1. Scene Setting
Dreams ... of a place far away, a new life ... she walks away ... towards a dawn of bright flower painted colours. I watch her step away, watch as she goes ... wanting to call her back, words get lost in my throat, choke me inside ... I watch her. She goes.
Maybe because I've lived that too. Wanted out. Sought escape and thought it found... only to see it (me) dashed against rocks, pulled from my grasp, below my feet ... yes, I've been there, that same town city? even. Years ago. Walked the road, Dreamed the dream.
Maybe because now I see a new dream ... maybe because I'm selfish.
She wakes early, little sleep excited, big steps worried. Out of bed and into a shower, warm and holding, running around her, caress, a fog of steam around her... out into a cold damp towel... brush away hair, falls long and straight down ... check reflection in a mirror, there ok ... practice a smile ... good.
On the chair beside the bed the clothes are ready ... clean and well pressed ... casual and comfortable ... money and ticket on the dressing table ... photograph of a grandmother looks out witheyes that look caring but were really just a little afraid of the camera and the man behind it... apply a little light make-up, dress, check the reflection again -- everything is still alright.
Eat ... cereal and eggs, toast and jam, coffee, ... enough. Up to the room, look at the bags, look at the walls, the space to inhabit, the place to go from. The point of departure.
No matter what, you always feel the emptiness as you go, the thoughts that have arrived and gone ... the hopes held, the nighttimes of dreams ... the chances that go and the past. You try to bury this in a joy of the present, of new life, new places ... but still you feel just a little invaded, a little stolen away.
The case feels light in your hands as you pick it up, you have condensed your life into a space of three feet by two by six inches and you think about the six or sixteen or twenty or however-many years it has taken to get this far...
She closes the door of the room for one last time ... does not look back, knows how dangerous this can be.
Carries the weight of the case out into the light ... checks watch ... early. Time to waste. (What else has been done these last years?) Makes her way to the underground station, conspicuous of the journey for the first time, feeling her weight run through her legs into her feet and onto the grey pavement ... above the sun shines.
Descent. Travel. Station.
Check for ticket ... still there ... good. Check money (in three separate pockets as a precaution against theft) ... still there ... good. Case just begins to feel a little heavy. Look at the noticeboard for the departure time, platform, etc. Bites a lower lip without even knowing it. A sudden vision passes and is forgottenas quickly...
Think of things that you don't want to... the parties, the friends... the little love you have ever known, the few happy moments... has it been worth it so far? Consider this and what lies ahead. Consider what your doing. What you want to do. The dreams. The career officer at school asking "and what do you wantto do?" and answering "I don't know" and they smiles and says "Well have you thought about..." whatever, and you think "No,this not what i want, what i want..." but you listen and you end up sitting inappropriate exams for the sake of this job, for the sake of a place at college, at university... whatever... think of all the times you never thought you'd end up with one / two / three / uncountable years on the dole trying to live on twenty pounds a week, not just exist - live... still knowing that your totally unqualified for the jobs you never wanted to do in any case... a little bitter.
How many years did this plan take to make up? How many nights of plotting, how many weeks of trying to save a few pounds... how many times looking at the dumb rich walking into and out of Prince's Square with their stupid expensive worthless junk with which to fill their lives... what makes them worth so much more than you? You overhear one of them in a pub somewhere, as you nurse the bottom inch of a pint because you know it's your last and your first, and they talk about the "scroungers on the dole, ... of course they should have to work ... I have to work (a pretty but useless upper management position in a family company / a totally worthless wanker in the city) for my money... they're scroungers, all of them - round them up and beat them" you think how can they be so fucking greedy, they live their lives in glory and they don't even want the unlucky ones to even have the price of a single drink once a fortnight, they want back that little bit of their NI contributions ... want people out on the streets, begging, homeless ... so they can despise them "you have no get up and go, you've got to make your own breaks in the world" says the boy whose father is the chairman, who was paid through Eton, who has never known a night without a bed let alone a roof... and the subjected thinks, "my breaks? i'd break your fucking neck if i had the strength ..."
What's worse? Worse that these people aren't just the rich dumb, the stupid and the dead, they're just the ordinary ones, even the working class that have jobs, the sun and daily record reading public ... why do three or five or seven million people read the sun every day - because they are too stupid to read anything else? That's the truth. Marx was wrong if only in this respect.
And luck, that's all it is, what makes one man great and another an alcoholic, one woman a queen, another a whore ... what puts men behind bars, what makes artists starve, what put Van Gough in the madhouse, what puts presidents into office... no-one is anything more or better than anyone else, its just a big game of luck, the pretty and the ugly are all equal in this.
So she stands and takes out her copy of Finnegan's Wake to read - as in the first class the bored waitresses run up and down the aisles offering coffee and brandy and vodka to the fat and sweating masses of shit in suits with their business papers and Jeffery Archers and Jilly Coopers and other shit, too stupid to walk. And in the kitchen the urns of coffee are ritually urinated in and emptied but not rinsed by each arriving or departing member of staff ... how else can these poor people smile as they hand out the cheap polystyrene cups (CFC Full! Make yourinvestment in Chemotherapy grow!) of coffee to ungrateful, unthanking, unthinking leaders of industry and figures of state...
and she sits in her cheap seat and in her book she reads -
"As for she could shake him. An oaf, no more. Still he'dbe good tuto two in his big armschair lerningstoel andshe be waxen in his hands. Turning up and fingering overthe most dantellising peaches in the lingerous longerousbook of the dark. Look at this passage about Galilleotto!I know it is difficult but when your goche I go dead.Turn now to this patch upon Smacchiavelluti! Sootallours, he's sure to spot it! 'Twas ever so inmonitorology since Headmaster Adam became Eve Harte'stoucher, in omnibus moribus et temporibus, with man'smischief in his mind whilst her pupils swimmed tooheavenlies, let his be exaspirated, letters be blowed! Ias a femaline person. O, of provocative gender. Usingular case.
Which is why trumpers are mixed up in duels and here's B.Rohan meets N. Ohlan for the prize of a thou. ..."as a femaline person. O, of provocative gender. Usingular case.
Which is why trumpers are mixed up in duels and here's B."
You might just recognize her from what she looked like then. Her hair that was brownblackred her facesmilered her eyesgreen... herworried, smilesmile... might just notice in her the familiar, the recognisable, but mostly not, just pass on, outwards like nothingever happeneding, not ever... or maybe.
In dreams.
A cold and wet and dark and biting night and you pass by the cardboard boxes of the disposed and dispossessed, you disinterested as you go to the theatre, the club, the gallery, whatever you choose. Look maybe at real art about real issues, but ... just look. Maybe to get a torn face from your mind you throw a coin (this makes you feel good too) but you never think, your "provocative artists" waste precious time, precious talent on your unthinking stupiding. Moo on through your "culture" like a cow in pasture, maybe even eat your own shit without noticing or calling it "distinctly refreshingly honestly etcly")...
You might just notice her then, just might say from that unnaturally straight hair (ialwayslovedyourhair) that a memory bubbles to the surface, from those lips that plead that once smiled that are cut and sore and open from winds from kisses of bottles of money of gods, maybe you notice this, maybe you don't.
Walks with a slow limping walk away and over the city, past brightlight and smallclub, past peopletalk and peopledrunk and peoplefight, past everything to a bridge side standing upon this to look down, her hair blows free around her, stands now you see her face, a little of the smight light that once prevaded her eyes, in hand a bunch bouquet of small flowers that grow wild, her hair still straight face with dirt and no smile, a little light in the eyes as she looks, a little hope in the heart as she remembers a journey, a time gone by, a place and all that ... awash of memory that tugs at her, pulls her down to sit, legsdangle loose over the side like strings.
You wake up, not from sleep, from something though - mourning maybe. You see the things around you, the things missing, find a cheap and stained mirror and try to look at yourself and find a different person, try to wipe the grime from the mirror and realise it is on you ... close your eyes and try to weep, to sleep, to dream.
It gets lost within you - what brought you here? The reason, the meaning, what you wanted, hoped for. You feel someone touch you not out of love or compassion but simply because they are stuck in this too. You feel the hand but nothing more, eventually it leaves and you are totally, completely alone and you make yourway towards an unknown location like an elephant to it's graveyard...
Rescue? At this point? Would take the work of gods - not just one, several - and that seems unlikely. You walk on. You find your position as the sun decides to rise again, just start, make things look nice, like a pretty wrapper on a razor blade...
Sits and watches the sky turn round from black to red to orange to pink ... slowly ... her hands hide inside her clothes to keep warm, hold her own body, hold herself tight and loving and all that.
A sense of wonder, of bitterness, of the injustice of luck overcomes you. A hatred, a fire that burns deepdark, an anger that clenches your jaw and your tiny, weak fists and pulls a single tear from one eye as you close them both. You feel every bone in your ribcage and the space within it is empty, completely and utterly, you have become a vacuum and you sense this hollowness breaking out from you, outwards to invade the whole place, everything.
The sun is up high enough to see her now, the derelict bridge, the way she sits, her eyes that look out for something that never arrives. Warmer but still cold, she brings her hands out from within her clothes. In the first, a fragment of a mirror. She looks into it and smiles. The smile is just the movement of muscles in her face, checking she can still perform this little miracle this is no ale talking, I have seen this and it is as said - miracle, no other words... but there is no reason for the smile, no hope, no joy. The dream? The bunch of small withering flowers beside her. Dreams are what you wake up from.
Her other hand appears, holding the tattered and rough body of a book, pages gone ... fallen or torn. It falls open and she reads:
"Hillsengals, the daughters of the cliffs, responsen. Longsome the samphire coast. From thee to thee, thoo artit thoo, that thouest there. The like the near, the likernearer. O sosay! A family, a band, a school, aclanagirls. Fiftines and but fortines by novanas and orvantads by octettes ayand decadentecads by a lunary withlast a lone. Whose every has herdifferent from thesimilies with her site. Sicut campanulae petalliferentes they coroll in caroll round Botany Bay. A dweam of doseinnocent dirly dirls. Keavn! Keavn! And they all sett on voicies about singsing music was Keavn! He. Only he. Ittle he. Ah! The whole clangalied. Oh!
This read, she closes her eyes, closes the book, remembers an evening one time, a day as a child, a journey that takes her away. Remembers everything and it is nothing. The scrap of mirror, the small, dried flowers, the girl and the book fall ing ently speeding arcs from the bridge and she and her book and mirror and her flowers and her dreams are gone.
***
Ah, but wait, now wait. Saviors you see. I mean, I control all of this, these are my words, my actions. I can take these characters and do as I wish, my control. No need for this. Take the last paragraph away, and let me try again.
***
She closes the book, her eyes, stands - feels the definite weight of her own body again, feels a wind caress her, push her out a little ... she feels her swayswingstay ... maybe just a word to stop this now, maybe a hope so simple as a voice to hold back these tides ...
"STOP! I yell.
As I run to her, she opens her eyes, stays standing on the bridge. Reaching her, I say it again, softly this time. "stop - I did not mean to shout."
I look at her, yes I recognize her, the eyes that burn out a soul once and are not forgotten ... I say words to her ... simple or short or long or whatever - words that I know make some form of sense.
Ramble on and on, the meeting, my indecision, her eyes, the talk of Joyce, of Celine, Kafka, of the intense softness of her skin, the depth in her eyes, the smile - my standing at train stations, haunting pubs and hoping against hope, but against winning in the end ... and all of this she listens to. And I reach down into my soul and I bring forth my love and let her know it and she smiles and makes as if to step down from the bridge and I offer my hand and she smiles and for a second everything is as it was... as it should be could be and
Nothing is as wayslipsaway - the mirror, the book, the flowers - I reach across the to look down, to see her splash in the water- still hoping maybe I can rescue her my own dreams) yet, maybe...
But not broken waves greet my eyes.
What does? Well, wait a second. First, let me read to you. A pagefrom her book. The only thing left on that bridge. Let me tell you a few words...
"One seeking Was that in the air about when something is to be said for it or is it someone imparticular who will somewherise for the whole anyhow?"
I look over and see no sea. No waves. A net of black and brown and silver, streaks of light and lines cut before my eyes. Tracks run and fade round corners into distance ... on top of this she lies a few flowers, a few pages around her, splinters of a splintered mirror reflect early light to my eyes) I look for movement, any movement ...
Any movement that is not the flow of blood, not the guts spilling where ribs have outpunctured the skin, not vomit from nose mouth not blood not tears
