David Hadley's Blog, page 115

Looking, but not Seeing

It was mostly ruins, some overgrown now, but still ruins. There were dips and bumps in the landscape too, amongst the shattered ruins of what had been buildings, graves and other distortions of a landscape. I'd been a farmer long ago, in what now seemed like another lifetime. So, I understood the land and how time shapes it. This was a landscape that had been at war. A landscape ruined by the power of armies to twist, distort and destroy all that stands in their path, including the land.

I was crouching there, at the edge of some ruins, feeling the soil, letting it run through my fingers. Jale was watching me. I could sense some impatience in her, but – as I said – I'd been a farmer and I knew how to wait.

'What's wrong?' she said, glancing around with the eyes of one who used to just looking and not seeing.

'There has been a war here,' I said.

She looked around. 'Here, but there is nothing, just these old ruins.'

I could feel the ash of something more than just wood in my fingers, I scraped at the topsoil and pulled out a bone, the mark of a blade on it.

Jale swallowed as she saw what I held.

'There has been a war,' I repeated as I stood up. 'You know what this means?'

She shook her head. 'No.'

'There will be work here for me. Come.' I walked back to the road and she followed, still looking but not seeing.

Blowing Away the Days

All of this could be written on the wind, here and then gone, blown away like the days are blown away by the unceasing wind of time. You and I, we have stood here on our high hill, watching the valley below as the wind scours everything away, blowing away all those days we shared and stored as memories for the lean times.

We stood here as the rain fell and washed us clean of the dirty city that did so much to tear us apart. Just more discarded humanity left to blow around its streets and alleyways where no place is a home. Merely a refuge from the creatures that haunt the cold city nights, hiding in shadows and stretching the darkness with clawed talons until it devours everything that once lived.

Out here, we have the grass, the trees, the meadow, sweeping down from our high hill. We can see as far as seeing goes to horizons of possibility and the mysteries of what always lies beyond the limits of vision.

Even though the cold winds blow, we have each other and we hold on to this hill, gripped by our rootedness, bending but not breaking. We are like the trees that surround us, learning to live with how the wind behaves and turning each morning to face the new dawn, knowing we held on to each other throughout the long dark winter night.

When the Morning Came

The world looked the same out through her window. At least, that's what I thought at the time. I glanced back, watching her sleeping; spread across her bed, arms spread wide.

I smiled and looked around for what clothes of mine I could find. When we'd got to the bedroom, there wasn't much for either of us to take off. I picked up what I could find and crept out, so not to disturb her.

The landing in the small cottage was narrow and gloomy. I saw my shirt draped over the banister where it had landed when she'd pulled it from me. I picked it up and carried on down the stairs.

About half an hour later, I was dressed and ready.

I didn't know, though, whether I was ready to stay, or to leave. In the past I have done both at one time or another, and regretted doing – or not doing – both.

I thought again about the way she slept, throwing herself across the bed as though she was riding it through some wild dream like a raft tumbling over rapids.

I hesitated, my hand on her doorknob and turned to see her standing naked at the foot of her stairs, watching me.

'Well,' she said. 'Are you going or staying?'

I shrugged, letting my hand fall from the door handle. 'What do you want for breakfast?' I said.

Kitten Theory Revisited

 

As everyone is now aware the existence of the entire universe depends on the quantum fluctuations in the whims of the universe’s kittens. This explains why the strings in string theory often end up in such a quantum entanglement. At least until the kittens go to sleep. Or start chasing a few fundamental particles under the subatomic furniture.

As physicists announced only a few weeks ago, the hunt for the missing dark matter in the universe is now over. They recently found most of the dark matter in the universe underneath the universal fridge where the cosmic kittens lost most of it.

Some physicists are now confident that the rest of the missing dark matter is under the furniture in the cosmic living room. However, some of the more sceptical physicists expect to find more dark matter under the wardrobe in the bedrooms out near the edge of the known universe.

As for why so many black holes exist in the universe, most physicists and astronomers point to the lack of litter trays out in the observable universe and suggest the kittens do need somewhere to go. As we all know, cats do like to dig holes for this purpose. This latest addition to Kitten Theory has subsequently put off many physicists who once claimed we could use black holes as a form of fast - or even instantaneous - travel between parts of the universe. They now say - in the light of this new evidence – such a journey could become somewhat uncomfortable, but may be tenable if people remember to always wipe their feet on leaving the destination black hole.

Not a Morning Person

It was a morning, which was good, considering she'd just got out of bed and was preparing to go to work. Unreasonably, at least to her mind, was the insistence by her office that Shelly should arrive there each day at the start of the working day... in the morning.

Shelly was not a morning person.

She had been married – for a while – to a morning person. Steve had the annoying temerity to not only like getting up in the mornings, he also enjoyed being awake, singing like a star in a big budget musical as he made his smiling way through the early day.

The marriage had not lasted long.

Steve had tried to not like mornings. Shelly could remember him lying there in bed, stiff and awkward ass the birds began their third encore of the dawn chorus, both Steve and the birds keeping Shelly awake and increasingly angry with both of them. Up until then she'd been completely oblivious to the dawn chorus, but once she'd started to notice it.

Steve had to go.

So, he went – last she heard he'd started a farm, which Shelly thought would suit him - while she went back to hating mornings... until she got this job.

Just why everything had to start in the morning, usually at some hour she'd only ever regarded as theoretical, she couldn't understand. No-one liked getting up in the morning – apart from Steve – so she wondered why everyone did it.

Shelly thought there should be some sort of law, but politicians never cared about the things that mattered. So here was Shelly standing in the bathroom as another day – far too early – started around her.

It was only when she looked in the mirror and saw who... what... was standing behind her that she realised that this was going to be one of her very few memorable mornings.

Oblivious Dances

Oblivious Dances

The ancient brooding trees,
once more beginning to bud.
Another year wrapped around themselves
as they watch over all our lives

as brief moments disappearing
before they even notice we live.
And then we are gone, before
they learn or remember our names,

while these hillsides don’t notice us
or the trees, and our brief existences.
Meanwhile, up in the far skies beyond,
the stars continue their oblivious dances.

The Only Secrets Worth Knowing

There was a noise, something moving in the undergrowth. She turned, saw the bracken undulating as though they were the surface of some deep sea disturbed by what swam though it. It looked as though it was big... whatever it was.

Melody turned back to the path, picking up her basket of berries and herb leaves, including the precious leaves the old crone has insisted she get.

The woods looked too dark; forbidding and full of secrets that she would not want to discover. She had always been told never to step off the path, but the crone had laughed, her few remaining teeth dark in the cavern of her mouth.

'The only secrets worth knowing, all of them lie off the path,' Old Beth laughed. 'If no one ever dared step off the well-worn path, none of us would ever learn anything.' The old woman then looked up into the tall young girls eyes. 'If you learn little else from me, young one, remember that. It is only when we go beyond what we know that we ever discover something new.' She hobbled away to her shelf of mysterious potions in dark bottles, jars and jugs. She picked up a green bottle, tightly stoppered, with something indefinable inside it. 'Although,' the old woman turned back. 'It is always possible – if not likely – that we will learn something we never wanted to know.'

Melody, as she hurried back towards the path, was beginning to think that she had discovered – or it had discovered her – one of those things she would rather not know.

She sighed a deep sigh of relief, one more step and she would be back on the path and safe.

The sudden claws struck out, grabbed her ankle and dragged her back into its own deep darkness.

Pandemic Panic

It is a matter of great concern that, despite scientist and medical professionals devoting their lives to solving the problem, humanity is still greatly disfigured by the curse of politics.

However, recently there has been a breakthrough at the School of Political Diseases at the University of Luton. Here, sequencing of human DNA has led to the discovery that all humans carry a gene which, in the words of the leading investigative scientist ‘enables us all - to varying degrees - to talk absolute bollocks.’

Scientists see this discovery as a major key to understanding just how the disease of politics takes hold in a human subject. They believe it also goes someway towards explaining how and why politics is such a virulent communicable disease. For, as we know, it only takes one person spouting some political bollocks for the entire surrounding area to become infected with political ‘opinions’ which they spread like a plague through those without any natural immunity to politics.

Virologists have over recent years become increasingly concerned at the way the political disease spreads itself. This is especially troubling when so many mass outbreaks of the illness spreading rapidly around the world, often using social media as a carrier. For it only takes one person spouting some ill-informed political nostrum or utter bollocks for that outbreak to spread across the country, or - in some cases – around the world.

It is for this reason that worried scientists all cry out for more research funding. All despite the danger they will have to put themselves in when they - through no fault of their own – have to get into close contact with highly infectious politicians to secure more research funds.

We can all only wish them well and hope that one day the deadly curse of politics will be lifted from mankind forever.

The Twisting and Turning Streets

She knew the alleys and the streets. They were her home. She had grown up in the twisting and turning streets as they wove themselves around the buildings. She knew the dark places and the deepest shadows where it was safe to hide and those shadows too where it was definitely not safe to hide. She'd grown up on the streets and so had learnt to survive both the dangers of the days and the dangers of the nights. Otherwise, she would never have grown up at all. Just becoming another of those absences that are sometimes noticed and then - just as quickly -forgotten.

Sheena had no idea who her parents had been, or even how old she was when she'd first found herself out on the streets alone. All she knew was that she learnt to steal, to trick and well, just to survive by herself.

There had been others, other children, at various points, but they had come and gone, most disappearing in the long winter nights as mysteriously as they'd arrived on the streets. To many of the adults of these poorer darker city streets the orphan children were vermin, much like the rats, feral cats and packs of dogs wandering the streets. Just as much trouble and just as easy to dispose of. After all, the river was deep and there was always a hot fire somewhere where bodies could turn to ash.

Sheena was lucky to be alive, fortunate to have survived so long. But now, at the darkest heart of the night, as she made her way around a corner behind the Inn, she was about to make the biggest mistake of her short life.

The Still Point of This Turning World

Well, there you go… unless, of course, you are currently not in motion. Although, quite how you manage that when the rest of the universe is rushing about all over the shop is probably better explained by someone in a more physics-compatible stance than the one I am currently utilising. A posture which more resembles the stance of one caught by surprise next to a chest freezer by a Thomson’s gazelle concerned about the integrity of its vanilla ice cream supplies.

No doubt, it is wise for a creature from such a warm climate to have some concern about whether or not someone is attempting to steal its ice cream. This is especially the case in an area famous for the diversity of its wildlife and especially some of the more rapacious hunters and scavengers… as well as an inordinate amount of TV naturalists. Particularly when the naturalists would be more than eager to capture such dramatic footage of a distraught gazelle standing next to its pillaged freezer.

After all we all – no doubt – remember that award-winning footage narrated by David Attenborough in his last TV wildlife extravaganza. A piece where a herd of zebras returned home from a day’s busy grazing to find their once so neat vegetable racks in complete disarray. Finding no sign whatsoever of the spring cabbage they’d bought only that morning from the Serengeti Tesco.

So, like I said – there you go… unless of course you are at the still point of this turning world. In which case, you won’t.