Journey

This month’s task for my writer’s group was to write around the title “journey”. There were so many wonderful contributions. Here is mine.

They tell you now, or should that be nowadays, that’s it’s ‘all about the journey’. At least that’s what the ‘spout-forthers’ on the internet tell you. I think, they call themselves ‘influencers’, but I prefer ‘spout-forthers’ as with bombast, they photobomb their way into our virtual lives with their opinions, beliefs, and perspectives, manipulating, or trying to manipulate, each individual thought process and convince people of the need to subscribe to their viewpoint or product.

They monopolise the socials with memes that speak of the ‘journey’ and the importance of ‘living in the now’. The destination is somehow a fluid concept that, I guess, for many of us is obscure. But what of this journey? What is it all about? And can a journey be a course with no defined destination? The ‘spout-forthers’ don’t seem to talk about that. They just say it’s ‘all about the journey’ often laced in universal metaphor advocating the ontology of presentism. They say it with their sparkling, white-edited teeth, glistening coiffured locks, toned and tanned bodies, and perfect make-believe lifestyles from their polished, photoshopped worlds. In essence there’s an irony right there – the ostensible proof of a preparatory prelude to the video or photo opportunities that pervade any instantaneous ‘nowness’!

Meanwhile others talk about goals and targets. Tangible concepts that are destination orientated. They want us to make these goals SMART. Measurable outcomes calculated in the short, medium, and long term; the end points of mini and longer journeys, I suppose. Projections reaching into the future and less cemented in “the now” perhaps.

What these ‘spout-forthers’ fail to mention is how the two interrelate. Can you, I mean, have a journey without a destination or a destination without a journey? Where do we get to if or when we wander aimlessly without sense of purpose and is that more fulfilling and maybe less stressful than steadfastly walking to a planned future? And then again, what about the past? The place from whence we have come. That land of experience framing our understandings and our reckonings of what it means to be here in ‘the now’ and giving us a platform and a springboard. None are really mutually exclusive, but all allude to a direction of travel – a journey with the delicious dilemmas that we construe in life!

This was the predicament that confronted George that morning in March when he woke up with his mind a whir – wired to think, or overthink as he was sometimes very aware, yet incoherent in this moment. He stirred trying to work out whether this moment in time was part of his journey or whether he had arrived. With the sun illuminating particles of dust that danced in the arrowshot of light piercing its way through a gap in the curtains, he roused intent on answering a question. Yet he was still very much in that post-nocturnal postictal stupor from a dream of which he had no reckoning.

It wasn’t a question that he had been aware previously needed answering. And if he was honest, it was not a question that he could rightfully define. Yet the answer was, unsurprisingly, elusive or was that the question – he did not know for his consciousness presented as a vanishing illusion suspended between two worlds in his hypnopompic state. That morning, though, it, whatever ‘it’ was, was certainly wrestling with a fuzzy fervour in the depths of his furrowed brow synchronising with the creased sheets in which he lay.

“Am I here?” his mind mumbled. “Or am I going somewhere? And if I’m going somewhere, then where am I going? But if I’ve arrived, where have I come from? And then am I now in ‘the now’, or has that moment passed? And how do I know because if I’m here now, or at least I was in ‘the now’ then, but now this is now, can now even exist? Or do I need to go to ‘the now’ and if I do, or even if I do not, then what about where I’ve been if that was now, and now is now, and then, will be now too?”

Confusion descended in a miasma of thought as a cloud outside passed in front of the sun so that the dust particles ceased their dance.

“George?”

The words broke through his semiconsciousness.

“George! You getting up this morning? You’re going to be late!”

“Shit!” Suddenly, he was brought right back to “the now” however ‘nowish’ that was with the sledgehammer of reality which succinctly answered his unasked question. The blunt brutality struck in that familiar way that our stressed, everyday lives so often have the discourtesy of doing in an instant! And in that instant, he was awake – up and ready to continue on his journey into the then, the now, and the next, right now!

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Recovery

I am a member of a Towcester Writer’s Group and every month we are challenged with a title or theme. This was the January challenge

Tell me about it” she said, “your recovery, that is”

“Wells, it’s a longs story so I ‘opes yous ‘as time” came back the answer from the man sitting in on the opposite seat in the rather old, dilapidated railway coach. “It’s a very longs story and if I’m ‘onest, I’s nots sure “recovery” even cuts it. But you asked so  ‘eres we goes”.

With that he proceeded to rapidly recall the contents of his life over the past ten years in meandering sentences that seemed to lose a certain coherency over the next portion of time. Quite a long portion of time in all fairness and there was part of her that wished she had never asked.

He had seemed an interesting fellow and she had been intrigued by the prelude to his story but in hindsight, she had to admit that she wished she had just kept her nose firmly implanted in her paper and never looked up as he rambled on! Yet in another moment her consciousness pricked the lining of her soul, and she remonstrated her selfish lament and reconnected, at least cognitively, to the old man and his tale.

“And theres yous ‘as it” the chap wound up. “I tolds yous it was a long ‘un but it’s good of yous to listen. Most folks just gives me that quizzical look that says ‘oh god’ and ‘old fool’ and don’t gives mes the times of days. So good of yous to listen. When alls saids and dones though, I’m really not sure that recovery is the right word.  I means do wes ever truly recover or do wes just reinvents us-selves” he mused.

“Reinvent ourselves! That was exactly it!” thought the girl silently. “That’s exactly what we do. Reinvent – reframe – repurpose!” She wondered some more.

“Does recovery suggest that we return to a previous state?” she thought. “But how was that ever possible. Life isn’t about re-doing anything. In reality, we may return to a previous address, or station or place but in ourselves, was recovery the healing balm it alluded to or was it just an illusion that we recovered by returning to better health or the same place or the same state. In the presence of the experience that one had lived through was recovery about improvement or adaptation or the ‘new normal’ that had become a buzz word through the recent pandemic”.

To the old chap opposite, she smiled and nodded. “I wonder then, why we call it recovery then?”

“We likes to kids us-selves” he said. His front tooth was missing, and the wages of time wore deep into his furrowed brow. His stubbled chin was dappled grey and unkempt and the hair on his head was lank with strands falling in grease ridden clumps out of the flat cap that must have been as old as he was!

“We kids us-selves” he repeated. “We likes to thinks that we’ve got it sussed. We likes out security – thats wes dos. We thinks that if we recover then it’s all gonna be dandy – fine and dandy likes it used to be. But it’s not, is it? It’s not really ever like that, it’s…..” His voice trailed off into the narrative that continued in his mind yet was denied any verbal definition that could be shared with his travelling companion.

“Yeah, wes kids us-selves – that wes dos” he said with a certain conviction as he returned from whence he had been to the present conversation looking to the girl for some validation.

“We certainly do” said the girl with the stamp of authority that the chap was beseeching from her. “We certainly do” she said recovering herself in that moment. The irony was not lost! “We certainly do!”

Normality – A Rambling

What is normality
But an illusion
Shared by many
Yet not by all
A manipulation
Of reality
Of A reality
Scattered amongst equals
With significance
Accepted
Not questioned
Except by
One

But then isn’t it that one
That makes normal possible
Like a line of straightness
Where the line
Only seems straight
Only survives
As a result of the kink
A curve
Where without that bend
There would be
No straight
Nothing more

And so too without abnormality
Without that ‘one ‘
Can there be normal?
Without delusion
Can reality prevail?
Without the mask
What really is there
The possibilities
Swimming in a sea
An ocean
Of possibilities
On the spectrums of odd
Weighed in the scales of reason

Lives being lived
Unfolding in the rainbow
The wavelengths of colour
Each as precious as the next
Refracted through a prism
To bend light
Curving whiteness
To bring brilliance
All realities warped
In hues; in shades
Of colour
For maybe everything is normal
Or maybe normality just doesn’t exist

Thursday

Were it but a different day
A Monday full of hope with her new beginnings
Or Tuesday where inspiration has the edge
Even a Wednesday in the knowledge of week half done
Or a Friday proffering excited anticipation for the morrow
Were it but a Saturday; a day of action and adventure
Or resplendent Sunday relaxing in the balmy weekend throes
Were it yet any of this
But nay it is a Thursday
Neither here nor there but stuck somewhere in between

The End

Will the words ever cease
Will the notes ever dry
Or the stars fall right out
Of the heavens and sky

Will the sun fail to rise
Will moon end its reign
Or the world stop revolving
On its axis again

Will the waves lull their lapping
Will the winds calm not blow
Or the birds fall to silence
Or the trees never grow

Will these things ever happen
Will our planet decease
Or universe disappear
Or time even cease

And in wondering these questions
And thinking them through
There’s one thing for certain that
We won’t know if they do

So why consider and contemplate
Or muse in such a way
When our time could be spent making
The most of our days

Yet I think on reflection that
We’d all like to know
When the end will be nigh so
We can up sticks and go

Photo Credit: NASA (via http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Grace

Grace
The edification of morality
In serene beauty
Embellishing propriety
In consonance with decorum
Elegance and finesse
That blesses the world
With a disposition of generosity
From a charmed sanctuary within

Contemplation

Taking the space to contemplate
A brief moment in time
To stop!
Not in purposeful meditation
But to pause;
To consider;
To think
Amidst the busyness of the day
Ahead the pile of ironing
The burgeoning debate
The critical evaluation of an overdue essay
And mass of backdated reading
Pressing marketing deadlines;
School letters;
Children’s demands
Appointments;
Administration;
The mundane
To stop!
And to ponder
To imagine that if the world stopped
If the last breath left my soul and the final beat pulsed through my heart
So that life itself vanished in this moment
What would my legacy be?
What footprint would I have left in the sand?
What difference would I have made?
And with that thought;
That contemplation;
Momentum returns
With a new urgency