David Hadley's Blog, page 196

They knew they were Free

There were moments when it all seemed to fall together as though there could be some sort of design or purpose to these things. Of course, they knew there was no such thing. The People knew that the universe had no consciousness behind it, no direction and no purpose. They knew that life was for living and there was only one life with no purpose, fate or reason beyond itself.

The People knew they were free.

The People were free from the dead weight of the old gods who grumbled and moaned at a creation that had no need of gods and their attempts to impose themselves into a universe that had no place, or need, for them.

The gods were just stories, old tales from times long gone. The gods themselves weren't any more - if they ever really had been – the heroes of those stories. Their heavens were empty, their hells had gone away and the gods themselves had come face to face with their own irrelevance to a world that had outgrown them.

The People, when they looked up into the sky, saw no gods hiding behind the beards of the clouds, they saw no faces in the moon or divine purpose in the movements of the planets and the stars. The People saw only the sky and how it held infinity more possibilities now that it was no longer held down by the dead hand of those once-mighty gods.

However, the gods decided they would not go quietly… not without a fight.

Ideological Compliance

This is what becomes of those who would throw rainbows at the earnestly correct and eat peas in a manner likely to cause undue distress to the humourlessly obsessive ideologically-involved. Let us not tarry here where the dread dead hand of those who would want to see their own tight correctness burned deep into the acts, actions and deeds of those they would wish to become the compliant drones of such a brave new world.

Let us go, you and I, to a place where all is unequal, unfair and unforced into the narrow, dreariness of such dead politicisation of the personal, the spontaneous, the natural and the real. We have seen how such ideologies, no matter how well intentioned, turn the world into a grey and fearful place, where every glance is a glance of suspicion and every motive is microscopically examined for ideological compliance before even a simple 'good morning' is risked.

Let us live in a land that does not have to live a lie underneath every action and deed and thought, let us instead just dance through our understanding that freedom matters more than anything else and that without it life is no life at all.

Monday Poem: Employment

Employment

I wait here for the slow minutes
to make up their minds and go,
walk on, passing me by.

I sit still, hoping time
will not notice me
and call attention to my idle hands
and how they could be employed

to make yet more useless distractions
to occupy other more restless hands.

I am satisfied within this stillness
and I can live inside this silence.

The world is welcome to pass me by.

Her Very Own World

I remember the way she walked through her days as though the world was there just for her. It was not arrogant or condescending, though, she did not look upon the world as her toy or plaything, or something she could wave away or dismiss with one imperious gesture.

No, she looked upon the world as though it was exposing its wonders to her, just for her. She seems entranced by each day and all that it could offer. She found each day there at the foot of her bed like some luxuriously wrapped birthday present she was eager to open.

I too became one of those presents she unwrapped, sitting cross-legged on her bed as the afternoon sun lit up her room and the summer breeze teased her curtains. I lay there, next to her, on her bed as she looked down at me, holding her long black hair out of her eyes with one hand as she kissed me. She kissed me as though she half-expected me to turn into some handsome prince who would take her by the hand to some kingdom even more magical than this world that seemed only to exist for her.

She took hold of my old leather belt as though it was the ribbon on one of those presents the world left for her to open each day, and she pulled it open. Then she opened my trousers and found that she did – indeed – have something new to play with.

Latest Dining-Out News

There are fads and fashions in dining out as there are in many other fields of human experience. It will be interesting to see if the new trend taking off in metropolitan restaurants is just such a fad, or if it is something that will – once the fuss has died down – become a staple of the eating out experience.

World-famous TV Chef, Slash 'Chainsaw' Massacre, opened his latest restaurant last week. It lies just off the M42 in a quiet rural village. Housed in a converted abattoir, it still contains many of the original machines and devices used in its former role. However, now there is seating for up to 200 patrons, as well as a special function room catering for wedding parties and so forth.

Service is quick and efficient, although patrons should be aware that the restaurant itself is usually fully booked for up to 3 or 4 weeks in advance.

Once seated, diners receive a full menu replete with this season's currently fashionable dishes.

To start, I chose arm of geography teacher, served on a bed of shredded exercise books, garnished with the sauce made from slowly boiled school desks. My dining companion, however, had a much lighter starter of TV comedian's toes barbecued over a hot TV set, served with a sauce made from the ink of rejected sitcom scripts, which she found very toothsome, if a little lacking in humour. My geography teacher, I found cooked to perfection with even the leather elbow patches from his jacket both soft and tender.

For the main course, I chose tender roast accountant pie with shredded VAT receipts. The crust of the pie, made from some of the finest hand-written invoices was light and fluffy, whilst the accountant itself was young and tender with the bitterness of the boiled calculator complimenting it all perfectly.

My dinner guest chose stir-fried media-studies graduate, whose tender un-worked flesh was served in a batter of media-industry delusion and served with a side-dish of TV programme ideas which she felt was somewhat over-boiled and lacking in any real worth.

For dessert, my companion choose the lightest of dishes, some whipped up politician's promises served with the cream of focus group research, which she found both bland and, eventually, completely unsatisfying as it seem to consist mainly of hot air which vanished into nothingness, the further down the dish she ventured.

However, for dessert, I chose streamed TV talent show hopeful, served with what turned out to be a rather sickly over-sugared custard of sob story where the saltiness of the (fake?) tears did little to disguise the general sickliness of the whole experience. It was a somewhat disappointing end to what had – up until then - been a rather enjoyable evening.

The restaurant is recommended, proving that diners exercise some caution over their choice of dessert and do not mind the sound of chainsaws coming from the kitchen every now and then as the evening progresses.

City of the Air

We walked out to the edge together, behind us the city rose out of its base, up into the clear blue of the sky. Below us, we could see the peaks of the snow-capped mountains rising up out of the clouds as the city sailed serene above them. I put my hand out to touch the clear material of the viewing area. It was not glass, it was not plastic, whatever the material was there was a slight vibration to it, barely detectable unless you kept very quiet and very still.

Mia turned from looking out at the clouds below, saying something about how solid they looked, while at the same time so soft, enveloping. I could see what she was hinting at and took my hand away from the clear material – whatever it was – and wrapped my arms around her.

She smiled up at me, her dark skin glowing in the warm light, shining with health. We kissed lightly and smiled into each other's faces. My one hand moved up underneath her loose top, my thumb just brushing the edge of her nipple. We were about to kiss again when we heard the hiss of the door behind us. We separated and stood side by side, each with both hands on the handrail in front of us, and a perceptible gap between our bodies.

Behind us, I could hear the distinctive tread of the boots of the guards, more than one of them. I had a sudden shiver, fearing that perhaps some technician other than me had discovered the security camera above our heads was defective and had repaired it.

"Good evening Citizens," one of the guards said as they came up behind us.

We turned. "Good evening, Sergeant, Private," Mia and I replied almost in unison as all four of us nodded at each other as though we were puppets all controlled by the same string.

Thursday Poem: A Beach for Mornings

A Beach for Mornings

We saw then all the seas we could
and walked along all their long shores.
Each day a beach for our slow mornings
and time the tide that turned again.

Each pebble found became a planet
surrounded by the depths of space
and every shell held a sea and whispered
its secret stories to our ears.

The days came and went like the waves
Some stormy and some calm and there
until the day came for us to turn
back from the sea and make our way

inland to places far from shores
and any seas and all the days
they wash clean  as they flow across
the fresh new beaches of the morning.

These Were the Roads She Walked Down

The past hides around every corner with a vision of what once used to be as she walks back down that road that used to be so familiar to her. Although, now it all seems so much smaller, distances have collapsed, what used to stretch far into the distance is now only a short stroll and what once seemed so high, barely comes up to her shoulder.

These were the roads she walked down every school day from home to the village school, there and back, twice each day. Once they were familiar to her as her own hands, now they are more like the face of someone not seen for years, still the same but time had changed them.

The shape of the roads were still the same, but some of the houses were different, like the lines and wrinkles of age on that once familiar face. Some of the houses had changed, new windows, doors paint schemes, extensions, renovations and improvement. Some of the gardens she passed had altered too, new trees, older bigger trees and so on. Whatever had changed, though, it was still the same place and she now was no longer Jennifer, she was Jenny again and she almost had to stop herself from skipping down the lane and ripping the heads off the dandelions as she passed by them.

On the Edge of Our Lives

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I step through this door and find myself standing on the edge of our lives. I do not know which way to go from here. For too long now, all my steps have been taken alongside hers, and now I find myself standing alone in this house we shared for so long.

The last steps I took from here were alongside her stretcher as they hurried her to the ambulance, and now I walk back alone. I look down and find I'm still clutching her balled up cardigan in my hand. Now, though, it is stiff with her dried blood. I go to put it down on the hall table as I shuffle past it, hearing her voice sharp in my ear warning me not to put it there. We shared this house for so long, but they were always her rules we lived by, her rules for living and a place for everything. Dirty washing should go in the laundry basket. I ought to know that by now.

Then I stop, and realise, that her rules no longer apply, that I will no longer have to live by her rules. My feeling of freedom is short-lived though when I allow myself to realise that only too soon I will be living by someone else's rules yet again, when the police come to take me away for what I did to her when I just couldn't take any more of her rules.

Pigeons

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[….]

'I think you may be right,' I said. 'But I don't really feel any connection with what I'm doing any more, there's none of that intensity of experience I was expecting from university. I used to think literature really mattered, was really important. But who really cares about T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and all the others, apart from a handful of specialists? I don't think knowing about them is going to help me much. I just feel as though I'm going through the motions.' I looked across the table at Julia and smiled. 'I don't know what I want to know, what is worth knowing, any more. Does that make sense?' I took a sip of wine.

Julia shook her head and looked away.

'Ron was explaining devaluation to me the other day,' I said. 'I think that's what I've got. My knowledge seems almost worthless these days. Nobody cares about literature now, anyway.'

'I just think you are pissing it away, not only the course you are doing, but the whole thing. The whole experience is just passing you by while you sit in that room. I think one day you are going to regret it, both of you,' Julia said with an angry concern that surprised me and turned heads at nearby tables. Julia glared back and shamed eyes dropped back towards their plates.

I watched Julia as she was eating. Her intensity of belief frightened me sometimes. I, who found believing in anything almost impossible, found strong belief in others made me embarrassed and nervous: embarrassed at my own lack of any form of commitment, and nervous of the power of other people's beliefs. People would kill or die for a belief, but I sneered at the obvious simple-mindedness necessary for the continuation of all beliefs, from the religious and political onward and downward. Even belief in my own existence was sometimes too difficult for me.

I glanced out of the window. On the roof of the building opposite a line of pigeons prepared to roost for the night in the gathering grey gloom. Their feathers were puffed around them like greatcoats, like the old Soviet Politburo on May Day with the same solidity and certainty of their own perpetual existence.

The pigeons' eyes snapped to their left and there was a ruffle down the rank. I looked to see what the pigeons had noticed. A polystyrene hamburger container spiralled and somersaulted between the two buildings on the opposite side of the road. That container was more like me, blown about, never coming home to rest. Having nowhere to call home, and nothing solid to build on in my past, I drifted on eddies floating between the past and the future.

I knew Julia was right, but I felt as though I no longer had the energy or the will to change myself. I lacked the spark that would ignite me once again. Lines I had quoted from Prufrock and The Hollow Men in my first essay ran through my mind. If only I dared, then I would be able to act. I had no desire to do so, though. Life with Alison had acquired its own comfortable inertia. Neither of us had to try any more, not out in the world, not out in the rooms and lecture theatres, not out in the bars, parties and discos.

All that mattered to me lay in that small room with the door shut and the curtains pulled tight. A yellow pool spilt by the angle-poise for Alison and me to wallow in. I turned back to find Julia studying my face. I smiled uncertainly, and Julia nodded.

'You do think I'm right, don't you?'

'Yes, I know you are right. But I don't seem to be able to summon up the energy to change myself,' I said. 'I don't think Alison would want it... me... us... to be any different, either. We seem to have drifted so far away from everything, I don't know if we have the power to stop, turn and push ourselves back.'

'Well... maybe. Perhaps this thing between you and Alison isn't what you think it is. Maybe it isn't such a good thing.' Julia looked down at the remains of her pizza, crumbs and untouched olives.

I rolled and lit a cigarette, washing smoke down with mouthfuls of wine. I had felt a momentary burst of anger at Julia for talking about Alison. Whether it was anger at an outsider peering into my life or anger at having the truth pushed into my face, I wasn't sure.

'Anyway,' Julia said brightly as she looked back up at me. 'There's a disco at the union tonight and you are going to come with me. What is more, you are going to dance with me. Don't look at me like that; I'm going to insist you dance with me. Maybe we'll even go to one of those student parties, you say you loathe so much, afterwards as well.'

'Julia, don't try to make me into another of your worthy causes,' I said. 'I don't think you can put me to rights like the rest of the world.'

'I'm just concerned about a good friend, two good friends, that's all.' Julia picked up the bill and her purse. She stood up. 'I do care about you, perhaps more than I ought to.' She walked off to the till. Standing at the back of the short queue, she turned and looked over at me for a moment before turning back to sort through her purse.

*

Twilight had turned to darkness outside. The Christmas decorations threw pools of coloured light into the street where litter danced in the wind. Julia shivered and cursed as the wind threw the icy drizzle into our faces. I saw a taxi turn the corner in front of us and stop at the traffic lights. Grabbing Julia by the arm, I ran. We pulled open the door and tumbled into the seat as the taxi pulled away from the lights.

Julia, thrown off balance by the sudden acceleration of the taxi, slipped partially off the seat and fell so she lay half across me as the taxi illegally u-turned sharply back up the dual carriageway. The driver grunted and swore as he tried to push his way into the stream of cars leaving the town. I reached into my pocket for my tin. Julia nudged me and pointed around the taxi. On every available flat surface, a No Smoking sticker glared back at me.

As the traffic rolled from traffic light to traffic light, I automatically inserted noises of assent into the taxi-driver's obligatory monologue. I shook my head and put my finger to my lips when I saw Julia was about to dispute some points with him.

'What's the point?' I whispered into her ear. She stared at me for a moment or two, but eventually nodded even though she did not look happy about it.

Julia shivered and snuggled closer to me. I could smell the icy rain in her hair. As the street lights lit up her face, I could see the animation in her eyes as she looked out of the taxi window at the now familiar sights of the town. She stared out as though seeing somewhere far more exotic and novel than this tired town battered by a relentless wind and too much indifferent history.

The taxi drew up at the house, and Julia reluctantly got out as I searched through my pockets for the fare. By the time I had paid - and politely listened to the last of the taxi-driver's speech - Julia had opened the door. She stood in the hallway silhouetted by the light behind her.

I stepped into the house and shut the door. We stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs. Julia looked at the door to the kitchen, then at the door to her room. I looked up at Alison's room at the top of the stairs. Up there James Joyce was waiting, locked in a darkened room. I thought I had better go up there and turn the light on.

'I'll see you in a little while, after I've had a shower and so on,' Julia said. 'Remember, I want you to dance.'

'You may live to regret that,' I replied.

'No. I don't think so,' Julia said, smiling secretively as she turned away to her room.

[….]

[An extract from Hanging around Until]