David Hadley's Blog, page 150

Dreaming of a New Possibility

 

I could have taken her away from here. We could have met as we normally did, as though we were just sneaking away together for one of our times away; one of those times when the work took us off to some other part of the country. This time, though, we would not have come back. We would leave it all behind. Walk out of these lives we live now and into something new.

I like to think – these days – that I would have done it for real. Despite all the problems and the complications, at the time it seemed so tempting.

We used to lie there, in some anonymous bed in some anonymous room, with the warm breezes fluttering the curtains and just talk, plan and scheme; create a new life for us together, far from the messes we’d both made of our lives.

We both spoke of our parents, and their generation, who’d stayed together but grown apart, living lives that only rarely touched. We decided we did not want to be like that. We wanted to walk together, hand-in-hand, across the beach as the sun set, even into our sunset years, growing older and closer as the years passed.

Obviously, though, it was all a dream and there comes a time when you wake up from a dream, no matter how much you would rather stay, there, inside it. The day came, as deep down we knew it always would, when that talk of dreams and plans faded into nothing, faded like a dream, and we found the only thing we had left to say to each other was ‘Good-bye.’

Monday Poem: Sandcastles

Sandcastles

We are here, eager for the morning,
waiting to take the day in our hands
and run with it down to the beach,

to build the sandcastles of our childhood
on the hard sands before the tide of life
comes tumbling in to wash it all away.

When we return to these beaches
as grown-ups there will be no trace
of any of those sandcastles we struggled
to build against the onrush of the tide.

The world around us too, has changed,
the long endless beach is now a small cove
that encloses this small beach so tight.

The sand churned by all the days between
holds no trace of the days we spent here
in those long endless summers of childhood.

The Consequences of Morning

 

Even then, there were so many reasons why we stood at the door of the day, uncertain, unwilling, not wanting to face the morning the day had spread out for us. We had seen mornings before and we knew they could hide so much from us. We knew that out there, beyond the door, the day would be waiting for us, waiting to take those dreams we had found and tended through the dark of the night and rip them from us; to leave them dying in the harsh light of the morning while we stood there unable to escape the cold clarity of the daylight.

We wanted to turn, go back to the warm bed, shrug ourselves deep under its protecting blankets, hold each other close and tend our delicate dreams. We wanted to turn our backs on the day, close the door of the morning and hide inside again.

We knew, though, that - one day - the day would – eventually – drag us out of our hiding place and confront us with all we had done during those dark hours of the night, showing us that nothing we do in this world is consequence free and that those dreams we so carefully tended, of us making a new life together, would – one cold bright day – turn into nightmares that would haunt us forever.

The Times I Made for Her

[image error]

There were times I made just for her. I took her from the bed up at the top of that old house, where she lay each morning in the springtime sun, and brought her down to my room downstairs. She would follow me, eagerly, wanting to see what kind of new world I had made for her down in my workroom.

I would open the door for her and usher her into the gloom of my workroom. It was such a contrast to the high, light room where she spent her days, waiting for moments like this – the times when I summoned her.

In the dark and the flickering of my candles, she would – each time – hesitate before my workbench as I cleared it of papers and books, to give her enough room. Then, she would drop her robe to pool around her feet, before climbing up and kneeling on my bench in front of me.

The shock of my fingers, charged with the possibility of a new world for her, would make her jump, twitch, and shiver as my hand met the flesh of her chin to bring her eyes up to look into mine.

The she would smile back at my smile as I took her into the new world I had made for us to share.

On-Line Bullying and Abuse

[image error] 

In the end, it turned out to not be that important; at least when she realised that nobody really gave that much of a shit one way or another. It was just another of those moral panics whipped up by a media constantly worried about its own increasing lack of relevance in people’s lives, now they can find out from other sources just what was going on in - what people like to assume is - the real world.

Still, it was not the first time anyone had posted an explicit picture of an open tomato ketchup bottle on her supposedly Brown Sauce-only website.

Despite several complaints to the web hosting company and to her ISP, the offensive and – in some cases – full-frontal pictures of the ketchup were not removed and in time there were even – to the shock, horror and outrage of the site’s regular users - blatant mentions of sweet pickle and even piccalilli in the site’s forums.

However, it was only when several newspapers and the BBC’s flagship investigative journalism programme We Don’t Make This Bollocks Up, Honest Guv, got on the case that action was taken by both the ISP and web host and the offending pictures and comments were removed, while the police promised they would some stumble into action against those posting the abuse once they had sorted out a shift pattern that allowed them to only leave the police station in nice weather.

So, all-in-all then, it was another success story in British society’s war on on-line bullying and abuse.

Thursday Poem: Deep into an Unknown Sky

[image error]

Deep into an Unknown Sky

So you let the bird fly
free from an open palm
watching it become a shape,
a speck, and then only empty air,

before we turn away
stepping back out of the silence
of a solemn and significant moment

into the ordinary time
of an ordinary day
where we will go
about ordinary business

in an ordinary way.
Only occasionally
will we pause, to look up
to search the sky

for the traces of a special moment
that took wing from your open hands
to fly into an unknown sky deeper
than we could ever know or understand.

Up and Running

[image error]

Still, even though it was not quite as clear-cut as the - albeit rather skimpy – instructions suggested it ought to be, eventually we got her new device up and running. However, before we had scoured the instruction pamphlet for all the necessary details, it had already diced a carrot, mowed the lawn and updated her Facebook status by providing a photograph of an activity which is – apparently – still illegal in several American states and three European countries as well as being regarded as blasphemous to certain easily-excitable religious folk.

Anyway, once we’d found the relevant paragraph - written in that nearly-English that is now de-rigour for all multi-lingual manuals and instruction leaflets - we discovered that the switch on the bottom of the device did not do what we thought it did.

Anyway, to cut a long story short enough for contemporary attention-spans, after she’d pressed this switch and tried it out on this new setting she was – consequently – walking around with a smile on her face I’d not seen since her sister put on so much more weight than her over a Christmas festive season.

Still, though, I am worried about the cost of the batteries, but then she does keep smiling that smile, so I’m beginning to think it could be worth it, even though we will probably have to put up another garden shed in order to have somewhere to store all these batteries.

After all, I wouldn’t want it to run out and risk her non-smile returning, at least not this side of me being able to afford a one-way ticket out of here.

A New Life Together

[image error]

This shall be the place. This shall be the time. These are times of newness and of beginning. This is the place where a start can be made from these few scraps we find around us.

Here is where our lives can begin again.

We have walked on through so many barren days, leaving our old lives far behind us. We trudged on through this wilderness, searching for some place, some time, we could make our own; a place where beginnings are possible.

Here, there is the silence, the peace we need to begin to build a new life together. Here is where we can find the space, undiluted by all that came before.

We have left our old – separate – lives behind, wandering out here to find a life, a way of living, where we can be together, far away from those old lives.

Even though we sit here and make plans, drawing the future in the dust and on old scraps of paper, still we glance back over our shoulders, knowing that our old lives are out there somewhere, searching for us. We know, too, that one day those old lives will find us and drag us back into their endless nightmare days, far out of the reach of one another.

So, we hold each other close and stare into the flames of our warming fire, looking for portents and signs in the dancing flames, hoping that this place will keep us safe for as long as it can.

Monday Poem: Eye of the Storm

[image error]

Eye of the Storm

The cool warmth of lips that could kiss.
Hair I can tangle my fingers in.
A breast I could rest my head upon,
Feeling the soothing heartbeat
Of one close enough for comfort.

It is easy to lie here together,
Listening to the rain and wind rage
Against the window with curtains closed.

To be the calm in the eye of the storm
Where nothing matters
As much as the next heartbeat.
And the only movement of air
Is the next easeful breath.

The River

[image error]

Jill laughed and broke free from Pete, climbing out of the old building and running off down the sheep track into the dark of the evening. There was a full moon, leaving their clothes behind on the old blanket from his car, Pete chased after Jill’s ghost-like body as she ran. Pete knew exactly where she was going. He sometimes called her his mermaid because they’d met at the local baths early one morning, both there swimming before heading off to work. One of the few things Pete knew about her was her love of water.

Almost at the same moment, he heard the splash from the river and Jill’s yell of surprise. It didn’t seem to matter to her how often she jumped into water; she was always surprised by the temperature of it. Even in the swimming pool she gasped as she entered its heated waters.

Pete paused to pull off his underwear on the bank, ready to dive in after her.

‘Aaagh!’

The scream came just as he had steeled himself for the shock of the cold water.

‘Jill! What’s happened?’ Pete yelled, searching the rough water for a sight of her, but there was nothing there, only the swollen river, tumbling over itself from the heavy rain of the last few weeks out in its middle. Here at the calm edges, though, where he expected to see Jill he could see nothing.

Nothing except….

It looked like dirty foam, as though someone had emptied a massive bubble bath container into the river. As Pete, wondering what the foam was, edged closer to it, he noticed the movement of the foam. At first, he’d assumed the undulations he could see in the foam were caused by the ripples in the river water. Now, he could see it wasn’t that at all….

The foam seemed to be breathing.

Just then he saw Jill, her naked body rising from the water like some creature from mythology. Pete sighed in relief, reaching out his hand to help her from the water.

As he reached towards her, he noticed the strange foam spreading up her legs from the water, the reverse of how the foam should have dripped off her as she rose.

She reached out… took Pete’s hand in a grip far stronger than she’d ever had before, even in the heat of passion. It was then Pete noticed her eyes and the strange undulating light behind them… then he stopped noticing everything as she dragged him back down into the breathing foam.