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Boldly go

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The lake was still. Will checked his watch and considered setting out to find the others; it’d been over an hour now and he should put them out of their misery. He definitely didn’t want a repeat of what had happened with that graduate scheme group who’d wandered off, found the pub in the local village, and then refused point blank to do anything other than sit tight and drink all night.

Why this ? Why didn’t you take up cycling like everyone else ? Do a triathlon. Invest heavily in lycra and join all the other middle aged men staring down the barrel of their own mortality by taking up some extreme physical endeavour. Just to, you know, show they’ve still got it. Even a vintage Porsche or an ill judged affair with someone almost half your age would have been better. But no. Not you. You couldn’t have a midlife crisis like everyone else. You had to jack it all in, sell your house, and plough everything in to ‘Next Generation: leadership and life development lessons from Star Trek’. There had always been that nagging sense, from way back, that you were in the wrong place, not quite sure why you were there. Even back to university and studying. Taking that degree in Politics, a Bachelor of Arts in having an opinion with conviction, and then graduating with a Desmond. Just a half arsed, couldn’t be arsed qualification. Graduation pictures were always taken with all of the hats thrown up in the air. Hats ? Mortar boards. Whatever they were. Those things you wore once in your life at that moment of jubilation, frozen in time. There was never any record of those awkward moments afterwards when everyone had to scrabble around on the floor trying to retrieve the object of their celebration. Sorry, I think you’ve picked up my hat by mistake. No, really, it does matter. That one was mine. I’ve only rented it for today and I’m pretty sure you’ve got mine. There was a deposit. Some people, of course, caught their hat. Probably tossed casually just a few inches and effortlessly plucked from the sky. Confident in what came next, just marking off another step in a pre-determined journey from school through college to some expected destination in the City or at the Bar or into consultancy. You weren’t one of those people.

Will heard them before he saw them, laughter carrying across the water punctuated at irregular intervals by the splash of an oar. They came into view around the side of the small island in the middle of the lake, the six of them sprawled across a bright blue row boat. They were either the worst mariners since people had ever ventured out onto the waves or extremely drunk. Or both. Will watched them lurch across the the water. Eventually they were close enough to shore for him to shout across to them.

“What are you doing ? Where’d you get that boat from ?”

“It’s not a boat.” said Rich, sat at the front, feet dangling over the side. “It’s our starship. The Enterprise.”

“The Enter-surprise” someone reminded him from behind.

“Ah yes. ‘Course. The Enter-surprise. Boldly going where…” he looked around, shrugged. “Well, across this lake mainly. But boldly.”

“And surprisingly,” offered the voice from the back of the boat. The crew dissolved into giggles. An oar was relinquished and bobbed away back towards the island.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Setting up on your own was going to be the thing you finally committed to, something you could believe in. It had all seemed so right at the time, such a good idea. All the big corporates wanted leadership development and all of them wanted it delivered with some kind of new angle. A hook. Colleague engagement was the thing. No more sitting in pseudo class rooms listening to lectures, it was time to get out into the real world and discover how to lead and grow by doing things. You’d looked at the competition and, sure, opportunities to go pot holing or climb a mountain or walk on hot coals or break wooden blocks with your bare hands were all available. Unlock your full potential by standing on burning ashes. All of that stuff. But no-one offered the chance to go into space, to lead in an imagined environment unburdened by earthly constraints. No-one had understood the essential leadership archetypes and lessons contained in the various Star Trek captains over their many iterations. The emotional, impulsive, instinctive, charismatic brilliance of Kirk. The considered, rational, intellectual rigour of Picard. The paternal, consensual warmth of Sisko or the maternal, resourceful, protective strength of Janeway. What kind of leader are you ? No one ever claimed to be the Quantum Leap guy who appeared in Enterprise. No one ever remembered it to be honest. There were a lot of Kirks. There was also a fair amount of bemusement. But, undeterred, you’d done it. Bought a plot in some remote corner of Devon and built your own version of Star Fleet Academy. 

“Where have you been ?” asked Will. “I thought we were going to finish this task and then work on a case study of conflict resolution in the workplace by looking at tensions between humans, Klingons and Romulans throughout galactic history. It gives an interesting perspective on diversity too.”

“We’ve been…” started Rich.

“We’ve been at the pub,” offered the ever present voice from the back which Will now identified as Simon.

“Yes, that’s right,” acknowledged Rich. “We have been at the pub but… but we were initiating first contact…”. The boat howled again. Will stood stony faced. “First contact with an important new sentient race previously unseen by us.”

“Really ?”

“Really. Scrumpy. Unbelievably advanced. It’s like cider but with pan-dimensional qualities. We had to study it very hard to try to understand it.”

They’d said there would be moments like this. Obviously not exactly like this. No one had said to watch out for the time when a cohort of delegates on the “Accelerated Leadership: Warp Speed One Engage” program went rogue, got pissed, and nicked a boat. They’d said there would be times you’d want to jack it in. Times when you’d wonder if your grand idea wasn’t just the tiniest bit ridiculous and that you should have just sucked up the quiet and predictable corporate route instead. You wonder what your heroes would do in this position. Kirk would probably be sleeping with Kate, the startlingly pretty accountant that seemed to be able to consume vodka at levels disproportionate to her frame. Then he’d get Spock to work out the hard stuff. Picard would maybe send Riker to ingratiate himself with the group, get them back on side. He’d be clinical and detached and resolve it through reason. Sisko and Janeway ? Who knows ? The die-hards would know but who are you kidding ? Hardly anyone coming on the courses knows who they are. If you’re going to run a theme based in space then at least do Star Wars. That’s what your friends had said. And you’d thought about it – Solo as the reckless, impulsive one with a heart of gold, and Skywalker as the earnest believer following his destiny, and Kenobi with wisdom, and Leia, all feisty spirit and resolve. But it was less obviously corporate. Where were the structures and hierarchies ? So you’d gone with Trek. And here we are.

“You were supposed to be liberating the Federation colony from an invading Dominion force.”

“You mean we were supposed to be trying to get on to that island to pick up a piece of paper that said ‘you have liberated this colony’ ?” shot back Rich.

“The program is designed to use your creative and imaginative skills as well. If you went along with the role play you’d get much more out of it.”

“We did. We got fully into it.”

“No you didn’t. You went to the pub.”

“Two words for you Will,” said Rich. “Kobayashi Maru.”

“Kobayashi Maru ? What’s that got to do with you lot getting pissed when you’re supposed to be learning and developing ?”

“You know what it is. I’m Kirk, right ?”. Rich gestured at himself and Will nodded. All of his questionnaire responses indicated that he was, characteristically, Kirk. “Well, when Kirk gets given a task that can’t be completed what does he do ?”

Will shook his head. “No, no, no. When Kirk was graduating Star Fleet the Kobayashi Maru mission was deliberately designed to teach potential captains the nature of failure. This wasn’t like that.”

“Well on balance we decided that it was. Sorry Will. We figured it was too hard and that it would be better for all concerned if we went to the pub and got very, very drunk.”

There it was. One of the essential lessons at the heart of the thing he loved – when you are tested against literally impossible odds then find a way to win – reduced to a lazy retreat to alcohol induced stupor. To be fair you might argue that Kirk cheated and that, perhaps, sometimes in life you need to cheat. What had they learned though ? What had you learned ? Was it all just a waste of time ? What does anyone take from one of these courses ? Burnt feet ? A tick box appreciation of their own inner quirks and personality ? A chance to boldly go deep into the human soul where no one has gone before. The final frontier.

There was a long pause before Will finally spoke again: “Do you think that pub’s still open ?”

 

O.

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It never usually felt like the end, the close of another cycle, but this Autumn, the one after she’d gone, hit hard. I couldn’t blame her. God knows I’d tried but I really couldn’t. I fell too fast and too hard. And you had warned me that you wouldn’t, couldn’t. That if you fell, when you fell – you sensed that you probably would – that you’d descend gently, carefully. That you’d only just picked up your own pieces after last time you lost your footing and tumbled into something too quickly. It wasn’t that I didn’t listen but I couldn’t do anything about it. I went head over heels and figured I’d wait for you to catch me up. It’s a hard thing to fall like that, so suddenly, so violently, and to turn around reaching for the person who tripped you up, thinking that they’d be right there beside you, dusting themselves down, and to discover that they’re not. You were off balance but steadying yourself. I was splattered all over the pavement.

I’m not making excuses. I know that you could never understand how my feelings seemed to wither, just as this seasons’ leaves lay scattered like rust inflected relics of summer’s faded glory. And I’m sorry to wax lyrical. You never warmed to all that poetic stuff, early on when I was pouring my heart out. Or at least I didn’t think that you did but turns out the truth of it was that it did touch you, found a part of you that you’d locked up, stashed away so it was safe. I guess it was some of that stuff that helped you pick your way down to me. I took the short cut – pitched myself head first, head long into what I hoped was your heart. Knocked the breath out of myself in exhilaration. You were careful with what you considered precious. You were slow to love but it ran deep and left its mark – I was the wave, all crashing energy and pulled off my feet, and you were the steady, inexorable, relentless drop of water. My wave got us soaked but left no real mark in time. You etched yourself in stone.

But I was hurt. I was too exposed too soon and never understood your reticence. And you say that’s not fair and that I should grow up and that I should have waited and that if it was real it’d have lasted. And you’re right. But I was hurt and those feelings slipped away, silently stealing off into the night just as you were ready to take the final steps down to me. We should have held hands together and leaped. Or I should have taken your hand and we could have picked our way down slowly, together. Is that all love is ? Two people ready to fall at the same time, at the same rate ? It was too fast for you. It was too slow for me. By Autumn it was done.

This is the sea

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Once upon a time I learned to sail. Time steals the memories of that learning and now that I can navigate the river I can’t remember those days of running aground, of fighting the slow, easy current, or even of the repeated soakings as I was tipped into the water. Nor do I remember those early journeys, all way back upstream now, through the hurried rapids, down the narrow streams of my childhood. Perhaps at the time it all seemed bigger but looking back, up and across to the mountains we made our way down, I can barely make out the path of the water; like tracing my face for the lines left by tears that dried up long ago. As the river widened and relaxed into the valley some memories stick. I do remember that initial sense of freedom, striking out from the bank alone for the first time but secure in knowing that the river was slow, shallow, and not so broad that I couldn’t swim back to something solid. The river guides. That was the teaching: trust in its easy, forgiving flow and use it to learn for the sea. The unspoken truth though was that the river is poor learning for the sea but it is all we have.

The sea looked like hope from the river as I glimpsed it occasionally back then, wide eyed, staring downstream into the future. Just as looking back changed perspective, shrinking things that had seemed vast, looking forwards played the same trick but in reverse. The sea looked contained, bound by shore and horizon; it looked manageable. Navigable. The distance flattened the ceaseless rise and fall of the tides and ironed out the distant surges and storms. It looked like a gently creased, blue grey sheet stretched out between the land and sky and I miss that idea of it. I miss the time when I headed for uncharted waters with excitement and confidence, when apprehension felt like the precursor to discovery – something new and wonderful – instead of the prelude to fear. Even when the discovery was just someone else’s map of those uncharted waters, the discovery that they weren’t uncharted at all, that someone had sailed this course before and left you their notes.

And for a while, as I stuck to the charted waters or uncovered the notes from those that had sailed before me, the sea delivered on the promises whispered in its waves. Close to the mouth of the river it was as easy to sail as the river itself had been. The boat I’d built and sailed as a child rode the benign tides close to shore just as it had coped with the nudging currents that had eventually pushed it out into open water. The coastal squalls were exhilarating rather than frightening, the rush of adrenaline feeding the strength to trim the sails or tack back into the wind. And when they abated the sea was calm for long enough, and I was strong enough, open enough, to improve the boat, to make modifications and adjustments. To face each successive squall stronger than I’d faced the last. Perhaps the sea guides too. That’s what I thought in those days skimming the surface spray hugging the shoreline. I don’t think that anymore.

I don’t remember losing track of the shore. It must have happened slowly, over years, a progressive pull from the ebb of the tides winning out over the flow. Out here the sea doesn’t look contained or manageable and the notes left by fellow sailors are fewer and further between. Is it even navigable ? Out here there’s just the sea. Vast and endless and unforgiving: it can swallow you up and leave you cold, lost and adrift. When the storms hit my boat splintered and sank. I fought them until my bones ached and my fingers blistered from straining against salt lashed ropes in the desperate struggle to stay afloat. If I’d had a solid place to stand then perhaps I’d have saved the boat but the drenched deck gave no purchase for my feet. If I’d battled a single, violent tempest then perhaps I’d have saved the boat but the bad weather resolved itself into a change in the climate, storms piled on storms. If I’d learned to rest, to trust the sails to others, to admit to the weariness of near defeat, then perhaps I’d have saved the boat but even back in the days on the river I’d always sailed alone. There was no solid place to stand, there were many storms, and there was nobody to relieve me as captain: my boat splintered and sank.

The sea’s depths seemed to offer solace, they were untouched by whatever raged above. At first there was a relief in the isolation as I dropped beneath the roiling, rolling waves, pieces of my former vessel, fractured and sinking beside me. As I lingered there longer though it became colder and a kind of numbness set in; it became harder to strike out again for the surface. There was nothing up there but storms and the relentless toss and twist of the swelling waters. Nothing there but more sorrow. There was nothing here either but it was a constant nothing. It was predictable. Navigable. I was lost but if I stayed where I was I’d never be more lost and I’d never risk the hope of clutching at a way back to shore. I’d never feel the touch of the sun on skin but I’d never have to feel the rain either.

The sea doesn’t guide, it just is. The sea doesn’t guide but perhaps those that sail it still can and still do. The notes from fellow sailors are fewer and further between out here – down here – in the sea. But some remain. Even here some remain.  I found one of those stray, rare notes and it said this: even out here it’s not truly uncharted. There’s a universal map written in the stars for those able to raise their eyes and read it. Perhaps it leads back to your shore but you can’t read that map ensconced and ensnared under water. You might see the lights, foggy and distorted, but the water refracts and changes the true positions of the fixed reference points you must follow. You must brave the surface to see the way. The only way back to the shore is to risk the storms. How do you learn to be still on the waves ? Or how do you learn to lean in to the teeth of the gale and laugh ? When does knowing you’re not in control of the boat stop being terrifying and fill your heart with exhilaration ? How do you leave notes as you chart your waters that others might find and learn from in future ? These are the questions I asked and still ask as I seek the playful exploration of the shores close to the river that I learned to navigate when I was young. I read the note and draw strength to seek the surface.

This is the sea. Terrible and terrifying and relentless. Open and hopeful and limitless. Build the best boat you can and learn to make it dance on the river but accept that when you reach the sea it can crush the strongest vessel or the skilled sailor without thought or malice. All you can do is learn to sail again. Seek out the constants in the sky, learn to sail and as you chart your course leave notes that others might follow and might know that they are not alone, adrift in their storms. The river need not be our only learning. We are each other’s guides.

Once upon a time I learned to sail. Happily ever after remains my destination, out there on the horizon, across the sea.

 

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This is story 42 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

So that’s it. Took longer than anticipated but all 42 are done and, to date, I’ve raised £700 for Mind. This one’s about everything the other 41 were about but also, in spirit, was about the value in sharing stories.

It owes a huge debt to Mike Scott and The Waterboys who said in six glorious minutes and two chords what I’ve struggled to say here.

Fragments

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I remember the bridge and the accident. Or, at least, I remember that I wrote that there was a bridge and that there was an accident. Something bad happened. We can agree on that. I’ve been coming here for weeks now, perhaps months, and trying to talk about it but the words just won’t come. The summer house at the end of a garden, slatted windows open in the late summer to let in the air, shuttered tight in the winter to protect the heat rising at our feet from the electric radiator. There’s a box of tissues that I’ve never reached for although there’s some part of me that thinks that I should: the absence of tears no doubt noted dutifully in the book of notes I never get to read. Am I a secret to myself ? A wasp drones angrily at the glass in the summer house door.

“Perhaps we should let it out ?” he asks.

I look up at him, at his eyes, at his eyebrows raised expectantly, at his kindness.

“Letting things out isn’t my forte,” I reply ruefully. He lets me lapse back into silence and watch the wasp, a study in impotent rage, continue to fail to break through the glass, fail to fly to the garden it can see but not reach.

I remembered the shattered shards of glass on the bridge after the accident. The lights from the ambulance refracting through the splinters, red and blue light dancing across the wet tarmac as I waited for them to tell me what had happened. Does it matter if there was really an accident or if I just wrote it ? Something bad happened. It seems easier somehow to dramatise it rather than  just lay out the bare facts because the reality was so banal, so mundane, or at least it was when I said it out loud; inside it felt like an accident. It’s not as if I don’t have the words. I am not short of the words, whether recounting the miserable, ordinary slide into depression, or describing it second hand via a series of thinly disguised metaphors. All of those stories came from the same source, the same white light scattered through the mosaic of broken glass strewn across the bridge, a myriad of separations, a spiders web of my shattered self reflected back in shattered glass. Does it matter if the bridge was real ?

“So what did you want to talk about ?” he asks, more questions.

“I’m not sure that I want to talk about any of it to be honest,” I reply. “You know I prefer to write it all down.”

“The stories ? The music essays ?”

“I’m better written down,” I persist.

“But it’s another front, isn’t it ? Another way of packaging yourself up to present to the world ? The pieces of yourself you’ll allow people to see. Carefully considered and thought through. Nothing in the moment or out of control or truly vulnerable or exposed.”

“Pieces of splintered glass,” I murmur. “I don’t know. Is it just a front ? I’m not saying those stories amount to ‘Blood On The Tracks’ but there’s all of me in there if you search. They seem as real to me as a hand shake or a late night conversation with a friend or, or I don’t know, an imagined road accident on a bridge and its post traumatic fall out.”

“So why don’t you cry ? Or get angry ? Through all that pain, through that trauma. Where does it all go ?”

“It goes on the page. Or it pulls me down, eats me up. It’s better on the page. I’m better on the page.”

“And do you think you could put yourself back together on the page ? Tell enough stories, find enough of the fragmented strands of yourself that you can stitch them back, weave a tapestry out of the threads. Work it all out on your own. Is that the point ?”

“That’s not the analogy I use. In the story – you know, the first one – it’s glass. All of those stories are just the little pieces of glass sprinkled across the scene of the crash, little reflections of a part of my whole.”

“So change the analogy. Glass doesn’t really yield. It shatters or breaks and even if you could glue it all back together you’d always see the joins, you’d never see through it as clearly again. Sure, we unravel sometimes but when you knit the frayed threads back together you can make something new; just as strong as it was before, maybe stronger if you can see where the stitches failed last time. Don’t write stories to describe the fractured pieces of glass. Weave.”

“How would I start ?”

“I don’t know. You’re the story-teller. How do stories usually start ?”

 

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This is story 41 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is intended as a wrap back to the very first story: Beginnings. It either all gets a bit meta or it disappears up its own arse. It’s a fine line… but it’s well intentioned. One to go.

Perspective (too much perspective)

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A faint, residual mist of hairspray hung in the air, motes sparkling in the semi darkness as Josh picked up his cigarette from the ashtray and inhaled. The tip flared and illuminated the descending shroud of spray, a tiny universe of stars falling and winking out in front of his eyes. He exhaled, blowing a long, lazy smoke ring that dispersed the last of the haze. Eighteen years on the road and these were the two things he had to show for it, the two things he’d learned. First, how to blow rings. Second, how to style his hair and smoke at the same time without setting himself on fire. No one was much impressed by either but he’d seen enough wannabes never master the second: why’d you think so many frontmen wore bandanas ?

Veteran rockers. That was what the reviews had said this tour. Veteran. Like they were returning from war or something. If he was then Josh was pretty sure he hadn’t won: it’d been a long, bloody siege, camped just outside the walls of mainstream success, battering to be let in but never quite finding the firepower to get it done. It hadn’t always been like that. First record had gone gold and Rolling Stone had anointed them heirs apparent to Guns ‘N Roses, eulogised about their inevitable place in a lineage traced from the New York Dolls through to all those West Coast bands that ripped it up in the 80s. They’d even opened for Motley Crue back in ’89, an experience that had teased a glimpse of a life they’d see fleetingly a few times in the years that followed but never quite catch. Still, those boys had shown him how to handle a can of hairspray and their audience had taught him how to dodge a bottle of piss so he couldn’t say it was a total waste.

This felt like coming full circle, except now they were opening for a parody of all the bands they used to think they wanted to be. When did rock and roll become pantomime ? Maybe it always was. Maybe it just came down to timing. If they’d landed in ’89 with three chords, a distortion pedal, and a plaid shirt then they could have decamped to Seattle and ridden the swelling (new) wave of grunge instead of being in LA just as everyone got washed up, spent, on the shore. Left to wring out their spandex. No-one wore lycra anymore unless they were cycling. It’s the new rock and roll apparently. Remember when rock and roll was the new rock and roll ?

Josh exhaled again and watched his face, staring out at him from the dressing room mirror, disappear behind the fug. As the smoke dispersed he came back into focus, indistinct and translucent at first and then sharper until he could trace every line on his forehead, every crease around his eyes that the soft smudges of mascara didn’t conceal quite the way they used to. Exhale. He liked himself better in the smog.

Two minutes. Someone had banged on the door and shouted the final call. No sense in being late on when you opened, not when you were trying to pack eighteen years, trying to pack a lifetime, in to the thirty minutes on stage you were allotted. They’d steal a bit back at the end. String out the band intros and stretch out “Sex Freak”; it was the song everyone came for now anyway. Billboard rock chart top ten, had even looked like breaking the Hot 100 in the midweek listings until dropping away at the end. Maybe if they’d agreed to the edits MTV wanted they’d have kept up the rotations but you don’t think it’s your only shot when you’re twenty one. You don’t want to start off by playing the game. It’s rock, man, not the Backstreet Boys. Cut the sex scene ? Fuck cutting the sex scene. Had he meant that or had he just been egged on by Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee ? Maybe taking advice from filthy rich hedonists with a sideline in heroin addiction wasn’t the smartest move he’d made. Great hair though.

Must be time. Do what you love, he muttered under his breath. Do what you love. It’d be the last thing he’d say to the crowd as they finished their set and it was the last thing he’d said to every crowd they’d ever played to. He’d carried it as a mantra all the way back to the days (or mainly nights) spent flyering the Sunset Strip, begging club owners to give them a slot, pestering label execs to turn out to watch showcases. Do what you love. It had sustained him through being dropped after the second record, kept his faith as half the band quit in acrimony last year. No, we’re not going to try more of a country feel. Who’d you think we are ? Steven fucking Tyler ? It was the rallying call as he’d put the new line up together, mostly kids: he could still see the belief – the desire – burning in their eyes each time they played. It could all still happen when you’re twenty one. It almost did for him.

You’re on Josh. Kill ‘em, man. Show time.

Do what you love. But what do you do when you don’t love it anymore ?

 

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This is story 39 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is for an old friend. It is fictional but may have been partially inspired by watching a Steel Panther gig this week. Yep, Steel Panther. I’m not proud.

Moonshot

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That was the high point, wasn’t it ? How’d we get from the low point – I use Hiroshima as my benchmark low point for the US but your mileage may vary – to the high point in less than twenty five years ? And don’t tell me it was JFK. I mean I get that he did the vision thing but really that guy was no completer finisher. It was the egg heads and boffins behind the scenes that should’ve got the glory, even more than Armstrong and Aldrin and the other one – who was the other one ? All of those “right stuff” guys. It wasn’t just them, it was the techies and scientists. Probably the same ones who carved out our low point, right ? Funny how they get the credit for that – Oppenheimer, Feynman, Fermi – but you never hear about the lab coat brigade at NASA that put a a man on the moon. It’s all astronaut suits and suspiciously horizontal flags and one small step. I know the flag was wires and shit. I don’t think Kubrick faked it all. I mean, have you seen “Eyes Wide Shut” ? He couldn’t even get Tom and Nicole to look convincing having sex and they were married.

Michael Collins. That was the other one. Floating round the moon, staring out into the abyss whilst his buddies got the kudos. Armstrong always gets the same questions – how did it feel being first, what was it like looking back at Earth yadda yadda ? And Aldrin doesn’t get off any easier – how does it feel being second ? Always asked with that same slight sense of “that must suck, you were *this* close buddy”. I mean, come on, he was the second guy on the fucking moon. It’s not like he was the runner up quarterback in the Superbowl. Second. Person. Ever. On. The. Fucking. Moon. He should just get a badge or something made up that says: I’ve been on the moon, unless you’re one of the other eleven people to share that privilege then shut the fuck up. Maybe something snappier than that but you get the idea. Anyway, where was I ? Collins. He never gets the same questions because everyone’s forgotten about him. Everyone’s forgotten about the guy that was first to orbit the moon and sit on his own, zero contact with Earth, and stare out into the void. I don’t know much about him – be honest, who does – but he must now either be the most Zen guy down here or out of his mind. This is me. That’s the endless reaches of nothingness. Fuck.

I don’t know. Maybe Collins and Armstrong and Aldrin went through all the same thoughts as the Enola Gay pilot. Maybe, up close, the low point and the high point didn’t feel so different ? He must have contemplated something as he pulled the big old lever to drop the bomb. Look, if you’re a World War 2 flight nerd then don’t bother to tell me that it wasn’t a lever, alright ? I know it wasn’t a lever. A button or something. Probably red with one of those little plastic flick up covers over it so you couldn’t accidentally lean on it too soon. What was that Tibbets ? Ah, shit, sorry guys but I just caught the nuke button with my elbow when I was drinking my coffee and… They didn’t get coffee on the Enola Gay, did they ? Anyway, the point is that surely being on top of something that momentous gives you pause. Why are we here ? What’s it all about ? What’s out there in that featureless expanse ? How can I justify killing thousands and thousands of people ?

Just ignore me if this is bugging you. I get like this sometimes. Especially when I see Trump on TV, you know ? How’d we get from 1969 and landing on the moon and the Stones and free love and LSD to 2016 and building a wall across our border and the Kardashians and no love and the NRA ? I can see the steps but I can’t see which one was the mis-step. If you could go back – McFly, McFly ! – then where would you undo it ? Maybe Armstrong’s not the hero. I know he never claimed to be but maybe that was the start of all this need to make someone emblematic of everything else. Is that even a word ? Emblematic ? I guess it is now. We made him the star. The greatest achievement, scientific or otherwise, of mankind and we made it about a man. That stuff belongs to all of us. We did that. All of us. I mean, not me obviously – and probably not actually you – but metaphorically we did that. Armstrong just got to wear the suit and fluff his lines leaving the lunar module. Aldrin probably gave him an impatient nudge and put him off.

Ah man I don’t even know what to make of it all. We came back from the moon and the best we found was Trump and Clinton. What the fuck ? We went with less computational power than you’ve got in your phone and all you use that for is watching videos of cats and playing Pokemon Go ? If I was Tibbets I’d dust Enola Gay off, take her up for one last flight and put us all out of our misery. Flick up the little plastic cover and give that big old red button a push. Another low point and maybe, just maybe, in twenty five years we can do something worthwhile again. Or better still what would I give to swap places with Collins ? Circling, circling the moon and watching the darkness for hours before getting to see the Earth reborn, shining in space, on each rotation.

 

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This is story 35 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

Honestly I don’t really know what this is. It’s the anniversary of the first moon landing today and it came as a character led stream-of-consciousness splurge from that. It’s pretty much as it came so apologies for the lack of edit. I am not the narrator but I can see where he is coming from. Troubling times.

Poppy

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Poppy marked a cross.

They’d named her Poppy for their grandfather, her “great gramps”, a man she’d never met because he’d fallen at the Somme when he was just 23. They’d taken her a few years ago so they could all find his name on the Thiepval Memorial, etched in stone beneath unadorned red brick. She hadn’t expected to feel a connection, hadn’t expected to feel much at all if she was honest with herself. Paris was next on the itinerary and she’d been itching to idle away afternoons sipping café and watching people drift around the 6th arrondissement. She was young and France was art and intellectuals and Les Deux Magots and, yes, again if she was honest with herself, it was also going to be shopping. France was Sartre and De Beauvoir but it was Chanel and Dior and Louboutin and Lacroix as well.

She remembered the surprise when they’d arrived and the sheer size of the monument as it loomed over her, impressing on her the sense of the scale of the loss. She was one person looking up, humbled, in memory at the absence of seventy two thousand. As she picked her way around the base of the structure the names were overwhelming: Joseph Anstee, Charles Balding, Frank Bell, Arthur Boon, David Brannick… All from the Lincolnshire Regiment. She found him, nestled alphabetically alongside his brothers, and traced the letters of his name carved in the stone with her finger. They’d found her there a few minutes later kneeling in front of a wall of the dead and weeping for a man she’d never known.

She wore her name with a certain pride after that day. A pride she nurtured through journeys to the beaches in Normandy to see where her grandfather had landed less then thirty years after his father had died. She’d driven across the country in pursuit of the route he’d taken: Pont L’Eveque, Saint Maclou, Pavilly, Yerville, Motteville, Yvetot, Bermonville, and Valmont. They were small, sleepy farming villages where tourists wouldn’t ordinarily go but she’d always, generally been welcomed. Her faltering French delivered in a distinctly English accent seemed to open as many doors amongst the older residents as it closed them among the young. Wherever she went they delighted in her name, some even calling her coquelicot, wild poppy: she loved it.

When she’d met Dan he’d loved the coquelicot story too and had adopted it as they’d grown in intimacy, a kind of petits noms d’amour. She’d carried that name along with her birth name as the two of them had followed his family history back across a broader sweep of Europe. He’d been inspired by her desire to know her roots and so they’d ranged across Poland and Romania visiting run down old synagogues in forgotten corners of old city quarters, looking for the places his ancestors had fled from. Their travels took them, eventually, to the silence of the long liberated camp at Dachau where one of the trails they’d been following ran to the coldest stop. The other trails ran back home to England.

They had family marked with crosses across the continent. From France to Germany, from Poland to Romania. They both used to joke that they wished their grandparents and their great grandparents had managed to venture somewhere warmer as they’d traveled across northern Europe, as they’d looked to thread together their shared past. Your granddad wasn’t much for the sun, even if he could have gone, her parents had told her with a smile, your grandma could barely get him to Skegness every year.

She didn’t know what they would have wanted but she was certain they’d have wanted her to make her own choice. To choose for herself and not for them. She stood in the polling booth and thought about connections and about all the people she had met and about her future and her past. She had family marked with crosses across the continent.

Poppy marked a cross.

 

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This is story 34 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This was written on the 100th anniversary of the senseless Battle Of The Somme and I guess is my small tribute to lots of braver people than me. It’s also some attempt to capture my genuine sadness in the wake of the EU referendum vote last week and, in particular, the tone of the debate and the upturn in nationalism and xenophobia that’s been evident since. In or out there’s more that unites us than divides us.

You and me and the end

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It was cold out past the north ridge. We used to go up there sometimes, late at night, and watch the lights. Fragments of satellites falling from orbit, burning up in the atmosphere, sparking orange and red and gold. You’d pull out your battered old hip flask and we’d share whatever you’d managed to steal from your folks’ drinks cabinet. We still had folks and we still had cabinets. It seemed quaint when there was an ever revolving war being waged above our heads but I think we both kinda liked quaint. Like how you insisted on still rolling your own cigarettes and we’d sit exhaling into the darkness, the smoke punctuated by those descending flares of colour. Was that one of ours or one of theirs ?

“Did you think it’d end like this ?”

It’s a variation on a conversation we’ve been having for the past few weeks. When we’d first come up here it was to pick out the stars, far enough beyond the light of the city for the sky’s darkness to give up its secrets. As the war had gathered momentum the slashes of iridescence marking another weapon falling from above had increased in frequency until they became an unrelenting firework display.

“Who says it’s the end ?” I take a deep swig from the flask and let the alcohol warm my throat, feel it burn in my chest. “I think the end’ll be a lot warmer than this.”

You take the hint and shuffle in closer, wrapping your arm across my shoulders, pulling me in tight. I offer you the drink but you decline with a shake of the head before turning your face away to puff out a long stream of smoke. We both follow its line as it stretches out over the ridge, over the desert, up into the still, fragile night.

“It can’t stay in balance for ever,” you declare. “Maybe we tip the scales, maybe they tip the scales. Sooner or later someone’s going to win this thing and then…”

“…and then it’ll be a lot warmer, just like I said,” I interrupt.

“Only if we lose,” you whisper.

“I think that’s inevitable now,” I whisper back. “Even if we win.”

You squeeze my shoulder and we twist our heads to look at each other. It’s a fleeting moment, even then I knew you couldn’t just look at me, couldn’t just sit and stare, nothing but us. It was too intimate and too exposed. Don’t misunderstand, I know that you love me but I know that there was a part of you that you wanted to keep hidden. I guess it was the part that was as scared as I was and I could understand that. You furrow your brow and screw up your eyes and I lean in to rest my head against your chest. It’s a way to be closer but, breaking eye contact, somehow further away. I let you retreat to your fears and I retreat to mine.

It’s only been three months but we know that it’s close now. One side’s network will fail, the intricate defensive web of satellites will be breached and then hell will rain down from the heavens. Nobody thinks we’re winning. Tonight the city sleeps behind us,  sprawling across the valley, its own spread of lights enough to mute the noisy colours from the sky. I think they prefer it that way. Better to pretend none of it was happening than contemplate the possible outcome. I break the silence.

“I’d sooner it ends like this, if that’s what you were asking.”

“How so ?”

“Up here, facing out across the empty stretches of desert, a flask of the ‘Mart’s finest own label scotch, the smell of tobacco…”

“You make it sound so romantic.”

“There’s a war on, haven’t you heard ? This is no time for hearts and flowers.”

“Just ‘cos there’s a little trouble overhead ? We’ve gotta maintain some standards.” You flick away the last of your cigarette and stand up. “Bear with me a second. I’m sure I saw one on the way up.”

I watch as you scramble a little way back down the trail we picked our way up earlier. The glow from the city throws up the rocks on either side as dark silhouettes and you’re soon lost to sight. From the top of the ridge the desert unwinds to the horizon. It seems flat now that the sun’s gone down but I remember us hiking it earlier that summer, remember its jagged undulations, all toothy outcrops and sudden, hidden holes that might snare a foot. We’d escaped unscathed save for sunburned faces; the sky in the desert hadn’t been kind to us even then. That was all before it started. Before the escalation and the threats and the test firings. Before we’d launched that strike, the one that their defence grid knocked out of the sky before it found its mark. Had we really struck first ?

“For you.” You’re back and holding out a tiny, delicate flower, a milk white star with five petals. “I don’t know what it is,” you offer apologetically.

“It’s a miniature wool star,” I reply taking it from you. I clasp your hand in thanks whilst holding the flower up in front of me and it’s then that we both notice; both realise. One star in the foreground against a canopy of thousands in the night sky.

“It’s stopped,” you say and I nod my understanding. You sit in next to me again and we embrace. It felt like hours but maybe it was three, four, five minutes, neither of us speaking, neither of us moving, just sitting and letting the rhythm of our breathing fall quietly into line with each other. In. Out. In. Out. In…

Neither of us heard anything as the city in the valley behind us vanished. Neither of us looked at the cloud of dust mushrooming above our homes. We just saw the desert light up in a palette of oranges and pinks and bronze, like sitting on the edge of a volcano as it erupts. If there’d been anyone left in the city to look up they’d have seen us, two figures, arm in arm, silhouetted for an instant on the ridge. Like the flash of one of our folks’ old polaroids and then we were gone.

 

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This is story 33 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

I wrote this whilst listening to some long ambient music that Moby gave away for free on his website recently. The jump off point was literally the mood that it invoked in me. That was the looking-out-over-the-desert-at-night stuff. The subsequent nuclear apocalypse was my fault. So don’t blame Moby.

Pi

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After the first time I’d nicknamed him Pi because the sex was over in 3.14 seconds. He improved but the name stuck. He became my constant. Whatever circles I moved in there was him. Me plus him, it should have been a simple equation. So why was I making it complex ?

Algorithms. Regression. Correlations. I close my eyes and the maddening march of numbers fill the darkness. I see structure in the noise and make connections. Form from the apparent chaos. I want it to stop. To trip an off switch and for the structure to dissolve, to shut down my highly prized mind. Algorithms to give way to baser rhythms.

I remember his touch on my skin and how those nights had been filled with a different darkness, absent of structure and analysis. Instinct and emotion and pleasure. I’d been afraid of it, of course, unable to break it down, to analyse it, to model what he might do next. He always did something thrilling next, something unexpected, something that made me lose the sense of who I was. I ached for him those nights. Ached in the pleasure of him and ached in the pain in not understanding him or, specifically, what he was able to provoke in me. No reason, no structure, no control.

So do I have to let him go because I can’t let myself go ? Must I regress to regression and models and statistics ? Me minus him, another simple equation. Would he be there tonight ? On the periphery of the room, marking out the radius of the latest circle I was moving in ? If he was could I calculate the probability that he’d end up back in my bed ? The odds had always been good. Constant.

There he is. I detach from a conversation about causal relationships and statistical significance and cross the room to him. Me plus him. Let’s keep it simple. I’m there in one, two, three… just a touch over three steps. Let’s call it 3.14.

 

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This is story 32 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

There’s a whole untapped market where sex and maths collide. Isn’t there ?

The cowgirl and the counsellor

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I was late for the appointment. It had helped to talk about him at first but not anymore. I felt like lately Claire didn’t want to talk about him; she wanted to talk about me and I wasn’t interested in that. Or didn’t want her interested in that at least. I was my own puzzle to solve.

Her room was bright, pastel painted walls, a large print of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” hung above a walnut coffee table atop which sat a box of tissues, a sketching book and a selection of pencils in a jam jar. Claire was sitting forwards in her chair, smiling, and beckoning me into the room. It always struck me as odd. This incongruous, boxed off oasis of peace in an otherwise sterile set of shared, serviced offices. Grief counselling and therapy alongside A-Z MiniCabs, LB Accounting, and Mitchell & Hobbs Solicitors: wills and inheritance a speciality. That always struck me as particularly unfortunate and Claire hadn’t found it funny in one of our early sessions when I’d asked if she picked up many referrals. I always felt like she was testing me and I was failing. Maybe I’d just wanted to test her for a change.

“Sorry I’m late” I offered. She just broadened her smile and shook her head, gesturing at me to sit down. I perched on the edge of the armchair that was reserved for the unwell, the soft chair to sink into and surrender. I could smell her herbal tea. The more the room screamed calm at me the more I felt on edge.

“How are you ?” asked Claire. “It’s been some time…”

“I’m fine,” I replied, too quickly. She pursed her lips and inclined her head, expecting more. “Really. I’m sorry I’ve missed a couple of sessions but I think that just shows that I’m doing well. I haven’t needed to talk to anyone. No offence.”

“None taken. I’m glad to hear that you feel you’re doing well.” She fell silent. I knew how this worked by now; early on I used to hate the silence and would desperately fill it. Stories of growing up, memories of Dad. I would tell her I felt sad if I thought that was what she wanted to hear and other days I’d tell her it was getting easier, that I thought I was getting better. I did feel sad. But not in the way that I could tell Claire even if I’d wanted to. I don’t really have words for how empty everything had felt after he died, how numb. When I was little I broke my arm, fell off a swing in the park, and the pain was so intense at first that I blacked out. When I woke up in the ambulance they must have given me something because everything was duller, I could still feel the sensation in my arm but it was like I’d been separated from it. They stopped me feeling it because I couldn’t cope with it. That’s what the sadness felt like now: if I try to really feel it then I can’t deal with it. There’s just too much of it and so I try to stay separate from it. Claire cracked first. “I’ve been reading back through my notes and it struck me that we never really talk about the reason you’re here.”

“I don’t understand what you mean ?” I replied. I started to fold my arms but forced myself to leave them open, any change in posture usually provoked a flurry of note taking from Claire as if my innermost thoughts were laid bare by the position of body parts. We had spent twenty minutes in a previous session debating my fingernails, bitten to the quick. She saw some conspiracy of anxiety whereas I was pretty sure it was just because I couldn’t play the guitar with nails. Eventually I’d confessed to a concocted feeling of restlessness as she’d become increasingly interested in how I felt when I played music. I think I’d made the mistake of saying that I needed my fingertips exposed to connect to the strings, that in a funny way I felt connected to myself when I played. It was too close to the truth and so I’d deflected her with a lie. The pain isn’t separate when I play.

“We never talk about how you feel about your dad’s death,” said Claire. I held her gaze, fighting the urge to look away, to twist and hide in my seat. This was unusually direct for her. Perhaps she was as tired as I was of dancing around each other. Perhaps she’d given up trying to coax me out and had settled on a full on assault. She broke eye contact. “I’m just trying to help you Emily. Grief is a complex thing, it can eat you up without you even realising. I’m worried that you’re not…”

“Not grieving ?” I interrupted.

“No,” she said. “I can see that you’re grieving. You’re hurting so much that I think you’ve shut yourself off from feeling anything much at all and that’s a part of grieving. But it’s not a part you can stay in forever if you want it to get better.” She was looking straight at me again now and this time I did look away. I knew she was right. Maybe that was why I kept coming back, despite my deflections and defensiveness she kept on trying and, at times, she seemed to find me even as I tried to keep myself hidden.

“I… I don’t know how to do it,” I whispered into my shoulder.

“There’s no right and wrong way. You don’t get an instruction book. They don’t even give me one and I’m supposed to be helping.” I looked back at her. She was leaning forwards in her chair looking intently at me with a worried, weary smile. I smiled back at her.

“So what do we do now ?”

“I think now we try and do this a different way. Write me a song. Forget about today, we can just have a cup of tea and chat about the weather.” She must have caught the look on my face. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to have the herbal stuff. Come back next week, bring your guitar, and write me a song. I’d love to hear you sing. Deal ?” I was scared but curious. I thought I knew what she was trying to do but the quickening in my pulse when she’d asked me to write a song was the most alive I’d felt in weeks. Perhaps it was time to stop hiding.

“Deal.”

 

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This is story 31 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is probably the last we’ll hear from Emily’s story (as spread across the previous three posts, Concrete Cowgirl, Broken, and Heartbreaker) for a while. Largely because I haven’t written anymore of it… However, I think she’s okay in Claire’s capable hands for a while. This one’s for anyone that’s ever sat in a therapist or counseller’s room and wondered how the hell they try and explain how they feel. I was spectacularly bad at it !