Why I keep thinking that I'm going to die.

Because I am. Varying intensities of nerves and scruples are annexed in my mind and they emphasise the grim anticipation of my own mortality. They work on my constitution as a parasite works on a host, eating away the critical functions. This annex is a place of tense atmosphere; untidy and brimming with all that we horde and with no sensible filing system in place, let alone one for expedient enough retrieval to foster confidence in debate. Nor is it an environment conducive to any form of relaxation. Unlike the a pub, or a bookshop, or sitting by a bookshelf in a pub. Beer and books being a proven fosterer of confidence anytime.

'What am I thinking about?' Says I.

The little silent tramp shoots me a glance that suggests to me he was pondering just this, or so I brazenly assume. Then I relieve myself upon him.

'Keeping a steady footing is difficult today. Feeling myself from the inside, I wonder what measures my body employs to stave off this death disease maturing within'.

The Little silent tramp whips me on the calf with a cane of birch and grins proudly as if taming the untamable. I animate as a living thing should.

'It's not as if I don't know why you were moved to do that, would you have whipped me so if I had maintained a silence?' Says I.

The little silent tramp whips me on the calf again with the same cane of birch and grins proudly as if taming the untamable.

'A van should screech up soon you little fucker'. Says I in increasingly acrid tone. 'White coated men should surround you and cautiously advance and then pounce on you, paying you more heed than you deserve and then they should take you away'.

Above our heads grey blotches of clouds gang up on what was only moments ago a ripened sky of azure. The little silent tramp reduces to ever-so-sad and I wonder, is that a feigned expression of rue or have I actually damaged him? The skin of my calve hisses with pain and heat and I fancy another attack...

'Or you should get on a train at a lonely station, and once within find no one there and you walk along from carriage to carriage and still you find no one, you are alone and the train does not stop at any other station and it becomes dark outside and the landscape reduces into bleak traces and the train does not stop... ever'.

The little silent tramp flings the offending rod to the bushes and I make a guess that also part of his spirit flies there too. But innate in this guess is a humbling sentiment and my counter-attack reflex overrides it. Inescapable too me is the shear causelessness of the offence. I crouch like Gollum and hold my calve and though the pain is diminishing, my insulted expression of a victim in outrage endures.

'If you would talk would you apologise for that'? Another clockwork grin ratchets about his grubby face and its accusing in a canting fashion, like the cat insinuating flirtation from the mouse.

'What'? I demand explanation even though I can predict the move about to be played. The little silent tramp nods at my satchel.

'The book deserves scrutiny'. Says I, clasping the thing. 'It stays with me for now so It can be read. No one thing has a destiny quite like a book. To be read and interpreted by those yet to be conceived against profoundly unfavourable odds. This one stays with me to fulfill its destiny. It's been saved by me, get it? And don't go drawing equations of determinism in the dirt either'.

The little silent tramp is having none of my theories and perhaps rightly so. I know to what he refers. Some days ago - and it could have been a weekday, for cars were abound in the morning and walkers scant on the paths - the little silent tramp and I, whilst cowering from the rain, fell in the door of a low level bookshop, low level from the street that is, down steps, and not the other thing. Inside we bring the count up to four 'living' human bodies present, (two or more of the floorboards look suspiciously displaced against the others), three of us prowling the isles and one sat at the till, an old man silently reading. Reading what, I couldn't make out. I'm always very concerned with the title of any book which a person has chosen to read in front of others. I must know what it is, like the supernatural outcome of an unresolved contradiction, so I take to ducking and peering from a distance, retying a shoelace or stroking a knackered dog, just to catch a squizz.

'It's 'The Day of Creation'. The man states and lowers the book and peers down on me where I'm crouched. I don't spring or look surprised, I have been caught whilst in detection before and have a pantomime for such occasion.

'By 'J G Ballard' we both say in unison.

'You've read him'? His question is intoned with disappointment. Maybe he is generally disappointed? Even his wire-like grey hair looks disappointed. At the sides and back of his head the stuff tangles in oily nests, and in his ears, nose, and especially eyebrows, the hair extends and seems to bristle like tentacles, no need to put the bedside lamp on to find your spectacles on a dark morning, I imagine.

'I have read him. Most enjoyable writing, and an interesting character himself'. Says I.

'Well he's dead now anyway'. Says the disappointed man.

'Yes, but his books aren't'. My answer has the devout optimism of a fanatic.

'Dead trees to make the books, dead writers to write them and dead words inside them'.

I can hardly believe his animus. What did he just say? The disappointed man snorts and resumes inspection of the dead words, as if the innocuous has been stated. 
How contemptible to cast such damnation with an air of apparent apathy. His blood hasn't the sulfur for real apathy, his eyes don't twinkle with enough consideration and his fingernails are too long and without the yellowing of tobacco. He must be a cunt! I conclude.

'Well I'll just have a look around then'. Says I in a shameful disengage.

I finger several spines but my examinations are mindless.  How is this real? A man working in - or even more tragically owning - a bookshop, and sitting and reading and free everyday to sit and read exquisitely crafted sentences, yet remarking to a stranger, a customer, with such brusque irreverence, that everything about books is everything about death!

Outside, the rainclouds are either spent or moved on and a new brightness exposes metallic rings of oil in several puddled potholes. Living human body number four wants to pay for a clutch of books and the disappointed man is duty-bound to attend. In front of the section on religious reference, the little silent tramp stands quite motionless except for the forefinger and thumb of his left hand which are deftly rolling a cigarette. I surmise to myself that this is why I keep thinking that I am going to die. Men like the disappointed man disappointing men like me, with remarks so cynical and gloomy that all one can do is meditate on the climax of ones life. Then, when all is coming on top from high up and hurtling towards me, the little silent tramp shoves an open book in front of my eyes and he points out four words over and over, at least seven times his muddied nail picks out the sentence until I can bear it no more. With a hollow-headed reel I make for the steps and alight into the wet reflections and an arcade full of humming machines blink and bleep and wait for zombies and packets of unwanted chips twizzle down the gutter like dingys to a sink-holed oblivion, the breeze carries a melancholy particular to the English seaside town and a stagger of awful clarity prods my shoulders and the arms attached search with extended fingers for a railing or shoulder to lean on, all the blood is in my knees and my head is scooped out and due for reset. I am about to fall when I do just that and give in to what must surely be coming, if not today then most definitely one day and then I crumble and lay willingly in the puddles and I repeat the words over and over Death is soft peace, Death is soft peace, Death is soft peace and I clutch the book that is in my bag and stolen away and in need of protection from the disappointed man.

I have been pleasently atomised by the reverie and the pain in my calve has diminished and the little silent tramp is my faithful companion again and he is forgiven in the expeditious way that comes easy to men folk.. So together, we walk on...

not The End

The Physical and Mental Boundaries of a Primate

The wind empties its remaining momentum over the bristling marsh and fishing boats sleep tilted on the dry basin. A shed is erected under an emerging cerulean sky and there within are pots of dead sea-creatures, pickled and made ambrosial for our mouths. The little silent tramp chooses eels and he salts them heavily. I pick on a cup of cockles and make small winces at the vinegar and grit as I nibble and enjoy the mainlining of nostalgia and regressions to boyhood and the small miracle of wondrous introductions. The man serving up the dead sea creatures appears so suitable and adept to his trade, that even the touch of simple mindedness behind his eyes leaves us with ample confidence to chow down. His beard is of a tropical luxuriance and his hands look murderous. After a long sigh directed over the marsh and out to sea, as if his soul was overwrought by the supernatural, he speaks the following words...

'Seemingly terminal, for more than 2000 years the religion illness has been infecting generations as if an insuperable uber-cancer. Although the suicidal mission of the cancer is in no way the intention of the religion bug. The accusation to cancer, that it is a man made disease and proliferates upon a modern society urged on by aggressive hedonistic activity, cannot be leveled at religion. Its proliferation needs far less encouragement or fertile circumstance. The physical and mental boundaries of a primate - which we all are - hosts the perfect storm in which religion can cross fertilise amongst us and flourish in our minds like an unruly weed.'

Being a man whose travels have sunk in soup and soared the cosmos, the little silent tramp pays this statement paltry recognition. Preferring instead to slurp at cylindrical sections of juicy eel with the flippant nonchalance of someone who has seen it all before. My reaction however, teems with microbes of adrenal excitement.

'That's a considered thing to say'. Says I.

'Much to be considered about religion'. Says he.

'Much to be considered about cancer'. Says I.

The dead sea creature sellers soul sighs again and its green portals fix me with unsettling intensity.

'Did you listen to my words?' Says he.

'Yes, I heard them all'. Says I.

'Heard maybe, but listen did you?' Says he.

'I was listening and I heard. I heard about a great plague 2000 and more years in the making. A plague disguised as a cure. A plague so heavily camouflaged and grossly unequal to the finite efforts of a human lifetime, however learned the human becomes, however articulate, profound and wide-reaching his intellectual antidote, the spread is too rife. It is a tidal wave of a plague, one that never breaks but surges and retards a species which already has limited means of universal rationale.' Says I.

A fishing boat bell goes ding dong ding dong and over by the public toilets, a fat woman reaches inside her blouse and hoists her stupidly large bosoms to a position of greater comfort. Her husband looks down at their old dog; the pet is shivering and too knackered to taut the lead and the man wonders when is it going to die?

'I've uttered those words on many an occasion and only now do I feel the sweet relief of understanding. Alas a universal understanding is the folly of a boy who stood here 41 years ago. The two of us do not make a universe'.  Says the dead sea creature seller.

'I know'. Says I.

'Will you walk far?' Says he.

'As far as I need to.' Says I.

'Take this crab for later. Eat it with bread and pepper'. Says he.

'Thank you... You were wrong in one place though.' Says I.

The dead sea creature seller turns away to prepare more dead sea creatures for selling.

'Oh yeah, where's that?' Says he.

'Religion is just as alive as cancer, and just as suicidal'. Says I.

not The End