What did you want?

Did you want it to be a mathematical formula? Something serious that scientific study could eventually unravel? Or did you want it to be a song?A dance? A game? 
Numbers are the victims of sums. 
Are you just a number? To be counted among them?

There was a time when - In order to do a great thing - I would have closed my eyes and sent up a prayer for the steel but I had long ago severed that transmission. Nowadays, I have to find the steel within me, scrabble around for a clue and delve further into my core. The closer I get to it the greater the feeling of dreadful power, the dark accomplice encroaching on my nerve ends like fingers of electricity.

In times of stress you may note a scene in intricate detail. In this scene the field leading off the rear of the house lays primed and ready to incubate fresh life. It seems here that the same birds cry the same cries in the same trees, as if their evolution is stagnant and their epiphanies long ago reached. Gusts of enduring wind lean on the fences. Beetles work on a seemingly important project. Yet natures music is unnaturally quiet, its volume turned down.

My methods to stop the onset of madness are tried and tested.  I use intensive exercise and then equally intensive drinking. Some days I run ten or more miles and then drink three bottles of wine. After a bath and before the wine clinches a mainline to my mind, I spend many hours planning, gathering ingredients for and cooking a meal. I am spreading out base joy thinner than the membrane of an egg.

Time has become conspicuous, its meters now pass with tortuous accuracy, time is an enemy to be plotted against, and time is all I have, too much for any man. Time breeds life, life moves toward death, death stops life, time breeds life, but not ad infinitum because one day the Andromeda galaxy will swallow this galaxy like a dog on a sausage, and I am increasing concerned by this.

The gun in my hand makes tiny wobbles as I strain to keep it fixed on the back of the beasts head. All I have to do now is pull the trigger and then I can run ten or more miles, bathe, cook, drink. I only wish that I had been cut out for murder, this would be one less thing at least; to have little or no empathy for other living things. I used to believe that empathy was the great key to evolution, to develop an understanding for our neighbors, not to tolerate but to really understand. Had I looked inward I would have seen the indicators of destruction, it was there in my guts, a desperate unshakeable urge for suicide, working like a parasite to sicken the mind. It would be agreeable to think of this urge as an alien stowaway in an otherwise wholesome machine, but it had always been in there, symbiotic to the end. It's nefarious intent only distinctive against the selfless capacity of a human, the two poles separating under particular conditions, like wheat from chaff.  We the naturally schizophrenic.

'Don't look at me my old friend' I say to the beast. 'just survey your territory one last time. Recall the frolicking and also the pride you took in your crucial role as centurion. Goodbye'.

Only I hear the trailing snap of the gunshot that bends the air and vibrates into nothingness. My old friend is dead and the warmth of his body will dissipate also and nothingness has become his destiny, his finality, leave alone his carcass on which I perform a solemn ritual. The morning is over and I will run ten miles or more, dream up a meal, gather ingredients, bathe, cook, drink. I am the last man left alive, and begining to dare contemplate that I am also the butt of his joke. The most elborate prank of all.  

not THE END

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

Jimmy stops under the stars for meat and wine.

Strolling off a cultured path on the North Norfolk coast, I clutch at gathered sticks. It’s near dark and one the most pleasant days of my life. I get on a can of beer and a string of sausages and lay down barefooted and wild-haired, my bag under my good old head and my ankles crossed. I stand at intervals, looking up at the splendorous night sky and contemplate the expiration of clouds as we roll together over a wood fire, churned and heated, singing, spitting in the red hot stones. It’s a local beach, mogulled by the feet of virgins and lost boys. Virginal and lost for now but not forever. They intend to feign sleep; half naked bodies entwined while the flames lick their hips. To fool each other they must first fool themselves and this deception is underway by the look in their eyes.

The beach reflects the outer channel and this night I wade in the water and catch another sausage with absurdly hot sauce and then wine and stars, stars pretending to be glorious and unique, when deep down they feel only brotherhood and same.  

I get to work on the wine and push it far down the beasts’ neck and drive myself away to avoided favorites such as mint-choc-chip ice cream, away on a drink and a smoke.

On my taste buds at eleven pm the sigh of the sea out there (somewhere near Holland) asks about my life and about the little mute tramp by my side and about being quite mad and cooking sausages over coals. I relax back to near mental health and a thin old universe of de-pixilated stars finds reflection so exhausting and unsociable, that it climbs into the belly of the North sea for a proper decent cuddle.
Digging down into the two tasty ones we head into a cross-legged discussion. We agree that since before the leftover part of our fortune came,  they all looked surprised to see us, even with only a few miles elapsed. Virgins and shop-keepers and publicans and birds and fish and even the early flames of the nightly fire, all gasp with surprise as we present and position.

The mute tramp establishes himself about my thoughts at this point and bites them off at the end. At the other end of the beginning-less evening, he lays down facing me. I pitch him sausages and tip him wine with his head on the honest sands and his own miserably small body picked out by starry pixels humming wondrously in the sky. He lays as still as a terd and says even less. We chomp, slug, chomp and blow the hubbly while all living creatures stop like mice to inhale our divinity. The wine eases down the rich bites of hot meat, sizzling on the tongue like many human-beings singing with feigned hope before they die. We sit and listen to ourselves and blow smoke over the water as the air gets exulted in one of the warmer and foggier nights since embarkation. 
On the matter of warm nights and the valleys of the coast, both the little mute and I have made unsuccessful attempts to hold the seas and cliff tops in our hands. Yet we still get up and swig wine and pace back and forth and flinch when the sand in our blankets dance about our chests like proposing electric fingers.

 Pretty soon we head of the beach at a siding up ahead. The mute and I figure that tearing up yesterdays regrets is the way to live. To drink wine and masticate and keep the rest to a minimum. The night has become bored of our chatter and finally it creeps off as nonchalantly as it crept in. At the pinnacle of deliberation we ask a question to the sun whilst it's still weak and emerging. What does it know of 'The Soup'? But before we dare listen to an answer, the electric fingers of sand remind us about the future dust that our bones will surely make, and we run, run, run, singing, spitting, running back home the long way round. Back home where lonely virgins strive for diamonds and all while the silly gems glisten about their feet unnoticed. We will run free in the soft eastern sands for them, with a sausage and the question and a bottle of dark hot wine.

not The End

Jimmy begins his journey by leaving the flat.

I leave my flat under the assumed weight of the middle-class citizen, and now whipping off the disguise, I am set for an itinerary which is perfectly adapted to the fashioning of epic days. Jailors of spirit becoming a vague respectable presence and the kind of ghosts that the fetus of intellect does well to ignore.

  I have consigned my assumptions to the north sea and formed a partnership with a little silent tramp. He wears a spotty scarf and a bowler hat square to his small frame. He smiles his little smile and mostly stays on my left side. We sprint intermittently and without warning or preparation, the packs grinding and unthreading on our backs, our lungs making good torture for our minds. In the many pubs we drink in along the way, I feel more like a junk-laden sculptor than a tramping frontiersman. But the little mute with his big boots and confident head wear - for these parts- is every bit the adventuring hobo.

 At one town along the snake paths of the North Norfolk coast, we witness the undoing of a community. Young men in fits of shallow laughter, blat about the delicate rural roadways and glare with subconscious homo-empathy in their eyes. They revere the superficial and wear the reverence on their feet and hands and heads and mouths. Famous people, all sad and gaunt for their lack of vision, consult the young men through natty devises in mutually unwitting ways. Even more tear-worthy is the calculated denial - by better educated famous people - of the boundless depth to the visions of the young.

 More youth about on the seaside high street and pub car-parks... Self-promoted young women squander their sensual allotments amid blaring claxons of soulless TV, music without melody and empty magazines; all promising inclusion and entrance into the fame-lottery at least. These girls are clamoring for womanhood, seemingly unable to halt and sit and realise the softness of their skin and how it can teach tenderness to men.

 Apart from the raging crowds the tramp and I take photographs of us alone on the North Norfolk beaches, smiling and listening to the world. Agreeing that the sea is not so enigmatic after all. These photos are now hung in a cottage hallway for purely economic reasons and depict us two as entranced by this craggy stretch of coast. Its enduring sweet-shops and dignified railways, resplendent ales, enthusiastic social calendars and stubborn sideburns on the ruddy cheeks of old men.

 Between crowded boulders and scrub offset by the vigorous long steps. Far off crumbling sea-groins can be seen extending from cliffs-edge to water like overworked arteries. An epidemic of yellow-petaled scrub, sways to the sound of shanty and kisses the sea mist and looks prehistoric.

 A special pleasure in seeing uncommon users strap off their packs halfway down the steps and contemplate failure, is almost sure to give us both short frissons, but rugged men as we are, we climb to them, carry them down all bleary and sick, down into the beasts cave as if attending to something there that pleases him. He is built like an old tree and has a pot-belly. Teflon-tough grass grows out, there are gashes down his eyes and cheeks. He was a beautiful child when he first came to this coastal town. The trouble - he tells us - is that he lost his looks by dint of a tinkers spell; Cast in a fit of spite whilst he play with his twin brother on the edge of the hard surfaces. And more hurtsome than that, his twin slipped in and was lost to the sea and the beast remains tragically cautious of the waves and their popping foams and displaced shingle. Yet, Into the soup is where he is desperate to be. Alone with his twin and their one mind.

 Once the users are delivered and attentive, we see a vision in the smoky morning mist. At least a hundred fisherman attend to the presumption of a beasts appetite, never to forget him and his terrible ways, they invent shanties and stories to that effect. Because of his beastness, they presume he wants prey. So they throw him fish and hope the fish flap enough to allay his predatory instinct. Really, the beast is just a mournful brother. He tries to convey this to the users and fisherman, he asks them truly, pleads for their help in finding his dear lost twin. He points to the horizon and the boats and then he wails, but his tongue is too wild and they all scream at his grassy belly and molten eyes, and then the fisherman continue to frantically fetch him more fish and the users scatter into the night, all mystified and disturbed and packless.

 Up the cliffs to a pub the two of us go. Our packs hitched up and molded, the tramps bowler hat straightened and proud. We ponder elucidation over the first beer, but It's no good that we tell these young people around us of the beast and his melancholy; how they should run to the beach and advise their fisherman fathers to cast their nets for a beastly twin with half a mind. Search, rescue and reunify the brothers. Break the tinkers spell and with it the dawn on this North Norfolk town. Alas, the young do not see us or hear us anymore. We have blinded them or allowed them to be blinded. We have blocked their ears or failed to prevent the blockage.

 After half a skin-full we plod off up the coast to the next town or village. We hope for more sweet-shops and railways, resplendent ales, busy squares and stubborn sideburns on faces with time to chat. I ask the little tramp:

'How long before that beast is driven mad by his inability to parley for his brothers soul?.. And how long until he tires of flapping fish?'

The little tramp smiles his little smile and we walk on.                                           

not The End