Love Story

I’d like to tell you a story, although the story may not be mine to tell.

First came Adam and Eve, at least that’s the story we all seem happy to follow, then came all the beauty and bestiality that makes up this world. In fact, first came a lump of clay, but God’s love for pottery and the creative arts is less relevant to us than the love of a man for his own bodily parts.

With Adam’s rib miraculously metamorphosing into his matriarch and their allegorical allotment blossoming with all the flora and fauna of God’s imagination their future was rosy. And then came the doubt.

The doubt did not start with each other. Their love was beyond question for it was the love of Gods’ own will – a miracle of creation – the doubt started when the power of God was offered to Eve in the form of a fruit.

So we have two people, the only two people, in love with each other intimately and physically as befits the love of one thing cleaved from another. These two people go out into their own world and live bountifully only to succumb to the single thing which their patron has warned against: the desire for power in the form of knowledge.

Wind on two thousand years to a time when the garden has been torched; brought to ashes around the feet of warring nations, and in the centre of this desolate and destitute landscape stands tall a tree, the only living thing not taking life from others. Among the boughs of this tree lies a snake; a snake that has obeyed the rules of evolution rather than those of faith and so this snake does not speak and cannot be heard.

Not heard, at least, by those who battle in the shade of the tree, shedding sweat in order to shed blood, but articulate in the lexicon of love; vocal, in the hissing sentimentality of the serpent world for this snake was in love.

The snakes’ love was for the she-snake that shared the tree, the she-snake that had borne his offspring and reared his great grandchildren among the vital leaves and branches around which humanity chased, chastised and killed each other.

Their love had grown as the tree had grown; above and away from the dying earth, toward the light from which they came, toward their creator whose only mistake was to give a single serpentine forefather the power of human speech. This voice had cast man into his disastrous present, the destructive path that the snakes were sheltered from by one final irony: man feared the snake.

So from a single rib and an artistic flair on the grandest of scales we end with a scorched planet, a single blossoming tree and family of snakes. These snakes have true knowledge: of love and the folly of man. They also have, contrary to common opinion, a multitude of ribs.

thegooddoctor 2004

Woody

If you’d asked me what I was like, you know, as a person or what ever, I would have said I was a pretty nice kinda guy. You know, I have quite a lot of friends, boys and girls. OK, so none you’d probably call best friends as it were, but a good few people I like to see on a regular-ish basis anyway. So yeah I’d say I was popular-ish. Which means I must be like-able, doesn’t it? I know I’m like-able. I know my self.

I think I know my self. I’m 47 years old for god sake, I should know my self by now, shouldn’t I? But what does that mean, My Self? I’ve seen the same face looking back at me in the mirror all these years now, is that what it looks like, my self? Is my face and my self the same thing? What if I’d never seen my face, and I only imagined what I looked like, how close would I have got to the truth? Would my imagined face be a more accurate representation of my self that the one that a random roll of the genetic dice has given me? One things for sure, I wouldn’t have given myself such a small chin, and my eyes wouldn’t be so close together as they are now. Am I’d have more hair. Definitely more hair.

Surely I’m the best judge of who I am, being me! 37 years I’ve gone about thinking people liked me, thought I was maybe a little mysterious, a little aloof, wanting to get to know me better, but they were not sure how I’d react if they tried to step past the welcome mat and make themselves at home. I thought the arms measuring the length of space between me and the people around me were my own. Until I read that e-mail.

“…is a fucking weirdo man!
- I know – makes me laugh the way he creeps about the place like a little insect
- That’s exactly it! Like a little woodlice scuttling about the place! Hahaa
- Woody! That fits to a tee. We were just calling him baldy before, but woody the wood lice is much better. Scuttling weird little freak!”


In the blink of an eye, I have been transformed into an insect. I know those people who transformed me hold sway in the heart of soul of the firm, they are popular with many friends whom they go out drinking with, and are probably sleeping with too. Once they hear that I am now a Woodlice called Woody, that’s all they shall see me as, forever. The name and the tragically, pathetically amusing image that goes with it shall spread like wildfire through the firm, fueled by my colleagues helpless insecurities and its own irresistible symbolic momentum. I am transformed in the eyes of all who know me into a filthy creature who lives in damp, warm, rotten places, a creature that scuttles terrified in a land of cynical giants. And this act of magic has been performed by an off handed comment by a junior clerk, someone half my age. How can they wield so much power over me, to transform me so completely?

There is no point in trying to manage my own image, my own self. It is not in my hands. The dissonance that exists between how I imagine my self and how my self is consumed by the world is as immeasurable as it is irrelevant. I am nothing more than the sum of every one else’s perceptions of me, and they amount to nothing more than an insect. This realisation has, as you can imagine, come as something of a shock to me. I am used to relinquishing power to those more powerful that myself, but I never realised how much I have relinquished seemingly without choice, or consciousness. Namely, everything I am, my very self. And not only to those more powerful than me, but to everyone who has ever set eyes on me. I didn’t feel a thing.

Now, now I feel small; vulnerable; as if even a careless child’s shoe could crush me and the world would not notice my vanishing. I feel as if I am lost in a land of giants, with a woefully inadequate shell that will fail to resist even the slightest attack. All I want now is to scuttle away from cynical eyes, to be with my own kind and hide somewhere warm; somewhere damp; somewhere rotten.

MJ 2004

When She Paints

When she paints the world collapses perfectly into a softer place, curves and cushions and warmth and memories of childish laughter and common goals, of interwoven souls sharing life's happenings and cultivated minds that perceived and understood the world simultaneously.

Her smile is permanent and of a mothers caress, sparkling eyes radiating crystalline mists that land invisibly on the canvas and sketch the delicate lines and blend wonderfully the many colours. Her soul is a wide valley that I fly through on the wings of an enchanted tale, soaring to mystical heights of unity and plunging exhilaratingly in the voids of flowing rivers of her
love.

The body takes form as her beauty floods forth, voluptuous form either side of the tiny brush, a reciprocal perfection in the creation of a complete aesthetic. The head flowers from slender shoulders that roll and widen with the confident strokes, her hair a mythical maze of ebony flowing, growing forever into the sunlight that fills and warms the space behind her, golden
shards and blissful clouds along tomorrows dawn and the hope that spills from wheel of time.

When she paints I dissolve into the parts of myself that seem beaten by the present, unable to find footing in the fleeting normalites of today, a stillness and sanctuous place that hides from the ephemeral world and awakes only into beauty and grace, happiness and friendship. As the void is filled by her art I find my centre and observe the chaos as my perimeter, revolving
harmlessly around my core, planets of pain and confusion spinning away and leaving the passionate passivity of a mind at peace.

When she paints there is music in us and around us, playing softly the rhythms of our understanding and the perfect chords of our love as again I soar high into the magical mists of the canyons of her soul seeing families wander together on the green banks, children hand in hand in innocence and simplicity while generations of loving eyes watch as the passing of life
brings new life and wheel of time rolls harmoniously into a known and loved future.

Here is peace and wonder, the truth of existence and the ceasing of seeking as tomorrows possibilities blossom as today beliefs, as hope expands the space between the objects that now have lost their material necessity and fade as pink on pink into the joys of the moment. Here is where we exit as one, united in the creation, the cry of the caverns of our spirits to the
heights of creativity and freedom, of expression and self knowledge.

This is the pause between breaths, the silence of the clocks' ticks. This is the moment that is lived for the known unknown the seen unseen the gravitational centre of the love of all things. This is nature and dreams, peace and serenity in a world without decisions or conflicts without hatred
and ignorance and the blinding powers of prejudice.

This is art and I am her subject, anima and animus aggregated and appeased; the marriage of spirit and form into the revealing of truth and the destruction of division and the collapsing of negative constructions into positivity and passion. This is when she paints.

thegooddoctor 2004

Hitcher

The road is long, continental in length but the width of only two small cars or one fuck-off truck. This may be the longest, thinnest thing in the world. Perhaps not. China has the wall, which I doubt offers room for a family car as 10 tonnes of rumbling steel and rubber come at you head on. Hadrian's must be shorter than this road and far from a rival to the space-visible Great one. So we can say with some confidence that of all the lengthy items this planet offer up, this is among them.

It was with such a thought that I tried to break the ice, spark up a bit of mileage killing conversation, anything to stop this fucker grinding his teeth and slapping his fat dry tongue across his lips. Long road this one! Ever been overseas? China perhaps? His eyes flicked momentarily at me, or at least away from the fly splattered windscreen long enough to qualify as a response. Never left this Big Island, eh?

The rapture of communication was long dead in this cross-continental soul, he was a machine of motion hunched encouragingly over the wheel, rocking with the revolutions as the tail of the road slipped between the mammoth tyres. His eyes red, knuckles white he was immune to my banter, focused entirely on the impossible next mile, on completion and ends that few us are so commonly given. Is this the longest thing in the world? Nothing.

The window drew me away from this soliloquy and in the passing trees and burnt bush I found a certain serenity. Strong lines formed where sight gave into speed, brown and black beneath the solid blue, occasional breaks for a train line or the long road to a farm. Letter boxes so far removed from the subject of their contents that they seem like communal collection points for random thoughts and ideas. I may ask this crazed carrier to stop so I can write some thoughts and leave them for an equally strange passerby. Dir Sir, you have obviously noticed these stranded mailboxes, driven miles way from home toward this dusty highway and, a soul striving for communication like myself, have deemed it fit for a letter.

If I believed for a second that this piston driven pilot would dare apply the hissing air brakes then I may have asked. In fact, I think I was going to ask when from among the blurred lines of flora and earth came a form unrecognised but somehow complete, not broken by our speed into lateral lines of colour but whole and closer than the liquid backdrop.

A camel, the desert dwelling beast of burden that graces the sands of the most exotic and ancient lands, running along side this filthy road train, straining, at least it seems, to keep abreast of the cab and trying, unless the heat and the silence had twisted my senses, to get our attention.

Lowering the window I leaned into the rush of dusty air and waved an acknowledgment at the ruminant mammal but it seemed only more frantic to draw attenion to itself. I pointed to the trucks immense trailor, to the burning wheels and to myself, innocently, but the creature widened its eyes and shook its matted head causing the humps on its back to swing vigoursly to and fro, it was obviously not impressed.

Not until I leaned back, confused and a little scared did I see the camel smile, a wide grin full of square yellow teeth and a long tongue beneath flaying lips. At the same instant my mute and long ignored driver leant across the vinyl seat and empty food wrappers that separated us, pushed me further back into my sweating seat and said, almost out of the window himself. Hello mate, is this the longest road or what?

thegooddoctor 2004

Roady

One more drink and I'll hit the road. The sun's down, the ashtrays are full and somewhere a dinner is waiting for me. Three hours and a dozen beers have passed, I tried to chat up the blonde that still lolls on a leather sofa in front of me, fingering her drink with ruby tipped nails and biting, wide eyed into a piece of lime.

My day has been bad and there's no end in sight but the booze has loosened my mind and my forward slouch tells like a clock hand that things are moving on. Another beer, the bar's not too crowded and the haggard chick that works all hours is out on the floor shuffling chairs and half heartedly wiping the tables.

I stand slowly, trying to catch the blondes' eye but she's too busy looking moody and ignoring me. Fuck her, I'll cruise down the road and find a decent chick who's into me, likes a good time, maybe has some pills, the beers no good now anyway, I need something harder.

The doorman nod their sardonic nod like every other night as if this was my first here. Fuck them, I'm in here every god damned day and all they can do is nod at me on the way out. On the way in they ignore me completely.

The wind is ripping along the beach and the sand is in my ears and eyes and mouth and my vision is blurred. Its not a long walk to the pub but it's cold and I have to pull my hands into the sleeves of my jacket. Fuck this, I stop and light a joint sitting on a low wall watching seagulls fight the wind and then glide up in control now and soaring out of the glow of the lights and into the true night of stars.

I burn my fingers putting the joint out and stand again, too quickly, my world spins, the seagull cries wobble and bounce in my ears as the blood rushes to my brain leaving my legs without a chance and I'm down again, on the wall with a noise like breaking bone. Fuck this, I light the joint again and slide from the wall onto the damp grass and pull my collar up and suck hard on the tiny roach between my fingers.

Looking up I see the smudged and salty windows of the bar, the blonde is still there, she's at the bar and alone, warm and light. I stand slowly this time, wary of another turn but missing it when the world stands still and I step over the wall and back toward the bar.

The doorman ignore me as I stagger back in with a grin that will look like a sneer and eyes that I know will be red. The working chick is back and looking eager with her hand on the tap. No, I say, I need something stronger. Gin & tonic. Lime and ice. She turns away and I do the same to check the blonde but she's gone, her glass on the table but no lime. I turn back, fumble for change in my pocket and throw down enough for the drink and a tip. Sarah, the chick says. What? Sarah, the blonde girl, she asked if I knew you.

As she spoke my head pounded and I felt my legs going again, I reached for the bar but got it all wrong and collopsed forward, cracking my chin on the way through and landing in a pool of beer and my own blood. What happened next I can't say but when I came to the blonde was kneeling with my head in her lap, her ruby nails stroking my hair and a look like only a mother can give. I was sick, she wiped my lips and looked deeper into me and I let go, the days and weeks surging out of me in tears and saliva and blood and I told her that it was too much but the she could bring me back, give me the light that I need to live.

Then there was nothing, I was suspended in darkness and only pain existed, then came the light, piercing and intense and I returned to my body when a hand touched mine and I opened my eyes. The rough chick was sat on the floor, blood on her hands and chest, her eyes full of tears as she held a beer towel to my chin. Come on she said, I'll get you home. Fuck that, get me a beer.

thegooddoctor 2004