She Got A Weekend in Paris

An Electric Tomatoes piece written in just over an hour.  We stabbed words in a book to come up with the prompt - She got a weekend in Paris

Aunt Jocelynne sighed at the other end of the line.

'It was quite quick in the end.'

Her soft accent curled around the words.

'He did not suffer. He was asleep anyway. His heart just... it just stopped. Gave up. It just didn't want to fight any more.'

'Right,' said Phil. 'I'll tell her, Jocelynne, thanks for ringing. I'll tell her when she comes in. She'll probably want to phone you. In a way I'm glad I can be the one to break it to her.'

'She will come, won't she? The funeral... and there will be the... the reading of... what is it?.. in English?.. you know, the wishes... the inheritance... what is it?..'

'The will.'

'Yes, the will. She will come, won't she? There is no-one else...'

'I'm sure she will. She wanted to come before... when we heard he was ill... but she couldn't get time off. She'll be devastated. They'll have to give her time off now. Claude was the closest thing she had to a father.'

'Good, good. Let me know your plans.'

'Course... of course.'

Three days later, at the station, Anna kissed Phil as the London train drew into the platform.

'I wish you were coming too.'

'I know... I know... I do too.'

She clattered the small suitcase up into the carriage, battled the persistent automatic door. Phil walked down the platform parallel to her as she made her way to her seat. But it was on the opposite side of the carriage so she could only see him if she remained standing.

At last the train pulled out and with a final fingertip kiss she waved him goodbye and slumped down into her seat.

She liked train journeys, especially travelling alone and with little in the way of luggage.

She unzipped her backpack and pulled out her book. But it lay on the table in front of her, unopened. Her hands stayed in her lap, her gaze fixed out of the window. She watched the weft and warp of the landscape as it slipped by. Fields and hedges. The running of fence wires, power-lines, the silvered rails of the sister track. All became a conspiracy of lines as the train slithered through the countryside. All scheming together underscored by the continuo of locomotion. She felt the wheels on the rails – ticketataa-ticketataa-ticketataa. Watched the telephone wires rise to the punctuation of the poles then swoop and sag back down again before cresting again. A wave of black lines – the musical stave of the train – drawing her eyes and her ears, mesmerising her, seducing her into the lull and pause of her memories.

Claude. Uncle Claude.

The smell of tabac clinging to the lapels of his jacket. A heady fruitiness to his breath when he picked her up and lifted her onto his knee after Sunday lunch.

She reaches up and touches his face, reading the grey stubble on his cheeks with her fingers. Then he seizes her tiny hand in his great fist so that just the tips of her fingers are showing and he lifts them to his open mouth and noisily plays at eating them. She could feel the edge of his teeth.

'J't' mange!' he said, ''j't' mange, mon petit déjeuner!'

And she would scream and giggle at the terrible monster he had become and flee from his lap, laughing, only to hide behind her mother's apron and wait for him to come and find her.

The connection was straightforward enough and she slept as the Eurostar slipped into the darkness of the tunnel.

When she awoke they were already passing among the banlieu – grey concrete tower blocks with broken windows and graffiti. Factories and rundown estates. The signature hinterland of every city.

But because she had slept it was only on arriving at Le Gare du Nord that she learned of the delays: a suspected terrorist incident at St Lazare. There would be no trains out till Monday at the earliest.

'There's nothing I can do, Auntie.'

Silence from her aunt at the other end.

'Tant pis,' came the reply at last, but Anna could hear the wheeze of emotion in her aunt's voice – her tight breathing,

'We'll see you soon on Monday, then, à bientôt.'

'Yes, Auntie. Baises... bon baises!'

But the line was already dead.

After a visit to the station information centre and a short Metro ride, Anna found her way down a quiet side street, Rue de Paimpol, to a small pension. She registered and was shown to her room where she washed and changed. Then she walked out into the late afternoon sun. Now for the first time she recognised the distinctive odour of the Paris streets.

It was still warm and she allowed herself to wander back down towards the Metro station but then at the last minute she changed her mind and walked over to a small café across the square.

She ordered iced tea.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the soft breeze, then reached into her bag and pulled out her book once more.

Le Petit Prince smiled guilessly from the cover as it lay on the table – his crown still as bright as ever. She decided that perhaps she didn't even need to read it. Actually. It was enough to just have it there. She remembered the soft whispering of her uncle as he read it to her. She could feel his breath on her ear.

She stroked the paper cover with her thumbs. She felt the the memory of Claude's hands on the leaves. Then her fingers opened the book, riffled through the edges - and smoothed the page.

Page One.

Here was Claude in her head, in her heart. Uncle Claude...here! Here they were in Paris together, drifting once again, from planet to tiny planet in search of peace.

Leonard Cohen

A poem written in an Electric Tomatoes session just after the death of Leonard Cohen.

Suzanne took me down

She had a place by the river

She put on her old turntable

As I flicked through her vinyl

But all I found to listen to

While the storm outside was raging

Was an album by The Beastie Boys

And Revolver by The Beatles

Then she looked up and noticed

While the boats rocked by outside

That the evening was descending

And that I really should be leaving

So I went and called an Űber

22^nd May 2018

She was a bird

She was a bird
borne above the earth
on softest wings
sunlight glancing
on iridescent feathers

He, a cloud,
grey with pendant rain

And with every beat of her wings
upon the blue door of heaven
the sky began to shake
and the rain to fall
his tears tumbling
upon the cheeks of the earth
until all were spent

And beneath
where dust and death had ruled
new life sprang forth 
and verdant pastures
greened the fortunate land
the air filled
with the scent of mint
and peppermint
of jasmine
and coriander

Are you all right?

Are you all right?

How I hate the question...
What do you want me to say?

Yes, I'm all right
I'm still breathing
Is that what it takes
to 'be all right'?

I won't mention the inner turmoil...
I love you, so
I won't inflict upon you
the twisting and turning
of my burning heart
the hatred and scorn I feel
for my own
self-destructive tendencies

I won't tell you
about how I dream
of slashing the flesh of my arms
with a razor blade
because then you would worry
that the breathing bit
of being all right
might be compromised

You would wonder
who the creature is
that you thought you knew
that you had
compartmentalised

I don't WANT to slash my arm
it just feels as if
that would be some form of release
for the uncomfortable energy
that's churning around in here

Feel the flesh separating from itself
see blood bubbling from within
carrying the toxin perhaps
dropping
onto the painstaking earth
and dissipating

I WON'T slash my arm
Because then you would see...
You could no longer ignore the truth of me

And if you can't ignore it then neither can I

So don't ask
if I am all right
because the truest answer
is impossible to formulate
and even a close approximation
is likely to obliterate
the true complexity

Just accept I'm travelling
and sometimes
the road is filled with rubble
so if you see me stumble
just reach out and
take my hand
for a moment

You take yourself to the mountain top
and sit amongst the clouds
you trek down to the sea's edge
and feel the rhythm of the turning earth
you press your hands
into the sand of the desert
feel the heat upon your skin
seek the place
the heart's honest landscape
where you the earthling
seeking heaven
best fit in

My journey
is a different one
it takes place while I sit here
seeing the thoughts flash by
with the eye of my mind
as if on a train
but the train is motionless
and it is the world that moves
I find doorways in my thoughts
secret passages
tunnels and traps
cloudless skies
red eyes
bloated cheeks
blistered skin

It happens while I sit -
feeling the internal bleeding
counting purple bruises -
but I am confident
that at some point
I will straighten the fibres
twine them together
and draw the thread
across the loom
and all the colours
I have found
will lie in harmony
against each other
and the fabric
will at last
make sense

Rude Awakening

Another piece from an Electric Tomatoes session... Our prompt was Rude Awakening


He hears it below.

A key in the lock.

The handle turns. Hinges grind and squeal into the night. The door expressing its pain at this untimely assault.

A hiatus as whoever it is negotiates the coming in with whatever it is they're carrying.

Then slow steady steps. Feet on concrete stairs as whoever it is manoeuvres whatever it is, whatever heavy thing it is, from one step to the next.

He lies in his bed.

He listens, eyes wide. Listening to the dark echoes rising through the carcass of the building. Listening to large, sharp-edged noises magnified by cold, hard surfaces. Noises like things. Solid. Ungainly. Cracking the darkness, fracturing the thick silence of one in the morning.

It's cold.

He shudders. Pulls the quilt up over his shoulder and under his chin. Squeezes his eyes shut as if this will deaden the din. But the squeezing sets his blood to throb in his ears, it floods his head. It muffles the noise of the ascent into a sinister unknown. He cannot recognise the edges the sound – cannot define the lines that create it. It is darkly dangerous, unfathomable. He releases his eyelids again, softens his grip on the quilt, reaches out with his ears to know the sound he's hearing.

There's a cough of exertion.

Whoever it is is on his landing. Whatever it is is being dragged slowly past his door, towards the next flight. A rasping heaviness. Dragged. Breathing. Heavy, effortful. Each drag of whatever it is preceded by a hit of breath against vocal folds. Not an utterance, not a word, just an exhalation constricted by muscular contraction.

Whoever it is has reached the next flight. The rhythm shifts again. He lies in bed imagining the scene beyond the door. He pieces it together in his mind. A dark figure. Male, hooded, heavy. More than heavy – lumpen. Meat and bone. Gripping whatever it is with large strong hands and yet grappling with the awkwardness of it. Filling the space. Pushing aside the emptiness of the stairwell. Overfilling it. Whoever it is. Whatever it is. Air closing back into the space as whoever it is moves up, step by step, lifting whatever it is, step by step by step.

The sounds are softening – no – shrinking, as they ascend beyond him.

A sense of relief and yet, here, in this darkness the questions pull at his eyelids. Prise them apart. His eyes reaching out now into the darkness for answers, quickly now, before the sounds cease completely. For in the silence the detail will detach still further. The sounds will slip into memory, memory just slip into colour and slowly fade. The light from the window lifts itself out of the darkness, finds the edge of the frame. His mind cues in and settles the room's other features – pieces of furniture, the looming wardrobe, his own body – into place.

He projects his imaginings against the screen of the dark wall by the door. He sees through the building, up the stairs to the top landing. He sees the whoever and the whatever bound together in some deathly embrace as whoever searches his pocket for a key.

He must know now.

He must answer the questions. What is the whatever? Who is the whoever? Why is this deathly escalation being danced in this the depths of darkness? Secretly, secretively, anonymously paranoically. He pushes the quilt back down from his chest. Rolls onto his back. Feels for the edge of his bed with his right foot. Hooks his foot over the edge. Pulls himself to the diagonal and further. Reluctantly complies with the compulsion to get up, to leave the cocoon of his bed and face the mystery.

Feet to floor. Cold, rough, wooden floor. He searches for slippers blindly. Finds them.. It's not too late. He doesn't have to go. He does. He has to know. There's a panic now. The noises from the stairwell lost in the sounds of his own movement. Confused and confounded. He is desperate to cling to the vestiges of the strange ascent, but they are dying. Pining away. Questions. The questions. Demanding in his head. Boiling in his blood. Forcing him to move. He's standing. Groping through the darkened bedroom. No, don't turn the light on or it will all dissolve. Get to the front door. Key. Where's the key? There. Unlock it. Pull the door open. There. Now he's outside on the landing, counting the noise above him, measuring it in his head, feeling how it fits. He's estimating how much longer before it ceases. How can he know? Move, just move! Up the stairs. Straight up. Two at a time. Running up the stairs.

Distant sounds now blocked out by the sounds of his own feet on the staircase. His breathing. His pushing of air into air. Like thunder. Next landing. He stops to listen. Silence... No noise? Then a step and a thump as whatever it is is dropped heavily down. Has whoever it is arrived? Is that it? Is whoever it is there now?

He runs again. Up and up the stairs, not waiting now. Not stopping to check. Full flight. Up and up. Feeling the danger rising in his cheeks, surging up in his throat. The sickening taste of running into his own death. Is this it? Will this be the end of everything?

Another landing and as he looks up he sees above him light. Light cracking through a doorway then splashing, flooding over to the opposite wall. An opening and yet a final opportunity. He knows the opening will close in seconds. That the opportunity will die. That the questions will be unanswered.

But it holds, the light. It stays and still stays, while whoever it is lugs whatever it is over the threshold and into the room. He's on the final flight. Hard-hitting the steps to get to the top.

And then the voice...

• Who's there?

It's not his voice. It's a female voice. Elderly. Cracked. Tired.

• Who is it?

He stops. Shocked.

• I'm not alone! Who are you? What do you want?

She's calling out unseeing. He hears the terror in his voice. She cannot see him. She's just hitting out with words, hoping to strike one feeble stroke against the darkness. Craven in the night-time. Her voice is just thin paper skin, watery blood, brittle bone.

He steps up one more step. He can see her now. But she is still blinded by the light in which she stands,

She is small. A small dark figure. A coat. A hat. She is silhouetted against her doorway.

- Who is that?

She speaks again with perhaps a moment more confidence, grown in the fact that she is not yet dead, that whoever it is has not yet pounced. He has not yet struck her, cut her, collapsed her, cast her lifeless to the ground.

- I have no money. You won't find anything.

- She is stalwart, defiant now.

- It won't do you any good.

- I... I...

He tries to understand why, now, he is here, doing whatever it is he is doing. Pounding the night for answers to that which is no longer a question.

- I... I...

- What?

- I... I heard a noise. I...

- Yes... well.

She is irritated now.

- My case is heavy. I apologise if I disturbed you.

- It's... No... I... I just wondered if you needed help.

- No. No, thank you. No help required. Thank you very much. I have managed.

- Yes.

- Yes... Thank you for the thought but...

Her unfinished sentence packed the moment with a dismissal.

- Well, if you're all right, I'll...

- Yes, quite all right, thank you.

- Then I'll... I'll say goodnight.

- Indeed. Goodnight. Goodnight.

The door is closing. He turns to walk back down the stairs. He glances at the door. It is still not quite shut.

She is watching him. He can see where the light is obstructed by her form. He can feel her eye held up against the door cra

Umbrellas, depression and tightropes

A

-nalysing

the rainclouds doesn't make it rain

it allows you to assess the preparations you need to make

before                                   the                                  deluge

in

ord

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to

mit

ig

       ate the

       effects

I have a tendency I know to intellectualise and to analyse as a way of addressing my demons.

For me it has to be that way. I have to rationalise before I can deal with the actual emotion although the rationalisation has never itself stopped the darkness from overwhelming me. I'm just trying to understand why I am like this... If I can understand it rationally then maybe I can get a firmer control on it emotionally.

My name is Chris and I am depressed.

I struggle with the word – because firstly, I don't want to be, secondly I don't want to label myself.

I don't want to be defined by the word any more than I want to be defined by a narrow view of what being male is about.

I don't want to use the label as an excuse.

I don't want to feel a sense of addiction to it.

But there is a sense in which this self-diagnosis is helpful. It helps me to forgive myself. It helps me to see my mental and emotional state as the result, perhaps the inevitable result, of the events of my life and the reactions I have had to them. It gives me an opportunity to say 'you did your best' to myself. And now also to say 'You may want to revisit those decisions you made back then and check they are still right for you. You may want to inspect the "rules" by which you have chosen your path in life and see if there aren't some tweaks that it would be beneficial to make. Are those rules still valid? Are they just? Are they relevant any more? Who made them in the first place and do you still respect the rule-makers?'

Depression is a negative thing because it causes the sufferer to feel like a victim of circumstances, to feel they are worthless but at the same time it places them at the centre of it all. 'The world/the universe/life/you have done this to Me...' 'Woe is me!'

The mighty Universe/God/you are all conspiring against me to make my life miserable – impossible even.

Everything becomes about how difficult my life is even though there are clearly those in the world whose physical circumstances are far worse than mine. And that leads to a sense of guilt and self admonishment that drives the depression further in, seats it more heavily within the dark, selfish soul of the sufferer – me.

Everything I experience I am able to fit into this pattern – someone else's wealth, health/fitness, success at some undertaking, artistic creation... all these just go to show how worthless my contribution is, how unsuccessful my efforts are. It's all a fiction, of course, but don't for a moment think that makes it less potent.

And Shame...

for me this is the biggy. I have come to recognise how shame has been passed down through my upbringing and Catholic faith. The subtle insistent undermining and devaluing of human instinct, human appetites, in search of some vague notion of eternal bliss.

I'm not blaming my parents. They were unconditionally loving and kind and warm, but they too were governed by a sense of shame – a moral code that was built upon the Christian understanding of Good and Evil. Everything has been about expunging the Evil, the Dark Side, and honouring only the unselfish, the giving, the loving. I don't know how to 'feel' any different because feelings are such deeply rooted things – they are based on the deeply instilled messages we receive from infancy. How do we rewrite that coding? How are we reborn and allowed to rebuild our world view with a more human/animal based morality – a morality which works for humanity as a social species living on this blue planet at this time in history in the company of a million other species.

Intellectually, I rejected in my thirties the structured religion that I was raised in and yet shame operates still. It's a vicious cycle – I feel shame at not listening to the voice of shame. In some ways it feels as if it's not that I have stopped believing in God, it's just I have determined to live my life without acknowledging God. I know God exists I just don't want to pay any attention to it. So my punishment is still accruing like unpaid library fines.

Shame tells me to behave. It tells me what misbehaviour is and that if I indulge in misbehaviour then I am 'dirty, perverted, immoral, unclean, unfit, sick...' the list goes on.

Shame tells me depression is a 'shameful' feeling – it is not real – it is controllable and simply an indulgence like masturbation, or biscuit eating, or drinking too much. Shame is literally a dis-ease.

So how do we integrate all these elements into one healthy human being?

I don't know.

How do I – without rationalising to some extent – undo the conditioning that has brought me to this place?
I don't know.

All I know is I have to keep asking that question.
All I know is that I have to seek to remove or at the very least recognise where shame is playing its part. Why am I feeling ashamed of what I am doing?

I have become keenly aware of shame having a physical effect upon me. It causes me to squirm, twitch and judder, to tense my muscles against themselves. It is a physical energy within me making me cringe. Sometimes it hits me as a full belly blow – a wrecking ball swinging into my gut. It is literally a physical sensation and a mental image that recurs time and again. The squirming, too – as if I am trapped in my body and that if I can just wriggle and stretch in just the right way I can break free from it and leave all the shit behind like a sloughed skin in the bed.

At other times the energy manifests as extreme sexual longing, an erotic desire for physical love – a sexual feeling of wanting to penetrate and consume another being and to offer myself up to that experience without hindrance from morality and social mores. I want to be consumed in the same way. Feel the passion of which I have always been, yes you guessed it, ASHAMED!

Anyone who follows @KnightAberrant on twitter will have read my sexual, passionate yearnings, for yes he is that part of me. And then sometimes he dies inside me when the shame is too strong. He is a most, in some ways THE most vital part of me and yet I cannot own him... for Shame! Bastard Shame! So I seesaw between binging and suppressing him, it, my sexuality...

And I have suddenly realised that I am writing this for public consumption. Because I can't SAY it all to the people I love but they need to know it because it is affecting every part of my life and not in a positive way.

Depression is a tightrope along which I am walking. As long as I keep my head up and don't look down my feet will find the tightrope and I can function. If I look down, if I examine how narrow this path is, how constricting it is, the whole thing begins to wobble. But I have started to look down. And some of you have seen me start to wobble. Maybe it's time to let myself fall off. I don't have to stay on the tightrope at all. Yes maybe it'll hurt hitting the ground but how much more will there be to explore down there? Down there where I don't have to live on a fucking tightrope! Whoever thought that would be a good idea? Such a narrow, constricted, dangerous existence.

And I know some of you are there with your arms stretched out to catch me... which makes me feel that this tumble may become more a stage surf. Could even be a pleasurable experience if I can just pluck up the courage to jump.

I'm working up to it.

I just hope you aren't disappointed if the person you catch isn't quite the person you thought you knew. He is trying to be more honest and more open and more energetic and passionate. He's trying to be a better human.

And if you've read through to this point I count myself truly blessed in having you in my life.

down the corridor

I have never told you
have I
about the girl
whose name I never knew
with angular features
a long sharp nose
and shaped eyebrows
skilfully shadowed eyes
with hair
cut short
and gelled up
into a fine comb

who had a room
down the corridor
from you in halls

I never told you
did I
how she and I
caught each other's eye
from time to time
how she would smile at me
even while you held my hand
and how
while we were studying in your room
you and I
I would listen for footsteps in the corridor
Fancy a coffee?
I would say
and you always would
and I would dutifully trip along
to the kitchen
in the hope that she might be there too

and sometimes she would be
and while the kettle boiled
we would courteously
dance
a light flirtatious gavotte
between sink and cupboard
kettle and coffee jar

and I would fail to say
all the things to her
that I had planned to
because of you

and she would ask about you
because that was a respectful
and a safe
thing to do