Another Day

The fields are burning again

There is no food, no rest, no kind touch on my fevered brow 

There is just silence, as if a vacuum has covered up the world 

There is a man in the corner 

His lips move frantically, he is pleading 

But the entity he is praying to no longer exists 

Not here, no

For here is where we go to die

Here is where angels forsake us, they fall 

Here is where God's disgraced son holds court 

Here, the currency is sin and the richer you are, the blacker your heart

Upon the burning plain, they march

A horde of demons, a reminder of sins you committed in the past 

What is your future, you ask? 

You? You who are imprisoned here think you can make demands? 

You are naught but hollow, naught but a husk 

You used to be human, now you're a disgrace 

Abandon all hope, for hope has no place here

And the louder you scream, the longer you stay

Round and round the mulberry bush you go

Day after day after day

The Bilge Master

The Return of the Little Prince

 There's a certain romance in knowing that there's one last train that can take you home, where your love lies waiting. But consider this, what if your love was not one, but many. As Zafon said in The Shadow of the Wind, there are worse prisons than words, and sometimes the prisons we build are the ones where we are busy with matters of consequence.

And if into this mixture, we introduce a child, what then? Let us consider this child. Pick up a pencil and make a Drawing No 1 for me please. Good, A box. Very good. I see the matters of consequence have not made their way into our relationship yet, and if we are lucky perhaps they never will.

So let me tell you about something today. Let me tell you what I saw in a child's eye the other day. I saw a tear, a tear of pain, for the child had lost its way. The child had wanted to reunite with a person, intending to befriend him, to recognize him again and having recognized him to acknowledge him. But this person, stuck in a loop regarding those infuriating matters of consequence did not even look up from his ledger.

Why do we forget we were children? Why do the adults in our lives make us doubt ourselves? Neurodivergence is a large word to speak of, but an easy word to understand in reality. When we are children, our curiosity makes us be able to befriend such big words, to sit with them and not be imprisoned by them. It is tragic that as we age, we change. We consider words prisons and we consider that there are worse prisons than words. There is a child to be comforted in all of us, if we could look up from our aeroplanes and understand that we are responsible for what we have tamed.

The thing about having a wounded child inside you is that the salve for that wound comes from places you'd least expect succour from. The child you once were may one day meet another such child, only this child he or she or they met may not have these matters of consequence bog them down. But was it easy for this person to remember how to be a child again? More often than not, it is one of the most difficult of journeys. There's so many things about ourselves we wish we could change- our clothes, our hair, parts of our body, the books we read, the people we love, who we wish more than anything will love us back.

Yet, all is not lost. Sometimes we meet children in the guise of adults. Children whom the inhabitant of Asteroid B-612 has visited and spoken to of roses, and in speaking to them of roses, reminded them that although there are many such flowers in the world, the fact that they gave time to one such flower is all that matters really in the grand scheme of things. 

Every year, I turn older. Every year, for years on end, I read about the inhabitant of Asteroid B-612. It is because of The Little Prince that I have met my best friend, it is because of him that I have learnt that sometimes all it needs to free oneself from a prison is to look outside the window, to see children playing football in a park, or to pick up a harmonica and make music. 

Maybe, just maybe, the matter of consequence is that the Prince has come back from his star and has brought you something you can tame? Maybe that landscape you go to when you are feeling lonely is no longer vacant? Maybe the face you see in the mirror wants you to know, that no matter what and no matter where there is always time to make a Drawing No 1 again.

A piece I wanted to write for a very, very, very long time. This pertains to the novella Exupery wrote called "The Little Prince", and it is a tribute to the people I have met because I read it, the people who remind me that a hat is a boa constrictor who has eaten an elephant. And to them, I just have this to say- thank you for taming me!

The Bilge Master

Where Is My Mind?

The boy woke up from yet another nightmare in the hospital and found the sun was shining outside. It was early enough for the first tea of the day that the inmates were served. He grabbed his book and headed out for chai which was served to him hot and sweet and milky.

It has been four years since this incident and so much has changed in the boy's life, but for some reason he frequently visits this place in his dreams, before the dreams turn darker and darker and like the Cohen song, its like a million candles are burning but there's no help coming. He knew he had to get out of that hospital but he came back to an empty house. The spirit of the person who occupied his thoughts and motivated him to undergo haloperidol withdrawal had long since gone. Truth be told, she was gone in 2002 and what was left was a diseased mind in a plump shell, addicted to Xanax and cigarettes. Next came the blame games, the ones where she lied to his friends.

It should have ended the day he burnt her corpse and did his duty by her, but somehow the next segment was waiting for him behind the hallway door. Unlike most exorcisms, this demon was going to take a while to erode out of his psyche. His medicines were changed and he could not hold down jobs for very long. However, every time he tried to stop fighting, a Terry Pratchett quote kept staring at him out of the corner of the wall of his room. 

"It was sad music, but it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive."

A few months on, more quotes joined that one on the wall such as this one from a Roald Dahl short story:

"I think the reason I do not want to die is because of the things I hope will happen."

Finally, Liam Gallagher came to his rescue, and the lines from his song, Too Good for Giving Up adorned the space above his desk. 

"Tomorrow's waiting down the line \

It's getting late but there's still time 

You're too good for giving up 

Look how far you've come 

Stronger than the damage done"

It is not an easy task to eradicate your primary caregiver from your life, my dear friend, and many have told him to try and move on, to put it behind him. Most nights however, the daemon of hatred rears its ugly head. He tells himself it is just a dream, but then he is reminded of how when the soul reaches the banks of the river Styx, the boatman Charon will ferry them across to the Underworld and he knows she left to go on that journey, but it is as if the spirits of her pollute the air he breathes.

He told me the other day over drinks, that he wishes to move on. I told him he has made strides in that direction, that the posters in his room are proof of that and that in time, although the wounds may never heal, he will find a way to accommodate both she who is dead, he who is alive and himself wh ohas all his life ahead in the same mind.

It's like the Rise Against song,

"We've all been sorry 

We've all been hurt 

But how we survive is what makes us who we are"

The Bilge Master