Posts (page 2)
With steel cold waves rushing onto and through the shoals of
pebbles, she sat down on what remained of the grass and looked out over the
water. It stretched away to the horizon,
one that for me had always held hope. I don't know what she said, what she saw, how long she stood there looking across the sea, only what she did.
My mind’s eye won’t let me see what happens next, it pans up to the grey steel sky which looked down with cold indifference at that unspeakable act.
I don't remember the months that followed. The world within me grew like some physiological
defence, taking me in, alternatively shielding and exposing me to what had happened. Life and death had never been so close, so interchangable.
Even now, when I am alone, silent spaces fill
with the metallic tang of the sea, the sound of waves rushing through cold,
lifeless stones and cover me in an indifferent sky. I think of her, what she would be if she hadn't been lost.
Jolted and displaced, I ran away, reduced my life to a backpack and roamed towards the horizon, still naively sure that whatever hope had been buried behind me, would be waiting for me ahead.
I walked, I ran, I flew and sailed. My feet cut the earth of mountain tops , I stood knee length in tidal drifts staring up at an upside down moon, I sat on the edge of Icelandic cliffs, staring out over jet black seas or braced in valleys with a branch in my hand fending off wild dogs.
And in each of those times, when I was truly alone, with no one but God to answer to, I said her name out loud.
Now and then I would see her getting onto a bus, going into a store. If I fell asleep on a bus, she would be sitting next to me, and without opening my eyes I would know. Without substance or pain, without judgement or guilt, without language.
There is Hope. I want to tell her. There is Hope. Her name, my words, still linger and vibrate in every place I’ve said it. In case she ever returned, I would point to them, to prove that there was Hope and that they all pointed to the Horizon.
Everyone did really well on Sunday, I thought a combination of heavy
rains, hailstones and terror would have scared the team off but people
still turned up albeit wearing three to four layers each. I don't really
think they knew what to expect and there were a few shocked faces when
I started screaming and pointing in my army training uniform.
The warmup got rid of those extra layers quick enough but I had to
punish everyone for one person not tying their shoelaces properly. The
team had a bit of a sadistic streak I didn't see coming and three more
people confessed to having to retie their laces ending up in about 20 to
30 pressups whilst people stopped (rested) to tie their shoelaces whilst
everyone else sweated and swore around them.
One thing that really impressed me was that no
one cried off or stopped outright, everyone put in 100% effort, no one
gave up and no one let the team down. If they can keep to that level of
commitment and intensity throughout their training for the 10k they'll be making leaps
and bounds. I was expecting excuses and pussying out but
everyone made a fantastic commitment to the session.
A few team games later people were barking order at each other, and I
just smiled and watched the ordered chaos as people screamed directions, stop-go
commands and encouragement to ensure a winning time.
Great work, impressive effort and a great photofinish.
Next week, cage fighting.
I have memories close at hand, to help and hurt me. To cut and heal. To force me to rest or push me to fight;
Sitting on the edge of the bed reading and looking up at her,
arms slung overhead and snoring like an enraged baboon and still
devastatingly beautiful
With my brother, backpacks slung over each shoulder
Feet smashing through the curling leaves.
He says something funny
The other laughs and punches him on the shoulder then hugs me
Waking up at four am, philotic connections, like golden wires to
my family still asleep spreading out in front of me
Being able to be thankful for everything I have, without plan or purpose, just gratefulness I’m able to experience it.
Drunk and buttnaked in Birmngham, throwing furniture at each other and wondering what housekeeping will say if they come to the door.
A superspeed litany of ‘shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit’ under my breath while gripping wall-holds with just two fingers and trying not to fall to the ground
Making her laugh so hard we ended up holding each other close so she wouldn't fall over, my arms around her thin waist and kissing her while people walking by couldn’t help but smile.
(Apparently) shouting at a pt client that she could do it and don't she dare give up, being unaware of everyone else in the gym watching this hyperactive ethnic with a vein popping in his neck.
Being able to answer questions that start with ‘Can you help me with this…’.
Legs and feet dangling over a cliff face in Iceland,
Whole body trembling under a barbell knowing if I don't get the fucker up I'll be pinned under it...
again.
Broken sunlight and blood in salt waters
Broken locks and keys that snap in half
Being asleep while she knocked on my window in Dead times.
The past couple of weeks have been hectic. The usual kid icarus stuff as well as organizing the handover from two of my jobs as well as preparing for the other two I am going to keep.
Next Wednesday, from working four jobs I will only be working two and it didn’t really hit me until today when I got my shit ready for the upcoming week.
I know its hard to believe, especially coming from this online persona I posty under but I am a shit hot teacher. I know it sounds big headed but in every school I have ever worked in I have always been the best. It meant getting the extra classes, teaching kids with behavioral problems then being sent to other schools and training other teachers. Not once have I come across a better teacher than me.
And on and up kid icarus goes until he’s an assistant director of studies then director of studies and on until he’s teaching and running extra curricular departments as well as running the school website and all that jazz as well as cycling like a mutherfucker to local universities and highschools and writing and writing…
Then, in the frst two weeks of spring, I go a little nuts. The classroom is driving me crazy, I keep the windows as wide open as they’ll go, I’m bouncing off the walls and spending the least amount of time indoors. Slowly, slowly I shave off the hours of sleep I get until I get by on four or five. I study fulltime, do exams, race from Irlam to old Trafford to Chorley and every moment outside, at a speed faster than a walk, every time I’m using my hands and bellowing out commands over fields and hills a totally new person appears and grows.
Coming back to England is like stepping out of a timewarp, everyone I knew is either in prison or married or living with their partner and they whisper, guiltily, in starbucks to me that they wish they hadn’t rushed it. And ask me for stories of torn mountains and being chased by gangsters through shanghai and where I got all my different scars.
I know I should be settling down, and when people ask me what I do I give them a different answer/job depending on who’s asking.
And last fortnight, when I got the job, better money, doing what I love, all the naysayers came out of the woodwork.
Its as if I have made some personal affront by changing careers, the new Finn that snuck into the room with them quietly and secretly is a sudden stranger to them.
‘What do you do again?’ becomes the start of another confession, that they hate their jobs, their places, their ruts that they’ve dug for themselves. The idea of making such a bare ass leap into the unknown scares me but terrifies them. And I;’m not even thirty!
My contemporaries are older than their years. They dress in shirts from next and ties for topshop, they look forward to tiger tiger on Saturdays and fryups and sleep-ins on Sundays. At 5am I’m racing through empty fields, weights strapped to me like ammunition, covered in cobwebs and dew.
There are pieces of me strewn around the world, Left in red ripped hills above lost villages And glinting at the bottom of the lost, forgotten streams that race around Mountain faces left gaping in the freezing snow And footprints buried in desert sands Coral snapped off under turquoise skies With the names of the dead written in pacific sands And bruises from my brothers And emails from my sister And self destructive smiles And pools of sweat And scars filled with blood And sleeping in fields at night watching Orion’s belt pin wheeling above me With pure delicious anger keeping me warm. I'd tear out my heart just so I could feel it beating.
‘Is that water bottle empty?’ I look down. It was full to the brim before I got in the jeep. I had two gulps of water on the way to The Moss to keep myself hydrated. Those two gulps leave a cavernous hole in my canteen. ‘No Staff.” I bark back. ‘Is that water bottle full?’ ‘No Staff.’ ‘Get it over your head then.’ ‘Wha?’ ‘Get it over your fucking head then!’ I lift the can over my head and pour the rest of the water over me. It’s fucking freezing, runs through my jacket, through my t shirt, down into my boxers, around my balls and cock then down my legs into my boots. I gasp for air and create little rainbows with my mouth whilst Staff fills my bottle again. ‘Is that water bottle full?’ ‘Yes Staff!’ You numb motherfucker. Straight into stretches, mobility exercises and warmups before I have to pick up my Bergen. I had to pack my own Bergan with the equipment and weights totalling 25kg or 50 pounds. I won’t know until the end of the test but I’ve packed it wrong. All the weight is at the bottom of the Bergen and as soon as I put it on I know something’s wrong. We start. Not running, running I can do, I can run all day and night while singing and making the lamposts dance alongside me. Not jogging either, I can sleep and jog at the same time. I jog more than I walk. This is TABBING, at a brisk walk, almost a run at 10 mph. I can’t get the Bergen to sit right and the weights have all collected to the right, digging into my back. At first its more a case of being able to move with that weight and not falling over, but with the PTI in front I don’t have a chance to get used to it. He’s shouting and pointing. Get up here, Get up here! I run as far as I can until I’m level, already my quads are feeling this. Twenty minutes in and I’m doing ok. I’m still breathing at least but my face is covered with sweat and snot and spit. I’m allowed 150 seconds to rest, drink some water. The PTI goes back to the jeep following us. Fuck. I cant do it. I feel like turning around and telling them I want to give up. I have melodramatic visions of me going to the PTI and the driver and just going ‘Fuck you! And fuck you!’ Instead I drink more water, stow it, get the Bergen back on and start at speed again. I try to get my mind off the pain, I count leaves, then look down and count how many times my boots scuff against the rocks. I count doubles or start arranging countries alphabetically. It works and I start to gain a little more speed. It’s too much effort to go around pools and mud so I just go straight through them. Some frantic uneven noise catches my attention and I realise its me, breathing. I slow it down, calm myself but I can feel myself flagging. The jeep gets nearer to me, if it gets level to me more than once I fail. I speed up, bent almost double so the weight isn’t killing me. My back, my shins, my quads are all on fire and in my head all I can hear is ‘eight miles, eight miles’. The PTI is still yammering on, getting personal. I’d like to catch up to him and tear his throat out. I speed up a little. My body wants to stop. Stop right now. My mind says ok, just a sec, do one more step and incredibly I manage it, one more, I whisper and my other foot follows suit. I’ve passed my limits and am still going but paying some terrible price. The rest of The Moss is gone, all I can see are my boots and the few feet in front of them. The sound of the countryside replaced with the jeep motor getting increasingly closer behind me and the PTI ahead of me. This is it. I give up. But I still keep going, my throat tears each breath out from around me, my legs are in some other country, I can’t feel them. My back has become some supersensitive surface area and I can feel every zip, buckle and strap knuckling into it. I’ll give up now. My mind and body agree but still I’m going on. I have no idea what’s powering me. I feel like I’m beside myself watching it all. I’m a fucking mess, caked in mud, sweat, snot, cobwebs, impervious now to the PTI. I can’t even hear him or the jeep anymore. Just the voices in my head telling me I’m no good, that I can’t do it, that I’m shit and if people I knew could see me now they’d point and laugh. And still I keep going. My neck and back are on fire, my legs are now in some one-dimensional galaxy far, far away even though I can still hear them. I tell everyone in my head to shut the fuck up and break into a shambling run up the hill. I pump my legs with my hands, ignoring the PTI, the jeep, the pain, the mud the water, my voices, my memories, my fears, myself and all I’m left with is a wall, the size of infinity and me in front of it banging my fists against it. The next marker is coming up, that information alone almost undoes me. My knuckles are bloody now and I crack on at the wall, shards flying everywhere, fighting again the concrete definition of Self. A crack appears, I get past the hill, the marker, the voices, everyone and everything and satisfied I had finally given my all I give up. This test is given annually to regular army. 90% fail. I’m in that 90% But I’m doing it again in 14 days. And again and again, if only to break down that wall and find out what’s powering me. I’m going to do it.
An old man came up to me once as I stood waiting for the bus He stumbled and shuffled and stood beside me, He was old And tired And I couldn’t see into him like I could with everyone else. His brown fingers wandering around his brown coat, tabaco stains and calluses on his thumbs Finding the pockets then diving up out of them again, wrapping his coat around him As the traffic surged and stalled around us. He asked me where was my joy and then his bus came Brown fingers again jumping in and around, fishing out his bus pass, warded against the doors that closed up behind him. I watched him shuffle to his seat and sit next to the window And as his bus drove away I found that my answer was that I had none.
