Monday

Buffalo Cartwright

I’m sitting by the back door, feet up on a pile of old surfboards and wetsuits, a dusty TV and a rocking horse with strangely realistic hair. 10:30 and it’s already a scorcher. All I want to do is put on my boardies, grab a towel and head off down to the beach. But first I have to write. First I have to collect all these barely connected thoughts and lump them into some kind of order, drag these warm buffalo carcasses into a clearing and somehow pile them into a neat pyramid, alone, by myself.
Meg stands in the doorway with an armful of recycling, hair wet from the shower. I have to stand up and get out of the way while she squeezes past me. I roll my eyes and sigh, getting frustrated.
“Sorry” she says. Immediately I feel guilty.
“It’s ok. I just want to get this done.”
I sit back down and read through what I’ve written.
‘There’s something there’, I think. ‘It’s a start at least.’
I’ve started seven times already. There’s a pile of screwed-up paper under my chair. I know what I want to say, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes it’s much easier to write about nothing instead of sweating over these lumps of flesh, these big ideas.
I want to write more about The Kindness; about the idea of promoting altruism, making it cool. I also want to talk about the idea of using the media as a tool for change, starting a web of propaganda to counteract the dumbed-down, ‘come and play, forget about the movement’ culture. I want to write loftily about our responsibility to future generations and the urgent need for change. But, to be honest, all I really want to do is go and play.
Neighbours pass and say hello. A warm wind from the sea rustles in the banana trees. The dogs stand in the doorway, looking out at the sunlight.
“Sit down or piss off.” I tell them. It’s not a command they understand entirely, but they get the message and slope off looking sorry for themselves.
I groan, put down my pen and rub my eyes. Then I take my empty tea cup into the kitchen, flick on the kettle and wander into the living room where Meg’s writing an essay on human rights violations in Australia. I flop down next to her on the couch and rest my head near her feet. She reaches down and strokes my face. I groan again.
“What’s wrong?” She asks.
“Can’t write,” I say.
“Yes you can.”
“Not today. Not very well.”
“Aw,” she says; a sympathetic, distracted sound. “Maybe you should write about something else.”
“I am. I’m doing a short piece about not being able to do a short piece.”
That catchy one-liner perks me up, this trip to the living room has turned into a brilliant material gathering mission.
“It’s hot out there. Maybe you should go for a swim.”
“I just want to get a handle on this first.” I say, biting her toe.
“Maybe you should edit my essay instead.”
I take that as my cue and wander back into the kitchen, make tea and sit down again. Then I roll myself a cigarette.
‘Think lofty,’ I tell myself, ‘think high-brow.’
I light the cigarette. It jiggles in my mouth as I write. One of the dogs comes trotting up, wagging his tail.
“I’ve had a really good idea,” he says. “Let’s go outside!”
I ignore him. He sighs and trots back into the house, his claws clicking on the kitchen floor.
‘Maybe Meg will be more responsive.’ He thinks. Not bloody likely dog.
The sun’s getting really fierce now. The buffalo are starting to smell. Maybe I should get some help. There might be a friendly farmer with a tractor about. Maybe he’ll help me pile these grand ideas together into a tasteful mound of flesh.
I’m not even writing about nothing now. This is getting silly. Lofty, Wil, high-brow.
My friend Kate said: “Why is it that only Gucci and Calvin Klein have sexy advertising? Why can’t libraries and good causes be sexed up?”
“Why not indeed,” I said.
My friend Kate said: “Let’s make the revolution sexy.”
“Let’s,” I said.
I love that idea: Let’s make the revolution sexy. Let’s make kindness sexy. Let’s save the world by making it cool to be a kind, switched-on, conscious, caring, sharing, happy member of society. There’s gold in that. Let’s share it with the right people and together we’ll rid the world of apathetic, dumbed-down, distracted thinking and…
Another neighbour walks by.
“Hot out there,” she says.
“Bloody oath.” I say, engaging the natives in their own parlance. When she’s gone I put down my pen again and groan, rubbing my eyes with the palms of my hands. Look- I’ve moved another buffalo a full three feet into the clearing, but one of its horns is snagged in a root and I can’t seem to budge it. I stand up and wipe the sweat from my forehead. This isn’t working. I’ve been at it for an hour and I’ve achieved next to nothing. I sigh and sit down heavily on the beast’s rib cage. Through the trees I can see the water, dancing and glittering in the sunlight. It’s getting smelly around here. I could really use some help.
I’m a man of perseverance. I fully believe that no task is too great, as long as you’re willing to work your arse off. But I’m not stupid either. I know when I’m beaten. Sometimes the best thing to do is to wait till the heat of the day cools a little, spend a couple of hours chilling and thinking, get some help and tackle the problem later when you’re fresh.
Thus mollified, the gnawing hunger in my guts calms down a little. I strip off my sweaty t-shirt, peel off my blood-stained jeans, socks, pants, boots, and wander naked through the woods. Down by the water I stand, ankle deep, smiling as my toes sink into the mud. I give them a little wriggle, sigh contentedly.
Then I take a deep breath and dive.

Sunday

Erosion

6:00 am, Australian Eastern Time.

In an instant I’m awake, no idea where I am, sitting bolt upright, eyes open. There’s someone sleeping next to me, long brown hair across the pillow, dim light filtered through the curtains.

“Who’s there?”

Somewhere inside me I’m aware of how childlike my voice sounds. The head stirs, turns towards me.

“It’s me Willy.”

A slender arm reaches out.

Of course. Of course it’s you. Of course I’m here.

I groan and fall back, rubbing my eyes. Then I turn and bury my head in warmth and soft skin.

“I didn’t know who you were…” I say to her left breast.

She makes sympathetic, cooing noises, still mostly asleep. I lie there and close my eyes again, my breathing slows, my brain relaxes. Then it begins a slow inventory, catching up with itself: flights, customs, airports, sunlight, heat, Meg in arrivals, Meg in the car… Then the whole hallucinated day plays out: wandering around, confused and sleep deprived, forcing myself to stay awake, to stay lucid, until Australian bedtime.

I’d slept a little on the couch when Meg went out for groceries. Then we lay together and watched TV. When Meg got up to shower I’d talked to Mum, then watched Leo’s short film about climate change.

Until now I’d watched impassively the slideshow of memories, enjoying Meg’s sleeping body next to me, her smell, her slow breathing, but now a darkness seeps in, a slow, engulfing panic. That ten minute movie, its volume too low, pixilated slightly on full screen, plays again inside my skull. The calm, softly spoken warning, the image of Earth perched on the hill, the little people marching towards the power station…

My brain is swamped. I lie cocooned in love and clean sheets, rigid with fear, my breath fast and shallow, shuddering as every new though hits me: We’re running out of time. I’m not doing enough. No one understands how close we are to the edge and I’m not doing enough! I understand what’s happening but all I do is write stupid stories. I should be doing more. I should be blowing up power stations, picking off the CEOs of multinationals. I shouldn’t be here, warm and loved. I should be holed up in a shed somewhere, making pipe bombs, wearing black clothes. The end is coming and all I do is laugh and play and fly in planes and…

“What’s the matter Willy?”

I’m so tense I can’t even answer. I shudder, fight for breath. She pushes herself away from me.

“What’s wrong?”

And I collapse: knees drawn up in foetal position, sucking air in quick gasps, not exhaling,

And then I start to sob.

“What’s wrong?” She sounds alarmed now, frightened.

“I…”, I still can’t even speak.

“I just can’t… I just… can’t.”

“Shhh”. She says, good woman, drapes herself over me, holds my head and rocks. “Shhh now”.

After a while I cry properly, and that feels good.

And then I draw away slightly, just enough to breathe,

And lie there,

And tell her what went wrong.

I tell her how scared I am, how useless and impotent I feel, how the whole Earth’s going to hell in a shitstorm and no one understands. All my words are over-dramatic, my tone is bleak and black.

“It’s useless”, I conclude, “there’s nothing we can do.”

“Oh Willy,” she says, “you’re jet lagged. You know there’s always hope, you’re always saying that. Even if we do all die and kill as much as we can, it’ll all re-evolve”.

“Rats and flies and cockroaches”, I mumble, “I love this green planet. I want it”.

Again I hear myself, how child-like I sound.

“I’m not doing enough.”

“Maybe not,” she says, “but you will. Right now you talk about it, and you write about it. You tell people. You’re a good man and people listen to you. You throw stones and ripples spread out. You know they do.”

“But it’s still not enough.”

“So do more. Talk more, write more.”

“I should be getting involved. I should be acting.”

“So act. Get involved. But don’t get stuck in frustration, and don’t be scared. I know you’re not really scared, anyway. I know it’s just jet-lag. You’re calm and strong. You’re not a bad person. You’re not lazy either. You’re doing what you can and you will do more.”

And softly she strokes my head, and the fear dies away.

I know what I have to do, and she’s right, it doesn’t really scare me. There is hope. Re-evolution isn’t a real consolation, it’s just a back-stop, something to keep the panic at bay. Deep down I know that a change is happening: all the people aren’t all asleep any more. They’re waking up, lots of them, and in the dreamy morning light they’re sitting bolt upright in their beds, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes and asking, in mumbled, childlike voices:

“Who else is here?”

And then they’ll rise like I did,

And cast a little stone,

And the ripples will reach others,

And together we’ll throw bigger stones

Until the ripples become waves

And the waves will peak and roar

And smash upon the granite cliffs

And loosen bigger stones…


www.wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html


Saturday

Road Trip



The waitress plops a crafted wooden object down on our table. "I'm expecting a phone call," she says. "Will you watch it for me?" She smiles and reveals a set of seriously rotted bottom teeth.

The thing she has put down consists of a couple of pieces of wood glued together - a half-round piece about 10 inches long, with two thin rounds glued at either end. Handwritten in marker on it are the words, "Hillbilly cell phone. Instructions: go to the top of the hill and holler. If nobody answers, holler again."

She is waiting to see our reaction. Nicola and I laugh at her joke, but I feel slightly uncomfortable. We are having breakfast in a Waffle House, somewhere off the highway in Arkansas. The yellow sign advertising the Waffle House from the highway turned out to be about as big as the actual restaurant. Any lack of auspiciousness of the venue, however, was made up for by the lovely smiles and warm greetings from all the waitresses as we walked in. They are all wearing t-shirts that proudly announce "Arkansas".

Is it just my insecurity, my self-consciousness of having more means and opportunity, that makes me imagine an edge in her voice, a challenge in her joke, "Go ahead, laugh at us hillbillies, you city slicker." I try extra hard to be friendly and appreciative to the Waffle House staff.

"Where are you kids from?" she asks, as she deposits our plates of eggs.

"New York," Nicola says. With a hint of apology?

As we leave Waffle House, one of the other waitresses opens the door for me. "So you're from New York?" she says. "That's nice." She has none of the edge of the other waitress. She is looking at me with admiration and perhaps a little wistfulness.

"It's ok," I say. "It very big, hectic. None of this nice nature you have down here," and I think what am I doing? "Its good, though," I add. "Lots of energy, lots going on."

"Expensive up there, huh? What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a graphic designer," I say.

"Oh, there's money in that," she says instantly as if that explains everything.

I am perplexed, never having thought of graphic design as something with money in it. "Not so much," I say. "I mean... I guess enough to get by." We smile at each other awkwardly.

"Thanks so much for breakfast," I say.

"Ok, have a good drive," she says.

I drive away from Waffle House contemplating the possibility of not being able to drive away from Waffle House - the invisible barriers of money and class that keep us so well in our place in the world.

Wednesday

And Of These Islands I Am Made

I gather driftwood, dry tinder from the thicker bushes in the ruined garden, gorse from an overhanging cliff, and quickly light a fire. The children stand around and gripe, or ask dumb questions whose answers seem obvious. Some help me gather wood.
We are all damp, wet feet like colourless prunes in our boots, waterproofs heavy and pungent, wood smoke and sweat. I find an old oak fencepost and wedge it against a rock by the fire, hang a ten pint half full of water from it. Then I wander out.
“Where are you going?” One of them asks, head tilted backwards so that he can see me out of his hood.
“I’ll be back in a minute” I say, resting my hand on his head for a second. He doesn’t react. There is a tiredness in everything we do. Five days ago these kids were soft and mollycoddled, now they communicate like cowboys: grunt, shrug, squint, or better still- not at all.
Down onto the soft sand I walk,
and glance behind me only once,
and see with grim satisfaction
that our fire’s smoke is quickly mixed
with the island’s mist
and hangs
and disappears.

I turn left and head anti-clockwise, keeping close to the rocks and overhanging bushes, soon I’m out of sight. ‘Better to move unseen until the tide turns’, I think, ‘until we’re cut off and safe.’
‘Safe from what? Am I so caught up in the game of trespassing and hiding that I actually believe it? Has it become true because they believe it so completely? It was certainly true last night and this morning, in the woods behind the dunes, where the farmer came patrolling with his shotgun. But it’s safe here, and I’m alone now. What does it matter if I’m seen?’
‘Perhaps I misinform myself, because this is my training too, my test. Hippy bootcamp. All the elements of army basic training minus the guns…’
I shrug and wander on.
‘Stop thinking now. Just enjoy the peace and space’.
I find a little cave beneath a clump of ivy, beside a rock pool, and dig a small hole in the muddy sand with my hands. Then I pull off layers of warm, wet clothes and squat over it, watching sand pipers and curlews on the far shore, a heron frozen on one leg, foot curled yellow and dripping, reflected in the water.
When I’m done I wash in the rock pool and refill the hole, drop a rock over the disturbed sand, brush my footprints away. Still in character, still hiding. Then I sit on a rock nearby and roll a small joint, take off my shoes before I light it, hold it in my lips as I tie the laces together, hang them around my neck, roll up waterproof trousers, soggy jeans. Then I light the joint and walk out onto the sand again.
The air is grey and moist, the sand ticks softly, bubbles, little streams fall from the rocks and roots of the island, seabirds call, a crab, a Twix wrapper, a smooth, black piece of wood, the pop of a seed as it burns, the slow calmness as the weed hits my mind.
Half way around the island, where the estuary cuts a deep channel, I climb back onto the rocks and sit a while . A mullet rises, then another. Bait fish flash in the brown water. In the distance the tide is creeping up the mud flats. My stomach grumbles, the ten pint must be boiling by now.
The mullet dart away as I stand and a blackbird cackles in the trees behind me. I walk with my arms outstretched, bare feet, wet rock, my boots bumping against my chest.
I round the last corner and see our footprints stretching across to the mainland, the mess where the kids played stuck in the mud, and follow them along the shore towards the ruined cottage. As I approach their voices rise up through the still air. I groan a little inside, these opportunities to be alone are few and far between, but I’m happy too, and as I turn inland and follow the weed-choked path up to the fire I see them caught in a ring of orange firelight, dirty, happy faces piling pasta onto their plates.
And suddenly I love them, or at least what they’re becoming. We use nature to strip them down, tiredness and exaggerated danger to open them up, and simple things- fire, food, songs, stories, a dry bed- to make them happy.
And in that way we show them that life is not a complex thing, it is survival, simple. It is getting the hard work done so you can play. It is going gently into the night without fear and,
rising in the morning light,
it is running over the soft sand
before the tide turns
and swallows us up again,
footprints,
fire and all.

Night Train (K. Howe)

It is late.

After dinner I bid farewell to my friend Molly and head toward the subway. Down Sixth Avenue to Spring Street, to the C stop. I dislike the C train. It comes infrequently and at this hour I could be waiting for it a good long while.

As I approach the station however, I hear a rumble underground. It seems to be coming from the right direction, and changing in pitch and rhythm, slowing - not an express train that would pass through the station. This could be my C. I start running, thinking, I'll never make it, shit shit shit, I'll be waiting there forever if I don't make that train.

Flap-flap-flap-flap! my flip flops slap the steps as I scramble down the stairs. I can see the open doors as I approach the gates, and think, "ok, goodbye, not gonna make this one."

Miraculously however, the doors linger open. As I scramble through my purse for my ticket, I hear, "Do you have it?" I look up, relieved to find the conductor's window right opposite me. He is looking at me, waiting for me, as paw through the contents of my bag. Where the is my ticket? It is always in a certain pocket, and it is not there. "Do you have it?" he says, encouragingly. Where the fuck is my ticket?? credit cards, business cards, keys, CVS drugstore card. Gum wrappers, lint, lipsticks, post-it notes with a long to-do list. The clean stainless bars stand between me and the open doors of the subway train, not more that six feet away. Still frantically pawing through, I look up at him and him and shake my head.

"Stand clear of the closing doors," he says through his mic to everybody on the train. "Do you have it?" he says through the window to me.

Where the fuck is my goddamn metro card??? Time feels stuck in an impossible way. The doors of a New York Subway train gape open, ghostly light and air-conditioning rolling out, tired people with blank expressions inside. For an unexplained frozen moment, the forward motion of the universe seems to have gotten caught, and everything just hangs like that. The doors don't close and my metro card is nowhere to be found. It feels like an obscene amount of time.

"I'm sorry I can't find it," I say to him, looking up and shaking my head. "Ok," he says. I continue to look, more systematic now, through all the pockets, leafing through notebooks and cards.

The train should have gone, by now, the doors have chimed and closed. But I hear again, "Do you have it?" - one last time he asks. I shake my head sadly, he shakes his head resigned, and out of my peripheral vision I see the train start to pull away.

In my purse, I finally see the magnetic strip of my metro card. In the wrong pocket. I snatch it out and hold it up. "I found it!" I yell. The train is pulling out slowly, and the conductor is still not more than 15 feet from me. He shakes his head. "Its too late," he says.

As I the clear the gates the last of the train pulls out of the station, leaving it empty and echoing. It will be a while before another one comes. I feel like that is the kindest thing anybody has ever done for me.

Over It/I'm Over It Again (K. Howe)

I just stole a roll of toilet paper from the coffee shop downstairs.
‘So this is where I'm at’, I think, ‘is it?’

I've just moved to a new apartment. The movers dumped my boxes however they fell, all piled together in a jumble on the bedroom floor. No room for a bed to be put down. No idea where my tooth brush is. None of it feels like it means much right now. In fact I feel like throwing it all away - stuff is heavy.

It gets worse: Stuff is heavy, but relationships seem light. So light I might have forgotten to pack them into this mess. My new roommate, who I have met only twice before today, feels like possibly the closest person to me. Perhaps slightly less close than the old roommates, who I only just met eight months ago, off Craig's List. Is this really where I'm at? My whole adult life of exploring, meeting, relating, sometimes connecting - where are any of those people? What about the good times, the shared jokes, the shared tears and philosophies? Right now, in this new place, all those ties seem no stronger than airy strands of dew long since evaporated by the summer sun. The sunny summer of 2008.
New York City.
The lightness of friends
weighs heavily.

Unplanting my belongings from the shelves and drawers in which they've taken root seems also to uproot my psyche. The routine of a place, the ability to feel my way to the bathroom in the dark or reach for a coffee mug and know where it will be gives me a sense of context and belonging. Shallow perhaps, but comforting.
Standing in a new street now, as movers grunt and struggle ungently with boxes containing that mug and everything else I own - from the van to the curb, up two flights of narrow stairs, to an ungainly pile in the new bedroom - all the roots, and their comfort, have been pulled out. My main arteries, I know, are strong and will be fine. They’ll soon start to feel their way down into this new apartment/ground/place, but for the moment they are lying exposed in a heap, feeling the pain of all the little, furry capillary roots roughly broken away and left behind as they were extracted.

More than anything, I am very aware of it all: I have moved a lot.

I call my parents and appreciate the fact that they are were they should be. My father chats on about mathematics, about a seminar he's teaching.
“People generally over overestimate the importance of small digits.” He tells me.
And that seems like a metaphor for life.
I half-way tune him out as I cut open a few boxes and tentatively search for my toothbrush, but his voice on the other end of the airwaves brings me comfort.

Untitled (K. Howe)

Funny. My therapist seems fond of saying to me, "You often want to explain how it works." She thinks that I want to explain away the feeling, I think. It might stop me from feeling the feeling, I think she thinks, this inclination of mine toward abstraction.

I want to explain how it works ("it") because I feel like this will help me feel the feeling. I like having a map. If I know I am halfway up the mountain because it says so on the map, and I can tell how big the mountain is, and what lies to the left if I turn that way, and what lies straight up if I keep on persisting, then I am much more likely to say, "my what a gorgeously treacherous mountain this is!" The mountain becomes a tourist destination. Like a roller coaster at an amusement park. Magic Mountain.

I resist these packaged emotions in the culture at large, of course. How trite, I think. Why not experience life, I say. Those people are missing the sublime. I wag my mental finger at them.

And yet, when I find myself caught out on the exposed ragged face of my mountain inside, with thunder and lightening clapping all around, my appreciation for the sublime is no more useful than the soggy, disintegrated scraps of my attempted maps.

We talked about it again recently - why she evades my desire to draw neat maps of my internal wilderness. "Its mainly because you always ask at the end of session," she said.

Rain Don't Never Stop, It Does.

"There's something special about you” Big Gruff says when I’ve finished wiping the wet wooden bench with a beer towel.
I grin and pull the other towel off my shoulder, lay it on the bench, sit down and sip my Guiness.
“You could have got one for the boys too” Ems says, squinting over this cigarette butt.
“I’m an ideas man”, I say, “I’ll show you the way, but I won’t hold your hand.”
For that bit of cheek I earn a paw to the side of the head. These are tough working men, men with big, calloused hands who build stone walls for a living. A friendly push is like most people’s right hook. I dodge most of it and stretch my legs out, sighing in pantomime comfort. The others lean on the low wall and watch me. Big Gruff ducks into the pub, the light and sound from inside loud as the door opens, quiet again. He comes back a moment later with four more beer towels, throws one to each of the other men. They sit back and arrange themselves on the bench, like dogs in the shade of a sunny afternoon, except it’s nearly ten and raining softly.
We’d smoked some of Gruff’s North African hash on the way down, walking through the woods in single file, ground ivy and tall oaks. As the high crept up on me I became suddenly aware of how many times we’d walked that path before, how boyish we were still in our confidence and overgrown pecking order. Boys with kids to feed and mortgages. Boys never the less.
It was strong, that hash, and we’re still stoned now. I guess that’s why we stayed out here, away from the noise and damp warmth of the bar, where we can smoke and watch the rain fall, orange in the street light.
“Who was that German guy who shook my hand when we got here?” I ask, pulling weed and Rizla out of my pocket. There is a pause, someone sighs, someone else spits. No one wants to explain because they think I should already know. They don’t approve of the years I’ve spent away.
“Teddy met him years ago”, Ems says eventually, “He’s a copper.”
The he settles into story telling mode, we settle into listening:
“Teddy and a few of the boys were driving to Berlin in Teddy’s old Ford Fiesta, remember that?”
The lads grunt and murmur appreciation.
“It was a real shit box. A fucking crap heap. They were doing ninety past a school bus on the autobahn. Someone had his arse pressed against the window, cos it was girls on the bus, see? Then this copper pops on his siren, he’s right behind them like, and pulls them over. He walks up to the car, which is full of god knows what and stinking of skunk, with his PPK out and starts his speech. But Teddy gives him the old ‘we’re good Welsh lads’ bit and eventually calms him down and invites him to stay with him in Wales.
Well. They got away with it- you know what Teddy was like- and forgot all about it, except in a few months this German copper and his wife turn up at Teddy’s house. Teddy opens the door like ‘who the fuck are these old farts?’, but they stayed and loved it and they’ve been back every year since. Even came back for the funeral and everything. Mad about Wales they are. He’s even got himself a dragon tattooed on his arm.”
The others nod and smile. I turn to look through the condensation smudged window at the German and his wife, chatting to some locals. The boys start talking about Teddy’s old Ford Fiesta, other cars they’ve known. I sit back and chuckle, lighting the joint I rolled while Ems was telling the story. ‘There’s something special about you lot’, I think, passing the joint to my left and shifting my already numb buttocks to a more comfortable position on the wet bench. ‘Something old and odd and utterly unique’.
And I smile again and sigh contentedly, this time for nobody’s benefit but my own, and the rain falls softly down on us, unheeded, orange in the street light.

This Is Not A Cry For Help

High. Flat on my belly on the edge. Looking down. Spit rolls off my tongue, forms a ball as it falls, swaying in the updraft, out of sight long before it hits the ground. Miles away. So far down it makes my muscles ache, my head throb. What evolutionary use can there be for this instinctive turning to jelly? This weakness in the knees? This swimming brain? Surely it would be better to have more control over myself, not less.

I force myself up, hands and knees, blood metronomic behind my eyes. I want to cower, to cling, to shrink away, but instead I push up and kneel. It's almost completely silent here, no wind, other than a soft rising from the sun-baked valley below. No birds, no planes. A grasshopper now and then, and this droning throb, the thump and sloshing whine of blood inside.
Up. Up and onto my feet. Steady. Straight.
-Now open your eyes. Hadn't noticed they were closed. Relax. If this was just a curb, six inches high… Don’t think, don’t enter the battle to justify this. Just be…

And this is all there is and ever will be: Me and life and death. Here, or anywhere, always the same: A struggle against fear, an endless need to let go and accept that it’s all the same, curbs and cliffs, woods and trees, mountains and molehills. Almost impossible, almost always out of reach, that clarity, until I take one last deep breath, stretch my hands so that warm air dries the sweat upon my palms, between my fingers… and jump, face first, swan dive, arms outstretched, wind suddenly loud and getting louder, a smile on my face.

But Why?

My friend's teenage son came to the house yesterday. He stood in the doorway with his mate. They both have floppy metro-sexual haircuts. His friend wasn't wearing any shoes. There were wet sock marks on the slate where he stood.
"We found a buzzard"
"We think it's dying"
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"Dunno... catch it?"

On the way through the fields I berated the friend for wearing socks with no shoes. I was bare foot. I couldn't find any socks. I kept getting thorns in my feet. When the boys laughed their voice boxes made kind of booming sounds.
We found the buzzard where they'd left it. I wrapped it in an Emirates Airlines blanket and picked it up. It's beak was wide open and it's tongue was stuck out.
"Doesn't look too good does it?"
"Told you"
I put it in the box. It didn't look good in there either.
"What do you want me to do with it now?"
"Dunno... take it home"
"Yeah. We don't want it. We're camping"
I told them what I thought of them and left them in the field.
Back at the house my sister and her sons were picking peas.
"Look at this"
"What is it?"
"Hello uncle Willy"
"Hello Maxy"
"What is it?"
"It's a buzzard in a box"
"Why?"
Dad came over. He'd been clearing and resetting the mouse traps in the pea bed. He had a mouse by the tail.
"Try feeding it this"
We all crowded around the box, six heads looking down at the buzzard. He really didn't look happy. Dad dropped the mouse in. The buzzard just glared at us.
My sister went into the house and came back with a knife and a chopping board.
"Maybe it needs to have cut-up mouse"
She started cutting up the mouse. Her husband stopped the building work he'd been doing and walked over.
"Try skinning it"
Everyone crowded around the mouse. I got some water for the buzzard. Then I tried to feed it a bit of mouse. It still just glared.
"I'm going to put it in the shed"
"Put the blanket over the box"
"OK"

That night I lifted the blanket and opened the box. The buzzard looked much more comfortable. His beak was closed and his tongue no longer stuck out. I closed the box again.

This morning mum and I took the box into the field by the house. It was raining steadily. The sky was gray, black over the mountains. I opened the box and the buzzard stood up. It turned and glared at me again, then it stretched it's winds and flew off. It circled a couple of times, screaming. We shielded our eyes against the rain and watched it fly into the woods.
"That was good" I said to mum.
"Yeah" she said. Then we walked back to the house.

This Ragged Day

It would be sensible to start slowly,

to think first, and then write.

But it's grey out there

and one of our sheep is missing

and I have to find her.

In acres of damp woodland,

young bracken beneath the oaks

raindrops on sagging spider's webs,

tall grass in the paddocks,

ravens in the ragged mist,

drifting about the high places.

Wet rock and the smell of dead leaves.

It would be sensible to find a path

among these rambling lumps of prose,

to form foundations from which to grow,

bones on which to hang flesh,

skin, veins, branches, leaves.

But sometimes a mountain can seem too high

when you look at it form the fields by the sea.

Sometimes it's better to put your head down,

watch your feet a while,

clear your mind of mountain thoughts

or bones

or borrowed meat

and plod

and think of nothing structured.

Until a feeling comes,

a feeling that you've come a little way,

and you can raise your head and look about

at how far you've come,

and how far you have to go.

The cows are smaller than they were

because you are

further away

but the mountain

is closer

and you know what you have to do,

to get to where

you want to go.

The One About The Old Man Dancing

An old man stood on the cliff path, his arms outstretched, the wind in his teeth. He said to the froth below: "If I don't do it myself, someone else will just do it badly."
People passed him and were curious, some were annoyed that the old man was standing there like that; joggers, dog-walkers and sight seers.
When he jumped they gasped, and watched him flap and career, a rhythm of the waves, rushing and dancing like a man half his age.
When he was all cleaned up I passed the place where he stood, and wondered who the tattered, brown flowers were for, and when the rain would stop.