Waiting For The Wind

The heavy doors beat out their irregular, echoing tattoo in her memory as the train came to a stop. Confused layers of recollection and reality shimmered in the curved space; the sulphurous stink of steam, the acrid stench of diesel and dust, the clattering flap of pigeons, incomprehensible tannoy announcements and the sound of hundreds of voices, hundreds of feet.

Hanging back from the crowds, she strolled along the wide platform, trailing slow, twisting whorls of misty chaos. The grey and grimy past spread out, dissolving into the hard light of the present. She pushed through the automatic ticket barrier and looked for somewhere to sit. She told herself she needed a moment to let the memories settle and the layers of time to synchronise. She told herself everything would be all right. It was a mistake she always made.

As soon as she sat, she accepted the journey had been a mistake. Ghosts crowded the concourse. She watched them filling the space, surging back and forth, pushing through one another, fraying the edges of reality.

Accretions of time piled up like dust in the station; the detritus of centuries accummulated from all the moments lost, the anxiety, the attempt to hurry, swirled across the concourse and deposited in corners. They were all the same. From the monorail station at Srinagar that she had never since been able to find to the remote halts in the middle of all those nowheres; small, large, decaying, brand new, open air, enclosed, empty, full, they were polyps strung out on a network of steel connectivity, islands of frutration and dreams, places of greeting and parting, steeped in emotion.

Dangerous places where she had no control.

She pushed herself up from the bench and crossed to the departure board, looking up at the old mahogany structure that had once stood there. An old, cold wind tugged at the long skirts of her coat. Long past light filtered through dust. Silence fell. It would be years before there was another train.

Vague echoes drifted beneath the high glass canopy.

With a shiver, she turned from the board and walked out through the abandoned ticket hall. The station forecourt had that ‘70s Sunday morning feel. The whole length of Queen’s Road stretched before her, empty of ghosts, people, movement. In the chill, hazy distance was the sea.

“Bugger.” She pushed a finger under her glasses and wiped away a tear. The ‘70s really was the last place she wanted to be right now.

Stealing into Winter - a fragment

With all the grace of a drunken dancer, the ghost teetered about the empty square. It would lean and move off in one direction, picking up speed until it righted itself. Spinning on the spot for a moment or two, faint in the painfully bright sunshine, it would lean in another direction and be on its way again, sinuous, trailing pale peach wisps of nothingness and a faint hiss.

Jeniche watched the erratic ballet from the deep shadow of a cellar doorway. Dust ghosts were rarely seen in the city. It was rarely this quiet. Most people would be sitting or lying in a shaded room, waiting for the afternoon heat to abate, especially at this time of the year. But there were normally some people about; luckless servants mostly, sent on the errands of the fools for whom they worked.

The square and the roads leading to it, the shops and stalls. All were quiet beneath the weight of the heat, sunlight shimmering from the hard baked mud walls. Quiet except for the ghost that skittered across the open space, spinning toward Jeniche and then changing direction. She pulled her keffiyeh up over the lower half of her face, squinting as dust drifted into the stairwell. Childhood memories drifted in with it, just as unwanted. She blinked the dust from her eyes, wiping away a grimy tear with the back of her hand.

Turning in the dark, she watched the ghost swithering for a moment before gathering new energy. It dashed along the main road out of the square, picking up more dust as it went, twisting, hissing, and taking on a more solid form. Without warning it collapsed. Mute sunlight pressed down into the silence.

Renaissance

Birth is painful.
Gut wrenching.
Heart aching.
Head fucking.
Painful.

All the more painful
When you thought you were barren
When you thought
That last time
Was the one time
The only time
The true time.

Em.
Just the name.
Conjures all the sweetness.
The bitterness.
The pain.
Of birth.
And loss.
The whole gentle, uncertain dance.
Finished.
Before it really started.

You are still there.
I can close my eyes
And see you as we whirl beneath the tree.
Lifetimes ago.
And gone.

You live within me.
Loved.

And now.
How can I love another?

Birth is painful.
Gut wrenching.
Heart aching.
Head fucking.
Painful.

A long time ago...

...this is where it all began.

Fragment 4

I was only a teenager, but always made to feel welcome. It was a bit of a thrill, really. All sorts of people used to be in and out of the place. Writers. Artists. Poets. Some local. Some, sort of, well, international if you like. Martin Henty, who owned the shop and the press, he seemed to know everyone who was worth knowing.

Everyone used to go on about London and all that, but it wasn’t the only place where things were happening. In fact, Martin used to say it was easier to get things done in Brighton as there weren’t all the wasters and hangers on. People who wanted to be part of the scene but had nothing to contribute. Some he didn’t mind, but there were always those who were on the make, sponging off people. That’s what was good about Octopus, cos Martin always got rid of those types.

One of the real reasons I kept going back was cos I fell in love. [laughs]. It was a real teenage crush. Daft really. She was, well, I don’t know, thinking about it, she must have been close on forty. But she was beautiful. Elegant. Had this amazing hair. A pale, rosy gold colour. Cut really short. And a face that… er… well, it’s like she’d seen so much, good and bad, yet found some sort of peace. Nearly. There was always something. [laughs] Woman of mystery.

I really did just hang around the place in the hope of seeing her, doing odd jobs for her. She ran one of the magazines that Octopus published. I’ve still got all my copies. I’d help with anything really. Learned a lot. Course, it’s all done by computer now. Shame really, cos it might make life easier but the finished product is always a bit too perfect. I like those old magazines and papers cos they had a raw edge to them. Not just the content, but the look of them as well.

Everything she did was done properly. Do you know what I mean? She took great care with it all. I used to watch her work. Sounds a bit creepy now, I suppose, but I really was… I even bunked off school sometimes.

Nobody knew much about her. You’d hear stories. There was one about her being a motorcycle rider of some sort. Never understood that. Some daft pillock said she was a thief. I got into real trouble over that. My one and only fight. Went a bit mad. [laughs] A bit mixed up. It took a few years to sort my head out. Didn’t help when she just vanished.

Sorry? Her name? Oh. Er. Charlie. Charlie Cornelius.

She’d be about seventy now. I often wonder what happened to her. Nobody knew where she’d gone. It’s funny. I was walking through that part of town just a few days ago, looking at the places, all changed now. And you know, I’ll swear I saw her. Couldn’t have been her, of course. Didn’t look any older. [laughs] I actually ran after this woman. Lost her in the crowds along Kensington Gardens. Just as well I suppose. What would I have said? Sorry. Thought you were someone I’m, er, was in love with. Thirty years ago.

Local Oral History Project
John Charles Woodman
Extract from transcript of session 47 (22 May 2000)

Listen

listen until the machine runs down
you will have to listen long into the night
and where the earth is most blighted
you will have to listen with other ears
only listen

it will take practice
many days or many years
it will take patience and understanding
above all understanding
a supreme effort to come to see the machine
to come to know its ways
to learn to hear its grinding scream
to learn to hear it
one night
as it runs down

and in the special places
where its grip is still loose
in the special places you may have to create
in your head
you will hear

you will hear
a fragment of silence

first it will be a silence
that is an absence of noise
an absence of the grinding
an absence of the scream

it will become a silence
that is a repose
a freedom

and then
if you are not seduced to sleep
you will hear

you will hear
the song of the earth

Funeral prayer

Through fractured wastelands of a future within living memory; through crystalline deserts where the flowers once sang; through all the empty days where echoes spin; I walked alone.

Some wayward path brought me here to where they finally let you rest. There’s a beautiful old tree. An oak. Remember the one we climbed in the back garden? Like that. And rich grass, rabbit cropped. I can smell honeysuckle.

I was not here then to say words; but I wrote them all the same. And there is no one here now to hear them. Just me and, who knows, maybe you.

i
fierce as the evening star
she lit my skies
but evening as ever
becomes the night
and she has set
gone into the west
and is lost to me
but now in the Otherworld
they rejoice
for a new morning star
has risen
a new star awakens

ii (adapted from ‘sian bhuadha’, a gaelic prayer for the release of the soul)
you go home this day
to your home of winter
to your home of autumn
of spring and of summer
you go home this day to your lasting home
to your rest of great deserving
to your sound sleeping

sleep now and so fade sorrow
sleep, my wonder, in the heart of truth

the sleep of seven lights upon you
the sleep of seven joys upon you
the sleep of seven slumbers upon you
my wonder

sleep in the quiet of quietness
sleep in the way of guidance
sleep in the heart of love
sleep, my wonder, everlasting in our hearts

iii
with thanks for her presence and the joy it brought
with love for her friendship and the strength it gave
with tears for the loss of her – a light has gone from my world