on … I was sure they were searching: I felt sure that my real family were still looking for me. But how would they ever recognize me? Or I them? No: we were lost to each other, lost forever more. And I was left alone: left alone with my longing.

And how strange and feverish is the imagination of a child.

How strange and how feverish.

Do you remember?

Yes.

I remember.

Although my sight now shifts: the scene changes.

And my words.

My words …

Do you see?

And it’s like this that I trace the lines of my memory, walking back into the past …

And now I walk towards that area of woodland which once marked the beginning of a forest.

Here I spent much of my childhood.

The haunted woods …

I really thought they were.

I was utterly convinced of it, in fact.

And I thought that with sensitive looking one would see them: the ghosts. Ghosts everywhere … And I felt them: traced their presence. As if they were everywhere I looked: haunting my eyes …

A riddle and its solution.

In this sense the woods were not a refuge for me. I couldn’t really hide myself in the shadowy darkness of its trees nor properly escape from the more troubled of my thoughts: other people, other places …

In any case it mattered little where I went: I was watched.

And I trembled: trembled beneath the cold contemptuous eye of disapproval.

Always there: seeing everything.

Looking.

And the woods were no exception.

Only the fears felt different.

‘Keep away’, you said.

You never liked the woods, I know. And you hated the trees: the trees above all. They put you in mind of a hostile crowd: a crowd closing in on all sides like powers of judgment. They gave you the spooks. And when the wind was strong and gusted through the treetops, the restless waving of the upper leaves and branches created a sound like that of an ocean. And down below you felt like you were at the bottom of the sea, as if drowning in the flow of the wind, weighed down and trapped by the air. And in general you thought the place too menacing: too dark, too sinister. It was better to avoid it, you warned me. And especially after dark. At night. In winter. The woods. Like a nightmare.

But I’m jumping ahead: looking back …

That was much later.

And by then, of course, your words could not frighten me: not your words. No more, at least, than I was frightened already …

But slowly I became accustomed to the company of fear.

And in the company of fear I often wandered around, alone, between the trees. So that over me, at least, they exercised a strange fascination: a power, magical, as if drawing me back to them again and again. I cannot easily explain it. Perhaps it was the fear itself that attracted me. I do not know. I am not told. And I ask you: what do you think?

Anyway.

I still went.

I followed.

Except: does the past grow darker in my memory?

I ask myself.

I wonder.

Although I think now of the coolness of the woodland trees in the summer. I felt naked, dancing between the branches like the sunlight, its thin rays tickling my body, a stream of light. And all the changes: the constant movement in the colours. Perhaps it was this that I liked.

And I turn the leaves.

‘The oak tree of Chaonia and poplars, Phaethon’s sisters, crowded round, along with Jupiter’s great oak, with its lofty branches, and soft lime trees and beeches, and the virgin laurel, brittle hazels, and ash trees, that are used for spear shafts, smooth firs and the holm oak, bowed down with acorns, the genial sycamore, and the variegated maple, willows that grow by the rivers and the water-loving lotus, evergreen box, slender tamarisks, myrtles double-hued, and viburnum with its dark blue berries. There was ivy too, trailing its tendrils, and leafy vines, vine-clad elms and mountain ash, pitchpine and wild strawberry, laden with rosy fruit, waving palms, the victor’s prize, and the pine, its leaves gathered up into a shaggy crest, the favourite tree of Cybele, the mother of the gods … ‘

And in the solitude of the woods my mind went mad.

A little mad: I’m sure of it.

But my games were glorious:

On other occasions I simply stood: looking, listening, feeling.

And I stood still for minutes on end, as if I myself were a tree, frozen stiff in the winter.

Or frozen stiff with fear.

As was the case at least once that I can think of.

I was alone beneath the trees, thinking myself adventurous, fighting through the brambles and the nettles, the undergrowth. But the skin of my hands and arms was soon a bright flaming red, hot with blisters and rashes, my legs likewise cut and torn, the pain exciting, making me laugh. I thought to cool myself in the water of the stream.

I headed for the stretch where the mud bank formed a low natural wall, easy to perch from, legs dangling, to wash or to chase with a net the tiny minnows darting around beneath the footbridge.

I always felt that the tree was listening.

And what else had it overheard?

Or seen?

I wondered.

The wound of a sawn off branch, a woodpecker hole, these were the eyes …

Terrible things: I was sure.

Scheming and betrayal.

Murder.

And I could feel the shivering skin: the hurriedly buried dead …

And then I looked up …

How easy it must have been.

And so I did.

And there he was.

All the blood rushing from my head: my eyes pale and lifeless.

Black, eyeless sockets: two cavernous holes seizing hold of me, dragging me in, willing me to follow.

The dark sight of the blind.

Until at last he disappeared, fading away into nothingness.

I turned and fled: running for my life.

With the eyes always behind me: following.

I shot back a look …

But of course there was no one.

And one memory prompts another, I suppose.

And it must have been at around the same time.

A birthday party for one of the other boys from school …

I’m not sure why I was asked. We weren’t friends. Perhaps his mother had told him to invite me. An act of kindness.

But it transpired that the party had a theme.

No one had thought to tell me this.

Striped shirts, eye patches, fluffy toy parrots.

It was immediately obvious, but in my case too late, that we were to play at being pirates.

In class we’d been reading Treasure Island.

I should have guessed.

And immediately I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed.

I thought to return home but hesitated too long.

My reflection in a glass window …

I felt ridiculous.

And waited for the children to start laughing.

But whether they did or not, whether they would or wouldn’t, didn’t matter.

In my head they were laughing already. And there was nothing I could do to stop them.

But the first games were innocent enough.

We passed around an imaginary eye-glass, for example, chanting: ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with the letter … ‘

One of the parents then produced a real telescope: a brass spy-glass dug up, no doubt, from the depths of an old junk box. It helped us believe that the games were for real …

Then drinks were handed around: small plastic beakers containing either root beer or blackcurrant cordial, noggins of rum …

And suddenly we were old sea dogs, drunk in a grog shop, singing:

‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest –

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest –

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’

I don’t suppose that any of us knew what rum really was, but still.

We must have been making a lot of noise.

And one of the parents, to quieten us, stood up and whispered ssssssh …

Come nearer.

Come close.

Be a part of this conspiracy …

Listen.

‘Mates!’, she said, in a low, plotting voice: ‘mates!’

‘Whatever you do …

Keep them open.

One of them, at least.

One of your good old weather-eyes.

Open them as wide as you can …

On the look out, of course: the look out for a blind seafaring man, jagged teeth and scarred face, a parrot on his shoulder and a great thick crutch … ‘

And with a low theatrical bow, swinging her arm towards the door, she directed our eyes …

And sure enough …

He took a few swaggering steps into the room, then bellowed out:

Struck dumb, not one of us ventured a word. We stood like idiots: staring in disbelief.

After all: we were all of us very young, very impressionable.

I was, at least.

Otherwise I’d have laughed.

Especially at the awkward conflation of blind man Pew, Black Dog and Long John Silver!

Was he a resting actor: hired to entertain us?

I wonder.

But to his credit he must have spent some time on his appearance.

The fake cutlass scar, for example, was drawn from an inch above his right eye down across his cheek and nose to just above his upper lip. It looked quite real and must have taken ages to get just right.

Listen … ‘

He cleared his throat.

‘First things first!’, he said.

‘We must get ourselves a hostage. A pirate ship is not a proper pirate ship, for sure, without a hostage or two at which to poke and prod … ‘

Perhaps the others had sensed my lack of concentration: my discomfort. Or perhaps I was picked on because I was already the odd one out. The boy chosen as the hostage, in any case, was me: obviously.

‘For days now we’ve been at sea’, or so explained the new captain of our imaginary ship.

What delight!’

‘Hoorah!’

The crew approved wholeheartedly …

Then the captain took up his story from where he’d stopped.

‘But now our ship’s in murky water’, he explained. ‘We’re barely ghosting along the sea’s surface. And the wind has almost entirely died and us soon to follow it, I shouldn’t wonder!’

A hushed silence.

And what says you, lads?

Is he to stay, to sink, or to swim?

And mind you tell me clearly now … ‘

I kept my arms at my sides.

But the vote was otherwise unanimous.

And then they started chanting.

‘Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank!’

They were having a wonderful time: the best party they’d ever attended.

They didn’t seem to notice my discomfort: it didn’t trouble them, if they did.

Nor the parents, apparently, who contented themselves with remaining as shadows in the background, the children permitted to do as they wished.

Did they think that I too was acting?

The poor, defenceless hostage …

Locked behind a façade.

‘Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank!’

Desperate to get away, I could feel the fear, restless, in the pit of my stomach.

But how?

It seemed impossible: my wrists and ankles were firmly fastened, my eyes blinded, my tongue tied.

‘Well, that’s that then: your destiny’s clear, young chap, and that it is!’ exclaimed the captain.

‘The ugly lubber must walk the plank – and won’t he look pretty dropping down to the depths? – ha! to hell with him … !

But wait!’

The captain stopped, looked around, perhaps seemed puzzled for a second, then brightened with an idea.

‘Wait’, he said again.

Another roar of encouragement.

‘Hoorah! Hoorah!’

‘I know: we’ll pluck out his eyes and give him dead lights, two empty black points like holes in the head, all the more clearly to see the sight of death – do you agree, my hearties?’

And so it went on – so many voices – all laughing and screaming and jeering and mocking.

The children began to spin me around.

And then I heard the captain saying to put me to sleep …

They were going to gouge out my eyes, he explained, then throw them out in front of me to guide my way towards the water …

I felt dizzy, sick.

Although I could also hear a little voice at the back of my mind, saying: everything will be all right; it’s just a game; keep calm; don’t worry …

But then, in all the noise and the clamour, I lost it …

Spinning around and around: around and around and around.

Going on and on …

Will it ever stop?

And I ask myself.

Again and again.

Going on and on.

These voices …

‘Now then, lads, the deed is done and we can wake him – slowly, mind you, very slowly, take care for the blood!’

And my body stopped spinning, but not my head, which continued of its own accord, spiralling away from my neck …

‘All crew to posts and a double helping of rum for they who’s quickest!’, barked out the captain.

‘You there, hoist up the Jolly Roger!

You lot prepare the plank …

And the rest of you gather around …

Gather around to feast your eyes upon a boy’s last moments …

Look sharp!’

‘Ay, ay, sir!’

‘Ay, ay, cap’n!’

‘Now look you here’, the captain continued.

And so saying, he loosened my gag to let me speak.

But I’d nothing to say: I just stood there, like a fool, cut off by my silence.

‘What?!’, roared the captain, ‘is that a dead eye on your shoulders, or what? Where’s your voice, boy? Now speak up good and proper I tell you! Or else there’ll be trouble, d’you hear?’

But still I said nothing: I couldn’t speak.

‘Here’s a queer one if ever there was.

It seems he needs his eyes to find his tongue, so his eyes he shall have, you mark my words – his left eye in his left hand and his right eye in his right – there you go!’

A small, roundish object, neither exactly soft nor hard, was then placed in each of my hands.

‘These are your eyes, my friend … ‘, jeered the captain.

‘I trust that now you’ll see everything: is everything clear?’

He chuckled in a low, bass voice.

The children, too, were in hysterics. And still now I hear the sound of their laughing.

‘What’s that? Still can’t see, eh? Well in that case try squeezing them, squeeze them tighter and tighter, go on … ‘

At this the captain took my hands in his and clenched them up until they were as tight as two small, hard balls.

And I wonder even now at his maliciousness.

But no one stopped him: I heard no objections raised.

My hands hurt terribly.

‘These are your eyes! These are your eyes!’ cried out the captain, weirdly jubilant. ‘And now you’re as blind as I am! Ha!’

I listened to his words and understood what he said.

But at the same time I thought that he was wrong and that somehow I could still see my eyes.

They were there: before me.

Terrifying in the darkness.

Looking out …

And as if I could see them there …

No longer in my hands.

No.

But rather suspended: suspended in the air as if hovering, weightless – staring out like two sharp points of light in the darkness.

Blind, yes.

But staring out: still staring out and seeing all.

But I wasn’t sure.

And I didn’t know what was going on.

And for a while I thought that perhaps I was blind.

As if they really were my eyes.

My bloody, torn out eyes.

These eyes now to haunt me forever …

‘Do you hear my voice?’, cried out the captain, standing behind me now, some distance away.

Yes. I hear you. But in the darkness a voice sounds only in the mind.

‘Do you hear my voice? Do you hear it?’, he repeated.

‘Or should I say: do you see my voice?’

Hilarious, isn’t it?

‘Yes, yes, but don’t laugh, my shipmates … ‘, he went on.

‘It’s not quite as crazy as it sounds …

And I could feel myself shivering.

‘But enough! It’s time now, mates! Are you ready? Draw out your blades and we’ll prick this blind young worm, prick him good and proper, that we will!’

And the children returned to their chanting:

‘Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank! Walk the plank!’

When suddenly, the gag having now slipped down around my throat, I found my voice …

And I screamed out: ‘You can’t make me – you can’t make me do it! Not against my will … I shan’t die! I shan’t!’

The captain and his crew merely laughed all the louder.

Until my wrists and ankles were at last untied and with one great shove I was thrown out into the garden, with all the other children tumbling on top of me, one after the other.

And that was that.

I was thrown overboard.

Drowned.

Dead.

Who knows?

But I couldn’t stop myself: I just kept on thinking about them.

The feel of them: the look of them.

And I wanted to cut them out, then and there. By my own hand. My eyes. As if in punishment. The looking. Lost.

And I wanted to hold them in my hands and squeeze them and squeeze them and squeeze them until my hands were covered in their gore, my fingers dripping wet with my own blind blood.

I headed for the edge of the stream and then sat down upon its bank.

From a side pocket in my trousers I drew out a small Swiss army knife.

Children get away with murder.

(I’d heard someone say it).

I thought so too.

Murder.

Anyway.

Cutting: cutting …

The knife would have been confiscated, of course, if my parents or any of the teachers had seen it. And then the same old questions …

Why do you this?

And why do you do that?

Why this?

Why that?

Why?

But I kept it secret, well hidden.

And reclining in the apparent loss of time, that sweet state of calm, I simply sat there for a while, a warm daze, watching the play of light as it leapt from place to place.

It’s such a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun and truly the light is sweet …

And then I slept, a deep, dreamless sleep, for a change: quiet like the passing of the hours.

Until gently, opening my eyes, slowly, I dragged myself up and looked again at my knife, still clutched there in my hand.

The silver blade was dull now but if I moved it a little it sparkled once more.

And it felt so nice to touch it.

‘I will cut out my eyes!’ I said to myself

‘I will cut out my eyes!’

I said.

Over and over again.

Like a chant.

‘I will cut out my eyes!’

And then I looked up.

I was crying now.

And I thought I couldn’t bear it.

This feeling of pain.

Going on and on.

I wanted it to stop.

That’s all.

And so I started scratching at my arms.

Scratching, slashing.

Then slowly, always slowly, I slid the knife along the back of my left hand, from a little below the wrist to the nail of the forefinger. And then again. Slowly, always slowly at first. Again and again. It felt so good I couldn’t stop. Faster and faster. The left, the right. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop myself, that’s all. I couldn’t hold myself back. Not more. Like a frenzy. The cuts.

And my eyes opened.

I could feel it.

The pain.

At last …

The joy.

And I was crying.

Crying, laughing.

At last!

And I was crying.

Strange, but …

Smiling.

Like a weeping wound.

The sound of my laughter …

I began to feel faint.

And it was a while before I felt strong enough to get up from the ground. At first I just leaned blankly against a tree, mopped my bleeding hands with a handkerchief. I tried to brush the dirt from my trousers but with little success. And with my arm I wiped my face. And to begin with I turned my back towards the sun, and then slowly I began to walk away, snubbing it, back towards the direction from which I’d come. But my shadow grew nervous and jerky, appearing to pull away from me as I walked: and my eyes grew tired as I watched its neurotic dancing, leaping around on the ground. I stopped and looked back. Nothing. Just the heavy darkness dripping slowly down: the night gradually forming from the day. And I turned and walked now towards the sunset. And I felt so pale. But also sure: sure to walk forever … the light, receding, like … like a memory. A memory of childhood, perhaps. A memory of a home that never was …

To the place where I lived.

‘Home’.

Was that it?

And where am I now?

They ask me …

I am not sure: I am not told.

‘D’you wan’ a fight?

D’you wan’ a fight then?

I’ll fuckin’ give you a fight.

I’ll fuckin’ … ‘

Yes.

This bloody life.

Bring your knives!

And come out to play, my children …

Why not?

Why ever not?

Cut it out! Cut it out!

Silence.

And the homes here are made from ashy breeze-blocks: the windows smashed then boarded up.

And the streets are from tarmacadam.

Fuck: this hurts.

Fuck: this really hurts.

Fuck.

I felt weak, sick, arriving home.

I wanted to be alone.

To sleep.

But instead I came face to face with my parents: they were waiting for me, looking mean and unforgiving.

I thought to hurry past them, behaving as if all were as it should be.

A mistake.

They’d anticipated this: blocked my path.

But I wanted so badly for this day to be finished and over …

And I wanted my room: a space for myself alone.

And there I am.

Collapsing into a dreamy oblivion on the floor: I’m like a heap of old clothes, enjoying the luxury, for a while, of forgetting.

The blood …

I was thinking about the blood.

And I tried to keep my hands deep inside my pockets, my left hand still very wet, dripping with blood, the right likewise bloody, clasped tightly around my precious knife in a hard, clenched fist. And I tried to look casual, indifferent. No doubt I failed. I’d too little strength for dissemblance. And I must have looked terrible. I certainly felt pretty awful as I stood there, feeling awkward yet again, unsure as to what to say or do, wishing myself away, elsewhere.

I gazed at the floor and imagined there a circle around my feet, an incision in the flesh, cutting me off, a mouth, open but dark, empty, a hole.

The atmosphere was heavy: an ugly scene clearly imminent. And I felt myself swaying from side to side as if soon to topple over … I thought I might fall.

Would the ground open up and swallow me?

Drag me down to its depths …

And at first my parents were too angry, too distracted, to notice much about my actual presence. It was as if, fretting so long over my absence, they couldn’t quite believe that now I was actually there.

But I was there.

And not only my father but also my mother, extraordinarily, began to rant and shout while I looked on.

And I suppose that it might have been my forlorn appearance or the sight of my crumpled spirit cowering at the back of my eyes, but I doubt it. I am inclined to think that it was rather their anger itself that saved me, on this occasion, at least, from yet another severe beating from my father: a beating that I would otherwise have expected without fail. No. Their anger was too intense this time, as frightening to them as much as to me. It made them cautious. And it drove them to guard a distance, discreet, between us for fear, I suppose, of what between them they might actually do to me.

If their hands reached me …

If they really lost control.

And I could see the arguments and counter-arguments blazing fierce behind their eyes, their fingers twitching as they struggled to place a limit on their anger.

And my parents didn’t touch me: they didn’t come near me.

But still …

I wanted to push them back.

And the pupils of their eyes had now shrivelled into tiny stabs of dark light, hieroglyphs dotted in precise black ink, pricked, painted, the milky white stone of the eyeballs, now hard, heavy, like marble.

And their eyes seemed so sharp, cutting me again and again with their looks.

‘Where have you been?’, asked my father, his voice rumbling towards me in a low, volcanic grumble.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Where on earth have you been?’, echoed my mother, she herself quite happy, on this occasion, to add to the commotion. And she looked wild, like a banshee, her voice screeching reluctantly into sound …

‘Yes. Your mother’s very upset today and it’s all because of you …’, said my father. ‘We’ve both been worried sick! So?!! What’s your answer? Where on earth have you been for all this time? We thought something really awful had happened to you … that you’d been kidnapped or killed! We’ve called the police! How could you do it? How could you just wander off like that? How could you? And what were you thinking? What on earth were you thinking about?! And don’t you care that … ‘

Bedlam.

All hell broke loose.

Although I wasn’t really there to witness it.

I felt so absent.

Just the sound of angry voices rolling in from far away …

And my eyes seeming sore and unfocused.

And then tears: full of tears, once more.

As if I dissolve into water, melt away.

My eyes first of all.

A liquid looking.

And it’s hard to see.

Like a film on the eye …

A blur.

A blindness.

Wave upon wave.

The voices.

But still I listened.

And I kept on listening, straining my ears.

I kept on listening until I heard a voice, rising higher, clearer than the others.

‘Get out of my sight!’

Do you hear?

Yes.

Yes: I hear you.

We all did.

And the house suddenly hushed: not only quiet, but as if unsure of itself, hesitant, waiting.

Slowing down …

And the voices fell silent.

My parents still, like statues.

As if at last they’d seen me.

And they’d caught a glimpse of my eyes: my eyes drained of blood and my face now turning yellow and green, my hands red.

And the blood.

(A painting).

A pool of blood, red, beautiful upon the carpet …

I close my eyes.

I close my eyes and try to sleep.

I must have fainted, I suppose.

I forget.

I have no memory.

For once I have no memory.

And only later did I learn a little of what had happened.

I was put to bed with a fever: a running temperature of over 100° – 102, 103, 104, 105, 106 … As if I were burning up, slowly evaporating into the air. And for several days I barely bubbled below consciousness, writhing sweaty in my bed, tossing and turning like a lunatic.

No one seemed to understand the sudden nature of this illness, if illness it was.

What caused it?

This malady: this madness?

I’d always been nervous and excitable: no more than usual of late. Not, at any rate, that anyone had noticed.

But the cuts …

And all the blood.

The blood on my hands. The carpet …

Was that it?

A sickness in the blood …

My father thought it through.

I didn’t mix well, all right. I was shy, what one might call ‘a loner’, the word pronounced with a note of marked distaste, of course, as if to emphasize all the dark implications otherwise hidden in its meaning. And most of my time I spent alone. And either my head was lost in a book or I was staring dreamily into space: both activities now seeming suspicious, they naturally went against me. Sometimes it looked as if I were talking to myself – either that or I was singing. And I was forever talking nonsense: telling stories and the like. But in the real world, the world of others, I was a disaster. I had to be pushed to greet people in the street, for example, even with those who passed – nominally, at least – as friends. And in company I was similarly hopeless, lacking in even the most modest of social skills. To utter a word was rare. And I became solemn and withdrawn: dark like a storm. It wasn’t normal: what more could one say?

But to return to the immediate situation.

I’d been to a party which I’d left early. I’d not told anyone of my intentions. I’d disappeared. Where did I go? Had I got lost? No one seemed to know. But I’d also managed to cut numerous deep grooves into my hands like an apprentice butcher opening slabs of young, tender meat. I had bled ‘like a stuck pig’, as my father later described it, with all his skill in picturesque description, ‘turning as pale as a ghost’.

So I was unwell, yes, but, more troubling, more sinister, was I sick, was I really sick?

This question presented itself as critical and, in the minds of all who counted – not only my disappointed father but also in the eyes of my mother, herself quite mad – the answer was: yes, undoubtedly. I must be, they reasoned: there was (naturally) no other explanation. So they ran with it: an explanation that in reality explained nothing, a diagnosis by default, as it were, vague and imprecise. But it served its purpose. And certainly my father latched on to it with gratitude (it was the same dismissive reasoning that he used in the case of my mother): it made the situation seem more secure and diminished the need for further thought, as if rendering it redundant.

And they believed that I was dying.

This seems crazy to me now.

But they too were crazy.

Although it’s true that I was weak: very weak.

And at one stage seemed to weaken with each discarded minute, as if my nerves, like poison ivy, had discovered a way to reach out through the cracks in my hands, slowly to strangle me, cutting off the little blood still flowing in my veins, turning me as pale as death.

Dying in a fever of lost blood …

Our wonderful family doctor soon disabused them.

The cuts on the hands and arms were very nasty, he said, and I had lost a lot of blood, but its flow had now been stanched, the wounds washed and disinfected and then stitched.

I had developed a severe fever – chilled through shock, perhaps – my blood poisoned …

I was very weak, of course, and probably my body’s defence systems weren’t working as they should but, with appropriate action, a course of antibiotics, the right aftercare, there was no reason, he went on, to be unduly pessimistic. The fever would no doubt break before long, almost certainly within a few more days, and in any case the drugs should tackle any pneumonia still lurking in the lungs: I should soon show signs of at least a little improvement. And at this stage I should be well wrapped up and given plenty of warm drinks, if I could manage them. But for the time being, at least, the windows should be open and the room kept cool, I mustn’t be bundled up in blankets and bedclothes until my temperature had dropped, and I might like an occasional cold flannel lain against my forehead. It was a good idea, he added, to keep a watch on me at all times. He (the doctor) should be alerted if there were any signs of deterioration in my condition – although he didn’t expect any, of course, and there was no need to panic.

He’d call again in a week or two.

And do you remember all this?

Do you really remember it?

Cutting: cutting …

I’m not sure.

I don’t know.

The blood …

But I feel my finger twitching …

A finger running slowly along the length of who I am.

And I say again: it’s like this that I trace the lines of my memory, walking back into my past …

Going: going on.

My memory.

And I ask you:

Is it a trap or a form of escape?

As I lie here, still, unmoving.

This room, for example …

I call it my room.

But is this really my room?

It seems so strange, alien.

As if I recognize nothing.

And don’t understand.

Why I’m here, for example. I don’t understand …

And the place is such a mess.

It makes me gloomy as hell it’s so depressing.

As if it’s a place where things collapse, topple over and fall.

Myself, for example.

Now.

And I can feel the floor, cold, hard, uneven, against my legs and arms, my back.

It gives no comfort.

No comfort for the fallen.

But it’s better than nothing.

It’s better than nothing: I guess.

I’ve in any case not the strength to stand: I’ve had enough of being vertical …

Although the old habits still die hard.

And it takes strength to give up.

I should know.

As I struggle to lift my head …

Lift your head.

Just once …

But there’s little to see.

And even the most basic signs of life seem somehow missing …

No proper bed, for example.

Just some damp smelling blankets, looking rather forlorn, abandoned, all huddled up in a corner.

And beside them a pile of tattered clothes, unwashed: still holding together but more from habit than careful use.

And the same could be said of those leather boots by the kettle, well worn, they’ve seen some miles …

The boots of a real gentleman.

Ha!

A gentleman of the road, maybe …

That leather sack.

And then there are the books, of course.

I pick one up at random … a novel …

The tops of some of the pages have been bent over at the corner.

And there is writing in the margins.

I open it and read …

‘Whenever he played he drew towards him animals, bushes, meadows, mountains bent over to hear, streams left their beds, the north wind froze not to miss a note, the birds fell silent, even the sirens stopped singing and listened. When his beloved died he followed her down to the underworld, charmed Persephone with his playing, from the eyes of Death himself he wrung five or six iron tears, and he hypnotised his dog. Surely every poet every musician every charlatan tries like him to bring back the dead. The one condition was that he should not turn back or look behind, that he should walk ahead without turning round. On the face of it this was an easy condition, an obvious security measure, to protect the privacy of the underworld. Hades, however, that iron-teared rhymester, knew his victim’s mind: the wise man’s eyes may be in his head, but not so the poet’s. A poet’s eyes are in the back of his neck. The minstrel always plays facing backwards. And so, as black turned to grey, his arms were drawn to embrace her but she was no longer there. To play or to touch. Either or.’

A poet.

A musician.

A charlatan.

In any case …

So many books.

Piles and piles of old books: poems, plays, novels, histories.

There are books all over the place, literally everywhere: old and musty, covered in dust, grimy, silent.

Virgil, Ovid, Milton, Nerval, Verlaine, Rilke …

So many lives …

However did I find the time to read them?

Sometimes I wish I’d never bothered.

And I dreamt of drowning them: I dreamt of drowning all my books.

So quiet and reproachful.

But really:

What was the point?

At the end one knows nothing.

As if …

Well: it’s like always being back at the beginning, isn’t it?

You try to get something done, to make a little progress, to do your best.

Perhaps you slog your guts out.

And then, when you’re done, too exhausted to keep going, you finally slump down, wipe the sweat from your forehead, look around.

Only …

You’re back at the beginning.

Again and again.

As if you’ve never really moved.

And yet you felt sure to go on.

Sure of it.

Absolutely.

And …

Keep going.

You said.

Keep going.

Going on and on …

Like a cruel practical joke.

A trick of time.

Is this what it amounts to?

All of it?

And look around you for a minute: just look around you.

Has it really come to this?

Has it really?

The songs of my room …

Do you remember?

Yes.

I remember.

And I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dripped with myrrh and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh …

And all the time I was only dreaming: I am only dreaming.

‘I’m only dreaming!’ That’s what I want to say – if only I could find a voice. ‘I’m only dreaming. I’m only dreaming. Don’t worry … It’s all a dream!’

But I’m feverish, I know. And anxious. And it’s a struggle to concentrate, to focus my eyes: like grappling with a dream. And I feel as if I’m bleeding: red, bloody sweat. As if I’m breathing, dying. I’m in the darkness. A nightmare. And then I hear shouting: ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ But there’s no response. ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ Going on and on like so many fragments from a dream, so many moments from memory.

And then a door opens and I enter a chamber of red, swirling blood: hot and sticky. And everything appears to be turning and spinning. This red flowing life as if heaving against its limits, erupting into the unknown. And my eyes are lost in the blood. But still I hear breathing: life. As if there’s a nearby body, waiting. And then I begin to see. Although my seeing is formless: formless in the sensation, bright, of flowing, a maelstrom. And only gradually do I distinguish arcs and lines which grow slowly together to form here a tiny leg, here an arm, a hand. And I watch as this flesh thrashes around in a pool of dark chaos. It’s like some jerk dance choreography: breathtaking, beyond belief. A sudden upheaval, maddening in its solitary focus: the lonely, shuddering movements of a life staged in miniature. Like a convulsion of the flesh: an explosion of matter. A truly protean performance.

And still I hear a voice, shouting: ‘Let me out! Let me out!’

And another door has opened. But I’m hesitant: reluctant to pass through. Not sure. And I’m anxious, drawn out: taut. And I can feel myself eroding, being slowly washed away. Repeatedly diluted: becoming transparent, invisible. Like a lost beginning. A fading past. And still I hear a voice screaming and screaming, a thunderous noise as if from some vast great mouth: a mouth expanding, growing ever larger and larger.

I don’t know what to do.

And I feel my heart pounding: my blood is in a riot and my eyes as if fit to burst.

And I feel as if I’m being pushed around: pushed and pulled this way and that, drawn out, dragged along against my will. And I’m trembling, lonely, the darkness: peering out at the blurred, flickering shadows, the play of dancing red. And I feel so hurried: I’m just not sure. And it’s like a terrible dream. A fever.

But I’m able to breathe now, at least.

And I open my mouth and gasp at the air as in a blind panic.

Panting, heaving.

As if drowning in the air.

Breathing in, breathing out.

Breath after breath going on and on …

‘Let me out! Let me out!’

Until finally I step forward.

And enter.

At first I’m blinded.

The bright electric lights: harsh and unforgiving.

But as my eyes slowly adjust I discover that I’ve walked out into a long, long corridor, several metres wide: it continues for as far as my eyes can see. The floor is of well polished parquet and the walls whitewashed and bare. And large, shoulder-height windows cut through the right-hand wall at regular intervals.

And I see a line of well-ordered people: people stretched out, on this side of the corridor, in a row, and all have their backs to me, appearing entirely absorbed in looking out at whatever it is that they see.

It doesn’t matter.

And I begin to walk.

These figures, absent, their gaze elsewhere, ignore me: men and women, boys and girls, their faces all mixed up, lost in longing and disappointment, sadness and anger. Only occasionally will one of the figures turn around: to look for a moment at my eyes, passively and with no sign of recognition, as if really they see nothing. Then I myself try to work out what they’re looking at: peering over their shoulders I’d like to see what it is, out there, that’s so fascinating. But each time I look I see only the darkness of the night, like nothing at all. It’s bizarre.

At one window, at which a child is standing, I’m able to see quite well. The child – a boy, I think – is shorter than I am and, standing behind him, I can look out above his head. I pause for a while and concentrate on keeping my eyes still: I really try to see. But still it’s like losing yourself in darkness, or watching the night as it creeps slowly through the small hours of sleep. Although eventually I do see something: the black shadow of my own face looking out from within the darkness of the window. I look at my eyes: they appear to be bulging and bloody. As if hanging in mid-air: lost and suspended in the night. And I think I hear a voice. ‘Are these really your eyes?’, it asks. ‘Are these really your eyes that come to see? Are they?’

Running along the length of the opposite wall, one after another at precisely the same interval, are a seemingly infinite number of doors. Each door is identical to all the others: plain white except for a small metallic lever positioned at the left side. I’ve already passed many, although …

I don’t know whether to open them or not.

I keep on walking.

And as I walk, I listen to the regular tapping of my shoes and, except when one or other of my companions turns suddenly to stare at me, my eyes are kept firmly to the front. This place is unnerving. It’s as silent as a morgue. And I hate it. It feels like a place where nastiness creeps in corners, waiting for its moment. It’s like a madhouse or a hospital: myself a patient. Drugged, dreaming …

And I keep on walking.

But the monotony begins to get to me, playing on my shattered nerves.

So that suddenly I veer to the left, in desperation literally falling upon one of the doors.

I push down on the door lever, slowly, cautiously, feeling it’s wrong: it’s something terribly wrong.

And I look around at the line of people trailing away as far as I can see: they trail both back from where I’ve come from and on in the other direction.

And I feel sure that they’ll turn: all these people. At any moment they’ll turn, together as one, to confront me: their thousands of eyes, gazing, united in a single staring look, reflecting back at me my guilt, an accusation. But as I stop and listen: not one of them moves. Not one.

I look at my hand on the door lever.

Gradually it pushes down, the latch parting slowly from the striker plate.

My hand, so vivid, so separate, apart.

The lever is depressed as far as it will go.

And I pause.

I’ve forgotten my purpose.

And then I realize that I’m not breathing.

I close my eyes for a second: make a conscious effort to relax, slowly breathing in, slowly breathing out.

And then quietly the door opens.

And I enter.

I meet a pair of eyes and jump back, startled.

They are dark: two smouldering coals set deep into the skull, burning in the head.

I look more closely.

Old eyes: I don’t know how old.

So many things to see …

The crow’s feet hopping from here to there …

Cuts in time.

I look more closely.

The eyes are so intense: two tiny iron roses opening only a fraction to reveal, at their centre, tight circles of glittering black colour, absence of colour, hematite, seemingly layered like a secret, arrested at the moment of full blossom.

The weather has worn it well: ravaged by age and now sagging and ashen, this face, dried and wrinkled, like the skin of a withered old prune.

But how to describe it?

The nose, for example, appears, roughly speaking, to have been stapled on, attached loosely, an approximation, left dangling from the face. Its colour is an alarming aggregate of purple, blue and red, sore with bursting blood vessels. It falls from the eyes to the mouth like sloppy stitching joining one to the other. The chin is no more defined: it echoes down into the neck, like leaves in a book. The forehead, too, is cumbersome: dense like a heavily lined manuscript. The hair is thin and wiry, a pale shade of grey as if covered in a patina of dust, not quite silver or white. The mouth is hard, tight. And for the moment is still.

The eyes look out at me.

I feel trapped: caught in an avenue of looking, locked there, no escape. And what I see is an old, old woman sat hunched up and crooked backed upon a stool. She’s bent almost double. I look at her hands, which are gnarled and twisted, distorted almost entirely out of shape. And watch as her fingers fidget, incessantly, like the last nervous twitches of an animal just dead. She’s dressed entirely in black, as if in mourning. And sits surrounded by toys, wool men and rag dolls, little tin people and discarded teddy bears, threadbare and unloved, childless, antiquated.

Is it a child who is dead?

I wonder.

I don’t enter the room, not fully, but remain standing in the doorway, unsure of myself, waiting.

For a moment my eyes break loose, darting around, shuttering open and closed, a hidden camera snatching random impressions. It seems a sombre space. And cold. Deathly cold. There are no windows that I can see and a corner lamp provides the only light, but weakly. Although it’s not a large room. Thick, heavily patterned carpet, old-fashioned, covers the modest floor space. And to the woman’s right are some items of furniture, hidden beneath layers of white dust sheet: their purpose on vacation. Occupying one whole wall to her left, I notice a dark oak cabinet, standing sullen like a portent. On its right hand side is a wardrobe, door left slightly ajar, its small black key still resting in the lock. On its other side are drawers, waist height, forming a flat working surface on which rest photographs, four or five, in crumbling wooden frames. They are sepia and badly faded. A couple of the photographs are individual portraits of children; one is a wedding picture of bride and groom, taken as the couple stride confidently from the church, the bride resplendent in white lace and veil, the groom beaming proud in his top hat and tails; then next to it there’s one of those starched, nineteenth century family shots, where everyone looks like a cardboard cut out, poor imitations of themselves, gloomy and stiff.

The cabinet itself is divided into two halves by a full length mirror cutting vertically through its middle. I shiver as my eyes look up at it, sensing that there’s something not right in what I see, that in some way it’s peculiar. It takes me a few moments to realize what’s wrong. The old woman’s absent: suddenly invisible, as if the mirror can’t see her. I look back to the centre of the room, half expecting her to have disappeared. But no. She sits there still: still as before. Still, that is, except for her eyes: her eyes seem continually to be moving, so vivid, so alive. Her eyes which draw me back to her as I stand there, staring.

She speaks.

‘You are too early’, she says.

‘You are another too early’. Her voice is low and hard to hear, cracking, from time to time, like her leathery old skin.

‘It’s as if you are dead before you are born. Like a shadow of a might have been. Dead before born. A spirit. Like a ghostly trick of light and time, a phantom glimpsed in a moment, passing, then lost, rejected. Born. But born too early. And almost without skin: transparent, vulnerable. Like a pure spirit. As if invisible. Uncanny. And born to die. And you may ask: was I born? Was I really born? You may ask … But I can see you, don’t forget! And I say that you are learning love. Go on … ‘

She laughs.

A horrible, raucous laughter, like the sound of a crying bird, her mouth suddenly open wide, gaping.

And I can’t stand it. It’s driving me mad.

And I can feel it scratching away at the insides of my ears, picking at my brain, this laughter …

I summon my strength and turn away …

The door slams loud behind me.

And then I run: I run as fast as I possibly can, sweating, shivering.

And, as I run, all the figures who’d previously stood impassive spin around, around and around, laughing, shrieking, reaching their arms out towards me as I pass: they want to grab me, seize me, tear me, rip me. And the faster I run, the louder, the wilder their laughter. I have to get away. I must, I must!

I seize the lever of another door and push down hard, falling through it into the room on the other side, panting.

But the scene that greets me is the same as before.

The same deep, penetrating eyes.

The same hard, worn features.

The same wiry hair and firmly pursed lips.

I try to gather my thoughts: the woman looks at me more kindly this time, the ghost of a smile brightening, for a moment, her face.

She picks herself up from her stool.

Slowly hobbles around the room.

A dust cover pulled from a chair. A gesture …

‘Sit down.’

She brings out a table from behind the door: two mugs of brown tea and a plate full of biscuits.

It’s all utterly surreal: a dream. But also frightening, sinister.

I think to plunge the point of a long sharp needle again and again and again into an arm, a leg, an eye.

And don’t you hear the screaming?

Wake up!

This can’t be happening …
I’m too tense to participate actively in this absurd drama so simply sit there, waiting, watching.

The woman returns to the centre of the room. Slowly she gathers together the black fabric of her dress, folding it around her legs, and then, gently lowering herself to her stool, she sits, like a bird on its nest. She helps herself to several biscuits, dipping them bit by bit, one by one, into her tea. She shovels them into her mouth, entirely absorbed, crumbs beginning to speckle her pale lips.

After a while she lifts her head and looks at me: she looks at me as if unsure of who I am or what I’m doing there.

‘I love this little game!’, she says eventually.

‘As a child I played it everyday, in the late afternoon, after school. I loved it best in the winter, when I would sit with my mother and grandmother before the fire, my toes curled up in the soft, thick pile of the hearthrug, my hands wrapped warmly around the steaming hot tea. None of us would ever speak: no, I don’t think we ever spoke. At least: I can’t recall the words. We just sat there watching the fire, spitting and crackling, dunking biscuits, munching, drinking tea. Do you remember?’

I must have looked blank, uncomprehending.

‘No’, she says. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t. I’m so sorry, my dear: so sorry.’

I don’t get her meaning but say nothing.

She doesn’t elaborate.

Silence.

‘I always saw it as a challenge’, she at last goes on. ‘The game of dunking your biscuits, I mean.

The challenge was to get the biscuit into your mouth before it became too soggy. Occasionally you’d be too slow, of course, and then the end of a biscuit would break off abruptly and fall back into the sugary pale brown water which in those days passed for tea. And then I’d laugh: what laughter! Or mother would. Or grandmother. We always did. One of us always laughed. Or someone. But it was terribly common, of course – this game. That’s why we sat in private before the hearth. We’d never have dared to be so silly in front of guests: not on your life! And with guests there would have been proper cups, with saucers, of course, and … ‘

‘Were there guests?’, she asks abruptly, breaking her train of thought.

‘I don’t remember … ‘

She seems increasingly oblivious to me: talking on and on in a world entirely her own. I let her ramble on uninterrupted: talk, talk, talk, yak, yak, yak! The words fly around in the air, ejected between the gaps in her teeth, like spittle, bubbling foam, white on the ground. And to the ears the words are chatter: jabbering in the mind.

In any case I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know what to think.

‘Sooner or later it always happened’, she continues. ‘Bits always fell back. Always. You knew that eventually it would happen. As if that were the whole point. As if the whole thing were predictable, entirely inevitable: sad really. And then I’d watch the little bits floating around in the teacup. They reminded me of so many tiny, bloated corpses, I remember. Too slow, too late. “Plop!” and gone. And then I’d drink down the whole cup in one go: gulping it down until at last I reached the sludge. The brown sludge was always lurking at the bottom. It was always there: the sludge. I found it fascinating. Childishness, I suppose.’

She looks up at me now: a look which strikes me as inappropriate, incongruous. It’s as if her eyes are still elsewhere and her mind still wandering, fragmented in memory. For several seconds she holds me in this fierce stare: wondering who she is, who I am. Her eyes are so bright and piercing, her look like being caught in brilliant, blinding lights, that I feel under pressure to respond to her in some way, her gaze as if sufficient in itself to loosen the tongue. But I’m really at a loss: at a loss as to what to say or how to act. And all I can feel is the force of her scrutiny: it presses down upon my eyes which squint as if in pain. I try to look encouraging, nod my head, feel foolish.

‘And then I told them’, she says, moving closer.

‘I told them that you’re a mistake. You’re painful to the eyes, I said: you’re like a distorted mirror. And I told them that the reason that you see so many shadows ghosting about you is because you yourself are a shadow. This is the reason why. And you are not who you think you are. This too I told them. No. You are a fraud, an impostor. Worse: you are nothing. A nobody. A no one. You had no name then, nor now: and you shall never have one. You’ll be forever nameless: a missing identity. Do you see?’

And then again her laughter …

‘You’re mad!’, I’m thinking. ‘You’re absolutely mad!’

And yet I’m not quite sure.

‘Oh don’t think that, my dear’, she says, her voice sounding spiteful, as if reading my thoughts.

‘These memories are, after all, your own: your very own!’

And she stands up from her stool and suddenly lurches towards me, without warning, her eyes now venomous.

But I’m too fast on my feet, a voice urging escape …

Run!

And in the blinking of an eye I move from one horror to the next.

And still I’m lost: a feverish nightmare.

And still I’m lost.

I’m afraid.

And the corridor seems darker and narrower now: the figures at the opposite wall drawing nearer, closing in for a kill. The transformation in their behaviour is complete: like machines slowly firing into life, they appear suddenly fully animated, fully alive. But their expressions are hateful, nasty: their eyes united in murderous intent. And it’s as if they’ve discovered a collective horror of me which before laid dormant: so now they wish to act quickly, en masse. And they stamp their feet in an aggressive, intimidating rhythm, as if intending to march right over me, trampling me under foot.

But in fact their movement is limited, for the present.

It’s a flow of bodies moving back and forth, back and forth, like waves.

And together they reach for me, their arms outstretched and their hands open and grasping.

But, although they push and shove me, clawing at my skin and clothes, they never once take hold of me with a firm grip: I keep on moving, little by little, or tumble on, rather, as I’m tossed between them, this way and that. And it’s as if something restrains them, holding them back. They move to seize me but, having touched me, almost immediately recoil, jolting away as if in pain or disgust. And their eyes, too, seem to mirror this sequence: they become brighter as together they look, hungry and aggressive, drawing me in as a feast to their eyes, when suddenly they look down towards their feet, their eyes averted, shrinking back, nervous, hesitant. Likewise their shouting and screaming, which crescendos to a peak as those coming closest manage to push or grab at me, at the last moment drops suddenly away to nothing.

But it’s still alarming.

And each time another assault seems imminent, I’m convinced that finally now I’ll go under, crushed beneath the weight of all these bodies, swallowed up by their desire. And I can feel myself sweating and shaking: my legs are like jelly as I try, in vain, to run forwards. And my nerves are in mayhem: torn violently apart.

And my mind, too, is a chaos of fragmented thoughts.

And my only serious and recurring desire is to give up: to abandon any residual wish to live and simply to lie down and die. And although my legs still struggle after movement, my imagination has already raced ahead to this longed for moment. It watches as I curl myself up into a tight, whimpering ball, waiting, shivering in resignation, for the arrival of an end, at last.

And as I wait I watch the eyes.

Scores of sharp eyes drawing nearer and nearer, piercing my body, biting, like arrows, then further, deeper into its flesh, like a fall of ice, a crashing weight, bruising me into a pulp, wearing me down, the gritty pricks of abuse, the hatred.

And this is hateful, I think to myself, over and over again: this is hateful, this is hateful!

And I’m engulfed by the madness.

And it cannot go on: it must stop.

As if …

I close my eyes: I disappear.

If only …

But then a voice speaks.

A voice.

Another.

So that I throw my head around, looking, my eyes wild, terrified.

And I scan the files of shouting heads, hoping to spot the speaker, but my eyes are almost immediately lost: all the mouths mechanically opening and shutting, opening and shutting one after the other, while my ears hear nothing above the chorus of blood-thirsty screams.

Except that there it is again: this same quiet voice.

It seems to speak from somewhere at the back of my head, saying quietly: ‘It’s a nightmare, that’s all: a dreaming fever. And you must go on, you shall … ‘

But I can feel the blind panic still boiling away: boiling away in my blood as if to erupt at any second. And I don’t know what to do. My eyes spin urgently around my head, looking out for some way to escape, to get away. And I’m desperate: I long to block out these horrid visions.

And yet again I fling myself at a door, violently shoving it open, as if my intention all along had been to walk right through it. And I throw myself once again at the darkness.

And for a moment I feel as if my prayer has been answered.

Finally I see nothing: my eyes are closed and I’m quietly sleeping.

Rest, I think to myself, at last.

Rest …

But no.

I’m mistaken.

My eyes remain open.

And still it goes on, this dream …

Going on and on.

There is no light.

And even the light that must have slipped in from the corridor, as I did, has immediately been extinguished.

And the corridor itself could have disappeared entirely: only the darkness closes in behind me.

It’s as if no light dares to enter, in fact, not risking even a single intrepid beam or a solitary enquiring finger, as if banished at the boundary.

And the room feels cursed with this heavy darkness: condemned to its solitude.

And without occupant or companion, it’s as if the room has been locked up in its loneliness: empty and wholly blind.

I feel as if I’m floating in space: buoyed up upon the black air.

And only slowly do I begin to move around, my hands and arms stretched out, my fingers nervously slipping in the darkness, blind, unsure. I feel like a ghost: a spirit floating out from my feverish eyes, a faint image flickering across an empty black screen, and no more than that, more felt than seen.

Then suddenly a sharp noise …

My head jerks around in the direction of the sound, my eyes stretching out still further into nothing: the door behind me has closed shut, the harsh thunder clap of its slamming echoing in my ears.

I cannot see.

But still I rush towards the noise: I hope to catch it in my hands like a key with which to open the door.

I wish to escape from this room.

It’s the worst yet: far worse than the others. In what way, how or why, I’m not sure: it’s unclear.

It’s just that, I suppose: a feeling, a vague anxiety.

And the darkness seems so oppressive, like a prison: incarcerating the eyes in a kind of solitary confinement. So that even the long, lonely corridor, with all its screaming mouths and scratching fingernails, would, I think, be preferable to this place: this place is an empty horror.

And I watch, although I cannot see them, as my hands splash around in the air: still searching …

And in the darkness of my eyes, I’m looking everywhere, but still I can’t find it, the door, the exit, as if it’s faded into a wall and disappeared. Except that the walls have also vanished: I’m sure that I’m moving but my hands find nothing, a chilling emptiness. And I feel them shake: I’m shivering with cold.

And I throw myself around in the fever: this way and that.

And I can feel sweat running from my forehead to the tip of my nose, stinging my empty eyes before dropping down to …

But I’m not even sure if there’s a floor lying solid beneath my feet.

It feels so strange to be moving here: like walking in a dream.

A fantasy of movement.

But I know I’m not alone.

And as I look for a way out, I’m aware of the presence of another, sometimes coming quite close, sometimes keeping at a distance, but always waiting, waiting, and watching, always watching.

Another pair of eyes blackened by this sleepy seeing, looking out, circling me in the darkness, invisible in the blind air. And now occasionally the sound of breathing: breathing in, breathing out. Coming nearer then slipping away: teasing me with trembling expectation. And I wonder if I’m imagining it, like hearing a voice in the head, saying: ‘A dream, only a dream … ‘ Except that something then brushes lightly against my cheek, like a whisper. I lash out with my arms but immediately they’re tangled in empty space leaving me only with myself and nothing.

And I look around but my eyes are entirely lost in the monotony of the black landscape.

And I see only the darkness staring back at me, stern and accusing: they are as good as closed, my eyes.

But after a while I hear a voice, a voice calling out: ‘Who is it? Who is it?’

But there’s no reply: even the sound of breathing has faded away and disappeared. There’s just the silence now: a peculiar silence, seeming almost loud, weighing heavily upon the ears like a deafness.

Then suddenly there really is a loud noise: the silence once more broken as I’m spinning around to the sound of a door slamming sharply behind me. At once I move towards it, but as soon as I take a step I’m cut off by a new noise: again the heavy slamming of a door, this time in an entirely different direction. And then the slamming of a third door in yet another direction, this time more quietly. And then another, now terrifically loud, the dark silence shattering around the ears. And I’m running around myself like a dog chasing its tail, frightened and bewildered. I don’t know which way to turn or what to do. Then again: another door. And then another and another: the noise invading the ears like torrents of abuse crashing down on the hearing in wave upon wave. And I feel dizzy and sick: weak as if each of these doors were shutting directly in my face, flattening me. And I’m both frozen, immobile with anxious indecision, and seemingly stretched out through the entire extent of the cavernous darkness around me, so that with each door clapped shut, I feel as if one length of nerve after another were being cut away in sharp, single blows, the severed nerve endings then springing back at me, spitefully, frayed and useless, like prickly undergrowth in a forest, whipping my face. And still the noise continues, becoming louder and louder in my bruised and burning ears: the sound like a hot poker skewering the head from side to side, the brain swelling up, fit to burst. And it’s like a constant, rumbling thunder: doors slamming everywhere. And as my head jerks chaotically from one direction to another, my eyes blinking open and closed, it’s as if this awful, splintering noise in my ears were really just my head slammed from side to side and from wall to wall: again and again and again.

But …

The noise ends.

As suddenly as it began.

And I’m returned, staggering, to silence.

I hold out my arms in front of me, looking for support, as if to prevent myself from falling. But still there’s nothing: nothing but the surrounding darkness, which feels rather as if it’s pushing me down, trying to force me to my knees. And I try to make it reciprocate, lending me a dark shoulder on which to lean for a moment, but then it shrinks to nothingness, leaving me stumbling in thin air.

And I continue like this for some minutes: I’m like a blind man groping in the dark, flailing around in my empty eyes, directionless.

Another turn of the screw.

And my wrists, abruptly seized, are held tightly: they’re clamped in a pair of hands, emerging suddenly from the darkness, which feel like two iron vices.

And I can hear myself yelling out in pain …

And it’s as if my arms are being simultaneously pushed and pulled in opposing directions, stretched and squeezed like items of soggy laundry, the blood being wrung out drop by agonizing drop. A game of Chinese torture where the pain is so excruciatingly intense that submission is immediate. Although the torture still continues and all you can do with the hurt in your crying eyes is scream out: ‘Stop! Stop! Enough! Enough!’

But still it goes on: the pain and discomfort.

And still I’m held fast.

And my hands are now wrenched behind me then slammed together, pulled higher and higher up my back, reaching up towards the neck as if I’m to be strangled by my own hand, my arms aching horribly, my joined fists putting pressure upon my spine, as if to snap it, boring through my body from back to front, like a drill. And the hairs at the back of my head are tingling: breath tickles them from behind making them erect with fear. And as I’m held fast, this breath is the only thing that’s moving in the air: it’s like a faint, ominous breeze. It disgusts me as if it’s foul, putrid. And gagging, I struggle to spit it out …

But just as I’m beginning to catch my breath and collect my thoughts, I’m given a sudden, savage shove from behind, forcing me to take several paces forward, crumpled, bruised, and now completely out of breath, winded. And then I’m hit once or twice in the back, then five or six times more, in quick succession, now a shove or a thump, now a slap or a punch: sometimes on the back, sometimes the arms, the face, guiding me now this way, now that. And as I’m lurching forward I look out again into the darkness which, in my eyes, remains always the same: only its texture is slightly roughened by all these vigorous blows sent slicing through it, and even then for only a moment. It seems to me that I’m not being moved far, at any rate, although I’ve lost all sense of time and distance. And I mistrust my sensory impressions: I don’t feel sure of them. I’m utterly disorientated, in fact: this no doubt being the point.

Until eventually I’m stopped: brought to a halt with a jerk of my hands, this time still further up my back, as if the purpose were to break my arms. My legs are roughly kicked below the knee, from behind, so that they separate and widen apart. And eventually I’m standing as if to attention, my legs stretched out like two sides of a triangle, a soldier at ease, not at ease, a martial court. And I’m shaking.

My head is yanked back from my chest.

And I listen to the sound of a striking match.

It flares up into a sudden bright, glaring light, only about an inch or an inch and a half below my right eye, painfully hot upon the retina, as if scorching out at once this single moment of unexpected seeing, like a missed window of opportunity, not a promise but an empty deceit. But still my eyes struggle to penetrate beyond the burning orange flame and out into the darkness of the surrounding space. The effort is wasted: my eyes are on fire and shrink away at once, seeing nothing. Then as swiftly as it first exploded into life, the flame retreats back, as if it’s melting in its own heat, exhausted by its efforts. The darkness squeezes it tighter and tighter in its sooty black fingers, until at last it turns blue and then faints and dies, extinguished forever.

The disappearance of this momentary light plunges my eyes into a still greater depression. And they roll down into its depths like two falling rocks, worked loose from above. The sensation makes me giddy: my head spins around and around. I try to close my eyes, to slow things down, but whether my eyes are open or shut, what I appear to see remains always the same so that I can hardly tell the difference now between seeing and not seeing, between having sight and being blind, as if the darkness has claimed me as its own, made me a part of it, cloaking me in its shadowy robes and blacking out my eyes, emptying me of light. And as I stand rigid with fear in this empty space, as if rooted to the ground and not daring to move, it’s only the trembling strain in my tired, sleepless eyes, needling at them as if the dark light has been splintered into countless jagged fragments, showering them in a solution of ground glass, making them itch and irritate, which is now my only indication that still, somewhere, they are floating out there in the black air, my eyes, like two milky planets, rivered with red blood.

And I still look out: I’m trying to see.

And as I do so: a ball of fire exploding from a second match. It’s again positioned a little in front of my face but this time held up to my left eye, like an ophthalmoscope. Instinctively I cringe away, drawing back until the pain in my arms becomes too intense, which happens almost instantly. And it’s clear that something holds my head in position, so that, no matter how badly I panic, I can’t move far …

Slowly, slowly, it draws nearer and nearer towards my eye: my eye now maddened in its staring brightness, blinking continuously in instinctive fear, as if trying to blow up a slight breeze with which to snuff out the flame. It burns against my skin. And as the surface of my eye seems slowly to melt away, smarting tears rolling rapidly down my cheeks, I feel like I’m in some weird thermolytic experiment, imprisoned in a burning tomb and observed as my eyes begin to boil. And my eye itself seems on the verge of flaring up into a bright, burning flame, when suddenly it’s plunged back once more into the icy darkness. The match has finally burned down and gone out. But it leaves the smell of sulphur still lingering in the air: a sickening memory.

And it’s not yet over. Still it goes on, this game. First one eye and then another, as match after match are struck fleetingly into light, blaring up brightly for two or three seconds at a time, screwing up my eyes into tight, fiery balls, then just as suddenly dying away, disappearing into darkness. The matches are struck at such regular intervals, like a flaming pendulum swinging from side to side before my face, that I find myself entirely absorbed in the rhythm of their opening and shutting eyes, of the alternating succession of sudden light and impenetrable darkness. And eventually I’m reduced to being little more than a staring idiot, entirely mesmerized by this play of fiery colours and spellbound before the sudden flashes of bright, blinding light, so that all that I can now distinguish is a faint blue-green fog, forming like a curse from the back of my eyes. The rest is darkness.

And I stare into this fog, like a mirror, as if it were some kind of swirling whirlpool into which I am shortly to descend, falling into it like a hole, going down and down. And I watch as it appears to grow and grow, sucking me into it, ever deeper and deeper. And it slips across my vision like an eyewash, its colour continually changing, first black and unseen, then grey like a plume of smoke spiralling outwards from itself, forming ever wider concentric circles, out and away from a single black point, like a dark middle, the absent centre, vibrating upon my retina, like an instrument of sound; then turning gradually into a dark, earthy brown, no more than a smudge or blur upon the eye, becoming paler now, dirty, like water in a flood; then more like copper, burnished in vinegar, growing darker into green, like rosy pink skin, once bronzed and burnt beneath a golden yellow sun, now infected and diseased, turned milky green like a colour gone off, pallid like a sickness, spreading across my sight like mildew, feeding like a fungus upon the eye; then red, like blood, roughened and made irregular by strings of veins, stretched out and vermicular, branching out like streams, or like hundreds of tiny tentacles crawling this way and that, grasping like thin, spindly fingers, constricting, narrowing, slowly squeezing ever tighter and tighter, the washes of blood red colour now slowed to a soupy trickle, thick and lumpy like glue; so that at last the colour collapses once more into a galaxy of tiny, barely perceptible dots, busy upon the eye, an industrious army of small black ants; endlessly circling the eye, they crawl gradually into blue, through purple and violet, as if dyed in the colour of an indigo sea, aquamarine, the colour of the oceans, a light, bluish-green beryl, flecked with memories of emerald and lapis lazuli, now growing paler with forgetting, turning turquoise like the sky; and then a creamy white, like the balls of the eyes staring blindly into space, turning silver in the darkness, like stars, tiny crystals of pearly light expanding into a fog before me, so that my eyes are now captivated and, lost, as they are, in looking, they simply stare and stare, like a madness. And the darkness has grown loud, like a sinister music, as if taking me into a trance, lulling me into a final act of abandonment, stealing away my eyes, then losing them, forever …

More laughter.

It slices through the air like peals of bright, metallic sound, cutting through the silence surrounding my ears, snapping at them like sharpened scissors, glittering before my eyes.

And I try to move my head and look around, searching for the source of this cruel, grating sound, wanting to silence it.

But my eyes, as before, are locked in their path of looking: my head rendered almost entirely immobile, and my hair a source of pain as if being pulled from behind, scratched away from the scalp by bone white teeth.

And still I stare and stare, trying desperately to see beyond, looking hard towards nothing. Although gradually it appears that I do see something: only a faint movement, at first, but then lines extending here and there into vague shapes, like patterns emerging in the play of silvery, fragmented light, slowly gathering into form before looming out at me, finally, like a face from the darkness.

And I gaze out, my eyes sore with looking, at a moon faced boy, who eyes me from within a mist of pale white light, as if cloaked in its aura. His features, to begin with, lack definition, as if slightly out of focus, blurred at the periphery of my vision, obscure. And as my eyes squeeze tight, I can make out only that what he is wearing, like his hair, is dark and plain. And that his face, by contrast, seems to float freely from his body, as if it’s a quite separate living entity: it possesses a disconcerting, luminous quality, as if all its blood has been drained from the surface, turning the skin a sickly, bloated white, appearing lurid against a background black as pitch. His eyes, by contrast, are a bright, piercing blue, like stained agate, swelling up in my vision like oases in a sweltering desert, unexpected and refreshing. But they seem, as I look at them, to alternate between gentle and hard, warm and cold, subtle changes in the light making them appear to oscillate, undecided, treacherous, quivering in their own slight glow. And while they appear, at one moment, to surge suddenly towards me, in the next, and as swiftly, they seem to retreat, as if once more hidden, a dark blur of seeing.

And his look is also ambiguous, unsettling in its intensity. It’s either serious, I decide, or its opposite, playful, as if the stern stare were only a front, a mask to be removed. And sure enough, as if reading my thoughts, he moves his hands to his face, pinching together thumb and forefinger, a hand at either side of the neck, below the chin, as if the surface of the face is indeed just a mask, a sheet which is about to be lifted, like a priest uncovering a monstrance, or a bride who lifts her veil.

‘You are wondering’, he says, in a voice which sounds strangely familiar, ‘if it is possible, perhaps, just once, to peel away the skin, removing it altogether, to skin yourself. And then to step away from your old self and out into an entirely new form, as if born again into a different life, like a discovery of a whole new world. And you are right to ask yourself this question and I can understand why you do so – especially now, when escape, for you, is impossible’.

I let out an involuntary shudder as his words drizzle slowly into my ears, reaching me a little later than they appear to have been spoken, like words out of sync, or as if the apparent nearness of the boy’s face is an optical illusion, and the actual distance far greater, or else that the air here is so thick and heavy that sound is slow to labour through it, arriving late. And I find myself wondering if the voice I’m hearing is connected in any way at all, in fact, with the slowly moving lips of the boy standing before me, as if it comes from somewhere else entirely, from behind me, for example, or else bubbling up from the back of my brain. And if it really is the boy’s voice that I hear, it’s curious how he speaks beyond his years, more like a man than a boy. Although I’ve wondered, also, at the words and thoughts that have sometimes found expression in my own voice, so that at times I’ve barely recognized it, despite the familiarity of its sound. And I find this thought comforting: as if this feverish dream that I’m still, even now, imagining, is only mine through error, a mistake of the night.

‘Look!’, says the voice. ‘And learn’.

And again I hear laughing.

Not really, as far as I can tell, coming from the boy himself, but rather from everywhere except for the boy, the sound echoing around my ears, stinging at them like a cracked whip.

And I watch, horrified, as, pulling slowly at the skin, he removes his face.

I suppose that it was a kind of nervous collapse.

And the time as if lost …

So much time.

How strange it all is.

And it seems to stretch both forwards and backwards.

From the past it creeps forward to this moment: from here it looks back …

But how long was I confined to my bed?

A few days.

A period of weeks.

Perhaps.

Or even longer.

I’m still not sure.

And I’ve never known for sure: I didn’t really ask for any details.

So of course I wasn’t told.

I only know that most of this time I spent alone, feverish, semiconscious, for the first few days, at least, then merely sleeping, still.

And these nights must have been so heavy with time: slow and ponderous, for a while unmoving, time stalled like a sail without wind. And it must have been quite a strain for my parents. It was certainly a strain for me. And I waited: trapped within this time.

Or had time, for a moment, stopped?

My dreams, timeless?

As if I’d escaped from its tyranny.

And existed quite apart.

In a place without time: a place without the counting of time.

So that even the time of my dreaming self I could view, as a spectator, from a distance, from its timeless exterior. As if it formed a film which, motionless, I watched: the lead looking at times familiar, then unrecognizable, his face flickering, insubstantial, like a rippling shadow on light sprayed water, a liquid image floating slowly in, then out, of focus, a starry constellation in a pitch black sky, its linked points prompting memory, a twinkling in the eye, brightly, at first, then fading, dim, played out in the dark, its chalky white features crumbling, dissolving, dissolving to form a screen which is, in fact, absent, a timeless cinema.

And I thought that I’d died.

But no: not yet.

Not so far as I can tell.

I’m still not sure.

But I know that then my breath stirred.

My breath stirred.

My spirit stirred.

And this stirring carried me with it, like a wave, pulling me along with it, unconscious, in its wake, supported on its back, a passenger, sleeping, oblivious to the time through which it flowed. And as I lapped from moment to moment, time continued, piling up within me like silt deposited by water, except invisible to the unseeing eye, taken on faith, like an imaginary shore, now far behind and lost as if forever. And as it accumulated secretly in my mind, time, like a residue of its past, in only the tiniest of increments, sweating it out, a torture, my temperature began, at last, to drop – too gradually, at first, to be noticed or remarked upon – but returning, nevertheless, slowly and surely, to normal. And then the atmosphere, as I imagine it, which before must have been so dry and heavy, must itself have been relieved: lanced, the fever released, finally, escaping as if through a rip in its stuffy, overheated garments, a small tear in its fabric, like a partially opened mouth, allowing me, once again, to pass my eyes, like watery bubbles, through its airy veil.

But instead of floating upwards into consciousness, like a diver coming up, gasping, for air, or like a man who splutters suddenly awake, springing up from his bed, and immediately alert, what I remember most is rather the sensation of a continued falling, like a man dropping down from the sky into water, falling and falling, so heavy, in the air, awkward and clumsy, falling like a stone, powerless, without will, and crunched up into a tiny round ball, hard, and tight, then crashing down through the water like glass, the broken spray swirling around in the air, then forgotten upon the surface as, cutting sharply through the water, through time, the fall continues, plunging down and down, ever deeper and deeper, going on and on.

And I continued to fall, and, as I did so, my dreaming sight seemed to roll around and around within me, my eyes rattling like two jewels in an empty chest, and my vision dizzy. And my sight grew darker, the bordering blindness closing swiftly around me, black extinguishing light, cutting off my sight, sending me downwards into myself, plummeting lower and lower.

So that in the final few moments of my fever I could do no more than watch: a distant observer.

And I watched, no more than a point, as I fell still further, black now myself, like a slick upon water, a darkened pupil, slipping into a spilling eye, an eye beginning to tear, rip open, an eye peeling apart in layer upon layer, an eye unravelled, in fact, spiralling out beneath me like a watery chute, sending me flying, an emptiness, dazzling, a milky whiteness, blank and unseeing, soft, like clouds, but always blind, blind as a bald eye.

And I’m awake.

I realize.

At last I’m awake.

And from the depths of the darkness I opened my eyes.

I opened my eyes.

Although at once, from reflex, I snapped them closed again, immediately, screwing them up, at first, in the dizzy strangeness of the sudden light, contracting the surrounding muscles of my face, concentrating, as if to tense and then relax them, working them loose, bringing the blood, bubbling, back to life. And only as I began to unwind these muscles, the eyes fanning open like unfurling flowers, did the light leak in more gradually, and tolerably, little by little, allowing me time for my sleepy eyes, grown lazy in their leisure, to adjust, once more, to sight. And then I began to see colour: colour washing in with the light, flowing out upon the backs of my eyes like ink in water. And the colours seemed to swim in my vision, both mixing and separating, until, drop by drop, they were streamed, as if in currents, into various shapes, shapes which gradually developed form and then were still. And my surprise was great, as my eyes slowly settled upon the objects before them, to find them revealing a scene which seemed, to me, so entirely familiar: I had returned to my room.

My room.

And it was just as I had left it, in fact, so neatly arranged, so ordered, now, where I see it all, in my memory.

The first object to take its place, for example, seizing my sight with its size, was a creamy coloured wardrobe, in a brown, chipped, plywood frame, which I could see still standing, like a surly guardian, in the corner opposite my bed, by the window. The window itself was concealed: robed in pale blue curtains, drawn closed, like a filter for the sky, its light diluted. And the walls, too, were of a similar watery blue: a dye perhaps darker by a wash, slightly fuller and deeper in colour.

Beneath the window stood a small child’s desk, the desk at which I studied, crouching over it with my eyes, a little weak, sat perched almost to the end of my nose, peering, in concentration, at the words scribbled out, from left to right, in a tiny hand. And to the side of the desk, a chair, its back standing straight and alert, as if encouraging me to set myself down upon its seat, a pale red leather, ready for work.

And the floor, thinly carpeted, was kept clear, for the most part, of mess and rubbish: there was just a small wicker bin, as I remember, a laundry basket, and a sturdy bedside table, covered in a neat square of white embroidered cloth, on top of which stood a coaster and a lamp.

My father’s favourite expressions were: ‘everything has its place’ and ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’. When I was young these comments washed over me like bleach, but now, unbeckoned, they recur quite often in my thoughts, more voices in the chorus. They did their work, I suppose: my room was always impeccably clean and tidy, unnaturally so.

On one of the inside walls, about halfway between the floor and the ceiling, were a couple of shelves. The lower of these supported some miniature toy figures, some stones scattered randomly, like an oriental garden, a few photographs, old family portraits, mostly, and a whorled conch shell, exquisitely beautiful, a souvenir of the sea. The higher shelf was reserved for my books. It laboured under their accumulated weight, with books stacked both vertically and horizontally, laden down with all the treasures of my childhood: books of travel and adventure, science and nature, stories of the sea and the sky, the supernatural and the fantastical, all mixed up together.

And how nice it was to see these things: how nice to see my room.

And how refreshed I felt when I woke from the fever, as after a long, sound sleep, and for a while I enjoyed the sensation of being dreamily light-headed, buoyant, like the air.

My parents, too, when at last my eyes had adjusted to their presence, appeared relieved. Although for some reason this struck me, in itself, as strange: they looked at me in a way which seemed new, different. And I felt as if I were seeing them in a new light. It was their eyes, I thought, their eyes above all else, which had altered. They seemed foreign: no longer suspended, lifeless, as if frozen in the air. They had blurred: blurred now with a hint of tenderness and compassion, forming trembling in my vision as if the heat of my fever had melted away the old eyes, old and uncaring, as previously I’d thought them, those eyes which had appeared always so fearsome, upon the surface so cold and so hard, staring out, unmoving, from their faces.

And did they really say then that they loved me?

Or did I just imagine it?

Again I’m not sure.

Not certain.

But I suppose that they must have done: they must have loved me in their own special way.

For a while they seemed hesitant as if unsure of their emotions: surprised by them, perhaps, not realizing that they existed. Perhaps they were surprised by themselves. And I looked at them now as if they were two quite new and different people: strangers, almost. Although, to my shame, I didn’t welcome the changes I saw in them, the subtle softening, for example, of their features, and the loosening up of the skin which seemed to crack open, as I looked, into tiny avenues of anxiety around their eyes and mouths, the lines on their faces as if painfully redrawn. I felt unnerved. It was as if a great age had stolen suddenly upon them, making them seem more frail and vulnerable, weaker and more confused, than I’d ever thought possible. And the suggestion of delicacy, if such it was, in their manner, unusual and unforeseen, their nervous discretion, their slight air, almost, of hopelessness, left me bewildered. It was all in such stark contrast to their attitudes during my previous bouts of childhood sickness: a contrast that struck me as awkward, disturbing, clanging in my memory. And I tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t: it seemed so strange.

And so I repeat the question.

What had happened?

And I still don’t have an answer.

I still don’t know.

The pattern in the past had, after all, been always to dispute a sickness, questioning its symptoms, challenging its existence, or simply ignoring it altogether. So that even when I looked sick, it was never immediately accepted that actually I was so: to begin with one could say only that I claimed to be sick, no more. Naturally this filled me with a sense of guilt: it sapped my confidence, forcing me to question the reality of my feelings and crushing me into a numbed confusion, doubting myself more and more, sent spiralling into my mind. And my anger and embarrassment at these accusations I would then take out on my body, as clearly it was my body that had, in some mysterious, ill-defined way, failed me. My body was weak and had let me down, I thought. It was determined to undermine me: it must be punished.

And when alone, I would crouch in a corner of my room, running my hands along the lines of my body, as if sketching its different shapes, shading, with my fingers, between hard and soft, the bones prominent beneath the skin, or else absent, seemingly, the skin smooth and responsive, my hands sliding silently across it. And I would search for its start and its finish, its beginning and end: a point from which to measure its substance, now seeming light, now heavy, in my hands. And often I touched my body with a feeling, almost, of disbelief, as if my existence were unreal, an illusion: as if to believe in it involved a faith too great.

And I would stare, blindly, into space, as my hands, all the while, kept on moving. And I willed them, as they did so, to find some fault upon the surface of my body: something to make sense of its weakness. And I don’t know why but I was sure that this would help me: a roughness, like a cut in rock, which at last I could seize and hold on to, grasping and exploring it with my fingers, like something seeming real and tangible, a point of pain, perhaps, a pivot, explaining everything, and from which, once finally I’d found it, I could tear myself away.

After a while I would allow my hands to settle upon my face, as if to still my head, to stop it from spinning. My right hand I would place tightly to my right cheek, my left hand to my left cheek, my palms pressing upwards beneath my chin, and my features feeling fragile between my hands. And then, at some mysterious, indeterminate point, as if independent from my will, a strange ritual would once again begin.

First I’d take my left hand away from my face, moving it slowly from my body until it passed beyond my vision, disappearing behind me. And then I’d use this hand to hit myself, hard, upon the side of the head, swinging it around and towards me with as much force and speed as I could possibly manage, the hand crashing red against my cheekbone, the dull sound of its impact slapping suddenly against me, a shock to my senses, making my eyes sting and leaving my ears ringing. The motion was then repeated, only this time on the other side, the right hand instinctively pulled back, poised, as if ready and waiting.

Again and again I hit myself: first with one hand and then the other. I would do it rhythmically and systematically, as if it were a question of discipline: first left, then right. The same action repeated over and over again, until my eyes seemed set apart from my body and as if suspended in mid-air, wild with burning fury, and my cheeks now red and sore, bruised and bloated, every nerve-ending crying out, screaming as if raw and exposed, and, at the same time, like the rest of my head, my body, seeming numb – deadened by the pain. And after a while my eyes, tired of their burning, would start to water and weep, the tears flowing down my face and hands, rolling away, unseen. And then, when I could stand it no longer, I would eventually stop, a crumpled mess washed up upon the floor.

The blood came later.

A sense of twisted anguish was only ever intensified, naturally, my stomach screwed still tighter, on those rare occasions when, after a thorough cross-examination and much heated discussion, the decision was finally taken to summon the doctor. Waiting for his arrival, as I cowered beneath a torrent of recrimination, was a test of stamina, a torture.

And it was a little as if my parents felt themselves personally responsible for any admission, on my part, of illness: as if I’d presented them with a charge against which they, in turn, had now to defend themselves. And their initial counter-attack came most usually, I remember, in the form of a series of stiff warnings against malingering. Malingering was a recurring theme: it was always assumed, for example, that I was exaggerating my case. And often I was accused, outright, of lying. ‘You’re crying wolf!’, I was told (the words of my mother finding articulation, as so often, through the voice of my father). ‘The doctor will see it instantly! He’ll see straight through you! And then you’ll be sorry!’

The doctor was a crotchety old man who seemed to lurk in my mind, when young, like a sinister shadow, darkening my imagination. He always arrived at our house on an old-fashioned, iron framed bicycle, a long, black cape draped over his head and down towards the ground. This cape concealed his actual means of transport so that he appeared, at first, like an area of dark matter floating freely and without form, a dense hole in one’s seeing like a smudge on the eye.

His appearance, once dismounted, struck me altogether differently. Seeming suddenly very solid, he was a short, fat man, with wild, wormy hair and round, stubby legs, whose features were in every way exaggerated. His eyebrows, for example, were unbelievably thick and bushy, concealing black, screwed up eyes, piercing dark, which, partly hidden, sank deeply into his skull. And his lips, too, were gigantic, sagging raw and open, swollen like his nose which was red and bulbous, pitted and pock-marked like a rotten growth. And sprouting out from his nose were small clusters of dark, oily hairs, which I would watch as they appeared to squirm, like maggots, in his gaping black nostrils.

But although the sight of his face was a fright in itself, it was his enormous pink hands, sausage fingered and sweaty palmed, which menaced me more. They seemed to be continually moving, twitching and shaking, the fingers in particular, as if clawing at the air, feeling for flesh. And as soon as they reached me they would start immediately to poke and prod, pushing and pulling at my skin.

Worst of all was his breath, so noxious and unpleasant that it made my eyes water at each fetid, gasped out puff of poisonous, second hand air, his flabby, wheezing lungs rattling and rasping alarmingly. His breath seemed to knock me out, like an anaesthetic, and once it had taken its almost immediate effect, dulling the senses, my sickness was all but forgotten, as if suddenly I’d been cured.

And my one thought, in his monstrous presence, was of how to escape from it. But it always appeared impossible: his flesh rolled around him as he moved, creating a compelling current, which seemed to suck you into it, like a vortex – there was no getting past him. And he was altogether grotesque, this man: a nightmare.

But for my parents, though, he was useful: useful for reasons quite apart from his questionable skill in medicine. They had sensed, early on, that I hated him, disliking his sinister muttering, his glaring spittle, his quivering form, and they put this to their advantage, employing him, sadistically, as a threat. ‘We’ll call the doctor … ‘, they’d say, in low, malicious tones, like a chant, the prospect always subduing me at once, as if they’d succeeded, as they hoped, to frighten me into a state of good health.

But they were doing their best, I suppose. At least I hope that they were. And perhaps they sometimes even thought, and in all good faith, that one day I might thank them: thank them for their severe, if unstable, ‘character building’ upbringing. But no: I don’t think so. Although I do wonder if perhaps, now that I turn back to those days, I’ve misremembered or misjudged them: perhaps they weren’t always as terrible as I’d thought. Perhaps they weren’t always so harsh and so cruel: not always. And perhaps I remember sometimes a soothing word. Or a hand: a gesture, appearing suddenly, unexpectedly, in time. Or an eye, perhaps, passing by: a look. Small things: memories.

Like those days, for example, when they thought me genuinely and quite seriously sick, and were quick to keep me home, away from school. Sometimes this was just a ruse: on their part, not mine. They wanted me to work around the house. But on the occasions when I was sent to bed, cold and shivering, I can, I think, recall my mother standing nearby, her presence watching over me. She must have been there: yes, I’m sure of it.

And occasionally she’d come into my room to bring me a bowl of hot, warming broth. Chicken soup was the standard: ‘a cure for all colds – light and heavy!’, she told me once, a weird grin fixed beneath dull eyes. And I would wrap my hands around the dish, its heat tingling my fingers, and watch the steam as it rose to my face. ‘Just get that down you’, she’d say, scoffing. ‘That’ll bring you alive in no time!’

And then, very occasionally, later, when I was nearing sleep, she would return to my room, sitting at my side in order to tell me a story. My body fidgets at the thought, a rippling of the skin, a shudder, perhaps, no more. And I can see her now as if she sits there still. I can’t get rid of her, not really: it’s impossible. And sometimes she would sit there for hours and hours on end, empty eyes drooped down into her lap or else staring expressionlessly into space: not speaking, not moving. Chalky faced, she’s frozen, dead. Although her voice still sounds: I can hear it, I listen.

Her mind, I suspect, had been lined from an early age, like mine, with cruelty. And her taste in tales, developing from this, showed a marked fascination with all things dark and macabre. So although there were perhaps moments, during my childhood, when I enjoyed the knowledge of her nearness, I lacked the courage to tell her that the stories themselves, on the occasions that she read them, pleased me little.

I had the feeling, in any case, that the stories she told were told primarily for her own satisfaction. She told them to herself, for herself, reading them as if exploring her own past, her own childhood: a past within which she seemed sealed, forever separate, apart. And I never had the heart to break the spell, if spell it was. It would have seemed a sort of sacrilege to have said something at the wrong moment or to have disturbed her in some way: an intrusion into her private world. So I simply looked on, silent and watchful as if myself bewitched.

And the stories themselves, replacing tedium with terror, were variations, usually, of local legends and old fashioned fairy tales, and told of ghosts and ghouls, werewolves and vampires. One story, I remember, involved a headless horseman who appeared only once each year, at midnight of the shortest day, the blackest hour of winter. ‘This was the hour of your birth’, my mother would then observe, innocently, a comment added always at the end, like a mysterious coda, as her eyes grew dark like the night.

Another story she told was the tale of a young woman who had locked herself in her room, inconsolable after the death of her murdered lover. Still to be seen, centuries later, she sits by the fireplace, mixing ash with the wetness of her face, drawing teardrops, one after another, on the wall. And then there was a similar tale about a man who’d been betrayed by his first love: his ghost still wandering. And yet another about someone who, maddened by the sadness of love, had slowly bled himself to death, drop by drop, from a hundred tiny cuts upon his body. And this story merges, in my memory, with something my mother once said about a house where a mysterious flow of blood dripped down from the ceiling, every night, in a monotonous music, forming a large red pool upon the floor below: its source unknown.

She particularly liked horrors in the home: they were the complement, perhaps, to her fully controlled world. There was a story about a room where bloody, staring eyes oozed out from the walls, for example: is it this room here, I wonder? It certainly feels like it sometimes. And another, or the same, creeping darkly into my dreams, of a room where spiders, at night, would descend, quietly, from the black shadows of the ceiling, to spin an enormous web around the sleeper below, who was now never to wake, doomed instead to be devoured in the darkness, night after night.

There were so many stories, in fact: scattered nights of my childhood. But these tales, in particular, were among my mother’s favourites, I suppose: they must have been the tales to which she returned, again and again, in her storytelling, staining my imagination so that they remain, still now, floating fresh, haunting, in my memory.

Like my face: a boy.

Still, impassive.

It had to be. Showing fear was a serious matter. My mother treated it with the utmost contempt. And the signs of it she would recognize at once, waking suddenly from her reverie in order to mock me bitterly, hurling abuse.

‘You can’t be my son!’, she’d taunt. ‘Just look at that face – all yellow and trembly, what a sight! – a disgrace! – no, no: it can’t be – I found you beneath a bush, I’m sure! – I must have adopted you in a moment’s pity! – just look! – that dear, soft heart – the coward!’

This was, in fact, the main lesson that my mother tried to teach me: always to hide away my feelings, to deny them in the darkness, and to bury them as deeply as possible beneath the surface of consciousness. And whenever something frightened me or made me unhappy, whether it was one of her stories or my father’s harsh words, for example, or, later on, because of being bullied or beaten at school, or if I was worried or depressed about something, or sick, even if just with a cold, or flu, I did try always, whenever humanly possible, to behave as if everything were entirely in order.

Order, I knew, was of the utmost importance – it made things invisible.

Sickness, which tended to run riot with a person, breaking out willy-nilly, without discretion or subtlety, was, by contrast, the very worst of crimes: it was never to be considered, a taboo.

And my parents, for reasons that I’ve never discovered, the natural fascism of the so far healthy, perhaps, lived mostly in denial of it: it was too much fuss, too much of a bother, too weak, too vulnerable, too inconvenient, too demanding. I learnt my lessons well: nearly always I kept silent. And so good was I, in fact, in a quiet, unobtrusive sort of way, that eventually I, too, disappeared, seeming invisible to all but myself. And sometimes to myself as well.

But my thoughts are wandering. And this, in any case, was all way back, long in the past: barren memories, random glimpses of my distant childhood, which relate to a period of my life much earlier, before the fever.

And the situation after it seemed in many ways very different.

Certainly the attitude and demeanour of my parents appeared to have changed quite drastically: I could sense it in the atmosphere. The way they looked at me had changed. The way they spoke to me, sometimes, at least, had changed. And their words, for once, were chosen mostly with a certain basic tact and care.

There was no more talk, for example, of helping hands, favours to do, and tasks to be finished: all such cajolery, no matter how light hearted, having disappeared, abruptly, from their conversation. They seemed anxious, instead, to keep me well away from any work, at school or around the house, away from anything at all, in fact, which might either tire me or make me nervous or excitable.

Practically falling over themselves with care and consideration, I felt almost, upon waking from my fever, as if our customary roles had suddenly been reversed, and as if they, in all their concern, were now a little scared of me, rather than me of them. And they looked permanently afraid that, in the horror of their presence, I might fracture or break.

I didn’t really know how to behave in the light of these changes: I’d had no example and felt lost without one. I didn’t know what to say or do, what posture to adopt or facial expression to assume. And I tried to keep silent. This seemed the best policy: to say as little as possible and, better still, to sleep.

I was still sleeping a lot, in any case, especially in the first few days and months of my sickness, when my parents repeatedly cautioned me that, although now over the worst, I was not to behave as if entirely better. No: I was still gravely unwell, they said. The sickness still lingered around me and it would be a long time, possibly a very long time, before I’d return to normal. And I’d have to be treated with great care, they warned, or else I might suddenly disappear again, swallowed up by the nightmares from which I’d only just escaped, and dragged once more into fever. And they didn’t want that: I would surely die. And me? What did I want? Did I want to die? Was that it? Well: did I?! No: one would certainly hope not!

Although not intended to do so, these words of course alarmed me. They played on all of my worst fears and, left largely alone in my room, as I was, they had plenty of time to echo, empty, in my mind. Once settled, they became oppressive. And for a number of weeks it seemed like a struggle just getting up from my bed, my body as if weighed down, imprisoned, heavy with a kind of numbed indifference. And everything involved too much effort: I was tired and listless, nothing mattered, I thought. There was simply no point. And my thoughts seemed to shrink to the dimensions of my room, as if there was nothing outside of it. Or as if my room, though small, had grown large in my imagination, expanding into my mind. ‘A secondary depression’ is what the doctor called it: whatever that was supposed to mean.

And I spent so much time in my room, where I remained cooped up like fowl, strutting around its small area in repetitive circular patterns, bored out of my mind, for what seemed like endless stretches of time, far too much of that precious, childhood time, in fact. And I began to think of it as a kind of prison. And I would often eat in it, alone, and sit in it, sleep in it, live in it, breathe in it: it was the world I knew. But at the same time it was a familiarity not always comforting: not always. My room seemed often menacing, in fact, like a four walled threat, chastising me with its bare, barren walls, and drawing me into it, pale, washed white, closing tightly around me, wringing me with boredom, and leaving me crushed, thin.

These were my days.

The nights were worse …

‘The lights must be off!’

That’s what they said.

And if not, they were angry.

But the darkness, at night, frightened me: blind in my own room, I felt lost in my mind.

I had little relief. It was thought that my friends, for example – imaginary though really they were, belonging only, to my mind, in a game of pretend – or any other kind of visitors, for that matter – hypothetically speaking, that is, their actual character remaining deliberately vague, dismissed, from conversation, with a weak wave of the hand – would, of course, have proven to be too much of a disturbance, draining the blood from my face with their curious, inquisitive eyes, exciting me with all their tiresome questions and idle talk, and irritating my imagination with thoughts of all the wonderfully interesting things that the other children of my age were saying or doing, descriptions of places they’d visited, for example, sights they’d seen during short trips into the country, or to the sea, all places which were considered impossible to visit, for me, too fragile, as I was, at the time, shut up, alone.

And I even seemed sheltered from the sun, as if, left too long beneath its fiery eye, I might burst into flames. And I never understood why but, as if to keep my skin pale and bloodless, the curtains of my room were kept almost permanently drawn, a habit which, still to this day, I find it difficult to shake off. And only rarely did I open them, then, the curtains, or even touch or try to move them: stories of spirits lurking by windows had made me wary, I suppose. And I don’t open them now because my eyes are weak: the light burns into them, sharply, hurting them terribly.

So as a child, at least, I was extraordinarily grateful for the existence of my books.

And it was only in my books, in fact, that I felt free to explore, to live a little in my mind and at the same time to escape it. And no doubt the shelf with my books was really the only place in my room, ungoverned by others, which remained open to a kind of mental disorder, a place where fact and fantasy could jostle freely for attention. Books were my liberation: I entered into them in flight. And soon they were the world in which I lived, lost not only in their words, but also in the images, both real and imagined, which, gathering in my eyes, they formed in my mind.

One of my best loved books was, in fact, a book of photographs: there were over a thousand of them, in total, a visual survey of birds from around the world. Its title was predictable enough: An Encyclopaedia of Birds. Dull but to the point: I still remember it.

The photographs, as I recall them, were extraordinary. And I would spend hours poring through them, scrutinizing all the different shapes and colours of the birds and marvelling especially at their names, which often seemed magical, as if, in saying them, you’d be transformed, taking their form and spreading your wings, at once, to fly. I liked especially the more exotic sounding names and enjoyed their sounds as I tasted them, like a song, in my mouth: such luscious names, for example, as Bluish Flowerpecker and Crimson Rosella, Sparkling Violetear and Black-spotted Bare-eye, White-cheeked Honeyeater and Yellow-collared Lovebird, Golden-winged Sunbird.

Another of my favourite books was called Explorations into the Great Unknown. It traced over two thousand years of intrepid travel, charting the lives and adventures of hardy explorers ranging from Alexander the Great and Marco Polo through to Scott and Armstrong. All figures who, according to the book, ‘risked tremendous danger’ and ‘endured enormous hardship’ in their search for knowledge of ‘the great and mysterious unknown’, those regions which had ‘never before been explored by man’.

Wow!

The book was bursting with drawings of a remote and romantic world, along with maps, old and new, which guided you towards its fantastic lands. There were also pages and pages of glossy colour pictures. Occasionally these were of wild, mythical creatures, staking out their territory in the hinterland of primitive fear, although generally the faces were human in appearance, staring out from the text like exhibits in a museum. Often they were portraits, semi-phrenological, of outlandish despots and their unfamiliar peoples, their framed faces and shrunken heads as if executed on the page. Most often, of course, they were the pictures of white, western men, boasting craggy cheeks and foreheads and big, hairy beards, their look, more often than not, seeming crazed and manic, an uneasy mixture of defiant hope and exhausted despair, charging out to conquer all.

The final two images in the book I remember very clearly: they were so different from the others.

A lone man walking upon a planet not our own.

And then an image which I found both delightful and terrifying: a photograph of earth viewed through the eyes of the universe.

The earth looked so tiny and beautiful, cushioned, alone, in all that dark, empty space, and haloed in stars.

Images that always left me feeling calm, thoughtful.

For me, at the time, it was as though they heralded not only the end of the book: they heralded likewise the end of everything that was either familiar or comprehensible.

So that I loved these two books dearly.

And they were both of them books about journeys, I suppose: books of departure.

That’s why I loved them.

I found it easy to imagine myself flying away with the birds, for example, taking off into the sky: flying high into the air with a migrating flock, or else alone, like an eagle, circling higher and higher towards the heavens. And my travels with the great explorers were pursued in much the same way: I followed in their footsteps, treading paths which took me further and further from myself. And I loved them because they were my first books of escape: the first of very many, all the books I’ve ever read, perhaps, of which by now there must be thousands. I wanted so badly to escape …

And books were my hope.

I disappeared between their covers: they were my hiding.

And only later did my writing answer the same purpose, after a fashion.

A form of confrontation: yes.

But also a form of disappearance.

A hiding.

In my notebooks above all.

And in my notebooks I store my life: it seems safer in their pages.

I can write it.

And rewrite it.

Little by little.

These words …

When I wasn’t reading, I was bored. But sadly I wasn’t strong enough to read all the time which meant that I was often bored. And, in any case, even when I was able to read: well, my books could liberate my mind, but not my body. And my body, too, was restless.

But paradoxically it was the dreaded doctor himself, during one of his infrequent visits, who rescued me, in the end, from this preponderant state of closeted, interminable boredom. He was concerned by my lethargy, he said, the slowness of my recovery and my continuing frailty. He thought I seemed disinterested in life: moody and introspective as if lost to the world. And I was morbidly sensitive: he was sure of it. Permanently on edge: as if frightened by everything. And at the same time I was reading too much: it wasn’t good for my eyes.

I’d have more energy, he thought, and more enthusiasm, as well, if only I could get out of the house, now and then, for some exercise and fresh air. Nothing too strenuous, of course. Just something to take me from my bed and room: an excuse for me to move, if you like, exciting my blood and expanding my lungs. A short walk around the house should, he thought, be sufficient. To begin with, at least.

And so I began, most days, to take myself out for a little walk, more like an old man than a young boy, into the modestly sized garden at the back of the house: a space comparatively small and enclosed by a high wooden fence on all three of its sides. But I was only allowed out in the late afternoon, when, although still warm, the sun, already dipped in shadow, had begun to wilt and was thought less fierce, less intense. And sometimes, striding around in the fading light, pursuing the shapes that flickered about me as I moved, like a dog its tail, I’d keep on walking, going around and around, for thirty or forty minutes – even longer when I thought I’d get away with it.

Occasionally my pace became really quite boisterous, as I tried hard to burn off all the excess energy stored up in my body, where it had accumulated, like a dead weight, during the long, dull hours of my enforced inactivity. But more often than not, a sense of lethargy having settled, like a damp, aching pain, too deeply in my bones, I would just sit, thinking, on a small slatted bench, sitting in the corner by the shed at the lawn’s far end.

And I can see myself now, a boy, pale and weedy, sitting quite still, in the shade, fixed in my posture like some cheap garden ornament, a mildewed statue. And I watch the insects, bees and butterflies, as, full of energy, they busy themselves around the sprawling mallow, pushing in and out of its heart-shaped flowers, tiny tongues clapping faintly upon their petalled bells. They look a little drunk, as I must, my eyes half-closed, dozing in the self-dissolving stillness of the slow summer air.

The flower of my youth.

And it’s a tiny spider that, some while later, stirs me, tickling my neck and ears before tiptoeing up the side of my face and up into the thick matting of my hair, from which it dangles, precariously, suspended on one of its fine silvery wires as if swinging on a rope. It’s a money spider and, unlike almost any other kind of spider, it holds no fear for me. I pick it up, gently, with my hand, circling it three times around my head in the hope of future riches. And I play with it in my fingers, nudging it from one hand to the other. And then, after a while, I flip my hands over, now holding them with the palms facing upwards, and watch as it scurries, the spider, like a tiny dot in the web of my eye, along the lines of my life. Eventually it heads for the tip of a finger, continuing on its way with dogged determination until, to my delight, it appears to stride out into the air, like a cartoon character which walks, without noticing, off the edge of a precipitous cliff. I swing it towards the borders, at a group of huddled up hollyhock, and soon it’s lost within a soft, downy embrace of chubby pink flowers.

So another of my daily pleasures, to which I attended without fail, was to devote myself, in earnest contemplation, to the study of the various flowers that made up my company in the garden, my eyes growing wide like their round, honey-combed centres, looking at them with enormous pleasure, entirely absorbed. And making circles on the lawn, I would inspect them as if they’d been assembled for a special parade, my pride and joy, memorizing their various plant names, my lips moving little, like my breath, as I read them, aloud, from the small plastic labels which poked out from the pots and tubs like slim white fingers growing up from the earth.

These containers were clustered in carefully arranged groups at the edge of the small, square area of lawn which formed the centre of the garden, its grass a watery green, recently cut, in my memory, and smelling beautifully fresh. Their names and their colours enchanted me as my eyes fell among them: monkey-flowers and white swans, for example; blanket flowers and fragrant phlox; red, pink and white asters; golden yellow achillea and blood-drop emlets; pixie lilies and chrysanthemums; violet and purple petunia; pink begonias and scarlet geraniums. There were also multi-coloured Mexican dahlias, which seemed to me to be waving, in a neighbourly sort of way, towards the proud yellow clematis, standing nearby. And then red nasturtium, trailing bright; and hydrangeas, so frilly and theatrical. Further around were some Californian poppies, their silky flowers washed in a vivid, sun-rich orange; also pot marigolds, proud and solitary, scorched a deep golden-yellow; and the claret coloured cosmos, with its velvety petals exuding an intoxicating aroma of rich, dark chocolate, like an expensive scent. And finally there were the lovely pale blue flowers of a delphinium, its ghostly robes appearing almost transparent, delicate like the wings of a butterfly. I knew them all.

And I watch myself bend down towards them, crouching close as if in conference, leaning forward into their blossoms and hovering suspended at their open mouths, like a bird, my body slightly swaying as in a breeze, swooning as from a nectary kiss. And occasionally I take a flower gently by its stem, trying to count the number of its petals, like a scientist recording data, a look of quiet concentration falling silently across my face. I count first in one direction, and then, to verify my results, I begin again, but this time I work in the opposite direction, counting first clockwise, then anti-clockwise: six, twelve, eighteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-six, and so on. But I find, after a while, that my figures begin to conflict. I get muddled about which petal is number one: the beginning and the end. And then eventually I give up and forget altogether about the counting, as my attention simply wanders from one lovely flower to the next. And softly I stroke their petals with my fingers, feeling for the subtle differences in their textures, enjoying the touch of their glossy, silken surfaces, and watching as my hands appear to mix their colours together, working in the various pigments of each petally canvas, my fingers smoothing over them like a wash, spreading their brightness into the corners of my eyes, as if my hands were really brushes, painting on the colours with my touch.

I straighten my back and then inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the scented air of a dozen different flowers, their perfume lingering in my nose like incense, suffused with fragrance. And I close my eyes, holding them shut for several seconds, tightly, before again I open them, shocking myself with the sudden carnival of colour which bursts before me into a spectacular, hallucinogenic vision, as if the flowers are blossoming as I look, shooting into the air like miniature explosions of dazzling light, the riot of bright colour appearing to swarm before my eyes like bees, then suddenly stinging and painful.

I open my mouth, wide, as if to scream.

And then I close my eyes.

I don’t want to see anymore: I’ve had enough.

I want it to end: that’s all.

But my eyes are open.

They are closed.

Then open.

And I can’t control them: not really.

Blinking back into my room.

My room.

My memory …

And he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

And this room I’m in now is rather bare: austere.

It’s a place to rest the mind.

Imagine.

And it’s been my deliberate intention to keep it simple.

Although I’ve failed.

I’ve not the energy.

So that things still reach out to me as I enter this room, vying for my eyes, my attention.

Things encroach.

Blankets.

Clothes.

Books.

And it creeps up on you.

This mess.

Slowly.

And I can’t escape it.

There isn’t the time.

And all these things just make my eyes feel heavy. And must I really carry them around in my sight? Like cases stuffed full. I want to close them but can’t.

And I’d like to get rid of everything.

To clear the space totally.

Item by item.

Throw it all out.

Empty it.

Cut free of its weight.
So that the room I really wish for is a clear, blank space.

It’s an empty room.

It’s a room containing nothing.

Although, bursting with possibility: it has the space for everything.

I take a deep breath: the air is so clear and so fresh.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Wait: be patient …

The floor is from pine: smooth and solid.

And I can walk here freely, creating patterns with my feet …

I can dance.

And sing.

And I can sing the songs of my room …

In which the words at last sound clearly.

And beautiful, I recognize.

I hear them.

And the walls, I should add, are like windows: the ceiling too.

So the space feels boundless.

As if, walking from its centre, one could never hope to reach its limits.

So I look around.

The sun shines in this room.

And the nights are clear.

And from wherever I sit I see the sky, which is infinite.

But still I hear a voice.

I can hear a voice, speaking: speaking as if reading aloud from something that has already been written. And I listen …

Mine, I suppose, was a lonely sort of childhood, shrouded in a solitude which at times seemed absolute. But still: I enjoyed my walks in the garden. They did me good: it’s true. They helped me sing.

And I close my eyes: my memory.

Imagine …

And then directly I can see you.

It’s like a film, don’t you see?

Cut!

And I see you again.

Each time.

And I wish we’d met both earlier and later than in fact we did.

Which is to say only this: it is so easy for me to imagine us having been together.

Together when we were young, for example: we were like children, really.

Although I know that I didn’t know you then: not then, when I was young.

And I was always alone.

I know.

Alone: always alone.

And so I had to invent you.

Do you see?

I had no choice.

Although I know …

Still now it’s as if I see you.

Do see you.

And again and again I see you.

Looking back.

My memory.

Cut!

And I see you as if you alone are my memory: now so focused upon the past.

And, as if what we thought of as our love, those few precious years of early adulthood, in fact represented no more and no less than a childhood romance: a tale from a past fast fading long into time.

And so long.

It has been so long now.

Can you imagine?

Looking.

Lost.

Your eyes.

And you stand alone in a field, walking slowly towards me like a figure from a dream.

I think: ‘You are my dream. I’m dreaming you: I’m dreaming.’

But to begin with you maintain a discreet distance: guarding your space. You will not be drawn until you’re entirely ready, it’s clear. And instead you pace around like some animal, pinning me with your looks, daring and defiant, fearsome in beauty. You’re like a fighter spooking his opponent, eyeing him up, staring him down, waiting, stalking. And I am spooked: I know it. I’m utterly lost in you: transparent, invisible.

I sit swaying on a swing, quiet now, rocking gently forwards and backwards, feigning a cocky indifference, looking away, waiting.

Until finally you step forward. First one step: then another. And as gradually you come closer I turn my head: I watch you, I wait for you. But once our eyes meet … Once our eyes meet they are lost: lapping lost like separate liquids that, in their meeting, form at once a single flow and together are gone.

Yet still I see.

And I watch you as your face then slowly opens for a smile.

And I smile too.

Then suddenly you are laughing and jumping around. Teasing, provocative. Running circles and circles around me. And you oblige me to respond to you: I have no choice. Get up and run: get up and run … Chasing around and around.

But the grass is still dewy and you slip. And immediately our roles are reversed. So that now it’s you running away, hardly able to breathe for laughing, as I race behind you, reaching out. And I’m shouting: ‘I shall catch you, I shall catch you! You’ll never get away! And then you’ll be mine – you’ll be my prisoner forever! And I shall be yours!’

But did I really say that?

My prisoner …

Yours …

I wonder.

Running and running and running.

Going on and on.

Playing hide and seek and touch and flee day after day after endless summer day…

And your laughter rippling like a breeze across the surface of the grass.

How I loved it when you laughed. It felt so beautiful to hear and to see it. Your laughter. And your eyes lit up so wonderfully. And I felt so happy. Do you remember?

And you?

Yes.

Look …

And you poke your finger at me, a threat, while moulding your features into a whole troupe of grotesque, mocking faces, always laughing and still laughing such laughter that I shall never ever forget: I’m sure.

‘Look at you!’, you say.

‘What a sight you are – as if you’ve been dragged backwards through a hedge!’

And my cheeks burn red as my hands move instinctively to my hair. And it’s true that my hair feels matted and dirty. I feel around with my fingers and manage to pick out a leaf and a piece of twig – as if my hair were made from these things. And when I look down at my clothes I see that they, too, are covered in burrs and sweethearts.

I lift my head and look up at you, coyly, from behind my eyes.

‘Are you jealous, is that it – jealous of all my loves?’

A snort of derision.

‘Ha! Dream on!’

And I am standing beside you: I place my hand in yours.

‘Listen’, I say.

‘I am green and brown and my skin is like bark. And I boast leaves for hair and branches for arms and twigs for fingers. And my roots dig deeply into the depths of the earth. They embrace the enormity of the world with their searching, fibrous tentacles: yet nor do they forget you, in their touch, nor I. And all this because I grow as a tree from the dark earth. And in spirit you must know that I’m a creature of the woods, quite wild and beyond control – so beware!’

I pull some strange faces of my own and embark on a series of peculiar willowy tree-like movements until we’re each bent double in a fit of giggles.

Then for a while we walk.

And as we are walking the grass beneath our feet, dry now from the warmth of the morning, seems so soft and forgiving, like a lush green carpet, that it’s impossible not to slip down into it, rolling ourselves out, bathing in the sun. And we sit there for what feels like a long, delicious age: whispering and laughing and sharing all our secret thoughts and dreams.

Lazily I place a buttercup beneath your chin and try to tickle you with it. I hold it up to the sky where it seems to magnify into a vast golden orb.

And then I lie back: staring out into the sun. And, beyond my squinting, I imagine the sun’s rays arrowing out this way and that like some fiery god drawn out from the dusty pages of an old leather book, well weathered and worn. And I listen: I listen to the sound of your laughter. And then, after a while, to the sound of your breathing. And so we lie here flat upon our backs, feeling heavy in the summer heat, and drawn down ever deeper into the earth. And we’re entirely still as we lie here, as if it’s just the earth itself that is breathing: its breath making our noses tingle as the air flows in and out. And thoughts float gently, quietly, through my mind like the light, wispy clouds passing high above. And I watch the sun as it rolls so slowly across the sky. And I wish that these moments would last forever. It feels so right to be here beside you, so good. My love.

But you begin at last to stir, your body rustling, pushing yourself up upon your elbows.

I watch you.

And you start to pick daisies. I do the same.

And in a few moments we’ve made ourselves two long chains of flowers. One of these I place over your head, adopting what I hope to be a dignified and ceremonious appearance. ‘You shall be my queen!’, I say. ‘And I your king.’

You laugh and look honoured.

I feel around in the grass with my fingers, searching out another daisy until at last I find one that pleases me and gently pick it, its stem held tightly between my finger and thumb. This flower I keep to myself, like a secret. I look at it for a while, as if it possesses some mystery which I cannot understand. This tiny little flower is truly a lovely thing, I think: a lovely, lovely thing. But already I’ve picked it: I’m not sure why. Plucking at the petals one by one. It’s dying. And speaking softly, as if to myself …

She loves me.

She loves me not.

She loves me.

She loves me not.

And then, a little behind my own, I hear your voice, softly resonant, an echo on a summer’s day.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

He loves me.

He loves me not …

And I feel you so close. And our bodies so near.

In my memory.

And it was almost as if we breathed in the same time, at the same time, the same air, sharing the same breath.

And I turn my head and look back at you.

I look into your eyes.

And after a while I say: ‘Your eyes are perfect ovals, like the shape of two leaves.’

But I don’t know why: why speak? And suddenly I feel so tentative, unsteady – as if nervous and confused.

And then, in retreat, as if frightened by the sudden strength of my feelings, I play the fool. And looking again into your eyes, I act as if I’m about to hypnotize you, or else you me: the points of the eyes moving regularly from side to side, in rhythm, swaying back and forth like a metronome. And a battle of wills begins in which we both stare and stare, staring the other into looking away. But you blink first and so lose. It’s silly, but I can’t stop laughing: I laugh for ages. And throw up my eyes, in delight, towards the sky.

‘I feel so happy,’ I tell you.

‘Me too.’

And I’m looking at you. Your eyes. My eyes. And I watch you as you watch me. And I can see myself in your eyes. As you can in mine. Your eyes. My eyes. As in a mirror: our eyes. And I know that it’s only within our eyes, our two sets of eyes, that this feeling, this extraordinary feeling of wonderment, will ever truly be possible. Only within our eyes that we seem to see ourselves fully, as we can be, at best, as really we are. And I wonder at what this means …

The sun, meanwhile, is glittering in your hair and for a moment I’m sure that my hand will burn if I reach out with it to touch you. But I can’t hold back: I can’t resist you. So close. So I reach out my arm and, very gently, I brush my hand through your hair which appears to be changing colour, as I do so, from gold to red to silver to black to brown. And for some reason I’m surprised at the way it feels – as if I’m touching you for the very first time. It feels cool, like water – like running your hand through a mountain stream in summer. And my fingers trickle slowly down your face and then I’m holding you in my arms. Our lips are now touching. And I close my eyes. The touch of your tongue is like a flower held gently between my teeth, gently moving: your taste sweet, as if your breath had somehow condensed in the heat of our love, flowing warming within me, a taste of nectar in my throat. So that at last we kiss. My love. At last.

Do you remember?

Yes.

I remember.

But these are words.

Only words …

Words and words: so few, so many.

And will there ever be enough?

I wonder.

To say what wants to be said.

Crying out, in silence, for a voice …

I doubt it.

And all these old books: there are books literally everywhere.

And looking through them again I rediscovered some of the stories from my childhood.

100 Tales For Children …

This, too, was one of my very favourite books when I was young.

I was surprised to find it: I felt sure I’d thrown it away.

No: I wouldn’t have thrown it away.

But I thought it mislaid.

So many years had passed …

Looking back.

And my parents had just seemed to fade away, further and further, into the background of my life, becoming invisible, dim in the dark distance, remote, forgotten, until, one soon after the other, they disappeared altogether, gone forever. And to clear various household and medical bills, not to mention the cost of their funeral and burial arrangements, it was necessary to sell the family home, and quickly. Not that the house was worth much by that stage. The estate had gone to ruin. And only the desperate, distracted by their circumstances, thought to live there: no one in their right mind would ever do so.

Anyway: I assumed that it was during this period that the book had been mislaid. As if I’d lost it along with my parents, my home, my reason to return, my past … All buried with the dead.

My copy is well-thumbed and tatty looking: an old-fashioned edition bound with hard card and stuffed with thick leafed paper.

And did you once read to me, from its stories, as I drifted slowly into sleep?

But no: not you.

I didn’t know you then.

I didn’t know you.

Did I?

And how could I have done?

No.

It’s not my fault.

It was my mother.

Do you see?

Do you remember?

My dear departed mother.

And there were occasions, thank God, when she spared me the usual nightmarish fare of ghosts and ghouls, spirits of the night, demons of the darkness. These were the evenings when the choice of a story was mine alone.

Tales for Children.

The voice of my mother.

Yet in my imagination it’s you …

I hear you.

So lovely.

That voice.

You said …

Look here at these beautiful drawings.

This one’s the young boy: look at his golden yellow hair …

It was his birthday.

And on his birthday he received a box of twenty-five wonderful tin soldiers, all decked out, as if for a parade, in military caps, a dense black in colour, and with smart matching uniforms of white, red, and blue. And so similar did they look that no one soldier could easily be distinguished from the rest, all his friends in the company, either in terms of his immaculate appearance, or else in view of his bearing, always upright and proud. So close, in fact, was the resemblance between them that the little boy was sure that they were all of them brothers.

Can you imagine?

Look …

He inspected them more closely …

Hang on!

Here was one soldier, at least, who, despite being dressed like the others, was clearly quite different. Look at this picture … It’s of the soldier who is different to the rest. He’s only got one leg, can you see? Still, he’s standing on it proudly: it sets him apart.

And here’s another picture …

He’s alone now on the mantelpiece where the little boy has placed him, a proud and solitary figure. And he’s mesmerized, as he stands there, by the beauty of the little cardboard dancing girl who, from his higher vantage point, he’s noticed immediately, pirouetting on a table in the centre of the room. To the simple tin soldier it looks as if the dancing girl, like him, has only one leg: it’s a thought that pleases him, filling him with hope and courage and a dream of company. But of course her other leg is simply tucked up beneath the full pleats of the soft white dress which she wears when dancing, drawn in at the waist with a golden star. The tin soldier had failed to notice this. His thoughts were too distracted: he’d fallen in love.

‘She is so beautiful’, sighed the soldier. ‘And I should like so very much for her to one day be my wife’.

Then abruptly he was struck by the thought that this pretty little dancing girl, the girl that he loved, looking so exquisite as she rotated in his eyes, playing music in his thoughts, must live in the great big toy castle standing grand and imposing on the table behind her. And this thought shook him violently, forcing him back upon himself, making him reflect not only upon his own current situation, but also on his prospects, such as they were, for the future.

Look: poor man …

His thoughts settled on what passed as his own home: a home which, for a tin soldier on active service was little more, at best, than a humble tin box. And he felt uncomfortable at the thought of his poverty, and withdrew into the shadows of an ugly old tobacco jar, grotesque by his side, as if to hide his sense of shame. And there he stood, alone, with only the dream of a romance for company, a dream which seemed so sad now, in its way. Although he still looked out, secretly, from afar, at the girl that he loved with all his heart, spinning around and around in his thoughts.

Lost in his wistful reflections, the tin soldier himself seemed almost to jump from his uniform in surprise, as a noisy and know it all jack-in-the-box sprang suddenly high into the air, colourful in his belled green and yellow cap, and carrying a small wooden sceptre, like a jester. Immediately he began to mock the tin soldier for his air of devotion.

‘Keep your eyes to yourself!’, he taunted, as he bobbed up and down on his spring, an idiotic grin painted red across his face. ‘I can see you! I can see you! Keep your eyes to yourself! Keep your eyes to yourself!’

The tin soldier felt embarrassed and tried hard to turn his head from the girl who continued to dance alone in front of the castle. Except that he couldn’t: it seemed impossible. And no matter how hard he tried, his eyes were drawn back irresistibly towards her: his focus was on her and on her alone.

The next day, promptly with the full arrival, bright, of the morning, the boy decided to move his one-legged tin soldier, who was now his favourite, from the mantelpiece, where he had stood, alone, all night, to the large white ledge of the window.

But the wind picked up as the day progressed …

And shortly the shutters themselves blew open, leaving the little tin soldier trembling in the cold and longing for the warmth of the fire beneath him, his loved one still in sight. And with these thoughts forming vividly in his mind, precarious although his position already was, he tried, as hard as he could, to hold on. But his grip was not firm and the wind was gusting strong: he could soon feel himself moving, being inched along by the wind, blowing fiercely around the sides of the house. And eventually he could hold on no longer. And as he felt his resistance ebbing inevitably away, his one good leg was suddenly kicked from beneath him, knocking him sideways, face flat upon the sill, from where, a moment later, he was taken up again in another great gust of wind and this time blown out, directly, through the window, falling fast, head first, for what seemed like an age: down and down and down and down. Until at last he hit the ground and stood there, dazed, in the long, wild grass of the garden, feeling suddenly so little and so lost, and telling himself, over and over again as if to shore up his spirits: ‘Be brave! Be brave!’

But then it began to rain, look …

The heavens are opening up above the words!

And on this page, this one here, you can feel that the paper is thick, feel it for yourself, if you like, as if it’s heavy with water …

And here the picture is of the lonely tin soldier, looking wide-eyed and bedraggled, a droplet of rain falling silently, like a tear, from his wind reddened face.

Do you see?

Two ragged young boys, playing truant from school and passing by, furtively, along the path, were the first to spot the tin soldier, lost in the overgrown grass and looking forlorn and unhappy. And immediately they thought they’d have a game: a game at the soldier’s expense. And so they picked him up and carried him off, laughing at his messy appearance and his one stiff leg, damp and stained with mud.

Their first thought was to make him a boat from a sheet of thin paper: they’d launch it in the stream, they agreed, and then watch it as it sailed down towards the river and then away, perhaps, to sea. And the tin soldier struggled to be brave, keeping his eyes to the front and trying hard not to blink, as he listened to the two boys talk, their arms waving around in their excitement, like windmills. But you could see from his face that secretly he was scared. He’d never travelled in a boat before and nor could he swim: he was a soldier, after all, not a sailor. Although he tried to buoy himself up by recalling that, even among sailors, the ability to swim was thought bad luck. So he screwed up his courage and hoped for the best.

Once the boat had been launched in the local stream, beginning quickly to pick up speed, and fanned by the manic waving arms of the two boys, who jeered him goodbye, the thought, vague and watery, loomed large before him, that he’d really no idea of to where he was headed or, similarly, turning with the boat, alone, to face it, of what the future might still hold in store for him. The only thing that seemed unequivocally sure was the sight, now stolen away, of the one-legged dancing girl, standing so lovely in his memory, in her pretty white dress, and his longing, terrible although it was, once more to be near her. And the dull ache of his desire, growing more intense and desperate the further it flowed from its source, became still worse and worse, as the likelihood of his ever seeing her again, even just once, for a moment, appeared increasingly remote. And this was a thought that stretched his endurance intolerably, dangerously weakening it, so that the heaviness of his heart, weighed down with sadness, now seemed too much for him to bear, as if his sorrow itself would be enough to sink him.

And the paper boat, rushing faster and faster through the river, towards the sea, wasn’t strong enough for the powerful currents that forced it along, and soon it was taking in water, its sides dropping low beneath the surface. And the little tin soldier, drawn down towards his own desperate reflection in the liquid mirror sliding swiftly beneath him, began to feel sure that he would drown. And at last he succumbed to what seemed so inevitable, the boat crumpling away beneath him, as suddenly he was plunged, breathless, into the freezing cold water. He fell heavily, like a rock, not even trying to swim. Even if he’d had the skill he still couldn’t have done so, he realized, as his arms, in any case, were cramped to his side, and his one stiff leg was as good as useless: he was sure to die.

But his fate seemed instead still worse than simple death, suddenly taking on the ominous form, as it did, of a gigantic fish which came looming up towards him as he fell, slicing through the water with its long sharp snout, its huge eyes bearing down upon him like two great weights, rippling darkly in the current. Swimming nearer and nearer, it began gradually to open its vast ugly mouth, its long sharp teeth glinting, now and then, in the little light still strong enough to penetrate the water’s murky depths. And then it swallowed him whole in one enormous great gulp, its teeth snapping shut like a trap.

Then an extraordinary series of events occurred, one after another, like a chain of wonders. So that soon after the soldier had been swallowed and, coughing and choking, started to suffocate in the dank, slimy stomach closing slowly around him, the great fat fish, always greedy to gobble up everything in its sight, found itself pierced by a long, sharp hook, dangling unexpectedly from its lip. And this hook was attached to a long line of cord, by which the fish was pulled towards the shore, against its will, by a local fisherman, tugging hard at his catch as he dragged it, writhing, from the sea.

The fisherman, of course, looking forward to telling his friends of his success, was quite delighted by his good fortune. And he looked at his fish with pride: the prize for all his patience. He especially admired its size, and the colour in its markings and their pretty pattern, for a moment coming close to throwing it back to the sea, thinking it a shame for it to die. He let out a sigh, as if reflecting on the harsh cruelties of life, then killed it with a single blow, watching as briefly it twitched in his hands, then slipped through his fingers, dropping down, dead, into his bag.

The fish was taken immediately to the market, from where it was picked out by an elderly lady, kindly natured and rosy-cheeked, who paid for it directly, without even pausing for a moment to try to haggle with the merchant for a bargain. She was the cook at one of the grand, imposing houses which lined the elegant streets of the centre of the town. And, as such, she knew better than to hang around when there was work to be done: so she hurried back to the house with a speed somewhat surprising for her age.

Once she’d settled herself in the kitchen, she scrubbed her hands, set out her utensils, then began directly to prepare the fish, cutting it open, lengthways, with a long, sharp knife. But as she did so, her knife struck something unexpectedly hard, making a slight scraping sound which jarred on her ears, causing her to wince. She really had no choice but to slice around whatever it was, cutting more gently, this time, through the still wet, silvery skin of the freshly caught fish. And, as she did so, she was astonished to find, in amongst the mess of its innards as they sprawled across the table, an object that never in a million years would she have imagined coming tumbling out from the tummy of a fish, like an oracle. It was a tiny toy figure.

‘It looks like a soldier’, the cook thought, a look of astonishment still set upon her face, ‘a little tin soldier like those of the boy’.

‘Quick! Come and look at this!’, she called. ‘I found it in this fish here: it’s a tin soldier with just one leg – imagine it!’

The boy of the house, who liked nothing better than to linger around the kitchen before dinner, watching the cook at her work, and helping her whenever she let him, came quickly at her call and saw at once that what she was holding, tightly, in her hand, was his lost tin soldier. And he cried out in the sudden thrill of the cook’s discovery, ecstatic at being reunited with his favourite toy. ‘It’s mine! It’s mine!’ he called out, again and again, running circles around the cook in his excitement, his eyes open wide with pleasure. And the little tin soldier, too, despite all that he’d been through, now thought himself the luckiest tin soldier in all the whole wide world.

And then the boy, to dry out his courageous little traveller, still drenched from his adventures, during the course of the evening and the night, placed him in the heat of the large, hungry fire that roared noisily in the grate, standing him back upon the mantelpiece as he’d done once already, not so long before. And the happiness of the soldier seemed complete as, from the height of his vantage point, he could warm himself again in the radiant beauty of the one-legged dancing girl who he thought that perhaps he loved, if it were possible, even more now than before, a thought which made his cheeks glow red. And once more, determined not to lose her for a second time, he fixed his eyes, tenderly, upon her.

But as he did so, dreaming that soon he would be standing by her side, a powerful sensation swept swiftly through his body, as if her sight, for a moment, had slipped suddenly across him, like a soft, caressing hand, making him tremble at her touch. And after this one glance, so briefly stolen, the little tin soldier began to gaze at his loved one more intently than ever. And he became sure, after a while, that the beautiful dancing girl, for her part, was looking also at him, a little more furtively, perhaps, less boldly than he himself, but looking nonetheless. And it was only her gaze, he supposed, that made him stand, as if on parade, feeling tall and handsome, so proud in his freshly scrubbed uniform. And his heart, as she watched him, beat faster and faster beneath its metallic material, seeming steadily to expand in the increasing heat, swelling as if fit to burst.

‘She loves me’, he whispered, a broad smile spreading out across his face, the words as if singing in his mind. ‘She really does love me’. And he felt so happy that, for a moment, at least, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

But then, as the little tin soldier kept on looking towards his lover, the two of them caught up in their mutual gaze, lost in their longing, he felt suddenly so strange. His body seemed to get still hotter and hotter, his eyes as if bubbling in his head, boiling with desire. And he began to feel dizzy and faint. ‘It’s just my love that’s making me giddy’, he thought to himself. ‘It’s my love that makes me giddy: it sets me ablaze’.

Although his eyes were clearly watering, and sweat, too, was streaming from his face and body. And he soon felt drenched from head to toe, the ground seeming slippery, his single foot unsteady. And he began to feel sick, his body becoming fluid, as if slipping away from him. And it was as if he were melting: his eyes melting first as, straining still towards his lover, they flowed from his head in a glowing red heat. Until finally he realized that he really had slipped: he really had slipped down from his position on the mantelpiece. And that now he was falling, his beloved too, their look of love seeming to bind them physically, their fate now shared and sealed. And as they continued to fall, rushing headlong into the great fire below, snapping and snarling and so soon to engulf them, they each held their sight still steadily upon the other, their eyes melting together as they burned.

And here’s the final picture.

Would you like to see it?

It’s the following morning. The sweet young boy with the golden yellow hair is standing again at the fireplace. His tear-filled eyes staring empty into the ashes. The fingers of his hands are closed tightly around two small objects. A tiny tin heart, in one hand. And then, in the other, a bright golden star.

Such are my memories.

And it happened so suddenly.

The unthinkable.

My memory …

As if it must be lying.

It must be.

And I lose you.

Your eyes.

My love.

As if lost within the sky.

Falling.

And falling.

And my words.

Falling.

They too are falling …

Droplets of sound and silence, sadness and tears.

And my mouth still moving.

The words still forming, falling …

In my mind, like echoes …

And the words still echoing: echoes of my memory.

Do you remember?

‘Get out of my sight!’

Cut!

And then:

It’s over.

And yes, I love you too: of course I love you.

Always and forever.

I love you.

You said.

I love you.

And I’m reminded of your letters.

I think to search them out: to read them again.

But I know them all by heart.

Already.

Locked away in my memory.

Vivid as a dream.

And in my dream, you said …

I see a vision.

A vision of two white swans: so lovely and so beautiful.

They raise themselves up from the water so that it looks almost as if they’re dancing upon its surface, slow moving, silvery.

And, as they dance, they entwine their necks.

They entwine their necks around and around each other, again and again.

It’s so beautiful.

And so beautiful as to form tears in the eye, cleansing them.

Swans mate for life: did you know that?

And each year they court each other all over again, renew their vows, mate, as if for the very first time …

And as if time becomes sculptural.

A moment.

Still …

‘Don’t ever forget me’, you said.

‘Don’t ever forget me’.

The words, still falling …

And these voices are like echoes.

But it’s in my mind: the noise.

It drives me mad …

Do you see?

I search for signs.

And in my mind I read your letters: walk through your words, once more, in my memory …

Although the words by themselves are not enough.

I don’t think so.

I don’t know.

But I listen as you speak.

And this is what you say …

Listen.

I’d like to write to you in whispers, blowing softly to your ears, to speak to you in kisses and talk in touch. And I’d like to be quiet with you; to lose my tongue within the soft depths of your lips, lost in their lapping murmuring, swept away within a sea of love, and then washed up, still dripping with desire, still wet, into the warmth of your arms, your bright eyes like light, and the slopes and curves of your arms and back like golden sands beneath my body, burning with hot blood.

And I’d like to surround you with tender words: words of my love.

Words that will make you feel warm, keep you company.

Words that I can wrap around your mind.

Words like wishes …

In your sleep.

I can write them in the stillness of the night.

And you can read them in the morning …

And I do read them.

I read them now, in my memory …

I look.

I listen.

I search for signs.

Thank you for opening my eyes.

You said.

Again.

And again and again and again.

I need you to do that.

Thank you for opening my eyes.

As if you woke me in the night …

The darkness.

And thank you too for opening your eyes: and then for keeping your eyes so open, so wide.

Those eyes of yours are quite amazing, I reckon …

As if they see everything and know everything.

And to me they seem infinite.

My God!

When you stand there watching me …

Your eyes so strong, accepting everything.

Patient, waiting …

You are wonderful.

No.

Not wonderful.

There isn’t an adjective in the English language which can properly describe you.

Or your eyes.

Although today I tried.

I did try.

I wrote a poem to your eyes.

For your eyes …

And only for your eyes.

But I’m not going to show it to yet.

I haven’t finished it.

Maybe one day you will read it.

Would you like to?

My dear, sweet love …

Or are you sleeping as I write these words?

And, if you are, are you dreaming?

But these words are coming out in fits and starts …

And I’m sorry for that.

There’s so much I’d like to say …

Your dreams, for example: what are they, my lover?

And will they one day be real …

I wonder.

But I feel so speechless with love!

And you?

And I find it so hard to believe that you’re not just a beautiful dream: an unimaginably beautiful dream. And especially as the reality – my reality, our reality – seems still more wonderful and amazing with each passing day.

But listen to me: I must stop!

Although first let me send you a kiss: a single gentle kiss for each one of your quiet sleeping eyes …

And I open my eyes.

I look up and there you are.

As if love at first sight.

And all the old clichés …

We were every one of them. For those first few years, at least.

It’s true.

And I was captivated by you from the moment that I first set eyes upon you: your eyes took me prisoner.

So that I couldn’t see what was happening.

I was blind.

And lost: the darkness …

And love is always blind.

Or so they say.

Always.

And my precious jewel …

Thank you for the rose.

It still seems perfect.

And the red as if deeper each day …

And our love, too, is perfect like the rose.

And more so …

Don’t you think?

Yes.

And today is a completely beautiful day: I’m feeling really blissfully happy.

I’ve been trying to read a book.

But I can’t stop thinking about you.

Earlier, for example, I was sitting with my hands in my lap. My left hand was resting in my right hand when suddenly my right hand (and then my brain) thought: ‘Goodness! I’m holding someone’s hand: to whom can it belong? I looked down and saw that really it was my own hand, but I was expecting to see and to touch yours …

And I should like very much to feel your fingers once more interlocked in mine.

Or rather …

I want to cover you with millions of kisses on each of your hands.

But not only on your fingers, your hands, but also on each of your closed eyes, on your nose too, and on your toes as well, and on your beautifully strong legs, and to be at home in your arms again, and to watch you as you open your eyes in the morning …

And I’d like to roll over and over in your arms in the earth and the sea and the sky …

And you?

What do you think?

Shall we?

And I’m at a bit of a loss to know what to do with myself, to be honest.

Everything I do and everywhere I go I feel as though you are with me. I feel as though you are with me every second of the day and the night. And it’s the most wonderful feeling imaginable …

Although at the same time it makes it rather difficult to concentrate: impossible, actually!

And the world seems so gloriously strange …

I hope that it’s a bit the same for you, my love.

It certainly should be.

Listen.

In my thoughts I’m with you all the time.

I think about you constantly.

Wondering where you are, what you’re doing …

And it’s as if we’re a circle, you and I, eternally intertwined.

And so that our love seems infinitely large.

But can you understand what I’m stumbling to say?

I want to sink into your arms with a completely open heart …

But I don’t feel vulnerable: I’m only a little bit scared.

Not with you beside me …

My love: shall we hold each other close for the rest of our lives?

I’d like to.

And now that I’ve met you I feel that I shall never again be lonely, not ever …

We’ll marry and have children and live happily ever after …

A thought that makes me dance with delight.

But really …

I’m looking out of the window again.

And laughing.

Daydreaming.

In the autumn the trees begin to undress for the winter.

The branches of the trees are stripped naked, bare as if bathing in the sun.

And the sky looks so clear and blue …

And I feel I could sleep.

I could sleep for a hundred years.

And partly it’s because at times I feel so calm and contented that drifting into sleep seems the most natural thing in the world; and partly because at times I feel so tired, so confused …

Right now, for example, I’m thinking about what you said about how sometimes you find it so difficult to sleep …

Without your love I’ll never sleep …

You said.

But when I go to sleep I can almost feel your nose touching mine and I can almost hear your breathing – but then, if I actually felt and heard these things, I’m sure (right now) that I would never be able to fall asleep. So that either way one of us will suffer from insomnia, I suppose.

But clearly it’s important that we sleep.

And right now I feel so tired …

I certainly don’t feel as if I’m making much sense, at any rate.

Are you managing to follow me, at least?

And I wonder: will you be bothered to follow me in the future?

But what am I saying?

I’m sorry, my sweet …

Forgive me.

And now I can’t sleep either.

But still: I wonder.

And I want to ask you …

If we both reach out our arms towards each other, then lock our hands, we shall always be together, won’t we?

And I know that one day without you in the whole of my future would destroy me.

And I hope that you know that too.

And I hope that you know that.

But …

‘Don’t ever forget me’, you said.

‘Don’t ever forget me’.

The words still falling …

And in my mind I read your letters.

I search for signs.

I look.

I listen …

But how can I begin this letter?

What should I say?

How can I help you, for example, to stop feeling so frightened about the future?

Have you been out today?

Have you seen the deep blue sky: the colour of your eyes?

Have you felt the sun on your face?

Or the wind?

And have you watched the dance of the many coloured leaves, blown around in the air, in the sky?

Or have you heard the birds singing?

Or the trees?

And have you seen yourself lately?

Have you looked down at your beautiful body?

Heard yourself breathing?

Felt the movement of your limbs …

And smiled?

And have you felt my hand in yours?

My arms around you?

Have you felt me carrying you?

Or have you just been working?

Again and again: work, nothing but work.

All work and no play …

Too hard: you work too hard …

You’re always working.

And I know you’d like to write: to find a language for all these songs bubbling away within your soul, these impressions, these visions, this life you live so fully. And I know you’d like to write for me: to offer me something of beauty, a beauty which for some strange reason you’re convinced that I deserve …

But it’s doing you no good: don’t you see that?

You should try to get out, relax, enjoy yourself a bit.

All this work …

If you ask for my opinion, you’re trying too hard …

You complain that you can’t get past the silence, somehow: that the silence seems to stifle your need to sing as if it’s suffocating your breath.

But what can I say?

Can’t you imagine yourself a shopkeeper?

I mean: try to keep regular hours, at least.

Open up your shop at a certain time each morning, work your allotted hours, then close.

And if the customers don’t come: well, you’re still working, aren’t you?

I know, I know.

You must also earn money …

But it’s wearing you out.

Shivering, silent.

And have you thought to seek help?

I mean: you cry so easily, you’re always crying at something or other …

I know that you say that it’s not always the sadness and the ugliness that makes you cry, but also the beauty and the happiness …

But I’m sure it can’t be normal.

And have you ever thought that you might be depressed?

Perhaps a doctor could help you: a course of tablets and maybe you’d be utterly different …

It could help your work too.

But really: you need to do something.

At the moment you’re flogging yourself to death and for what?

You say yourself you’re getting nowhere …

And it will kill you in the end: especially if you keep going as now …

You do know that, don’t you?

It’s going to kill you …

But listen …

Do I sound too stern?

I’m concerned for you, that’s all …

And no: you don’t need to worry.

I still love you, my little Orpheus: of course I still love you.

And I always shall.

And don’t you forget it!

And in fact …

If you open your eyes.

You’ll see I’m standing here beside you.

Waiting.

And I look.

I look again.

I look everywhere …

But this is vertiginous.

There’s too much feeling, too quickly, for myself alone.

And I would like to take you by the hand and dance with you. To circle around you, to move with you, fall, kiss, continue with you always. And with our words.

But at the same time I’m young.

And this seems so serious …

And lately it feels as if we’re going in circles.

As if we’re going precisely nowhere, in fact: I try to be really honest.

And I just don’t know …

You have your work, after all: often I think that it’s all that you think about.

No: I know that’s not quite fair.

But still …

What do I have?

And sometimes I feel so alone …

As if you’re elsewhere.

Absorbed in your work.

Preoccupied with your muses.

And it’s terrible for me: don’t you see?

And I’m alive: I’m something really living …

And I need to live …

Don’t I?

And at times I’d welcome any diversion, any relief …

And I feel as if I need some time: that’s really what I’m saying.

I need time to reflect on what I really want.

And what is it that I really want?

After all, I’m only young …

And this seems so serious.

To get away.

To travel.

Like a breeze.

A whisper in the sky.

And I just don’t know.

And nervously you laugh: I listen to its sound, this laughter.

Do you remember?

Yes: I remember.

And your eyes are like a paradise.

Looking, always looking …

So that the afternoon slips stealthily away into evening and, like a pair of furtive lovers, the sun again runs off with her. The day’s warmth is soon evaporated. And at once the air seems cool – shocking.

We fall into silence as we walk. But not, I think, an awkward silence. We’re just a small part of the summer evening, that’s all. As if we’ve been absorbed into its mood. Calm and quiet. Listening. Waiting.

But was it really summer?

And, if so, which summer was it?

And how young would I have been? Or old?

Or are we back within the present?

The present of those few sweet years.

Ever present.

I forget.

Yet still we keep on walking. No longer together: no. But walking. As then …

Walking on and on until eventually we reach the bench by that great old oak – our customary meeting-place, a favourite tree.

This bench we spoke of as ‘our’ bench. It was our private domain: exclusive to our love.

Do you remember?

And the last time that we met there we just sat silently side by side – like the bookends in that song you liked to sing.

And I ask you:

Do you remember now?

But our hands are no longer touching and our bodies feel for once quite separate: apart. I’m not thinking of anything in particular.

And you?

No.

Just waiting. Listening. Looking.

And only gradually do I become aware of the sly breeze that has started to creep quietly around us. At first it’s a slight numbness around the ears, barely noticeable. But then suddenly it picks up speed, circling around us like a cord, whipping us around and around and around, binding us to the air and cutting at the skin. And the sky itself seems to darken, lowering itself into a heavy watery black: matching our mood. It’s one of those strange summer storms that come from nowhere, bursting forth so suddenly from the sky. Out of the blue.

And I feel anxious. Helpless.

And then …

‘I have to go,’ you say, ‘I have to go’.

You have to go.

You’ve had enough.

That’s all.

And …

‘So when shall I see you?’

‘Soon!’

Your voice is fading.

And then at once you are gone.

Summer to winter.

And I …

Alone.

Walking.

Walking on.

The words like weights …

I drag them with me.

Soon!

Going on: going on and on.

But never again.

Never again: going on …

Do you remember?

Yes.

But still I ask you: must time be always circular?

And after all, it’s only recently that I decided once again to look back: to trace again the haunts of my old home town, like an urchin, a vagabond, passing unrecognized, unknown and utterly forgotten; and yet knowing everyone, knowing everything, knowing all.

But what on earth has brought me back to this old bench?

To here in particular?

And without thinking I get up and start walking.

And I feel, at this precise moment, so old: so terribly old and so terribly lonely.

The loss of my memories …

And I feel sick.

Like a kick in the stomach: a stab in the heart. A knife …

Breathless.

Bleeding.

The cuts: cutting …

Cut!

And yet I keep on walking.

Traipsing on and on.

My memories …

Asking: ‘why?’

And: ‘why?’

And at the same time knowing clearly, all the time, of course, that this is only the beginning: this is only the beginning.

The beginning.

The end.

And as I walk I watch my shadow lengthen. It’s more substantial than I am, I think. More real. And I want so badly to embrace it, to find some solace in its brooding company, some comfort. But as my eyes look down I feel only that my strength and my hope are as if draining away from me, bled of all courage. And I know that I, too, must go away: drawn out irresistibly into this flickering black shadow, beckoning.

I think it my true likeness.

And ask of it, pathetically:

Where are you?

But of course you’ve gone already.

Of course.

But nonetheless I raise my head and look up, for a moment, searching more from habit than conviction, still scanning the skies: hoping.

And I look for your eyes.

Your eyes above all else.

My love.

Your lovely, liquid eyes.

Like an infinity.

Of looking.

Lost.

‘Falling in love’, we called it.

Falling.

And falling.

But now it’s raining again.

And there’s mud on my shoes.

And my memory feels so heavy that I can hardly walk in it.

Listen …

The summer had ended: the autumn for once forgotten.

It was the winter.

I’m sure.

I’m sure of it: I’m certain.

It was definitely the winter.

Do you remember?

Yes.

Yes: I remember.

And I remember the way that your hand reached out for me.

The way that you reach for me now.

And I hold you in my hands.

Your photograph.

The first of many.

How lovely you were.

And in your photograph you are still young. It must have been taken about the time that we first met, I suppose. Young and innocent. Eighteen. Nineteen.

Your eyes are opened wide, eager, excited: bright in the flash of the camera.

And it’s as if you’re looking out into your future. And to reach it sooner you’ve seated yourself close up towards the camera. And your face is full of curiosity, wonderment. Asking …

What will be shown in the light?

But for the moment it’s still unclear, of course: nothing new.

Although even tomorrow will be the past: this moment there already.

It will come …

And so your mouth hesitates to smile: your seriousness might look better, you think.

But it’s the whites of your teeth that betray you.

And your skin seems so pale in black and white.

Although your energy is palpable.

Looking out …

And you seem so well, so happy.

But gently, memory …

Be patient.

Please.

And I hold you in my hands.

And each of these images, these photographs, are like traces: they are signs of a history. A mark, a line, a gathering together of shape: impressions upon time. And I look through them as through the past. So that sometimes they seem like reminders that the future sends back along the lines of time: as if it too needs a past, a memory. Or else the opposite: the past waving frantically towards the future. And gathering up its things, it tries to make sense: the past a vessel in which to travel through time. Like signals to the not yet: for someone or something who may yet be recognized. A person or a moment. A sign you were there. Or had been. Or were going to be, soon.

Remember me!

And I hold you in my hands.

A journey into the future: lights blazing.

It’s like a dream.

These photographs are like dreams in my memory.

And there was a time during which we often stood together, as still as images, both solemn and silly, before a camera. And then we liked to take endless miniature photographs, squashed up together, cheek to cheek, in those tiny booths which sometimes appeared unexpectedly in side streets or else were hidden away in the corner of a supermarket or department store, a train station or an airport. And it seemed like such a source of delight at the time: always very spontaneous and romantic. And we laughed like mad. Do you remember?

Although now I can’t help wondering if perhaps there was a slight edge of desperation to this obsession, as if, in this manic collection of images, we’re wondering who really we are: who are we? As if only our photographs could really capture us together, properly together, I mean, as if a proof to the future that once in the past our paths really had run parallel, that we really had shared our lives together, for a while, at least. And I wonder now if it had somehow been hard, difficult for us to look at each other directly. Perhaps it seemed easier through the mediation of a lens, as in a mirror. But my thoughts are wandering. And I just don’t know.

Anyway.

Our pictures taken, we stood directly outside the booth, right by where the photographs would eventually slide out, to horrify or delight us, jealously guarding this space, our waiting charged with impatience. And the several minutes that it took for the photographs to be developed, our faces slowly forming, somewhere in the heart of this magical box of images, were always interminable – a torture! And we rarely had a normal conversation while we waited, but rather would run around in tight circles, jump up and down, scream and shout, pull funny, grotesque faces, and generally act as children are supposed to, but usually don’t, in fact, only adults being silly.

And when the four square shots did eventually drop down into their little drying tray, we would snatch at them like monkeys, pushing and shoving each other, each hoping to be the first to whisk them away, inspecting them privately, in secret. And whenever I was the first to reach them I looked immediately for your face, and then, only then, afterwards, would I look at myself, and then see myself sat next to you. And you told me once that you did the same: you did exactly the same.

And here I hold you in my hands.

Waiting.

And later on I became wary of cameras.

Once you’d left, I mean.

After you’d gone.

And whenever possible I avoided having my photograph taken.

I feared that I’d somehow disappear in the flash of the camera, my image absent as the film developed, as if I’d never really been there, or as if I’d never really existed in the first place, from the beginning.

And I withdrew into myself.

I became reclusive: remote from the world.

And as if I’d never existed.

And I thought that.

Yes.

But whenever I went out it seemed as if there were always cameras.

In fact it seemed impossible to go out: there were cameras literally everywhere.

Looking: looking out.

And staring at you: staring through you.

The blank gaze: empty, meaningless.

And no one asked permission before they shot you.

Naturally.

And I really hated that.

But …

Don’t get me wrong.

This was more than ludditism.

I was a fucking primitive.

Do you understand?

And it was no wonder that I stayed in my room.

Or else went out either very early.

Or late, in the night.

Sheltered in the darkness.

They’d not catch me unawares.

The bastards.

Running off with my image, slipping away with my soul …

Or what’s left of it, at any rate.

I’m just not sure.

And I feel the same about mirrors.

I say ‘mirrors’ because I find it hard to think of a ‘mirror’ in the singular.

Mirrors, for me, are always plural: they insist, by definition, on multiplying everything.

And yet …

Alone before the mirror.

I ask you:

Are you there?

Are you really there?

And at once you’re two.

At least.

The image appearing to ripple like circles upon water, tracks in the sand.

Like a labyrinth.

And will I be beautiful?

Again I ask you.

Will I be beautiful?

One day.

Perhaps …

And I look at my face.

It’s grotesque.

One eye is larger than the other, the mouth, too, lopsided, slipping away, my face out of all proportion.

And is it art?

Is it art?

I wonder.

And yes.

I’ve agonized endlessly in mirrors.

And in particular when I was young.

But not only then: not by any means.

But also later.

Also now.

And I’m intensely, painfully self-conscious.

Fragile.

Insecure.

Self-loathing.

A death wish a mile wide.

You said these things.

And I think you’re right.

My height, my weight …

My thin, tall body.

‘If you stand sideways no one will see you’.

My mother used to say.

And you too, later on.

I half believed it.

And so quickly I picked up the trick, whenever I heard a negative phrase or expression, said in general terms, I mean, in conversation, for example, or read in a book, heard on the radio, on television, to claim it directly for myself. When others then tried to judge me in these terms they were too late. I’d judged myself already. I’d beaten them to it. So that whatever negative they came up with I felt sure that their negative judgement was not nearly as negative, not even half as negative, a fraction as negative, as my own pre-existing, preformed, judgement of myself. And so I was always the first to damn myself: this was my prerogative. And in so doing, I reasoned, the others could make their own way to hell. They could fuck right off! And this sucked out the sting: cut it out. Or it seemed to at any rate. A little of it, at least. Perhaps.

But still I hated being in company.

And I always had to get away: the sooner the better.

Although fortunately I found alternatives.

And whenever I could, I adopted them.

I became another.

Masks, roles, projections onto bodies: other lives and personalities.

I tried them all.

Becoming like this, like that …

More confident, for example, more assertive.

And at times even bold.

Or reckless.

But this was all artifice.

And it wasn’t really my nature.

Not at all.

By nature I kept myself to myself.

And I still do.

Alone.

Always alone.

As you know.

And I grew to think of myself as a weed.

And I often described myself as such.

I was an unwanted growth.

And it was only a matter of time before I’d be dug up and chucked away.

Or so I thought.

‘Compost as destiny.’

If you like.

But listen …

In a breeze I sway from side to side.

I wave with the air.

And this is what you do when you’re tall and thin.

You’re vulnerable.

One strong gust and you’re gone.

Do you see?

So you’ve really got to move.

And the important thing is just to keep on moving, to keep on going …

And you’ve got to do that all the time.

That’s all.

Going: going on …

And for some I know that it’s the eyes, the face, that sheds some little light upon the life.

My eyes, my face.

But my features were, and remain, thin, hollowed.

The lines around my face awkward, unruly, cut clumsily into the skin.

And they seemed to create shadow.

Tiny pockets of darkness.

Pocks, pockets …

Chiaroscuro.

A play of light and darkness.

And in the mirror seeming more dark than light: more darkness than light.

The patches of milky white skin, for example, pale, bloodless, were as if just left there, blank, to form a contrast to these shadows.

And it’s the light that makes the dark still darker.

And I ask you:

Will I see you in the mirror, my love, at last?

I wonder.

And I look.

I look: you look.

And at once you’re two.

Four.

And we often stood naked before a mirror.

Do you remember?

Side by side.

You and I.

And in fact we do so still now: in one of these photographs, at least.

Let me see …

But the shot has developed badly and we appear as two strange amorphous shapes, pale and blurred.

And you’re holding the camera to your eye as we try to see each other through the layers of glass.

And we looked: we looked at ourselves.

And wondered at the mystery of our nearness.

Ourselves together.

Like two lives running parallel.

But what did it mean: what did it all mean?

I’ve no idea …

But we’d taken a shower.

And the room was damp, full of steam.

Clouds in the eye: a mist, a fog.

I remember.

And I squinted my eyes and pretended that I couldn’t see you, groping in the dark, my hands held out, brushing lightly across the surface of your skin, touching you.

Perhaps I grinned from ear to ear.

Who knows?

And you giggle: laughing as I tickle you.

‘You’re wicked! You’re absolutely wicked!’

You say.

But you’d accepted me, at least, and for the moment I existed.

And this was a beginning.

But …

‘No I’m not.’

I say, laughing myself now, no end to it.

‘Believe me.

I’m not wicked.

I’m light: I’m pure fucking light!’

But someone is dying: someone is dying as I speak.

And in the course of their dying, I ask you:

Will my whole life pass slowly before my eyes?

After all: that’s what they say.

And I wonder.

But my thoughts are still wandering: fragmented, formless.

Listen …

A mirror, propped up erect against the wall, was like a magical door, a portal, opening mysteriously into the self.

But I didn’t want to look: I didn’t want to enter.

It was earlier or later …

Going on.

But then I lost my image.

So that it was like an empty reflection, my image.

The absent watcher.

And like a ghost in the mirror …

Unseen, invisible.

Or else a reflection of nothing.

And I wanted to smash my fists straight into it.

To fracture it into a thousand tiny pieces and myself a thousand cuts…

I wanted blood.

Do you see?

Blood and blood and blood.

And then at last to break through to the surface …

To feel the pain.

And scream.

Do you remember?

Yes.

And sometimes I wish that we’d met both earlier and later than in fact we did.

Later would perhaps have been best.

So that now we live together, happy and contented, settled, getting old, our children almost the age that we were, then, when we first fell in love.

But how quickly time passes when you think about it.

You shouldn’t, I suppose.

At least …

That’s what you always said.

Don’t look back!

Keep close.

That’s all.

And touch me.

My love.

So that then we’ll walk together.

Hand in hand …

And I open my eyes: I look.

And yes.

Yes: I see you.

You were my first and only love.

Yes: yes, of course I see you.

Again and again.

‘Soon!’

And I open my eyes.

And this is still my room.

I can still say that, at least.

But I’m not really here.

It’s clear.

I don’t belong here: I no longer belong in this room.

And it’s as if it doesn’t want me anymore.

As if it’s finished: over.

And shunned, I feel a stranger here: I’m a stranger here now.

And without much success I search for something that I’d recognize.

A desperate longing: a blank, empty space.

And of course I find nothing: I see nothing.

And my eyes are only water as I look.

And the walls of the room seem themselves to turn to liquid: floating away …

But still: these are the songs of my room.

And I sing them now: still now.

Going on …

Do you remember?

Yes.

Yes: I remember.

And I remember the way that your hand reached out for me.

The way that you reach for me now …

The way that you touch me and the way that you hold me tight as if you’ll never let me go …

Laughing, shrieking, screaming …

Don’t let go! Don’t let go!

And the way that you keep on holding me, touching me: my legs, my wrists, my arms, my hands, my face …

And laughing and running and dancing!

We are together – you and I.

Your hand in mine.

‘Jump!’

You say.

‘Jump!’

And at last …

We’re together.

But …

You said to me then that you wished to cry.

And I wonder.

Have you done so by now?

You must.

You see …

And as you cry it will all begin to make sense.

You’ll see this.

And again and again our happiness, together …

You’ll see it all very clearly, I’m sure.

And don’t worry.

After all: there’s perhaps still time.

And perhaps in the future it will happen like this …

We’ll find a way.

Our hands reaching out, touching …

We’ll stroll together, side by side.

And I’ll not look back.

I’ll not look back this time.

And you’ll help me, I know.

You won’t ask me to look.

And then we’ll pass through our tears, beyond them, never stopping …

Until at last we’ll escape.

And then we’ll be free.

We’ll be free again.

Can you imagine?

Like a dream.

And as brief, as fleeting.

Like passing beneath a waterfall.

A waterfall opening out, like gates, to a dream of childhood innocence: a paradise.

And we can see and we can hear and we can feel … everything!

Or so it seems.

I say: I have a voice!

I can sing!

And I am floating free …

I am infinite space.

I am infinite!

My love …

In memory.

And both of us, dizzy with delight, seeming transparent in a blur of movement.

Spinning around and around.

Until I feel so wild.

And like the air.

The wind.

And my eyes are fully open but I’ve lost the sky …

And all I can see are your eyes.

Your lovely, liquid eyes.

Flowing around and around like circle upon circle rippling upon the surface of two watery pools, so deep and so solemn, so beautiful.

And I’m utterly lost in them – your eyes – as if lost in their promise of happiness.

And as if my eyes are about to overflow with their seeing and then finally to see no more: my heart about to burst and die.

But listen.

For the moment, at least, my pulse still speaks of flesh and blood, of life lingering on, but my thoughts are bloody.

Going: going on.

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me … ‘

And someone is dying as I speak.

I hear the sound of his breathing.

And I hear the sound of his slowing heart: beating, still beating.

It’s like a low, aching pulse, drumming in my ears: rhythmic, hypnotic, going on, the blood.

And I clench my fists: clench and then release them, open and then close them.

And a heart must be about this size, I imagine, as I clench my fists closed, as tightly closed as I can make them. The size of a good round stone.

Thumping.

And I think of a stone: bleeding …

Cut!

The words.

Going on and on: bleeding, still bleeding …

And once more I hear the words: once more I hear the sound of the words, once more the sound, these last, dying words. And again I hear them: softly, so softly, like echoes, like the whispering of echoes …

Or a whispering in the blood, a voice, listen …

And I walk.

I can feel myself walking.

And yes: yes of course I remember.

And, as if to make sure, I tell myself stories from my memories, stories as I walk.

I say:

I am, after all, a storyteller …

As if telling myself a story, repeating it again and again as if to thereby gain confidence, to convince myself of its truth.

And I am a singer of songs.

And I must look and I must see and I must love: for these are the skills of the storyteller, of the weaver of the winds – these are the skills of the singer of songs!

But in truth I’m not sure: I’m not sure of anything any more.

And I think only of the absence of your eyes: darkening blind.

And then I feel like such a failure.

Going on: looking back …

But old habits die hard.

And even now I think of stories: stories I’d like still to tell. Old or new, good or bad, no matter. I do it both for practise and for company – half-speaking, half-singing.

Do you hear? Do you hear?

But I am weak now: weakening all the time. And the stories that I recall I can recall only in fragments. Only, at best, in fragments. And how to choose and select: how to order them?

And in any case I’ve still the impression, unsettling, that the most important of these stories remain unspoken, untold, perhaps misplaced – or simply forgotten – in memory. So that what is said seems only a signpost to the unsaid, the silence: highlighting the absence of what has disappeared or been lost or forgotten.

To say the silence: to look upon the lost …

And the stories seem blurred and confused.

And I feel as if my life is being eroded away: eroded away in this strange play of remembering and forgetting, this play of voices, the words like echoes, whisperings in time.

And I’ve little love leftover.

Although still I try: still I try to keep on going.

Going: going on …

To love to sing a little.

To sing to me to you: in memory.

But soft songs now – soft songs to sing a little – soft songs to love to sing – sing softly to me now. Ever so softly. And sing softly: softly now. In memory. My love.

And still I’m remembering: from time to time.

And you: do you remember?

Do you remember still?
Yes.

Yes: I do remember.

Yes of course I still remember.

And I ask you:

How could I ever forget?

And it was like a hint of a dream: a dream of walking on.

Step by step: going, going on.

But I had no choice: don’t you see?

Blind: I had no choice.

And I simply couldn’t turn away: I had to follow you.

And so I kept on walking.

I had no choice.

A corridor, long and narrow, the air heavy, dense.

And I look forward into nothing as I walk: the darkness ahead, black and empty like a void, an abyss.

No thing: no one: no where.

And it’s hell.

Going: going on.

But …

Do you still remember?

And do you remember even now?

Yes.

Yes: I remember.

I remember a dream of walking on.

And with this dream I travel far: it takes me to a land far off, remote, unknown, a land at the limits, the furthest limits, perhaps, of imagination and memory.

And I keep on walking: on and on.

Step by step: step by lonely step.

I have no choice.

And it’s like a dream.

Looking around …

A blurry landscape that hovers uneasily between the familiar and the foreign, between remembering and forgetting.

I am nervous, I suppose.

And I feel aware of everything: as if I am everything.

It’s like an illness.

To experience too acutely …

A heightened sensibility: an empathy stretched dangerously far.

A kind of fever living.

I feel it.

But still I keep on going.

And I will not give up: I cannot.

I have no choice.

So I walk and walk and walk.

Going: going on.

And I’m thinking, as I walk, in terms of distances which are infinite.

As if my wandering will go on forever.

Although at the same time I’m convinced that I’m nearly there: the end is in sight.

A paradox.

And so of course I carry on: for the moment, at least.

Although suddenly the darkness lifts, blinking unexpectedly into light.

And I look around.

I see your eyes.

Open.

Close.

Looking back …

And I’m surrounded once again by a scene of quite staggering beauty. It’s a perfect vision of lakes and mountains. A landscape in the purest and most sublime sense of the word: I look at it as I would a painting, absorbed, spellbound, transported. High, snow-topped mountains tower up towards the sky: and icy mountain water trickles down from their tops in streams. And looking lower, a lower altitude than that of the tops of the mountains and the mountain lakes, I look upon a gentler scene of rolling hills, wrapped warmly in a blanket of ancient forest, and rivers sourced in the heavens and costumed accordingly in rich meadows and pastureland. And the colours are magnificent: as if from an artist’s palette upon which every conceivable shade of blue and green and brown and yellow and red has been ground and tested, mixed and tried, created and applied.

And I gaze: transfixed.

Do you remember?

Yes: I remember.

But …

Looking around, the scene growing familiar, I begin to observe it more closely, to notice more of its detail.

I look up.

And the sky, I think, seems sketchy: oddly sketchy as if it’s been added as an afterthought, painted in swiftly in watercolour with broad, rapid strokes that have left behind patches of untouched white like blotches of nothing, blank and staring, sore on the eyes. And of course this begins to undermine the impact of the picture as a whole, giving it the impression, upon reflection, of a piece unfinished, a work abandoned before completion.

And I begin to feel anxious, unnerved.

But I keep on going: I keep on walking.

And I’ve finally found a path: small and narrow, twisting and turning as if unsure of its direction, I follow it. Although the weather has changed rapidly while I’ve been walking and the wind is picking up and the sky growing black: the scene resembles an earthly paradise no longer. And I wonder about turning around and heading back. Except that I can’t, I know. I have to keep on going: I have no choice.

I walk.

Although soon the narrow path seems entirely to lose its way, shrinking narrower and narrower and in places breaking up, until eventually it’s no more than a muddy winding track the traces of which then disappear completely.

And the walking has become hard, difficult: it’s all uphill and I struggle for my breath.

By chance I raise my head and look up across a valley, deepening to my left.

And only then do I realize.

The sky is turning black not only from the sudden changes in the weather but also from all the smoke hanging heavy in the air.

My eyes begin to sting.

And I look.

Dense funnels of smoke rise up from the trees: already a burning chaos, they are robed in flames, red tongues licking madly at the sky. The forest is on fire and the flames spreading quickly.

And I’m anxious: scared.

But even now I walk.

And listen.

I’ll not give in to panic.

Not yet.

And you?

Going: going on.

So yes: of course I remember the dream.

Perhaps not perfectly: but I do remember it.

And in my dream I keep on walking.

Walking on and on.

I have no choice.

Do you see?

Going on …

And the scene that surrounds me, as I walk, is never settled: it changes constantly.

So that soon the flaming forest is but a distant memory.

And what is real is only movement: the changes in the seasons, the ages, in time.

And for a while I feel it’s autumn.

It’s cooler and the wind strips the trees.

Their leaves, one by one, are plucked: the exposed earth swollen with rain.

But this is not an autumn that exists in time, I realize.

This is an autumn of the mind.

And my thoughts blow restlessly about me.

Nothing is fixed: nothing is settled.

And everything is changing …

It’s like a dream: a dream of long ago.

Do you remember?

Yes: I remember.

And I keep on walking: walking on and on.

A corridor of trees.

I walk through a corridor of trees.

And the canopy overhead blocks out the sky and the trunks form impenetrable walls on either side of me. And I feel like a prisoner, hemmed in by these trees, figures stern and silent like sentries on duty, growing darker and darker, gloomier and gloomier, and seeming ever more harsh and hostile, I’ll not escape them.

Until the light is at last obliterated: the sun blocked out completely.

Blind: this darkness.

And I’m lost: I know.

Although I keep on walking.

Walking on and on.

Step by step: step by lonely step.

I have no choice.

Going: going on.

Do you remember?

Yes: I remember.

A dream of walking on.

But I’m growing weak: I’m tired, exhausted.

And I want it to end: I want it all to end.

I am nervous, I suppose.

Tired and on edge.

And I feel like broken glass: the sound of my shattering is deafening.

But still I hear a voice.

Yes: I’m sure of it.

I hear it.

A voice.

Far off, at first: far away.

So soft, so delicate.

And I hear it as a murmur in my mind, thinking: this is the wind now gently singing, like a soft, tired whispering, trembling in the air, or a voice at the back of the head, a dying echo which I hear only faintly, a memory.

And sing it softly to me now: sing softly.

This song: this singing.

A voice.

I hear it.

But …

It changes.

The sound changes as I listen.

And I change with it.

So that I begin to think that this is not a voice I hear: it is not a voice at all, not really.

It’s a stream: it’s the sound of a stream.

A gently flowing stream: flowing gently towards me.

And I am nervous, I suppose.

I feel confused.

A voice, a stream.

A flowing of water.

Nearer: nearer.

And I ask you:

Is this then my voice?

My voice: running, running away …

It’s like a distant stream: a soft streaming voice from far away, calling out upon the wind, this sound, like song, like singing on the wind, singing to the wind, singing the songs of the wind …

So that everything is changing: everything is movement.

Do you remember?
Yes: I remember.

And still the sound goes on: going on and on.

Growing louder: more intense.

And now I hear it.

A voice: always again a voice.

Or rather voices: there are many.

And I hear them, I hear the sound of voices, so many different voices, all mingled together and sounding one upon another, so that it makes me think of bells, pealing, ringing out, ringing forth, the sounding of bells, the hours.

Tin-tin – tin – tin-tin.

Like a stream of voices.

A thousand different voices.

Louder: louder.

Louder: louder still.

Until at last it’s like a storm.

A storm inside my head.

My head cut open, splitting …

A whirlwind: a tempest.

Like a thousand different voices.

An ocean of sound.

And I’m going mad: I know it.

I’m going mad!

Do you hear?

But listen …

At first I hear laughter.

A scream and a shout.

And then a cry, the sound of crying, crying out, wailing, sobbing, like the sound of falling tears …

And I listen.

I hear it all.

And the sound of voices, all these voices: the sound of so many different voices, all mixed up together and confused, merging each with all the others as if melting altogether, melting, dissolving, flowing, flowing on and on …

A stream of voices: a roaring stream of voices.

Until finally it’s like one vast, great voice: one vast, great voice whose sound is a sort of celestial music, like a song, a song of all that is, the world, flowing on, flowing on and on, flowing on and on and on …

And changing: always changing.

So that everything is changing: everything is movement.

A voice.

Imagine.

But I am nervous, I suppose.

Nervous and confused.

And my ears are ringing: my mind maddened.

It’s like a vast, great voice …

But still I keep on walking.

And you must: you must go on …

A voice: I hear a voice.

Going on and on …

And yes.

Yes I know.

I have no choice.

Do you see?

But then for a moment it’s you: and for a moment it’s the sound of your voice that at last I hear.

Listen.

Waiting.

And how beautiful it sounds, your voice: extraordinary, exquisite.

And I listen, I hear you: I know that you are there.

And it’s like I’ve been living with a ghost: speaking to a spirit, talking with the unknown. Both presence and absence. Going: going on. And all this time …

I listen: I hear you.

Come!

You say.

Come!

And follow: I shall follow.

Step by step: step by lonely step.

Just walking on and on.

And follow: come follow.

I shall always follow you.

And I am feverish, I know: delirious, burning up. And I can feel myself sweating: night sweats dream drowning. And I’m cold and wet and shivering as if I’m up to my knees in water, as if I’ll be submerged, as if I’ll drown in a dream: a dream of the deep sleep sea.

But then again the voices: so many voices in my head.

Crying: come, come follow!

And of course I have no choice.

Do you hear?

And so I walk: I keep on walking.

Although I begin to feel weak, too weak to go on, too weak to go on much further. And I’m weakening, weakening all the time, my legs shaking, trembling, my heart as if beating out of time. And I’m unsteady: unsteady on my feet. But I have to go on: I have to go on. I know.

And yet these voices, the terrible noise of these voices: it’s all too much, don’t you see?

And I feel as if I’m going to topple over at any moment and then that at last I’ll be swept away: swept away in this torrent of voice, overtaken and consumed, lost in it, drowned in it.

The panic in the blood.

And this stream of voices draws nearer: nearer, nearer still.

And soon it will be on top of me, scooping me up in its arms, racing past, overwhelming, flowing on. And I shall be engulfed, swallowed up, I know: these voices …

A deluge of sound.

And at last I turn: I look.

Looking: looking back …

Don’t look!

And yet I hear you: your voice.

That’s what you said.

Do you remember?

Don’t look back!

Although I do look: I do look back.

And it’s then that I think: I’m seeing things, I’m hearing things.

When in truth I see nothing, hear nothing.

As if I’m walking in the depths of silent space.

Looking back: the stars in my mind …

Open.

Closed.

It’s how I see.

And in my mind’s eye I see it coming: at last I see the end.

And at first it arrived in a creeping mist of silence.

But now it’s impatient: it will not wait.

Menacing: malicious.

Look, looking …

Don’t look back!

And it’s a great rush of water surging up behind me, flowing fast.

And the water’s waves, wild and foaming, seem, as I look, to snarl and snap, gnawing and gnashing, angry, ferocious.

And random objects, flotsam and jetsam as if scattered in the sea, float around upon the surface of my sight: trees, bits of old rubbish, cars, furniture, scaffolding, just about anything you can imagine.

And I can also pick out the occasional shape of an animal: cats, dogs, sheep, goats, cows.

And bodies, human bodies: bloated corpses, if you like, bloated corpses bobbing up and down with the movement of the currents like bathers enjoying a lazy evening swim. But not all of them. Some of them look to be waving or pleading, as if they’re still alive, tossed around in the turbulence of the water, flushed out, and drowning.

But in fact they are all of them dead: they are all of them dead already.

Do you see?

And I’m alone.

Alone with the dead: my memories.

But …

Don’t look back!

And I turn to flee.

But I’m weak: I’m weakening all the time.

And I try to run but I can’t: I just don’t have the strength.

And I feel as if everything is slowing down, slowing almost to nothing, in fact, a heart barely beating, that’s all, and a life stretched now to its thinnest extent, thinking: I want to die, I want to die.

And this in itself is a madness: a madness from which I cannot escape, I know.

And still I keep on going.

Going: going on.

And my chest aches: a terrible, aching pain.

And my fitful heart pounds hard as if to burst.

But slowly, I say: beating slowly, my heart.

And my body is burning up …

A voice.

I hear a voice, still speaking.

Listen: try to listen.

And we are all of us searching for oblivion.

We are all of us searching …

And time flows through me but I feel so thin now that it’s as if I’m time myself: looking back …

And for a moment, in imagination, I see myself: my head thrown back and my mouth wide open. It’s frozen like a single shot, a single frame: frozen for all time. As if time has stopped: life held on pause.

But I think:

No.

No: it’s not time that is slowing down.

It’s not time: time continues, keeps going, moves on and then passes, passing silently away.

It’s me.

I decrease: I diminish.

I shrink away.

And I am no one, no where, no more: lost, faceless, forgotten.

Memory: memory.

Be gentle, my memory.

As if I’m slowing: slowing down.

Do you remember?

Yes.

Yes: I remember.

And in fact I drink deeply from my memory: too deeply, perhaps.

Wave upon wave.

And the waters roar behind me: the waves are coming.

And I want to escape, to flee.

I want so desperately for it to end.

To look and be lost: to go on be gone …

And I’m drowning: drowning in words, in memories.

Don’t you see?

Or understand?

But no, not yet: this nightmare’s not yet over.

And instead it closes in.

It closes in and then it continues to close in: closing in on me like an incoming tide, and I cannot escape it, I know, I’ll not escape it, not ever, never, closing in, closing in all around me, like an incoming tide, coming closer, closer in …

A liquid nightmare.

So that whichever way I turn it makes no difference: I turn towards water, water lapping at my toes, my ankles, my knees, taking hold, dragging me down, drowning.

And going: going on.

But I can’t now, I can’t go on: it makes no difference.

The sea, the sea …

And I look, looking: looking lost …

But I can see only the sea: this vast teary sea closing in on every side.

And a voice.

I hear it.

It doesn’t matter.

Looking: looking back.

And for a moment I’m calm: calming, becoming still, my sight, looking out across the sea, looking out, listening.

And the sea itself seems then to cease its restless stirring, to quieten and become calm. And it’s surface is like a light green sheet, a pale jade green, but glossy like bright silk, gently, gently, undulating gently, almost imperceptibly, in time, as if in time with the beating of my heart, faint, so faint, the rhythms of the deep. And this I’ve never before seen, I’m sure: the sea so quiet, a strange, eerie calm, deathly silent, so still, as if mirroring my moods. And it looks now like a mirror, a great sheet of glass, blue, silvery blue, it’s true: a mirror and its reflection, like the sea and the sky, as if one the perfect image of the other, like twins turning face to face. And indeed it seems somehow magical, this sea: like the seas in which I swam during my dreams of childhood.

And do you remember?

Do you really remember?

Waiting.

Yes.

I remember.

Go on …

And at last I can look out across the sea.

Imagine.

I look and I look.

Your eyes …

Your face.

But rather …

No: this is my face, or so at least I think at first.

My face forming upon the surface of the sea as in a mirror.

And I see my eyes: lone eyes.

Looking: always looking …

Don’t look back!

A trick of light, perhaps: exhaustion.

Who knows?

The blood …

But look: listen …

A pair of eyes: a single pair of eyes.

And I’m losing my face, looking back, looking lost …

Slowly.

And soon I’ll disappear, I know.

Going: going on.

And a pair of eyes, a single pair of eyes, eyes floating out upon the surface of the sea …

And this interminable floating: like a dream.

My eyes, floating out …

I make no sense, I know.

And hopeless, it begins to rain.

The sound of rain upon the water, falling like tears.

And my eyes are full of tears, it seems, full of tears at last: watery, watery tears, drowning in water, a sea of tears, a sea of watery, watery tears, floating out, floating away …

And listen:

I’m the tearful king of a tiny, rainy country.

A king of sorts – but powerless.

Silent and forgotten, I’m dumb: inert, meaningless, my wet eyes staring, flowing, washed away, washed away, like a figure of wet clay.

And I can feel myself slipping: my self is slipping.

But still I look: I see.

Looking: always looking.

Looking back …

And your eyes.

Your eyes, my love.

I look again and at last I see your eyes.

Your eyes: your lovely liquid eyes.

And your eyes floating, floating perfectly formed: perfectly formed in my looking, looking back …

And your eyes, at the same time, as if drowning in their depths …

First your pupils, dark, intense, a brushstroke of black, waiting, wanting, then circling out, growing large, spiralling larger, and then longing, still longing, like a shoreless radiance.

So that I see them: your eyes.

Eyes of all colours and none.

Eyes of grey, silver and white, eyes of brown and black, of green and blue.

Like liquid gold in the light of the sun …

Those eyes, those watery, watery eyes.

And I see them: your eyes.

Like a dream: liquid like a dream.

The sea, the sky.

But I’m dizzy, confused.

And I’m weak, weakening: weakening all the time.

My eyes.

Your eyes.

Blurred, fading …

Going: going on.

Going gone.

And of course I’m alone.

Always alone: myself alone.

And my mind is losing its edge.

My mind is losing its edge, I know: its walls are crumbling. And the once strong surfaces of my body appear to weaken, as if to melt, to thaw, slipping away, lost, in a whirlpool of swirling fluid. And it’s darkening, blackening out, as if I’m wading now in shadows, shadows of mind and memory, the formless, darkening waters.

And my heart still beats but only just: a rippling, murmuring heart, I can barely hear it now.

Listening …

Wave upon wave.

And the water seems red in my eyes: a dark, crimson red, like blood, stained with blood as it trickles down the creases and crevices, into the fissures and hollows, along the lines and runnels of my body, this sea my blood …

And I feel now like an island, floating alone upon this blood red sea.

Come!

Come follow!

I hear the voice …

And then I walk: I walk into the sea …

And at once my breath is drowning: I’ve lost my tongue, my tongue of land, my voice, my song.

And the crashing waves are deafening me: I’ll not be heard.

But the voice, my voice, the sound of my voice: still listen …

And I am fading, fluid: lost, like a dream.

But I tell you:

Many waters cannot quench love.

And neither can the floods ever drown it.

And I ask you: I ask you again.

Do you remember, my love?

Do you really remember?

Don’t look!

You said.

Don’t look!

But nothing: only silence.

And for a long while I felt like such a thing would never be permitted: the passing of the years.

And it was like a dream: completion …

Do you remember?

Yes.

But then I think to myself:

How strange that these will be our memories: these snatches of thought, these words that weigh so heavily.

And my remembrance is a burden: I’ve had enough.

As if it’s time now.

The end.

Do you see?

And yet the end must be right: the end must be perfect.

In the end is everything.

Yes: I know.

I’ve heard it said.

But I ask you: how shall I reach it?

And that I do not know.

I am not told.

So gently, memory.

Be patient.

Go on: going on …

Step by step.

Step by lonely step.

And it’s like a journey.

The journeys of my love …

Going on and on.

Far: far away.

Imagine.

And at last I lie still: I lie here still, on the floor, as I do most mornings.

And the sky looks almost white: blank like an empty page.

And I’ve heard it said so often.

Why don’t you write a book?

Write a book, at least.

As if it’s something so easy.

To claim back some meaning from all this mess …

You said so yourself.

And why don’t you finish it?

Why can’t you reach the end?

Or just let me read it?

Now …

Or later.

Do you remember?

But …

My writing seemed at times so slow and so heavy. It was like getting blood from a stone: a stone at the gates of hell. And I could have dedicated years to the banging of my head against walls. I’m sure of it. It would have been a relief, for one thing. And perhaps easier than writing: this deadly contamination of pen and ink, the fingers then twitching nervously, later on, in the darkness of the night, a keyboard, the blank screen drawing you in, inviting you to sleep, but your eyes still wide open, blown up and boggling, maddened by radiation and fatigue.

But still.

I’ve kept going.

And for so many years now I’ve somehow kept on going.

Going: going on …

Like an obsession.

But always very slowly: very slowly and almost mechanically, in fact, adding word to word, linking phrase with phrase, sentence with sentence.

I’ve kept on writing.

Like a figure from a dream.

Writing.

And my words were like tiny particles of matter, so many grains of sand piled high in a man’s hand. And I sifted through them as if peering through the icy blue waters of a river, digging it up, handful by handful, shovel by shovel, checking each grain slowly and carefully, looking for myself, sieving them for gold.

And when I first began to write I fluctuated madly between joy and despair.

But still: it seemed to me then, at that time, that I might reach something solid and lasting.

Words, after all, are so much more constant and reliable than people.

And then they feel real, substantial, in a way that people rarely do.

They were my hope.

But now I’ve changed: I’ve grown so tired.

And the words dried up.

And it’s as if my eyes themselves have become silted up with time and memory. And a lethargy lingers around me like a fog. But it’s a sickening business. And I loathe it like my life: like life itself.

I’ve lost my faith.

I suppose.

My faith.

My confidence.

So that even my words seem out of place.

As if they’re not really mine.

Arriving from here and there.

Always elsewhere.

Mixed up: muddled.

And these voices are like echoes.

And the words as if nothing at all.

As if it’s all a mistake: a terrible mistake.

Going on …

And you were my language.

You.

My love.

My language.

You gave me the strength to work.

And the strength to go on: the courage.

You were my hope.

Except that now you’ve gone: you’ve gone for good.

And I’m left here all alone.

Silent.

Still.

And yet it’s true: it’s true that there were times when almost everyone seemed to be writing – a little book, you could say, for every one of us on the planet. Mostly they were crass, stupid, rather meaningless affairs: so insipid as to be almost instantly forgotten, pointless, like our lives. And lacking significance or purpose, long separated, divorced from its meaning, our world seemed like a world without memory. And endlessly distracted, as we were, as we are, in the play of appearances: this in itself is forgotten.

So we’re lost.

We’re all of us lost.

And I should know.

After all …

It’s my language itself that fails me: it’s my words that are wrong.

These words, my memory …

But hush.

Silence …

Gently, my memory: be patient.

And I rather wish that my eyes would with themselves shut up my thoughts.

But they open to be closed.

Open.

Closed.

And so I try to cover them: I try to cover up my eyes.

I try to cover up my eyes and to stop myself from seeing.

But don’t you see: it’s all in the mind.

It’s like my mother said.

It’s all in the mind.

How deep.

Don’t worry.

But it’s true.

I can imagine it.

And I can see it all stretched out before me.

Straining towards silence …

As if the silence now surrounds me.

And it’s true that the silence has grown loud, deafening, in these past few years.

I see no one.

And hardly speak.

And my words, when I do speak, sound empty.

As if I’ve nothing to say.

Nothing to write.

Nothing.

And if only I could enter fully into the silence.

Or vanish utterly in language.

And I’d like that: I know.

I listen.

And I listen quietly to the sound of my breathing.

But am I the only one who hears it?

I wonder.

And I watch.

I watch.

I watch the world through ghostly eyes.

Wandering in my absence …

A dancer dancing alone in a darkness no one sees …

And this silence speaks only of despair, I know.

And it grips me like a vice.

But to drag myself away seems impossible: quite impossible.

And so it’s as if I’ve found my home in this unhappiness.

It’s as if I’ve found my true home in all this terrible unhappiness.

So that my ending is despair: despair, as from the beginning, my relentless, inevitable undoing.

My primary loyalty.

But try to understand …

Doctors depress me.

I’ll not call a doctor.

No.

Not ever.

Imagine.

But no man is an island.

Do you remember?

That’s what you said.

No man is an island.

And you can’t survive alone.

Or so it seems.

Not now.

Not ever.

But is that really why you left: is that really why you disappeared?

I still don’t know.

This deep despair …

And it floats in the air like ashes: settles like dust.

And it seems to cling to everything that it touches: blacking things out.

But what did you want to see?

Did you want proof?

Proof of my despair?

Look here …

The cuts: the blood.

And I ask you:

Why did you leave, my love?

You could have stayed.

My love.

If you’d wanted.

And I remember.

I remember these words as if I wrote them only yesterday, as if I read them from the page, pursuing them with my eyes, my fingers twitching.

And, muttering to myself, my lifeless tongue a piteous murmur and the words bubbling up by themselves, surfacing of their own accord from somewhere deep within me, I know that someone, somewhere, is dying: someone, somewhere, is dying as I speak.

And I, too, am breaking up.

And my breath is labouring upon my lips …

And someone, somewhere, is dying as I speak.

And the blood is flowing everywhere …

But listen …

Memory does not flick swiftly through the pages of the past.

But slowly: so slowly.

And yet still I can feel it: I can feel that my time is running out.

And running: always running.

I can feel it.

And then the sound of a closing door: slamming shut.

And footsteps.

Footsteps.

Going on and on.

And I ask you: is it not possible to bridge the distance between now and then?

Could I not begin again, for example: begin again from the beginning?

I wonder.

But still a voice: the sound of a voice.

The sound of a voice like whisperings in time: a book of echoes.

Listen …

And how fragile is memory.

Or rather brittle.

Like glass.

And once shattered it rests in shards, in splinters.

Cutting: cutting.

Cutting into the mind.

And does memory remain, memory rest?

Does it remain alive?

For example:

Will these memories last forever?

Lingering, longing memory.

Or will they be forgotten?

Not forgotten, but lost …

I ask you.

And it’s like a dream.

Perhaps.

All this time, all this memory …

It’s like a dream to me now.

Both distant and all that I’ve left.

And I’m left alone with my dream.

Except that a dream is of interest only to the dreamer: this, at least, is clear.

It’s of no interest to others: a purely private obsession.

Don’t you agree?

But still …

You: dear you.

I ask you.

And have you no dreams then of your own?

Forgotten, lost …

I wonder.

And if your answer is no you surprise me.

And what else can I say: what else can I say to you now?

So stop: stop now.

Yes.

That’s what I’ll say.

Stop now.

Don’t go on: going on …

Although you’re right: you’re right, in any case.

It doesn’t amount to much, in the end: a life.

A few thousand words.

Drifting in the air …

And imagine.

My eyes are closed.

And I place a shell to my ear.

I listen.

And I ask you:

Can you hear the sound of the sea?

Or taste the tears, salty, on my tongue?

And the blood: the blood …

My blood flows like a river: my blood is a river.

But blood is not water: the water turned to blood.

Crimson red, gleaming in the darkness like a river, a river of dark light.

And it’s a river of dark light flowing out to the sea.

Singing out in search of a response, I suppose, asking:

But why am I bleeding?

Why am I bleeding?

Cut: cutting …

The blood.

Once more the blood.

And then I ask you:

Does no one even notice that you’ve gone?

And you: at least …

Do you not notice?

As if now you really are forgotten to the past: lost in time.

Looking: looking lost.

And I ask you:

Does really no one now remember: really no one?

A memory.

That’s all.

A memory.

And I throw a stone into the well of my memory: I listen for a sound.

And now I’m listening.

I’m listening still.

And yes.

Yes: I remember.

I remember everything, it seems.

A blessing, a curse.

I remember.

And of course I remember you.

And above all your eyes: your eyes above all.

And I remember your eyes that day: your lovely liquid eyes.

Do you remember?

Blazing out, bright with love.

And like the sun in the morning.

And you seemed so confident and welcoming, light shining everywhere, so that with you it felt like being in the presence of a kind of grace, a kind of grace in which to live, and to live for a while, at least.

And the dawn had seemed a miracle.

And life like a never ending morning.

And you.

There you were.

Growing brighter and brighter.

Alive.

The sun.

Like a figure from a dream.

Do you remember?

And it was almost as if you yourself were my dream: the dream that made me wish for sleep.

And you must understand …

You must really try to understand.

I wanted always to believe in the possibility of love.

Always.

Do you hear?

But not just in its possibility: no, not just in that.

I wanted also to believe in its reality: I wanted above all to believe in the reality of love.

And I wanted love to be true.

The dream to be real.

And this is why I began.

I guess.

I think so: yes.

And now going: going on …

So that I walked towards you.

I walked towards your eyes, your voice …

I would follow.

Come!

You said.

Come and I shall follow.

I shall follow you.

I shall always follow you.

Travelling back and forth, in time, in memory.

In heaven: in hell.

I’ll match you step by step.

Step by lonely step.

Just going on and on: go on …

And follow: come follow …

But the sands of my memory seem to shift and slip in time: the path blurs …

And I look for our footsteps: footsteps that seem to stretch out from me to you.

And then I look up: I look up and then back.

The life the looking and the looking the lost.

And each step singular, solitary.

Going on and on …

And they are fading: my eyes …

I trace their image in the sand.

And while still I scrutinize my sight.

It’s useless: I know.

I cannot see.

And the words are lost.

Going: going on …

And as I walk I feel as if my entire body is weighed down by a sense of extraordinary heaviness. As if time has stayed with me, growing bloated and cumbersome, flabby in the flesh. It’s the horror of all that living – all that looking back – all that memory. I’m sure.

And the fact that you left.

You disappeared.

It was too much for me to bear.

Your leaving …

Love.

Do you see?

And I felt as if I were sinking beneath some enormous weight. As if I were finally to go under: to drown.

And I look.

I look: I see.

And as you tossed your hair behind you it streamed out into the light, a river.

And for seven whole days I sat beside this river.

And I was utterly unkempt: dishevelled, neglected, unwashed.

I did not eat.

I did not drink.

Anxiety and tears were my nourishment.

And I was alone but for time: time was my only and spiteful companion.

And I waited.

I waited.

I watched.

And still I watched.

Again and again.

And I watched your face as it disappeared: floating away from me forever.

A snare, a trap.

In time: in memory.

And that moment in memory endlessly replayed so as to seem at last quite timeless: eternal. As if always in my mind. And that precise moment of parting: that final touch. And I feel it still now as if again I hold your hand.

Do you remember?

And I hold your hand as if we’re scared.

A dark, deathly cinema.

And now we’re both of us trapped: imprisoned. As if confined, alone, forever: unhappy spirits in this ghostly world of memory. And it’s like a world of private torture: a hell of remembering. Don’t you see?

And you must understand …

I only looked to see that you were there: to tell you that I loved you.

And then at once you were gone – just like that!

A fading flickering farewell …

As if vanished in my looking back: the blinking of an eye.

And then nothing.

A blank, arid nightmare.

Going: gone …

Like a lost goodbye.

Do you remember?

But I swear: I swear I didn’t know – I didn’t realize. And what was I supposed to do? What should I have done? Should I have somehow kept hold of my eyes? Is that it? Should I have kept my eyes to myself? Is that what I should have done?

But no: I opened my eyes.

And I opened my eyes at the beginning, that’s all, and ever since I’ve been struggling to see my best: to see well the world. And then I loved the world and sang with all things. Why not? I couldn’t help it …

And then I bathed my eyes in the richness of it all. And it was as if they opened up wider and wider for the love of it: the sheer exuberance of all the wonder. And so my eyes became lost, I suppose: lost in the glory of their looking love.

And that was when I first saw you, my love. And I never meant to fail you. I was looking to love – that’s all. ‘Don’t look back!’, I knew, ‘don’t look back, don’t look back!’ But I was excited and confused, I suppose. ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’ And for a moment I forgot – or was I cursed? And I tried so hard to focus, to concentrate. And you wanted me to look. You wanted me to look back. I remember. Look me in the eyes, you said: why don’t you look me in the eyes? As if eye to eye. But I never wanted to fail you: of course I didn’t. I wanted to love you: to save you. And I never wanted to hurt you with my eyes. And perhaps I really should have just kept them to myself. And I should have kept them forever turned away. Who knows? But then: I looked. And I just looked to love – that’s all. And I looked to love to see your precious eyes. And I wanted to see you alive and well. And so I looked back: I looked to love again. And there you were – for a moment – your lovely liquid eyes. Blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes of the sea and the sky. Those watery, watery eyes. But only for a moment. And then you were gone: gone from me forever …

My blinded memory: looking lost.

My eyes.

And it was like drowning.

Yes: I remember.

It was like drowning.

But …

I ask you: I ask you again.

Do you remember?

Yes: I remember.

After all: I am nothing now but remembering.

And I am only remembering: the memory.

And for the moments that remain I am only living in memory: living memory …

And I am only and always living in memory.

Only memory.

Departed. Dying. Dead.

And the thought of it: the thought of death.

It’s like nothing now.

A blank, arid nightmare.

And your face folding, melting, as if crumpling up into a scream of anguish: your features a contortion of all the pain and anger, the bitterness and the horror.

A silent scream.

But your face was once so beautiful.

Do you remember?

While now it’s hollow and haunted – sucked dry of all its hope and possibility. And it’s as if all life has now been bled from it – leaving only the staring panic and the pale green sickness and the shadows around the cheeks and eyes. And the face now formless in the darkness: this empty screaming darkness. Going down and down. Going on and on.

And I turn my eyes inwards: the colour of my eyes washed out in their whites and now vacant, blind.

My eyes are open or closed.

They are blind or seeing.

It doesn’t matter: it doesn’t really matter anymore.

Not now.

And I see you anyway.

And I keep on seeing you.

And I see you still.

And in a way that’s all I wanted.

I wanted to see you – that’s all.

And I wanted to see you so badly.

As I see you now: my love.

And so I failed you.

And I failed you once again: looking back …

Do you remember?

Yes.

I remember.

And I remember the look of horror in your eyes: your eyes fading away from me into the darkness of my memory, a red blurry tempest of despair, looking back out of love, in memory, in time.

And it was like an act of betrayal, I know: an atrocity of time.

Time that tyrannical changeling, the hidden enemy seen only through its traces in the past: terrible, thieving time with all its secret schemes and manipulations, so subtle, so silent.

And it’s like a cold, evil wind.

Or a snake in the grass.

It’s biting, poisonous.

A stinging pain to steal you away from me forever.

So that again I look back.

And you’re gone.

And a trickster: a liar.

Still now: this moment.

This last moment of looking back …

So that I look back only at the looking back: I look back only at the looking back.

And it’s like a hall of mirrors.

Maddening, my memory.

And so I fail you yet again in looking back.

A curse.

As if I’m cursed to fail you at every single moment: even now in my memory.

And I ask you: how can I look back?

How can I keep on looking back?

And how can I continue to fail you, betray you?

Or how can I not?

But then for me to keep on failing you – to continue failing you again and again – and still to keep on failing you, it seems – to keep on failing you again and again and again – looking back – looking back and always looking back …

And it’s as if there is no escape from time.

Not yet.

Be patient, my memory.

Time is not yet ready: ticking on, ticking on.

And it plays games with us now, I know, I understand: passing too slowly, too painfully.

Time is a torture.

And we struggle, but …

Straining and stretching, it refuses to let me go, it refuses to release me.

Not yet.

But the going on seems so slow: too slow …

As if to slow down on purpose.

Slow: slower …

Slower than ever.

And it’s precisely this that drives me mad: this slowness that sends me insane …

The weight of my body, sinking: sinking beneath some enormous weight. As if I were finally to go under …

And I seem to fall so slowly, in time.

A year, a month, a day.

Trickling through …

Second by second.

Until at last: a last, dying second which seems now to last for all of time, stretching out as if from birth to death, before, beyond.

So that a moment seems in itself like a memory of time.

And memory reduced to just this brief, passing moment.

A moment a memory: passing, in time …

I loved you.

Do you know that?

I loved you.

Looking back …

And I failed you.

I failed you but of course I did not mean to fail you.

Not you: not ever.

The thought destroys me.

I loved you: that’s all. And absolutely: like life itself. My breath, my love.

And so I came for you: I followed and reached out for you.

I was looking to love you, I was looking to love you, I was only looking to love you, I was only, – I – I was only …

I wanted to help: to save you with my love.

That’s all.

But it seems I could not help but respond to the touch of your hand, the feel of your hand in mine. And then your warm breath flowing gently across my neck so that I could not help but feel your nearness …

I was in my element.

With you.

With you so near …

And we were almost to the light: almost in the light.

And I was singing …

Do you remember?

And soon we’d dissolve in love.

Soon: so soon.

As so often before.

Like two currents that merge together to form a pool of intimacy.

And so I looked: I looked to love …

But you wanted that. You wanted me to look at you: I know you did. I remember. You wanted me to turn around and to look at you.

‘Look at me!’, you said.

I’m sure you did: I’m sure you said it.

‘Look at me, look at me! Look at me, my love! And why won’t you look at me? And look me in the eyes!’

And then:

‘Are you ashamed to look at me?

Am I repulsive now?

Is that it?

Or do you not love me, after all?’

And so I turn.

I look.

But …

Don’t look back, don’t look back!

Don’t look, don’t look!

But I looked – looking – looking back.

I looked to see you.

I looked to love.

That’s all.

Do you remember?

Yes.

I remember everything, it seems. So much remembering, what power of memory.

And it’s maddening, this memory: a hell of remembrance.

But still I try to follow.

And I shall follow you always: wherever you go, wherever you are.

I shall follow you always, my love.

Down and down and down and down.

Down into the very darkest pits of hell if needs be.

But I promise …

No more looking back!

And no more the madness.

Going: going on.

And I shall come.

I shall follow.

The moment the memory.

I remember.

And we are like flowers.

This is what I said to you.

Do you remember?

We are like flowers.

Flowers from the earth.

And we reach up to the air like the flowers scattered liberally around our feet.

Sparkling, the sun …

And I watch you singing and dancing.

And …

Blossoming forth from your fingers, the flowers, I think, dance with you, as if listening to your music.

And I watch you as you touch each one.

Gently, memory.

Be gentle.

Breathing in: breathing out.

Each scent is a delight.

And the splashes of different colour are as if you paint them across your vision …

The white stars of the lilies of the valley; daisies white and red; bluebells and bellflowers; golden rod and marigold; eyes bright and butter angels; yellow narcissus; forget me not.

And you touch each one.

The colours in your hands and hair.

The colours in your eyes.

Look at me!

You said.

And I look …

And your eyes are like two sky blue flowers.

They are the hint of a dream.

And I told you:

Lift up your eyes.

Stand up …

And standing upright as if born directly from the ground, rooted in it, we towered into the sky, tall and proud like trees, upright upon the face of the earth.

We began to walk.

And it was like walking in paradise.

Our very own Eden.

And I said:

The dew and the grass, the flowers and the trees, the rivers and the fields, the mountains and the seas – they’re like a chorus of voices combined in glory. And even the sky seems at times to be singing. And it’s a song of light. Of all … As if the entire earth is singing!

So I took you by the hand and with the music of these voices I sang to you.

I sang of love and beauty.

I sang of dance and song itself.

Movement, creativity …

The world.

I sang of you.

And to each song I tried to give a fullness of meaning.

So that as I sang I had, at times, the feeling of coming close, nearer, I mean, to an understanding of shape and structure, the hidden design.

But how can I describe this?

For me it marked the end of difference.

No: not difference. Everything was different, each tiny little detail, gloriously so. Not difference then. But separation: mind and matter, soul and body, the tame and the wild, the animated and the silent still. Crude examples, I know. Words to walk on like a path … And the differences are still there but with each step taken they diminish in importance: no longer obstacles to understanding. It was the end of separation: the end of distance.

Or perhaps I speak of judgment. As if there’d be no more judgment: no more ordering of value. As if all the categories, hierarchies, ranks and stations of the world – in size and stature, worth and meaning – were unnecessary. They could gradually be erased. And each person, each object, each moment in time, were then to be seen as if purely in themselves. And this in itself would be plenty.

So it was of this, then, that I wished to sing.

My eyes, streaming …

And I said:

I can dance with this music!

The movement like floating in the sky …

And I step out.

I step out into the sky as in a dream: walking slowly, one step at a time. Until above and all around me there is nothing but the sky. And it’s like a pale blue wash of possibility. And looking into it I see it for a moment as if entirely clearly, clearly in its entirety: I know, I understand. And it’s as if all is reflected back at me in the sky: like in a mirror. And at once I read its meaning. I can read the meaning in the sky. And at last to sing: to sing its song …

But then: looking down …

Lift your eyes.

I said.

Lift your eyes, my love.

Open wide your eyes and look at me as I am.

Eyes fully opened and face turned upwards towards the sky.

Your eyes are like a paradise.

Your eyes are paradise.

And then you laughed.

But your laughter was different now.

You looked away.

Do you remember?

You looked away.

And true love never runs smoothly: or so they say …

But why?

Why did you look away from me then?

Why did you ever look away?

And run.

You began to run.

Do you remember?

You ran and you ran and you ran.

Why?

Why were you running?

Why were you running, my love?

Running.

Running away.

As if running all the time.

Running.

For life.

For love.

Do you remember?

And tell me.

Was I to look, or not?

Was I to look and not to see?

Is that it?

And what was I supposed to have seen or not seen that was so terrible …

You: my love?

And how could I have known?

Then.

How could I know?

How could I understand?

And blind from the beginning, forbidden to see: should I have torn out my eyes at the start?

Really: I ask you.

I ask you again.

What should I have done?

And …

Tell me!

Why don’t you tell me?

And tell me now …

So tell me, my love: just tell me.

Please: I beg of you.

And a sound in this dreadful screaming silence.

Whispering in my ear.

And I’m going mad: I know.

But this silence will tell me: this silence will surely tell me.

This silence will tell me something.

Surely.

This silence …

Again and again: more, always more.

Deeper, darker …

Going on.

Do you remember?

Yes.

And I remember that day: what a day that was.

The day that you ran from me: stolen in the air.

The day that you were taken.

As if the day the death …

And do you remember the breeze?

The breeze that began so gently, at first: at first it seemed so cool. And it was like a whisper in the sky, nothing more: a sweet sigh the soft wind. A voice in the song. Singing softly the flowers, the trees: swaying gently in the wind. And it was like a lullaby: a dream of gentle movement, listening, a trance. But then the change, the changes: listen always for the changes. And at first so slow, subtle, barely noticeable. Soft and gentle. At first. Assuming nothing. Waiting. So that I thought: I shall float gently upon this wind. I shall dance with it. And feel it in the air …

But I wasn’t thinking.

Not thinking.

Not seeing.

I was as if blinded – drugged. Not even anxious: the fool! And I’d simply no fear, that’s all: I didn’t think to fear the change, do you see? It was just a world taken up upon a breeze, like a dream.

Or so I thought.

But I should have stopped: I should have known.

And then this wind was suddenly a wind of terrible thieving change: icy cold and razor sharp, getting always stronger and stronger. And it was like a slithering seductive chill that rose up from the ground and entered into your bones. It was like a snake in the grass. It was …

And for you it seemed impossible to resist.

That fanged wind: hateful serpent lust.

To bite into your flesh.

To want you: to take you.

And to steal you away: to steal you away from me forever …

Your laughter and your loving, your smiles and songs, all poisoned in my memory.

And then forgotten.

Far away: forever.

And hearing nothing now in the roar of this terrible wind: it’s impossible to go on.

Don’t you see?

And no matter where I turn it seems to rush there before me, this wind: so that everything is blowing around and away in a chaos of violent movement.

And it wants everything, this violence: it’s devouring all.

Although to begin with …

To begin with just those tiny lacerations that we all of us suffer: day in, day out …

But then the cutting, slashing.

Cut, cut: slash.

Cutting: cutting.

My face, my arms, my legs …

Blowing around and away: my thoughts above all, my mind.

So that everything changes in my memory: turned around and upside down.

A chaos of movement …

And the seasons change constantly.

The grass is flattened.

The flowers dying and the trees uprooted.

The river is raging and the plains flooded.

The sea is sobbing and the mountains crying out.

And the time is changing …

And will soon be lost.

Do you remember?

Yes: I remember.

And one day, soon, the grass shall grow from my eyes.

And some day, soon, the grass shall grow from my eyes.

And I’ll be pushing up the daisies.

And your eyes.

I should have seen them.

Lovely, liquid.

I should have known.

That day.

Your eyes …

As if lost to sight: stolen away …

And finally you’d gone, disappeared.

Taken away from me: gone forever.

Missing …

As if you’d dissolved: drowning in the darkness.

A sudden night.

Night eyes – a cold wind – black sun.

And nothing.

Nothing now but memory.

Wintry memory.

And the voices: so many voices.

Like echoes in the silence …

But my eyes grow dim and darken: my face tickled by a tear.

And I cannot find the light: even my failure grows dark.

Dark: darker …

And the past so dark that now it’s hard to see.

And I’m a blur in my memory.

Going on.

But still I say:

Open your eyes.

And I see you.

I see you again.

Once more: only once.

I held your hand.

Do you remember?

Don’t look back!

You said.

Don’t look back!

And then …

Again I’m alone.

But yes.

Yes: I remember you.

In my dreams I still remember you.

And I remember you often in my haunted nightmares.

But listen.

I’m lying flat on my back with my thoughts still loose, wandering: it’s only this present moment which it seems I’ve forgotten in the past.

A moment: a memory.

And I ask again:

Will these memories last forever?

Still upon a point of clarity?

I wonder.

And will they remain, even when I’m gone, vivid, living still?

Still here, for example, in a moment or two from now? An hour, perhaps? Or a day? A week? A month? A year? Forever more … ?

Lingering.

Longing.

Or will they, too, find at last some rest?

I wonder.

And how strange to think these thoughts: these thoughts that now are somehow the remainder of my memories. And the future and the past are both collapsing, collapsing as if the one upon the other: myself caught between them, the blood running thinner, slipping away, like my breath, lost, in time, vanishing in the wind.

The blood.

And the blood as if still running: still running from a thousand tiny cuts.

And I ask you:

Was it really necessary to make so many?

I don’t know, now: I can’t think.

And I’ve no answer to give: none to break the silence.

Perhaps an answer in itself …

A faint, half smile …

As the blood runs …

Trickling out in a thousand narrow rivulets …

Flowing fast …

Running …

And pouring out from my veins.

My arms and legs: my hands and feet.

My ears and nose and throat.

My chest.

My heart.

My eyes.

And the blood bleeding from my eyes.

And looking down …

My body, heavy, in the blood.

And it’s like a great weight falling forever in the darkness: a great weight falling forever in the darkness.

This awful consciousness.

Awake!

And at last: the end.

And I bleed myself dry.

And rising up above the surface of my thoughts, I float there: floating still, for the moment, like an island, an island adrift upon a blood red sea.

Imagine.

And it’s like an island of paradise: waiting.

While the blood, like tears …

And I look.

Looking out.

Asking:

Where are you, my love?

Where are you?

And I listen …

Always I listen …

The voices.

Echoes.

But seeming still so far away, so far …

But don’t look back …

I remember.

Don’t look back!

But I’m weakening: I feel so tired.

And these voices will make me sleep.

Sleep again …

So soon.

The echoes …

And how strange is this music: the silence …

Can you hear it?

And this is my voice: my mouth wide open …

The silence.

And then I open my eyes.

And at last I try to see.

Although my eye itself is bleeding.

I feel it.

And I look up and the sky is blood red.

And the blood …

The blood.

Again and again the blood.

Do you remember?

Yes.

I remember.

Once more the blood.

And I thought I’d never do it: never reach it.

What hell …

Going: going on …

Until at last I hear nothing.

Nothing: only silence.

And the words, in the end, just bled from me.

And how happy I am.

How happy.

“Writing has nothing to do with success; it has to do with lucidity.” (John Berger)

THE WORD

HERE IS WHERE WE MEET

THE SOUND OF HEART

IN THOUGHT, A FACE

AS IF, THE SKY

WE, THE ONE

I THINKS YOU THOUGHTS WE

ONLY THAT, I AM

THIS TOO, MY LOVE, IS YOU

THAT'S ALL

YES TO ALL

THE MIND'S EYE

THERE WHERE THE SUN

THE MOON, BRIGHT

SAKURA

SOMETIMES A NAME

8 NOVEMBER 2016

MY LIFE AS A WORM

LOVE IS BLIND

SONGS OF THE SILK ROAD

ALMATY

NAME CALLING

MY RUSSIAN WINTER

CRANE DANCE

WALKING ON ALONE

SO TO SPEAK

FRIDAY TRAIN

MONDAY TRAIN

KNOCK KNOCK

RUNNING OUT OF TIME

BLOODLINES - SKETCHES TOWARDS A FAMILY

THE VOICE OF BLOOD - EXTRACT

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST – BEDE NIX

ETYMOLOGIES OF A NAME - BEDE NIX

INSPIRATION - BLUE SKY THINKING

NIGHT

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THE VOICE OF BLOOD

“I have nothing to say. And I’m saying it.” (John Cage)