Foreword
Why we plunge in is anyone's guess, the reason we stay here is to try and answer that question. The following characters have spoken with me and told me their individual stories, all of which are, possibly based upon, lies.
Anon
ONE I sat on the edge of the water for years, I guess I still do. We all do don't we? Why we plunge in is anyone's guess, the reason we stay here is to try and answer that question. Well, I have always been trying, in my mind to answer that question. Faith doesn't give me an answer, I have it, not religiously, but it is there. Recently I heard it described as a feeling. The tingle you get from seeing something that fills you with awe. Perhaps simply described as pantheism. I guess a part of what we do is describe ourself first. Who we are, our purposes, our reasons. Our why? Then next, how we surround ourselves; with the refections of who we like to think we are. We are in fact none of these things. No one is, no one can be. It is just a thought.
Look at it all objectively for a while, none of it makes sense, really.
History, we do not learn from it. Conspiracy, we do not truly make sense of anything via that either.
More distractions. yet more distractions.
The water is there; thought, ebbing. It is there cooling our thirst. Cleansing us. So you sit and watch it, and it gives everything, everything in cycles. So the point of it is, what? It is not that I think there is no point, but none of us really know what the point is, yet. We strive to leave an echo, an inspiration for others, for our children, for people we never know. We strive to do well. We strive to stay comforted. In short, We strive to be understood.
With a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of history behind us, as a race (human) should we not now understand more? That all the the things we pointlessly strive for, are a waste of our reasons.
A waste of our lives. Just a waste. A waste land.
The beauty of our world, a world even if we each lived for 900 years we would still not get to see. Not all of it. Such a waste. Although, it is all there. For us to look at, to experience. We simply do not have the time. Time is relative. And we are too. Importantly we do not decide on the relativity of ourselves or of time. If we look outwardly at our world, the same atrocities still occur, the same beauty still exists, hand in hand, side by side.
Why then as humans do we think money will solve these problems. It cannot. It has not and it will not. The only thing that would begin to solve our issues is us, our patterns, our thinking, our action & reaction. Maybe we think too small, maybe we just don't think at all.
Michael
ONE I was sitting at a bus stop, not even waiting for a bus. Just sitting there. The buses had stopped. Time was irrelevant for me at that moment, but there I was just sitting. A shadow passed by me and echoed a voice. Nothing that made any sense to me, just a voice that started me thinking.
Yesterday, was different from today, everything was very different. My world had changed. Yesterday I had stuff. Today I had nothing. All was gone. A relief and a shock in the same instant.
TWO Walking up the hill that morning happened to be just the same as every other morning. The birds in the familiar trees would call out, what were they saying? That, I think, depends on the time of year. The slight fog from the coastline drifted. Our Character was dressed the same, jeans (blue) t-shirt (an old favourite from a trip to some place exotic) and the same slightly worn tennis shoes.
Michael was a pretty good tennis player. some years back. A circuit player who had trophies, medals and sponsorship. Not a household name, firstly he was too young to have climbed the ranks to be playing world level and secondly an injury had stopped all. That was that.
There was no rush, always being early allowed for a coffee, a cigarette and a quick glance over the morning paper and chance to peruse the people walking by.
The world was still quiet. Then Noise. It was as if a huge lever had changed its status. Resting in its relaxed position where nothing was happening then pulled. The power was on, the set came to life and the world was turning and people were moving. The town and all its people began routine.
There were the 'morning' calls from the extras as they passed by, everything having been rehearsed.
Nothing out of place. Markers set and characters expertly playing their roles.
THREE The work day was not a work of art, or well rehearsed; the monotony was relentless, the expression and the feeling similar, but always with a different expression. Factory. Much the same as any other structure of work. The feelings and thoughts of those inside it were the same.
The work maybe different, but the underlying mood the same.
The machines clattered and spluttered their songs, leaving little room for imagination, leaving no space for talk between co-workers, conversation would have to wait. Instructions or communication had to be made with eye contact.
Michael had become an expert. Adept at explaining who needed to do what with just a few ocular moves.
Sitting behind a desk, where he figured out what orders were required for that week, Michael looked around the vast room where the machines stood. He was in a nightmare. He just needed those few moments to stop and realise it. The walls were closing in. The air was stale. The machines were destroying him. The people around him too. Panic was about to set in. “Mike, we need ya on the floor” called one of the extras. He was not listening. “Hey Mike, 24 is slowing down, you know what that means...” He still did not really hear, just another noise. “Mike!!” Yelled the voice. Michael looked up slowly, the panic around him was nothing in comparison to that which swelled inside. The guy from the floor was banging on the perspex window of Michael’s small office.
“Mike!... Mike!... Hey!...Mike!” It was at that moment Michael stopped. That same lever that had switched the world around into motion, now signalled Michael's own moment to stop. His eyes shut. He slumped forward and his head hit the desk with a sorrowful thud.
FOUR A squeeze of his hand awoke Michael. His eyes did not work. Fear. He heard a soothing voice. Although not a voice he recognised, the words however he did not understand. They were in a language he did not know. He wouldn’t come around for a number of days. But each day that same squeeze of his hand and that same voice would sooth his restlessness and his pain. Weeks passed, he was still in that same bed. He still could not open his eyes, he still could not move.
FIVE After a few weeks of being in retreat Michael started to walk, started to find his feet. “Good morning Michael” said Rajnee as she passed him in the corridor. “Hey, you doing okay Rajnee?” Michael asked back, almost rhetorically, but he waited for a response.
“Umm...I suppose I am OK yes...” she started
“Thanks” she continued, as Michael walked away slowly. Adding, “That's so good, perhaps I'll see you later?” “Yeah, sure...” was the fading response.
Michael continued to walk the corridor. It went on and on he thought. He had not noticed how slowly he was moving or how quickly other people passed him.
Michael was at his room 34a, strange, there was no 34b. Or a 34. Each time the door opened on the room it looked different to how it was when Michael had left it. The bed clothes may have changed colour, a different flower in the vase. A new book beside the bed. A different light shade. He wouldn't know, but he was imagining it. It was always just as he had left it. Tidy
o r n o t.
Taking a timid step through the doorway he was in the room. He kicked off his shoes and left them where they fell. And slumped onto the bed. 'Man, I am tired' he thought. His eyes still open, he fell asleep. He dreamt. A dream he'd had before.
On many a night.
When Michael woke up, the covers were on the floor. The room was lit by the morning sun and the noise of the corridor was tapping at the door. Calling him to rise. He headed for the small adjoining bathroom and brushed his teeth and emptied his bladder.
Keith
ONE ‘What a fucking waste!’ ‘Were you thinking what I was thinking?’ ‘Could it really be helped? ‘I’m not really sure’ Keith replied with a look of distrust in his eyes. ‘It was about two years ago’, John said before lighting up.
A few years earlier the two shameless guys had been discussing the very same thing. No one on earth had the answers they sought. Who could have the answers? Politicians, healers, freaks, men of cloth, none of them. It was an impossible cause. No one would ever secrete the solution. Especially not two misfits like these.
Keith was now 38 years old and all of his life had been spent, so far, chasing impossible dreams. John, a more distinguished man, was older but always seemed to be the child of the two. Keith had the look of a lion tamer and the rags he wore were circus like too. Once an upholding citizen he had given up after his life had gone from sweet success after success, overflowing wine and champagne and all the things money can’t buy too. He was after all a dimwit. John, who liked to be called Johnny, was a man off the wall, he had always taken the risks in life and always failed but the optimism he had didn’t fail him. Ever!
‘Where are we again?’ ‘I am not really sure, but I would hazard a guess if you want me to.’ ‘Nah don’t bother, we’ll find out soon enough.’ ‘It really is a shame Colin isn’t here no more though, he had a good sense for discretion.’ ‘I think you mean discussion?’ ‘Nah, man I meant discretion.’ ‘But all he did was collect them stupid pictures and leave ‘em all over the place like clues. That is why the guy is dead.’ ‘How did he die?’ ‘He turned into a frog...’ ‘That is bullshit and you know it...’ ‘Look dude, I don’t know anything any more.’
The noise of the wheels started to make the bottom of the carriage hum and Keith held his fingers in his ears. Johnny on the other side of the carriage stubbed out his cheroot and looked longingly at the shoes on the dead man's feet.
‘Why that fool couldn’t have had the same size feet as me!’ ‘OR AT VERY LEAST GOT SOME SHOES THAT WERE WORTH WEARING!’ The brakes were begging to brake. That is their job after all. No place to alight. Just another bend. The weight of the sky was all-in Keith’s head.
‘You and those turkeys better start bringing in the dough. Or we will have to cancel this whole operation, and I’m not about to do that I have invested far too much time in it.’ ‘What you talking about John?’ ‘You know, but if you think I’m going to go through the whole god dam thing again you must really be stiffening.’
John looked pale; Keith paler. It would be fair to say neither of them knew what the other was talking about and perhaps never had.
TWO Going back a few hours, twenty-four to be precise, the situation was much the same as right now, going back twenty-four years it would again be the same. Going back twenty-four minutes, everything was different, totally different. Colin was still breathing though the bullets were only the slightest moment away from the cerebral. This moment was long enough for him to tell the two stingers all he knew about saving yourself from the coil, mortality, immortality and failure and success.
‘Way back, way back I had it all, more than it all, I was the only man who knew god in a way that was crucial to living,’ Colin paused before returning to his plane of thought. ‘There I was sitting in my chair, the one that has always been mine, I earned that chair and its place in the arc of speakers and the biggest TV you have ever seen. My wife was cooking and the kids were playing and the Sunday evening sky was sleepy; that big, big sky. And I was there watching everything that sobered me in that Sunday evening way. It was as it would seem a perfect day. Then just like nothing it was all gone. What could I do but sit there...’
Colin’s finger itched the trigger. A wasp landed and drank form the sweat on his brow. The shot. The nothing.
All gone, forsaken even. Eventually Keith and Johnny noticed. Colin was gone. Soul adrift, moving on towards another great adventure, unknown.
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Nicolas James is an emerging writer, artist & musician living and working in London, The Midlands, England. And Europe. As a Visual-Audio artist, words, music and pictures are passions. Since childhood Nicolas explored all three of these creative outlets. Writer, painter & musician, not in any particular order. He writes, paints and makes music most days. As a writer his work would be described as prose based story-telling. As an essayist, his work considers philosophy and psychology. As a musician Nicolas is foremost a songwriter and composer, multi-instrumentalist working in a similar way to that as a writer, a prose based story-teller. As a painter his work is best described as Lyrical, Abstract Expressionism. Art that is described as free, emotive, with personal compositions unrelated to objective reality. However, there is a difference that should be noted, a person’s nature is a part of reality, Nicolas’ work is part of his nature and becomes meditation.
Additionally, Nicolas has long been fascinated by the overview effect, ’an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it.’ Additionally, his work considers the psychology of arts and considers promoting healing, aligning with changes in societies, worldwide. ‘We are so adept at recognising and creating natural patterns: we embody some of the very patterns that are ubiquitous in the natural world in which we evolved.’
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