Happy Halloween

WF would protect his own, those he loved and was devoted to either through a sense of deep felt idolatry admiration or those who he considered sacrificial lambs on the alter of the vagaries of Life, those innocents that only the egoists would call martyrs sarcastically.

In his lifetime he had one key resolution, which was to build a deep lasting and meaningful dialogue at all times with all individuals no matter what the situation or location. His total sense of courage about expressing himself openly and fully, where time or situation allowed made him exceptional.

So when his marriage began to crumble, bringing him to his knees, we knew that this was one person who would never slip into denial, and that he would truly explore if not become absorbed by the depths of pain that he would experience. Nothing within him could pretend that his marriage or his relationships were sound when they were not, instead he would answer honestly, frankly and respectfully without losing his compassion for those who he was bound to.

This meant that you were exposed to pure truthful reality, that you were in the company of a man completely without pretences, or illusions, magnifiicent in his vulnerability.

When he would call me for a long conversation it was always with encouragement of whatever I was planning to do, and without the disingenuous motives that so many have. Therefore, it was the least I could do to be readily available for those painful dialogues that everyone who has broken up with their loved one will have delved into to rationalise what was happening to them.

When he spoke of his failing marriage it was with such truthful tenderness and without cunning escapist tactics being deployed that I felt entirely predisposed to listen to him and advise where I could without thinking for a moment that he required validation of untruths.

Month after month, his relationship deteriorated, and he weakened in his resolve to try and keep his wife close to him through purposeful dialogue, week after week, he felt their tentative bonds weakening to the point where he despaired of even hearing his own voice describe another episode that was evidence of the irreparable split that was a fissure which could not be lessened.

Eventually, I received the fatal all encompassing call that told the finality of where his wife’s toxic behaviour had invariable drawn him to make to me.

He said quite simply, ‘I can never be myself again, from this moment I shall be different, I won’t know myself, I won’t feel as I did with her (KC) with anyone else’.

I said softly back to him, ‘My Friend, I understand, and you are right, you are absolutely correct and nothing anyone says to you will make the pain go away, but perhaps this is one moment when you can cherish that you are human and can feel such intensity and how exquisite it is to be human ... and feel such excruciating pain in your heart that you know you are real, when so many are out there faking their relationships rather than risking discovery as you have’.

He whispered, ‘Oh, I have to go now she is packing her last things, and that is it, this is how it will be now’.

Four months later he rang me, and he sounded as if there were explosives plastered to his chest, furtive, and dramatically he hissed to me on the phone, ‘I have a book that you left here when you were visiting ‘HER’ (his wife was also my friend), do you intend to collect it or is this going to sit here forever?’

His voice appeared huskier than normal and I was startled at his entire tone, it was accusingly harsh over some thing quite innocent.

I replied that I would collect it that very afternoon and in fact was pleased secretively to have located it for it had concerned me when I couldn’t put my hands on it immediately I remembered I hadn’t quite finished it, and it niggled me knowing there were some chapters unresolved for me, with an unfinished ending.

I went over to see him and was almost horrified at the change in him.

‘What happened to you,’ I had asked as he slovenly, unshaven and unrepentant about appearing so wolf-life and brutal, (he was banging and kicking and stomping it seemed at every tiny grievance and petulantly like a teenager suffering from hormonal angst) delivering each line with a hiss.

‘She happened and now she is gone!’ replied as if this statement was itself a complete debilitating discovery, one that as he grafted the words made everything flow from them tragically. He handed me my book as if he were intensely taut and his whole body seemed pulled by invisible strings that appeared to be straining as he moved against their pull.

‘I understand, but that doesn’t explain your appearance?’

He offered no explanation, instead he snapped that I had my book so was there anything else I had forgotten there. I fathomed quickly that his rage was levelled at her, and then himself and wherever possible it was forming itself into shards of explosive viciousness at anyone who appeared to him to step in his path towards seclusion.

This certainly wasn’t the person I had grown to admire and know for so many years, this wasn’t the father of a lovely, relaxed and decisive boy who at the mature age of 13 could be more charming, more polished when he turned out to be picked up by his mother after a weekend with his father than most adults I knew.

Then one day, I received a call from KC, by now his ex-wife. She asked if I had a moment or two to talk as she knew I was sympathetic to both of them, she asked if I would go around and see if he was alright as he had quite simply withdrawn himself from contacting anyone whom she knew, and now refused to even see their son.

I felt I was an outsider, and since they were much older than I, although I felt flattered and trusted their need for an outsider to overlook the situation, at the same time I felt disappointed in her for her tawdry affairs and the various times in her life that some extra-marital alliance had distorted her self view, I felt she had slowly enveloped her marriage in a staleness and silent depression one which neither of them would escape easily.

I was privately disturbed by how vicious her statements were, whether it were concerning his weight or his receding hair, she appeared to delight at describing his yellowing teeth and halitosis. I considered such disparaging remarks as not only shallow weakness on her part which made me shudder in the face of such transparent lack of depth, but also as I always do in the company of a coward find myself repulsed by her.

Now, as I dressed and told my other half, who diligently was changing a plug from a lampshade well past it's decorative stage, that I was going to be back soon but not to wait up, I was catching glimpses of a worried expression on my own face in mirrors around the house, showing I was ill at ease. ‘Shall I come with you?’ He had asked, ‘No, I will be okay, WF, responds more intuitively towards me; just feed the cats will you, in case I am late back?’

'But it is only 6.30...', I thought to myself, 'So it is...' However Autumn evenings blend into Winter darkness effortlessly.

I left the house and pulled up my collar as I opened the car door and sighed noticing that the rain had dripped through the door where the window had not been closed all the way up and my seat felt damp. I climbed in and immersed myself in ruminating how the relationship had turned for our friends, and how I was possibly the last person that should have been involved, I despised his wife, yet I knew she considered my ethics scrupilously fair if not clinical.

I drove the two miles to their home where He still lived and noticed how dark it appeared.

I parked and went up the drive shuddering at the sound of the gate that creaked and banged shut alarmingly.

The trees and bushes that lined their drive were silvery-wet absorbing some of the moonlight and surrounding house lights. Some of the pine trees seemed overgrown and entangled, longer and heavier than I had ever known them to be, and the windows looked ominously dark, and reflecting the street lights with a distorted imagery that reminded one of fairground lights shimmering in water.

I knocked on the door, thinking ‘WF is probably in the conservatory (heated),’ where he was known to spend a lot of time alone most evenings, a part of the house that you could not see from the front of course.

I waited having knocked several times, frustrated that the bell didn’t work, which was just as well as it was an annoying tune that I have long past resigned to that part of memory that refuses to be annoyed further by recalling those aspects of my life which are too bland to be replayed.

Eventually, as I turned to walk back up the leafy drive, I heard the door lock click and looked back.

In the second that I did, I froze.

WF looked frightening, his mouth appeared like a gash, and bloodied as if he had just tasted raw blood and I realised that his bloody gums had come about because of the meat he held in his hand which looked like a piece of raw steak, one that he held in his fist. His hair was long and matted and his eyes appeared dark rimmed and tired, as if many sleepless nights were habitual for him. He reminded me of a werewolf from some macabre tale, and I just stood there without speaking.

Hearing his sharp questioning voice startled me back to reality, and I casually inferred that I was passing and just wanted to see how he was.

‘Seen what you needed to see?’ he asked and then he slammed the door in my face and I heard the lock click.

No more words and no more of the person that I had enjoyed many a time listening to across a heart meal, when highly level headed dialogue had flowed from him and he had decanted a wine with finesse and brushed away the crumbs from a pastry tartlet that his wife had made with those chubby but dextrous hands that she had.

My partner and I would sit back and watch them laugh together and wonder if they could be real for everything appeared too casually relaxed and comfortable, she was merely going through the facade, whilst he was deeply transfixed to her with the despair of the one who would never comprehend her betrayels once these no longer were so well hid.

Now as I stood there with the pain that comes from knowing someone has changed and to despair as one takes full stock of what this change means and what has been lost to you. I realised that we all change dramatically, however, most people are hidden under secretative layers of fake pretences, and wondered how my own transformations affected others when I myself discovered I was redefining my own identity. However, one thing for certain, somehow I retained my persistent clinging to being authentic and as they say, 'To thineself be True'... My ideal of definitive self ruling.

Not for me the pitiful expression, in years to come, which hears itself say... 'Why did I stay with you, when we were clearly toxic together ?'

'I cannot discuss my relationship with you in case you see how shallow it's levels are, and how far I have betrayed my value system that you think I still own and resolutely give my pledge to... For how can you know how weak I really am, if I never reveal it in words to you', say the eyes of so many I have come to know.

I went to my car and shuddered with a sense of past longing of the lighter times - all an illusion, I know; when their home was filled with laughter and the colours of the various lampshades and light bulbs were purchased by KC purely for the ambience that they created in the rooms that we frequented.

I was at once filled with dread and suddenly quickened my pace as I felt for the keys in my pocket and although it was Halloween evening, it was not this that made me think that I was at the wrong place - perhaps at the wrong time... I had not noticed how dark Autumn really was, and I shivered quickly locking my door and knowing that WF stood resolutely becoming a stranger to me, his burning eyes and sizzling emotions; at the darkened window chewing raw meat watching me start up and drive away quickly.



Edited from 'The Wolf', 31st October 1997, Xsapph



Who are you neglecting today? Someone you profess to be loyal and devoted to or... yourself?

... Offkey...

B; had an old piano, glossy-brown and dust-ridden, with fallen farthings and ha'pennies in it's insides, that was (in the opinion of those deaf to Wisdom) desperately in need of tuning, but B refused to take such a radical step to affect it’s delicately balanced unique imperfections. For when he played any piece no matter how well known these off key restrictions to what was expected would in fact create such an extraordinary composition that it haunted you from your head, trying to make some sense of communicable expression to your heart which would respond so acutely to the piece.

Such is the sound of intuition, it cannot be contained by the mathematical accuracy of precision, and instead wrestles with reason to prove that imperfections can be perfect in the eyes of the Gods.

I often smiled when first time listeners made a point to remark that the keys seemed strangely curious when they sounded so delicately off pitch.

It added almost the sound one would hear as the echo to the original piece, so it was decided (well at least by me) that this is in fact what he was… He was the echo to an angel’s playing some place far away… and he would smile, you know the smile… soft and then quizzical.

I liked the warmth of his company, it reminded me of a bygone time that wasn’t part of my history but reflected everything I had seen or read of real English gentry.

My favourite moment was when, he softly took my hand and kissed the back of it gallantly. He always held my hand when I arrived for hot buttered scones in the days that wheat was not my enemy… and said… ‘… Aaaah you are here, so the highlight of my day is complete…’. Then he would tremble, and shake a little for he was heavily arthritic, and, already well into his nineties.

Such are those moments that we cherish but cannot fully comprehend until we are ourselves so preciously guarded by the angels as to make us appear fragile in our humanity, yet strong in our souls endeavours towards sincere companionship.

His textures made everything around him appear bland. He wanted to carry out gentle hospitality, much the way that a Geisha might ritually prepare tea, with craftsmanship that belied her millions of years of training and immaculate conceptions of gracefulness. In some ways he was so like this, loving the art of a simple but celebrated ritual, itself, so deliberately timed... and slowly, methodically, with the same reassurance and delivering every facet of the process with the same diamond precise clarity.

Look here are the warmed teacups, and saucers… The teapot is in perfect alignment to the tray and so is everything else, handles all pointed purposely to be as conveniently practical for the receiver. The teaspoons shining beautifully as he polished each slowly, slowly making the gleam appear effortless, and then I would watch him mirrored in the teaspoon dip as he slowly walked away, trying not to let me see him using his furniture to move around since he was proud, and he wanted to show me his vigour and remaining strength which appeared to have been conserved only for these precious moments to him.

Such are the much talked of times that we recall only to those we trust, and we know will accept our words without the pressure of shallow material focuses.

Sometimes he would press a small two-dimensional flower into my hand that he had kept in a favourite book of poetry, and he would say softly, ‘I have a gift for you,’ and this would be not the flower but the piece that he would recite, softly and lovingly read, pretending for a moment in his heart that he was no longer so ancient, but again young, and that he was still able to ‘woo, or charm’ a young woman who appeared to be adoring his very being.

How remarkable his voice was, with a low soft whisper timbre, a slightly provocative lisp that made it appear silky and forgivingly aloof. His favourite colour was canary yellow and he loved one creature above all else, and that was a banana yellow snake, that always surprised me for it appeared so perfect and rubbery in the picture that he showed me he had saved for so many years never quite finding the moment to frame it, he said, perhaps because frames imprisoned the subject. Thus he had no picture frames in his home. Each photo was either kept in a book that was it’s home or stood slightly damaged, often stained and always creased, as it was covered with fingerprints, from years of being handled by him, as he wanted to look at it over and over again, the older he became.


Yellow Snake - picture taken by George Grall

Such are those inaccuracies that make each memory more discerningly felt, that sometimes they become deeper felt than the real moment that we experienced.

I could relate to his oblique imperfections, where whilst he was so delicately preoccupied with detail, he was also so subtle as to be as faint as a whisper heard through long stemmed grass in Spring.

I would sit silently on his small wooden footstool that no one had ever used as a footstool, with its needlepoint that frayed around the straw that it had been firmly stuffed with forty-five years previously, and here it remained.

I would rest my face in my hands, as my elbows rested on my knees, and then I would adjust my position just enough for him to pass me a small green tartan blanket folded to put over my knees, saying, always and the same thing… ‘Here you go, it is cold in here… this will keep you from shivering…’ Although I wasn’t cold, I would always oblige him and watch him take each tenderly painful step to his small kitchen, for he was self reliant, brave and this ‘grandpa Annexe’ was part of his daughter (my friend’s) home. She was a late child born when he was quite nearly fifty… and I would sometimes baby-sit for her, and once the children were in bed I would join him for a little supper. Like me he was a feline who kept unsocial hours, happily whiling away hours into the morning where he could yawn from last night’s chatter.

Cautiously, he might sometimes choose to kiss my hand hello or goodbye, it depended on how much pain his back was in, but always with the graciousness of a true soldier he stood as tall as his weathered bones would allow, and offer me his world of happy lucidity and wonderment. He sometimes reminded me of the beautiful yellow snake, for as time went on his skin tone changed to being more and more pale lemon… and his small eyes always appeared to me to be glazed whereas he was shimmering, nervously, waiting to share a little of his memories, of long ruminations, many hours of playing his piano, and all the years alone without his beloved wife. There were the rumours of privacy and secrets that he kept from the world wrapped in brown paper and waxed string, which I would understand a little of every so often, when he chose to share these.



Eyelash Viper Snake, Costa Rica, taken by Lynn Stone...



Such are those unforgiving life experiences that tear a little skin from under our eyes making it impossible to avoid the tears that humanity imposes on us.

Imagine if you will a small cocoon of amazing history, where from within it’s wrappings you felt he was once more the young man who leapt downstairs three steps at a time to be with his wife K. She had brown eyes as dark as mine and a similar smile, or so he told me, and within his mental imaginings she was more like me each time we met, and it made me smile to know he felt he loved me, for Love could bloom for you at anytime and he was living proof of this bewildering power that emotion can have over us.

When he presented me with the simplest of gifts it warmed my soul, and I would unwrap each article which I knew his arthritic fingers had conscientiously tied with brown paper and waxed string, and breathe deeply to remind myself not to overwhelm him with my effusive energy and excitement at being around someone who quite frankly was incredibly exciting as a person for each experience he recounted had a unique quality of seizing my attention and ensnaring it a vice grip of fascination.

He would give me the most extraordinary gifts, perhaps a small hand made flower that had come from his wife’s ball gown, and that was all that was left of her dress, she had thrown it into an old sewing box, now he found it and wanted me to have it… pale yellow and organza. Another time, a small paste and diamante flower… it came from the late twenties and the metal that held it together (possibly zinc) was slightly blackened from ageing. Another time, with trembling fingers he gave me a book of our favourite writer…A secret that was ours alone… Someone, I would never share with anyone else, and whose lines were so excruciatingly masterful, that it would make me want to cry at reading the wit and cleverness with which each line had been executed… I would want to scream, ‘Read this… it is a line of perfection!’ So tenderly did both he embrace those words in his twilight and I in my early yearnings for beautiful conjecture.

Such are those delightful Romanesque poses that frame themselves in our mental amphitheatre so that they become more imposing and glorious when we think back to those exhilarating times.

He would smile, for he fully understood how important it was to me to ultimately always be in this moment where I could read and read again many times over the same touchingly remarkable line, read it and hold it inside my head, and then turn over the thought as if it belonged exclusively to the reader gifted with the ability of reading it.

He felt the same, so this is what Life was really about. Passion for knowledge, and the brilliance of this banana yellow snake-like man with his imperfect piano renderings, lispy voice that added a stunning vocal dynamic to each poem that he read, so much so that one wished it to be imprinted forever inside that place we each have called emotional dialogue.

I would often walk around the old country house that his family had owned and now it had passed down to my friend, and would solemnly stand by the window feeling the coldness outside shiver my very bones as I watched the willow trees and magnolia that had been planted a little distance from the room we were in, and then the small cherry tree that felt strangled by a beautiful fiery red canopy of Canadian ivy.

This room was once a pantry, which was extended and refurbished to accommodate this wonderful creature of variety, with his many books that were placed in small bundles and every so often a magnifying glass was discovered (he had several, some that were quite old, their handles loosening, fancy and ornate), which he would use to read some of the worn stained pages of novels that were well read and loved.

‘You know I miss not seeing you, when I am doing a double-shift’, I replied, (I worked at Heathrow Airport that particular summer, long ago… in between colleges…. one of many students saving feverishly.

‘I get a strange pain between my ribs, as if I cannot breathe, and I think, you might be dead, and that will be it!, the end of poetry and pianos...’.

He would smile, for only the young at heart can make such alarmingly dramatic statements and be forgiven for their lack of superficial tact, which we all learn to develop to avoid disagreements and agreeable types turning on us with terror.

‘If I leave, you will hear this old piano in the wind…’ He replied.

…. But before (I heard the strains of offkey notes playing in the wind) that, I saw the whole sky flicker for a moment as if small banana-yellow planets starlight had gone out…


‘Offkey….’ by xsapph

20th June 1998

... Did you hear a song today that drew you to backtrack past corridors, that weaved until you were reminded of a door opening to a defining moment with someone special to you?

Runaway Moments

Runaway Moments.... such as these took T, by storm ... and when he felt the buzz of joy that a fresh encounter with dazzling life-forces such as hers inspired, he knew what it felt like to be alive.

T ... sat alone in his car, he had just met the single most significant woman in his life, but he didn't know this yet...

As he watched the Autumn leaves sparkle and turn through the air crisp and brittle landing on his car bonnet, and brushed ruthlessly away by the wipers, he drove for some time before realising that he had forgotten to put the radio on ... He felt an immediacy in their connection as if something out side of himself had beckoned and then when he responded in soul, it had gripped him in its clutches so that he was nervous and anticipatory...

Sometimes he had felt frightened about experiencing anything this unfamiliar. He realised he had felt choreographed to her will, and almost as if he were a silent partner, someone who provided the anchorage whilst she drifted through the crowds entrancing those who willed her to stay.

Was this a real emotion or one captured like leaves turning and falling from his bonnet … as fragile and momentary, gone in the moment that they were threatened by the forces?

Traffic that was becoming heavy, and windows that had already misted up to avoid the gaze of each stranger in the passing cars were surrounding him as he sat at the traffic lights waiting for the lights to change.

Was he as shallow as other friends he watched in their stunted emotional growth; who altered the lies and truths in their memories so that significant interactions became pitiless despair were these to encroach on their safety, or seclusion?

Was he to prove himself as superficial as to play it safe until such time that he the supposedly grown up man, was tested as an adult, and then proved where his inner strength lay, or would he like so many others, be so small a person that he convinced himself that being 'safe', was best.... Even if it were at the cost of integrity or self-worth?

In many years would he think to himself on reflection that he had supported only those dull relationships that helped him to root himself into mediocrity so securely that he was never to be uprooted until he made both himself and his partner miserable with his lack of active romancing?

He certainly hoped he was above that, he committed to Time's crippling seizure of reality checks that made one realise where the journey took a turn and a stranger became less so, perhaps even joined the traveller in more ways than one. He aspired to be a passenger in the same kind of journey the victorious took — those whose courage superimposed itself over fear and anxious need for approval from peers. ... particularly those who no longer supported the ideal which was to be truly embracing change.

He remembered a moment when her long dark hair was caught within the wiring of her umbrella spokes, and she had wrestled for a moment as she skipped over the wet leaves and smiled at a passer-by, almost looking through him, as she sauntered over to her car, which was covered in broken leaves like grated netmeg, confetti.

He only caught fleeting glances of her at work, as if a spell had been cast, but already felt as if she were a part of him in some incidental way, touching the joyful and excited aspects of his nature where he thought immediately when they would talk again, this is what it would always be like. She imbued him with a fire-stone of emotion that warmed his heart and at the same time shimmered inside him like a slow burning flame, so that he felt he had seen her all day in his mind even if it were for glimpses of secondary glances, where he saw her reflection through window panes, or watched her briskly trot past the closed doors barely seeing her form – just being vaguely aware of her presence and energy, perhaps hearing her laughter down a corridor.

Now he was travelling alone and flickers of her image, and then her words would sit still inside his mind and then he would feel that strange emotion that he was yet to name, if ever.

The trees creating corridors of pine tree columns, ash trees, walnut trees, and oaks... Where ominous turns each leaving him with the sensation he was going around and around and in some kind of continual journey that was never-ending.

He remembered that he had watched her discreetly, and felt that anxiety wash over him again as he observed her genuine laugh and softly touch the arm of one of his colleagues, he felt a pang of jealousy and somehow felt protective or was it possessiveness he could not isolate the emotion for it felt unreasonable to him to feel this over someone who he had no real connections to or links … This ever-reaching sense inside him was familiar for he enjoyed the challenge of a romantic adventure, even if it were only choreography inside his mind.

He missed his connection to the turning that would have taken him along the highway closer to his town.

What was the name of the last road he passed, he knew he had to turn left soon, he felt with each turning he left a vulnerable part of himself behind, someone she had revealed within him even though their dialogues were hardly confessional.

Such profound revelations came from the heart.

A small part of his heart felt squeezed, and he felt his thoughts spiral into a confused state of resistance. Was he responding to his guts, fearful of change, or was he just being cautious because there was little control when he lacked the usual control he was used to exercising his life routines?

Did he foolishly balance his life in the tight-fisted way a miserly accountant would, so much so that life and its chances passed him by?

She was enchanting when she touched his arm, and then lifted herself up on toes to be a little closer to his face when she whispered some devilish anecdote of her personal take on Life, giggling to herself as she had realised she had added a spin to the situation that made her laugh as she saw where it was driving to.

He was usually confident and self composed but he felt immediately self conscious and when he did manage to have a brief few seconds of dialogue it was fast and furious her end, as if there was so little time and too much to share, and it had to be now... That urgency reminded him of war time, that whole sense of identities being crushed because one had no idea when it would all end.

He remembered that when she first spoke to him it had astonished him, and he wasn't sure if it were a real sense of mutual understanding or if she were a part of an illusion that he was used to seeing form in his mind, where he wasn't sure of his emotions and therefore submerged them in reasoning.

Would such wounds heal, was he actually wounded, in fact had she even been aware of how intense he had felt in her company or was she toying with him?

His journey appeared circulatory interludes....

When would this long windy road end, there appeared no regular markings and he thought he may be lost.

The trees broke their patterns of predictable foliage silver birch and sycamore, yew trees and holly... and colouring as newer different types of greenery and broken patches of land took over his periphery and he kept thinking one place was the same as the next... The moon was already in the sky in a magical mist that made everything appear dark and almost transparent.

Could there be such a thing as a real enchantress?

When she sparkled and laughed through her dialogue and with flickering eyelashes that seemed to swat invisible flies in front of her nose, he laughed to himself that she was overwhelming but he felt immediately that this was all about him and had no reason for a moment to think she wasn't interested in him...

She wasn't like anyone else he knew, there was a specific quality that he could not label and he knew that he would not find a way back to her on his own, were he to go with his usual thinking patterns... this time it would have to be intuitive.

At some sense he sensed a vulnerability below the humour that was self effacing and at times cruelly enticing. When she flirted with him, he felt unsure whether she really was flirting with him personally or whether this was just social flirting, a way for her to appear friendly but no real intense connection on her part.

For a second he would step back almost to take a deep breath and wait for her to recapture his attention which was lulling into a soft slumber of relaxation knowing there was little required from him other than a little kind politeness for she was simply reeling him in. Other times he would try to test the energy there and take the lead and almost characteristically like a fisherman with a slow motion flick of the wrist throw out his fly and see if she bit...

This wasn't the way he usually drove, but he knew without exception he was lost and had been for some time, and now the darker trees appeared dense as the night began to swallow everything up in shadows.

Mainly he laughed long and hard, because she made him laugh. He put the radio on and would never have been able to tell you what he was listening to, unless he stopped to think about it, for what bombarded his senses was his realisation that his life would never be the same again....

Like a distant shadow she was already fading into his minds recesses, slowly she was lost in some pleasant but unreliable place in his thoughts, a place from which she could only rise, as the moon might out of a mist, with a strange mystery that he would never quite fathom.
His journey was ending he had discovered a shortcut route and now felt on track again back to his comfortable existence of reliable woodland, and scenery that resisted the urge to step outside his boundaries to what was unknown and therefore without signs.

He realised he had been listening to a popular track from his far off past, [Stevie Wonder, I Just Called To Say I Love You], one that he could immediately relate to and find comfort in....

He also found that he was home. ... a place he would never find her....


... written by xsapph...

.... Why are you going, from where, to whom?

Turning the pages....

Slowly turning the pages, as the cold bleak Winter sun settled inside his unfolding open book....

... EP, was charmed by the beauty of the character that unfolded, with each page, within his mind. He felt the comfort of being with a friend as he read each word, his heart filled with joy-words by his favourite author.... Each time, the simplest phrase turned lovingly by his soul as he paused over a deliciously savoured sentence, some new intensity, the old slightly bedraggled book revealed its secrets within it's faded and in some places dusty tea stained leaves.

Even as he gently lifted out the scented silk ribbon of lapis lazuli he had found that belonged to some past lover, to be his bookmark, he paused his mind iterating the previous read sentence over again and again. He paused only to watch a soft silvery feather stick to the damp frosted window glass.

... He had set the scene. First Paganini, and then Vivaldi. ... The manic violin fired his senses, especially when the Winter piece cried its spectacular tears over his kneeling soul, at the alter of some small buried corpse of who he once soared to be in his youth... He felt at once violent and then that feeling he knew to be exquisite in the pain such stunning imagery described; along with a musical accompaniment that spliced through his brain and left shards of spectacular cooling ice formations through his mind through his heart to his soul. He felt the fragile power of visual imagination, the dervish tempest that shattered a tea ship across the oceans bed, until only the dawns silence and gentle mist clouded the memory of what was.

As if to trigger a memory of sufficient detail possible, of the previous time he had been able to be as he was now, he concentrated all his efforts to be the most mentally awakened, he had ever been. Reading as he was, words of silky precision, crafted thoughts that like ribbon rivulets wove their loops and plaits tenderly over and around his seated form, in this, his favourite window seat, where he could see the sky, some simple shrubs and little else to distract from his closeness to the author of this, a book of expansive creativity. Bound as he felt to the author yet released by the strange feeling of affinity this relationship appeared to resonate within him.

For a second, he imagined the author's ghost surreptitiously sipping his tea, and dunking shortbread into his cup...

Such hopeless imaginings are with each of us appreciative learners who read with deep fervour that can match religious zeal, those words that appear effortless on the part of another. In modest comprehension we pledge our allegiance to the artist whose technical craftsmanship is underrated and unimaginable by other lesser mortals who are barely able to clutch a crayon in their laziness to attempt artistic blending themselves. Yet do we attack those who may suppress artistic creativity? Or do we have the courage to interfere with their need to repress creative aspirations by responding weakly with contrived nonchalant dismissal, and a pervasive yawn, showing well worn molars, are we the same, for what they cannot buy or own, they cannot control in this our materialistic world.

He had an elitist disregard for those with the ability to read, blessed even with elementary education, that refused to extend themselves to reading beyond their scope therefore in his view with no excuse to not read.

On the rare occasion he was given to humour, he offered up exposes that were simply side splitting, had his own sides been split, his stomach contents would have revealed a raw scorn, for the banal, the mediocre and most of all the arrogant fool.

He found his cruel observations tantalising and revitalising - particularly when he felt his own shape and form were becoming too hazy.

He considered such subjects or points of interest much as a scientist might have labelled specimen jars so he labelled in private 'idiotic people' those he found limited, as such he had little private regard for them other than as easy prey. He was candid when entreated to explain his harsh and yet lucid and visionary viewpoint.

He devoured them with the devastating objectivity that all birds of prey coolly destroy their hapless victims, although they were unappetising and appalling bad taste to his unsympathetic discerning palate.

He winced when he overheard or had ever encountered any individual who it appeared survived with the absence of the simplest desire to learn, who lacked the patience or appreciation of the written word, who provided excuses for their own inability to choose to 'read.'

This did not mean he rebuked the humble labourer whose daily toils and meagre subsistence made it impossible to do more than survive, or the starving mother whose minute scrambling amongst the barren and arid dirt roads, holding her small wide eyed rodent looking child close to her heartbeat. In his heart, these were the most beloved and cherished children of the Gods, therefore, were his deepest concern, and never for a moment did he forget their plight. With a significant aristocratic nobility he genuinely cared for those he considered Life's real victims.

However... When it came to those of us who had the luck to be part of 'civilised' society with its libraries, and bookshops, newspaper stalls and coffee shops... In his opinion we had no reason not to be 'well-read.'

If he was honest, he was repulsed by them, (those civilised individuals, with their microwaves, tanning lotions, and obsession with branding-labels) he shuddered in his comprehension of what he perceived as a lack, an inferior disposition therefore, want on their part.

He did not care whether they read comic books or the quality of their reading material be it fishing tackle brochures or the daily periodicals, as long as they had read often and with interest... What infuriated him was the well rehearsed excuses he felt they had nurtured alongside what he perceived as ignorance of their own, let alone other cross-cultures and the arts.

He mentally listed the numerous excuses he had heard, from... "You know, I prefer to learn through Life experiences then read.... I would rather see the film then read the novel it came from.... I like to visit Russia rather than read Tolstoy's version of the Russia he knew, any way his Russia is dead history". ...

Or astoundingly, "Americans ( ... Or Indians, Africans, Chinese, in fact 'speaking for a nation....') are far too busy to read (because they are far too involved in their mundane day to day routines of making money, obsessed with surface trivialities, material superficiality. ...) to bother with poetry...."

He begrudged answering the (useless) question, 'Oh what are you reading?' by those who were never going to read anything more than their own astrological chart, horoscope or if they felt special, the latest best seller on some diet fad, or sexually exploitable serial.

As he sometimes squinted despite his spectacles, he realised that he loved his books and how much comfort they provided him beyond even listening to the radio or switching on the television and having his mind intruded on by sudden uninvited impulses and inconveniences as well as those channels or programs that he enjoyed every so often.

In his awakened moments he recognised that he needed little more than one of these early second hand cheaply acquired editions found in some old bookstore or flea market, on days when he had no need for the companionship of the world that was always a stranger to him and he it.

Despite the promises of the media merchants, and marketing pimps he knew that for the elderly there was no promise of splendour, or release through a new car, a matching sideboard or a larger walk in freezer, for food that would rot before it was eaten, or thrown long after it was remembered.

His sharp eagle penetrating eyes which appeared black or possibly the darkest charcoal grey might have easily been the colour of gold speckled black tourmaline or the bottom of a dark pond, moss green or agate ... Who really knew or cared? What was noticed perhaps only by me, but felt with supremacy by him; was that for each day that he was able to studiously, read a favourite page something within his inner battleground found peace, and a new sparkle of wider comprehension grew.

With this deeper feeling of floating on a breeze, as he watched the feather caught on a whisper of Winter breeze, he felt himself enfolding.

When he spilt his tea again over his pages, and wiped them tenderly he also considered (only for a moment) that he was wiping away his proclivities to polish his past so that he no longer needed to reflect and thereby mourn what may have been some intrusive bond with anyone other than his book, which he now lovingly held closer than any lover had held him.

A whisper of blue violet eyes that gazed longingly into a far off distant setting Winter horizon, beyond the mist kissed mountain tops, to be a visual search that activated a closer bond with his maker, and left it's indelible tranquil clarity ... And with this a mental alertness that could gnaw through steely tension and magnified qualms, that Life activated in him as it did in all of us. Beyond reach his piercing gaze glanced into my eyes and perhaps yours, and he saw what we attempted to hide.


... written by xsapph...

.... Importantly, what did you reveal to others, and most vital in your self examination ... to yourself, today?