The Ego of Finn

‘Mam?’ I say ‘My shoe split’.
I point down to my shiny black shoes mam said we had to buy for today. My black cotton socks poke out and I wiggle my toe. My shoes shine like beetles in the sun. My shoes made of beetles. I told her they were too tight in the shop but she had been thinking of something else then. She’s always thinking or having ‘quiet time’ now, like what grannie or Mrs Richardson calls it. But we have a book to read then and I go and sit in the big pieces of sunlight and pretend I’m a flower.
Mam looks down quickly then outside. Her hands are still on the driving wheel but the car isn’t going. I like the way it feels, rumbling. Its a four-ex-four and sometimes when dad gets me from school he drives on the country roads behind my school and we drive fast in the holes and I hold onto the belt laughing too much and scared too much too. I told mam once and she got angry and shouted. Dad stood in the kitchen with his coffee while my mum pointed and shouted. I hid behind doorway, angry that I told and secretly happy and sad if we didn’t go again.
Dad said something, quietly with his crooked smile and my mum would start to laugh. He picked her up and they laughed and then I didn’t have to hide anymore. And then every time we drove on the country roads it was a secret between us and it was more exciting and dangerous.
Her dress is the same colour of my shoes but isn’t shiny.
I sit and look outside. There are flowers everywhere, all the white ones in the sun together. I can see Uncle David standing outside looking at us, waiting.
Mum turns the car off, rolls up her window and takes some deep breaths. She puts her hands back onto the steering wheel, like she was going to fall off if she wasn’t sitting and I can hear the bells outside. The church is full of people and all the cars parked outside look like my shoes but bigger and longer. Uncle David walks to the car, puts his hand on my mum’s door and opens it. Mum looks at him but with her hands still on the wheel, like she’s about to drive off, like an Eff One driver, like she robbed a bank and she’s the getaway driver. They look at each other and he says, quietly, ‘Debra..’
I think he’s going to say more but they just look at each other. Something happens, something strange and I don’t know what. Then they are just Uncle David and Mam again.

We walk to the church and the cool dark inside is like a tunnel. Everyone smiles at me but no one says hello which is a little bit scary. I look around and can see Aunty Sarah and my cousins Alice and Lisa. I don’t like them and they don’t like me because one time they stayed over but wouldn’t let me play with them and when I told my mum she said they were playing girls games and I wouldn’t want to play. They see me and wave. Aunty Sarah puts her hand over theirs and stops them from waving like their hands were birds that might suddenly fly up into the dark above us. Maybe we’re not allowed to wave in the church. I stop waving with my left hand. Mum’s holding my right hand but she feels cold. Can I wave at dad? I almost ask but don’t. When I see him I’ll ask him quietly.
We walk up to the front and its like school assembly but no one form school is here. Patrick is my best friend but his mum wouldn’t let him come because he’s not allowed to look at the Open Gasget. I can’t see any gas, just a lot of candles. Maybe they’re fake and have gas inside them. I’ll ask dad.
We sit down in front of a box. Its covered in flowers and Father Mckenzie comes out, smiles at me and talks. It’s like school assembly and we even sing hymns but mam doesn’t sing so I don’t. I can’t see dad and Father Mckenzie keeps talking about plants and water and growing them and giving them life. Maybe he’s talking about the Parish garden. I poke my toe through the split in my shoe and wiggle it but it’s too dark in the church so I can’t see my sock.

My mum gets ups, and we walks to the box and inside a plastic shop man inside wearing a suit. She starts crying and let’s go of my hand. My hand feels like it’s been in the fridge. I open and close it and touch the box. It’s like my wardrobe but really small and long. The shop man is asleep. He looks like dad.
Mum picks me up and takes me to the front of the box and says ‘say goodbye’. I don’t like the church, it’s too dark and the candles are hissing like Miss Patel’s cat in the summer holidays. My mum looks like she did in the car with Uncle David. He’s standing next to her, holding her arm. Did she hurt it? They look like they did in the car. They don’t look like grown ups, they look like kids, like me. Uncle David would come and ask my dad for advice, they’re bothers but I don’t have any brothers or sisters because I’m A Only-Child. They sat outside in the garden drinking from Tins. Sometimes Uncle David cried but I wasn’t sure. Dad always made him laugh at the end though. Uncle David is crying now but no one is making him laugh. I’ll tell him a joke later. I think about which joke to tell him but I can’t remember any just ‘Ice cream if you don't let me in’. But I can’t remember the start of the joke. Dad would know, he told me, ‘Knock knock...’
I remember he told me when he hugged me and I could smell his shirt and the grass, hugging him when Uncle David laughed, when it was ok to come into the garden because they had finished talking and Uncle David’s eyes were wet and shiny. I pretend I can hear my dad shouting like a cowboy when we drive over the big holes and I laugh so much I can’t breathe. I look around for him because we’re s’pposed to say goodbye to him today but he’s not here.
Uncle David and his friends come and close the box. I know some of them men but they look busy and sweaty. Some of them came to the house for help but dad would only talk to them in the living room only. The garden and the kitchen were ours. They were the real parts of the house. My dad picking up my mum and making her laugh or dad and me playing footie in the back. The garden grass needs cutting now and the kitchen is cold and grey.

They pick up the box and carry it away. It looks heavy even thought it’s got the shop man inside. I feel sick, like when Kai punched my in the stomach at playtime and I couldn’t breathe, but it’s not going away and it hurts. It gets bigger until everything feels cold and my throat hurts.
Mum won’t drive the fourexfour over the big holes and she won’t know the start of the joke. And I’ll forget the joke because I can’t remember the start of it and then I’ll forget about forgetting it. And then it’ll be gone and alone.
Its dark inside and hot so we walk outside into the sun.

pieces:  'how to rear a baby antelope' ,
'my father moved through dooms of love' ,
'mascarpone cream'.

Here follow instructions on how to rear a baby Antelope;
As my father moved through dooms of love to raise his and
struggled everyday.
I,
however,
found simplicity in buckwheat grass, and
mascarpone cream.
And so,
antelopes grew
thick and fast.
manageable and socially responsible.

Antelopes_and_Cream

i'm sorry mate
i scraped your car
your side mirrors okay
it's on your roof

i left you a fiver
tucked under your wiper
i jammed into the hedge
across the street

lick of paint will fix it up
bit of spit
and polish
two shiny new tires
you'll be good to go

B

In the morning before the morning, the red brick headquarters of Hayden, Jones & Smith sat as it had always sat in the centre of the city.  The squat fortress was a geometrical tower, evenly broken by wide rectangles of glass windows that framed the edges of desks, wastepaper baskets, , coat racks, door frames, barely lit by the predawn morning.  During the day, streams of men and women, coated in navy blue or black then trussed up in gift ties streamed in and out of its doors, two gaping glass mouths that preened to every passer by unluckily enough to not work there.  At night the workaholics dare each other to be the first person to leave before the lit windows fall dark and the building becomes invisible, echoing to the surrounding pubs and clubs.

In the morning before the morning, giant ten foot words had been spray painted across the East wall.  Day glo yellow paint scarred the windows and walls with an even indifference.  Bigger than any billboard, scrawled but legible, the colossal sentence that was not yet an admission but remained wet paint, trickled slightly before drying, soaked up eagerly by the red brick. 

Between mornings, a street cleaner passes underneath, not looking up, two buildings done, five more to go before the coffee shops opened and he could stand in line, grimly determined that he should also be eligible for his morning coffee, pretending that the suits weren’t pretending he wasn’t there. 

A security guard finally woke up to the rumble-clatter of the cleaner’s cart and turned on the CCTV cameras that would have recorded him asleep at his desk for the past three hours as well the author of the sentence. 

 The morning before the morning finally ebbed away and the streets that had been built by greater people than these began to fill.  The morning bus, a horrendous mess of orange and white stopped opposite, spewing its early birds and office cleaners who all turned to look at the giant words as the bus shook and sputtered possessively at its stop.

It was another three hours before the media awoke up to find a crowd had assembled outside the building, a mass, an audience, a quorum.  ‘Wanna-be’ witnesses, shoulder to shoulder looking up at the smooth face of the building.  The words now a full admission, stared at by a growing crowd of silent watchers, whispering to each other as if in church, all faces turned upwards;

‘Everything slips away from me’.

The chorus whispered and groaned that it was the recession, that some banker had finally flipped his lid and given the public the confession they had demanded; a suicide note spray painted on the side of the building so many people saw as impenetrable.  Those that believed it went on their way, mystery solved, while those that didn’t grew uneasy and unbelieving at the image some city cat had scaled the walls in his £300 shoes and £2000 suit and gone the way of the graffiti artist.  The group swelled and grew, people leaving, no time for mysteries of heartfelt admissions, people joining, late for work or class and not caring.  A turnover on a busy Monday morning rush-hour with only one figure in the centre unmoving.  Fingers flecked with yellow paint snug in their pockets.

By lunchtime news the words, a confession fed, grown and torn from the heart was a blog post, a Facebook picture or even worse a Twitter.  The headlines clamoured to be the first to point shout and point “CONFESSION!”, whilst the employees of Hayden, Jones & Smith were dumbfounded.  Their workplace suddenly scrutinised, their office windows mini theatres, from which they were watched by the crowd pin wheeling outside.  A temp giggled something about reality tv and was shushed, not unkindly, for being flippant.

‘Everything slips away from me’.

Hayden, Jones & Smith issued an official statement that whilst they had no idea who had written the words that they were cooperating fully with the police and, with intractable embarrassment speculated it was a tasteless stunt, business as usual. 

With that the crowds dispersed to the workmen tying tarpaulin and plastic sheets over the infected windows and walls. 

The officious looking gentleman who gave the statement was correct.  The words had not been written by any employee.  In fact the writer could have cared less for the recession, bankers or even the fact the insidious paint would be eventually painted or covered. 

There were those that noticed that the wall faced the sunrise and that for the majority of the morning the wall was the only perfect canvas of sunlight in an overcrowded city centre made up of glints, shades and shadows.

The words, even now covered under unfurling blue canvas, slow burned in the minds of everyone who had seen them.  That everything slips away from me was a promise of a secret.  A tiny moment of freedom, whispered throughout their day.  In the spaces between sentences, in the pauses before texts, in the blinding white of office monitors and walls of photocopier paper, everything slipped away, for everyone.  For a moment, everyone caught a glimpse of the writer. 

And the words burned with the sun.

I prepared for tonight, honest I did.  I didn't fall asleep after class, spread eagled on the floor with my hungry cat massaging me for attention, food or freedom.

I showered, honest I did.  Brushed my teeth and combed my hair.  Didn't leave my clothes in a crime scene explosion of mint shower gel and evaporating footprints on the wall, nor did I jump out to the car, over the fence, a la 70's cop crime show.
Without my wallet, keys or phone.

I didn't regress into my usual scally, speed racer persona, ninety in a fifty mile zone, nor did I have my windows down, radio up, rebel yelling to the ambers.  Plenty of green still left in each one I left behind in the slipstream.

I found your house with ease, without trying to leave a cutesy message on your phone, scare your neighbours by being too ethnic nor knock on two wrong houses whilst wiping the shower gel from behind my ears.

Honest.  Honest I didn't.

Article Health & Food >> Health & Body :: Movnat
By Finn Christo
Last Saturday, slowly sun-burning Londoners on Hampstead Heath were witness to a
group of people crawling around on all fours, lifting logs, throwing rocks, jumping (and
occasionally landing) from trees generally following the instructions of a barefoot, barechested
Frenchman seemingly made up entirely of tan and muscle.
This is Movnat (‘natural movement), a grassroots revolution that ensures you’ll be in the
best mental and physical shape of your life without a 2 year iron clad gym membership
or 3am call-now-infomercial-equipment. From its slightly story tale origins (ancient tribal
skill-sets turned into a 19th century training system, adopted by French military and
then almost blasted into extinction thanks to the First World War) Erwan Le Corre has
revolutionised and breathed new life into the system making it more relevant to the 21st
century ‘zoo humans’, who suffer physically, mentally and spiritually to being
disconnected from the natural world. Modern society being the zoo.
Erwan is the charismatic and obviously passionate proponent of the idea our true nature
is to be strong, healthy, happy and free, travelling the world to ‘rehabilitate zoo humans’
escape the confines of their conventions and lead happier, healthier lives by sidestepping
the convoluted orgy of Swiss balls and rubber tubing the fines industry has entangled
itself into. He’s also a hard task-master who demands I muscle up a tree; seemingly
uncaring of the shredding my soft, supple northern skin is taking against this cheese
grater of a London oak. I jump back down ready to pick up the nearest block of stone
he’s made us carry all day and cave his head in but then explains why I’ve had to shed
blood to climb the tree and the gestalt shift stays my hand.
I consider myself fit and regularly train boot camp style to the obvious distain of my
fellow gym brethren, but this is hard! Sure, I can do a pull-up or twenty in the gym but
Erwan demands to know if that means I’d be able to do the same if my life depended on
it? Short answer; no. The shredding design of the swaying branch that has miraculously
become an osmotic part of my arm is very different from the pristine, rubber covered
pull-up bar hidden away in the corner of my gym and Erwan forces me to ask how much
of what I’ve done in the gym is transferable to a real life scenario. Am I fit or as fit as a
zoo human could get?
Would I still be able to get up on the tree if I was simultaneously being chased by a wild
animal with a pack on my back and having to save a small child (an example Erwan uses
with alarming regularity all day making me wonder if we need to call somebody). It’s not
paranoia but constantly qualifying every exercise and movement, creating what Erwan
calls ‘a situational mindset’.
The entire day is the same, forcing us to strip away the conventions of fitness until we
have to relearn the very basics of body movement; the principles of correct tension,
using gravity, ‘bodyweight shifting’ and ‘transfer’ as well as mental acuity, willpower,
focus and concentration, optimum body alignment and placement. Muscle size becomes
unimportant compared to the output they can achieve, flexibility only goes as far as how
low you can crawl and how much you can lift is as important as how far you can throw.
Where some systems like Crossfit aim to recreate real life demands on the body and
general preparedness, Movnat, cuts out the middle step and places you barefoot in any
given situation, creating a deeper, more vital understanding of how our body works and
what its capable of.
The 5 hour seminar has suddenly become 8 hours, infused by Erwan’s genuine desire to
help and educate. It’s a joyous yet demanding experience that is surprisingly
empowering. MovNat has subscription fee, no instalment plan or need to attend weekly
classes. ‘In fact,’ he playfully admonishes, ‘after today, I don’t want to ever see you
again!’ Basic movements are stripped down to basics then combined with other skill
sets; as your skills increases so do the variations you can perform until you’re left with a
seemingly never-ending toolbox of movements that focus on essential techniques and
fundamental principles. Movnat has an inherent scalability and dedicated coaching
system which, alongside natural movement means the system is applicable to everyone
from all walks of life, ability levels and ages. Even after eight hours it’s obvious we’ve
barely begun to scratch the surface of what Erwan wants to share.
It’s hard to want to go back into the gym and do a bicep curl in the air conditioned,
mirrored confines of the gym when we could be running barefoot and bare-chested
under the glorious sun, surrounded by fresh air and nature, using our own bodies and
what unprepared materials around us. This isn’t just monkeying around in a local park
but rediscovering the same joy of movement most of us felt in our childhoods. With an
almost Ayn Randian approach to fitness, Erwan highlights what was good and pure about
how we interact with our bodies by discarding the unnecessary and conventional and
finding something purer and more honest.
For more information check out www.movnat.com or email Erwan at
contact@movnat.com

A cold drizzly Tuesday morning. Dig deeper into the warm cavern; trying to retrace the steps I wandered through and out of the quasi-sleep, footprints on the quilt, warm underneath, freezing white snowscapes on top.

Blank, dank light, white on white, traffic outside, unknowing and uncaring.  Cats, idly prowling around in their fur coats, attacking computer wires and chair legs before scarpering downstairs against the sudden tectonic reveal.

The snow lifts, revealing footsteps leading back to the warm sleep-cocoon that self-destructs in slow arches and ribs of warmth. Cold air attacks every square inch.  Stand.