Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "pavement"

Taking your own life is not easy. I know I’ve tried, and obviously failed. When you commit suicide you haven’t lost a battle with depression or illness or whatever it maybe. No, you have won – you have taken the final step away from an insoluble problem.

One day, I'll take my own life and that’s ok. It’s mine to take (unless I were to hurt others in the process). I am a disabled man with little if anything to look forward to in life; apart from increasing ill health and poverty in a society that’s shown itself to be virulently anti old-age.

My lover took her own life last year, she, like Robin Williams, hung herself. She left no note but I found out from reading her diaries that she felt that life had come to a full stop for her and that she did what she did out of bravery not cowardice.

I have no information around Mr William’s death other than what’s already in the public domain but I suspect he knew all to well what having Parkinson’s disease entails and perhaps that factored into his choice.

People do not commit suicide in the depths of despair. There is not enough energy down inside that trench. It’s on the way out of the despair when you can see things more objectively that you have the energy to take action.

Once I wrote a lengthy suicide note that, in a twist of irony, caused me to carry on living. It became my novel on the futility of existence - Pavement. It’s no surprise to me that many suicides do not leave letters of intent. That much thought often hinders action. I ended up needing to know what would happen in the story my own suicide note had become. I suspect that many more people consider suicide than is commonly known about but the primitive survival instinct inside each of us is hard to overcome. I once attempted suicide by hurling myself from a bridge fully clothed but it’s harder to drown than you might think – if you can swim and you are conscious then you will.


I am not sure why our society has such a sanction on suicide when we seem happy enough to cause and create societal death on a huge scale. Perhaps the freedom inherent in the decision to take your own life is subconsciously felt as a threat – what if everyone realised his or her life is ultimately pointless? I also question the sanction that the religious have against self inflicted death, surely if there is a paradise then we should all promptly top ourselves and hop on the stairway to heaven, but nope, it’s a surefire way to Hell if we kill ourselves. Personally I don’t believe all this nonsense.

When you die it’s over and that’s a thing to be thankful for, I know I will be.

When someone you love dies a sudden and unexpected death, the shock is nauseating. Vomiting occurs.

Everything you had invested in that relationship – everything you shared and perhaps, more important – everything you thought you were going to share is gone; snuffed out like candle, leaving only the acrid smoke of grief, nothing more, nothing.

This is the first extract from my book. It's a short one, after all this is a blog post and I don't want TL:DR to come up...ever.

Enjoy, next one on Friday.



I like the walk along the canal, water is soothing for some reason; even the fetid liquid that squats in the Regent’s Canal is soothing, despite its empty beer cans, tyres and trash. Why is that? The peace offered by bodies of water – perhaps it’s the idea of another world, silent, dark and cold, containing life totally different from us – the strange nature of its substance, both solid and liquid. Life-giving and life-removing, it creates borders and separates us from each other. I think it’s that, and the life-giving nature of water, which is deeply embedded in our souls. We recognise its power and, in an unknowing way, we worship it – it has power over us – we cannot live without it or in it, we cannot tame it or control it. It has us we do not have it. Is that why I love being close to water? Sometimes, on the rare occasions I get to be by the sea, I feel a powerful urge to walk into it and drown, to let it close over my body and remove me from the world. I have heard that drowning is a peaceful way to die.

That is all....

Another brief extract from Pavement... in a day or two I'll tell you about the time I met Neil Gaiman.


I’m standing on a flat deserted seashore.There are large cube-like blocks of black stone that appear to have been frozen in mid-tumble to the water’s edge. They’re heaped up and strewn around like children’s building blocks.The ocean is metallic grey, oily and flat, like the surface of an ice rink. I might have thought it was solid but I know it’s not, small waves lapping at the rocks along the edge show me this.

I am aware of things under the surface of the water, things terrifying and deadly.The shoreline disappears into the distance in either direction, a straight line, as far as I can see. It vanishes into the murky sky, a sky that is dark grey and boiling with clouds that burst with silent sheet lightning. The horizon is a mixture of blood red and a sickly green light filtered through the angry clouds.

There is complete silence, as if all noise has been removed from the universe. I am standing on a narrow pathway set back from the shore and made, I notice, from Portland stone slabs.The surface is new and the slabs perfectly set. This path has never been walked, of that I am sure. It leads off in both directions. I am alone. I turn to look behind me, inland there is nothing to be seen, just a wall of blackness. A dark so tangible you can grasp it in your hand like clay.

I have to go somewhere, so I walk, and as I walk the scenery stays the same. I can see tiny movements in my peripheral vision. In the tangible dark something is moving. I walk for hours and as I walk, the dark recedes to reveal a landscape of huge stone slabs and shards, piled up high into the sky, they look as if they should collapse at any moment. Giant paving slabs piled up to the sky by an autistic ogre.These piles of rocks pay only lip service to gravity. The pavement under my feet is warm and comfortable, a fantastic walking experience. I look at my feet and they are glowing and perfect, no shoes, in fact, I am naked

Pavement

Here's another short passage from my novel Pavement - currently there's a few copies available on a giveaway. In couple of days a bit more....stuff.


He doesn’t cry out, the impact of the cold water has taken his breath away.

He’s trying to swim and find the edge of the canal; he ends up over at the far side where there is just a sheer wall rising out of the water. He claws at the wall with both hands, trying, in vain, to get a grip on the wet slimy stone.

I watch.

He flails about, sinking under the water because of the weight of his waterlogged clothes and boots. He’s now in the middle of the canal, eyes wide with panic, cheeks puffing in and out, hair plastered across his face, which seems pale blue in the sickly neon glow from the strip in the roof of the tunnel. His hand outstretched, he sinks again and then emerges nearer to me on the concrete lip of the canal side. Still clawing, he manages to get one hand over the edge of the concrete. I grasp it and he grips my hand. Once I’ve lifted it free of the edge, I reverse my pull into a push and shove him back into the water. For good measure, I pick up length of wood, which is floating in the water, and push it into his back, thrusting him under the water. He kicks like a dying frog and I push harder. Some bubbles break the surface and one of his hands flaps as if beckoning me to join him. And then he’s still.

Pavement thoughts of serial killer

Hey, someone got it... "This is brilliant writing, atmospheric and disquieting. The imagery of the dreams alongside Smith’s observations of his everyday surroundings are haunting." Here's a great review posted today by a blogger. It's good to be appreciated...


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