Writing comes easily, it always has. I was raised to worship the word as written, as God. Writing was the road to salvation. It was the ultimate form of expression, of transmission. It was the means by which we could find our way through to the heart of darkness. I was taught to form symbols and meaning from the strokes of black on white.  My father showed me how to form the necessary symbols; my mother encouraged me to inform.

I was blessed with a fertile mind, an active mind. A blessing that meant I had plenty of material from which to form my words. My mind never shut off, there was always something there, something forming, reforming, leaping and sweeping, demanding space to move. This blessing soon become a curse, as I too quickly fell behind. My hand could not keep pace with that which moved it.  By the time I was six, the backlog had begun. Words unformed festered in my head, becoming mishappen and mashed together, they soon formed an amorphous seething black mass.

I tried my best to ease the beast inside. I scribbled and scrawled, doodled and drafted, and yet I never rid myself of that backlog. The seething mass just kept getting bigger and darker and more demanding. I tried, and the more I tried the more I seemed to fail. All I managed were moments of temporary relief through an expulsion of built up vocabulary onto the page in front of me.

What I saw there only disheartened me more. My words made no sense.  Their mutant shape while  recognisable to me, were alien to any others who saw them.  They were not pretty, they emerged from me squashed and pummelled. I had no time it seemed to nurture and nourish them after their birth, for there were always so many others, mangled and maimed, yearning to be set free.

For so many years I have lived in this agony. A narrow neck, a choked canal.

 So why do it?

Because it is what I am meant to do. I realise that now. It is not about making sense. It is not about finding an audience. It is not about anything other than this, simply this. Writing words is what I’m meant to be doing.

Some people are talkers, others have a healing touch, others still are affectionate and demonstrative in their love. I am all these things in part, yet none of these things come as naturally or as easily as the recording of my mind.

And I need to keep practising. I need to keep sitting in front of the page and writing what I am. For when I am not, I am distracted by the voices in my head. I am distracted through attachment and investment. When I am not writing I am caring; caring about whether I make sense, caring about whether I am making a good impression, caring about whether I am fully in this moment or not, and what the next one might be.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

He was able to convey his feelings through the slightest rearrangement of his features, and in this moment he once again was saying that he did not understand, and also that he was not interested in trying to understand. That he had more urgent and pressing things to think about. Con knew what those things were, Carlos was always thinking about the same thing. He was worrying, like the proverbial dog with a bone, about how many years he was going to be spending in prison, in a foreign land. His best bet was three; the worst case somewhere around six, both of which were half of what he would be sentenced to.

Con was used to Carlos being distracted, it was more common that not, and for Con it didn’t really matter. he was not here to push these guys. As long as they were having a good time, as long as they would rather be here that sitting in their cells, then his work was done. They were a mixed bunch. ‘His boys’ he called them when he was talking with Cat. She would sometimes ask when she got home from work ‘ so how were your boys today’, and he would answer – ‘always good’, there had never been a time yet in the year that he had been teaching in the prison when they hadn’t been good, when he hadn’t had an good time with them.

He had long agao given up trying to understand why he felt so at ease with men who were locked up. Now he just knew it was so, he was able to develop an easy and relaxed relationship with those who were known to be drug smugglers, thieves, rapists and even murderers. He had been around such people for a long time now, in two different countries, on different sides of the world. They were good people. He knew this. He also knew they had done bad things, but for most of the time he had spend with them, this was not his concern, not directly anyway.

There had been a time, many years ago, when it had become too much. Not so much through being with the men themselves, but rather through having to know what it was they had done. After the riots at the maximum security prison he had sat in a small interview room, sometimes seeing close to 40 prisoners a day, one after the other. Reading their files, often huge tomes of paperwork squashed into two and sometimes three brown folders. Sometimes spanning decades, reaching back to when these men were children, detailing their lives through their contact with probation officers, social workers, psychologists, prison officials, judges and others. I made for depressing reading; so much life spent in institutions. The accumulated effect of it had been too much – not that he was conscious of it, not as it built up, it was just there one night as he lay in bed.  He remembers the dark gloomy expanse welling up underneath him.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

It’s a long game. A game that lasts forever and even then the result is never quite guaranteed is it? Life is just about playing it and enjoying it and being in it, and to do all that I can, all the time, to understand the rules. The rules of the game; the rules of engagement, entanglement, entrapment.

Being a couple was so different from being a single, a one.  As a lone operator, when life is lived alone I always know what the end result will be – something dark and dirty, and full of surprises that are of my own making. A sore head and a heavy heart. A  weary heart and a wandering eye.  Itchy feet perhaps, though mine do not itch. Unlike some of those that I have attempted to lie with in the fox holes – they were constantly moving, scratching, itching, rubbing – unable to feel the calm inside, they expressed their fear in franticness, the never-ending worrying through the welts and swells on their bodies.

A swell mob those compatriats, my companions in the ditches. Eventually we all breathed in the same stinking yellow gas, and eventually we all ended up here, our backs on these beds, looking at a cracked grey ceiling and contemplating the long game.

Next time I’m here in this room I intend to start from the beginning. I intend to learn a new and different language to explain what I feel, to describe the cracks in the ceiling. I just want to remember one thing, that’s all. I jut want to take one thing over from this world to that. Just one little advantage, and as I lie here hurting myself through my breath, I wonder whether I will have the courage to ask. The guards are standing waiting, I can see them through the cracks in the ceiling. They are waiting, not for me, but for anyone who wishes to cross over into no man’s land, and I know that soon I wil be standing there, asked to declare what I carry with me, and I am not sure whether it is best to try and smuggle my little advantage over the line, or whether it is best to simply declare my desire and hope for the best.

I know what you say. I hear your voice chiding me,  Of course it is best to declare, but I am scared of crossing without this smallest of things, this little piece of knowledge. But then I guess that as the slate is wiped clean, I will not be able to read what was written before anyway. I will not know then what I have now. I will not be aware that I have started again from a position of weakness.

I will not know that I’m starting something that I have no intention of finishing. I will not know then that this long game does finally finish and that the rewards are divved up, and the truth is finally out. There is eventually a way through the gaps and cracks that surround us, plastered over so very carefully in the walls we surround ourselves with.  Here I lie, my back against the sheets and I have made it my mission to know the cracks above. The chances that exist, the odds of making a clean break.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I’m surrounded by non-believers. Unhappy people. People who don’t even know they’re unhappy. Maybe I need to tell them? Teach them at least. Teach them how to recognise their unhappiness.

No? Teach them to be happy then, teach them to see beyond the next purchase, the next piece of stuff that they want to hold in their hands, attach to their hearts. The weight of the world. The burden they choose, yes choose, to place upon themselves.

Ah, but I am not a teacher, even though that is what I say I am. It is a lie, a fallacy. I lack the courage to teach.

I lack the courage to be. To be in this moment, and to move freely into the next. It is random, you know this don’t you. You know there is no meaning and all purpose to what there is. It is of our own making, you know this. You know that in anything you choose to be. In all things you choose to exist. You choose to be what you are.

Free will.

And me? I am so free that I no longer see the magic that exists in my own being.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I understand the attraction. The cynicism and the despair. The desire to slander and complain. I understand the welcoming hand of bitterness and disappointment. It is the resting place of so many of us.

Why is that? Do we fear the light? Do we fear the joy that can come from our own way of being, we fear our own brilliance? Yet you are different from many, different in that you know your brilliance. You have seen the light that surrounds you, that lies deep within you, that emanates from you.

You have learnt this for and from yourself. You know what you are. And yet you feel you have may have squandered it, chosen to hide your light under a bushel. This is your doubt, it is your fear that pulls you into the shadows. You look at others, others less aware than you, yet so much more courageous.

You have chosen safety over exhuberance. There is no doubt about this. You have chosen security over excitement.  Be strong, be brave, be steadfast my friend.  Arise from you place of rest, you know you must proceed. You know you must cross that bridge in front of you, the one that you glimpse when the mists of uncertainty part. You stand here now before the bridge that swings in a gentle breeze. You stand here wondering, how long? How long have I been standing here?  It seems like eternity.

And I know that you want that bridge to be the last, you want this to be the end for you. That is part of your fear. Part of our despair. None of us want to continue the journey; to face another bridge. There seems little point. We have nothing and we want nothing, or so we think. Is this right? Is this how we feel? Is this who we are?

Or are we darker that that. Are we simply fooling ourselves, trying desperately to inject some meaning into this bleak existence, this life that can seem so devoid of love and understanding. You know no one understands you. Perhaps there are a few, just a few who come close to knowing your anxiety, your angst, but they are not with you now, they are not here. They are hidden in the mist and now, more so that ever before in this life, you are alone.  Alone, amongst those that do no understand you, do not befriend you. Yours is a bleak existence my friend, and yet it is one you have chosen. You are not however a martyr for you have no cause as such. You have no students, you have no disciples, you have no followers. You have only you, and you do not know in this moment what you are.

Don’t stop believing my friend. Don’t stop raising your eyes to the heavens. Don’t stop thinking that this will not last. Don’t keep wishing for the end. Cross the bridge in front of you and keep walking. Keep walking until you wish to stop, and then rest in peace. Rest free from the burden of those that choose not to travel this path with you. They are many for you have invited none.

In days before you hated with such a fury, a vengeance, and you found some comfort in that. You were held in a cold embrace, forged in the icy wastelands of your youth. You can never return to that place again, you do not have the constitution now to face the cold and survive. Now you live in a more temperate climate, one which warms your aging body. Now it is time to move south again, to seek out the light, to feel the sun on your face. Cross the bridge that sways so gently in front of you. You know there is light and warmth on the other side. Yours is a journey away from the cold, away from the poles that separate us from them. You always have been moving towards the middle, heading for a place of equanimity, a place of equal distance betwen distain and delight. Cross the bridge and journey towards the centre of your being.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x