suicide line

Every life is a tragedy waiting to happen, in the end ‘tis only luck and grit that sees us through; a small dose of the right stuff is enough to change the course of a dream to a reality (even tiny) and then what? The sun may blaze and kiss the necks of lovers, may shine on history and let us know how lucky we are to be where we are but that does not mean it’s the same for everyone. Some awkward moment can be enough to throw a person down, then where are you? I’m scrabbling for words here, trying to ascertain the fine line between hope and despair, the electric charge that causes someone to throw themselves in front of a train in the full knowledge of what will happen, willing it so, surrounded by natural beauty, the delicate calls of birds at their heels, the shy temptation of Roe deer etc etc. How could they determine to miss that? That is their extreme, pulling at them, making them know their insides better than any other stimulus. I’ve been there, but I‘ve never been that close. I know the awkward anxiety, the waves of unfathomable despair, the daily shock of it and the hold that it can manifest, tight, leather-like grip, but I always found a way out. I was fortunate. Here, in this corner of Britain, on the line between Suffolk and London they choose to do it on a regular basis. Why? And who are they that would sacrifice life; these sorrowful souls desperate for release? Are they young tragedians lost in some final ACT of teen misunderstanding; lost in some emotive puzzle that they believe cannot be answered? Or are they gone beyond life’s youthful hope and found only repetition and turmoil, too many subjects left to balance?

Who has any right to judge? In their seeming cowardice they take a brave and humane decision to stop their pain, as any animal would. The tragedy lies in the loss of hope and in the means of their departure, the foisting of its appearance on others, innocents on a carriage and a driver who is not expecting anything other than signal failure to be a cause for concern on a Sunday afternoon. That it is so public makes the tragedy the concern of everyone, because it is also in some way an exhibition, a final cry for proof of existence.

Kestrels hover and the land twitches, and spring revels in itself.

I once had a girl or should I say . . . ?

We no longer (as Santideva states in The Bodhicaryavatara) ‘perfume’ our minds, they are not given that tiny grace or gift. Nor do we allow the perfume to be imperfect, it is the hope of perfection (unattainable) that has the ability to destroy us, and we are frenetic in our attempts to keep things perfect. Cannot be. One carries one’s karma each day (it cannot leave) and the karma can be changed by so many things but too many things are dependent on something or someone else and therein lie the routes to agony and despair. I am not one to judge. I can only receive the sadness at the extent to which someone had to go to relieve their agony. But I have to wonder and concern myself with the repetition of the act in one location; what is the fuel (to use a topical metaphor) for this suicide engine?

eyes widening lotus

The moment I picked up a copy of The Bodhicaryavatara things began to change, a quickening in my guts, around my heart, some recognition of past desires and questions, a fruition maybe now coming full circle – as I walked with the book under my arm I noticed I had already slowed down, my pace, my steps, had to turn the iPod off and listen outside myself, remain in the present, in light; I was then aware of the buds on the trees, burgeoning, sap-filled, sticky and sweet, some perfection of form in the abbey grounds – a lotus unfolding? – In the words of only the first few scriptures I recognized synchronicities, references to the sacred threes that an author pays homage to at the beginning any work – Death past then in the form of a cortege, beneath the wetted oak trees and the tumult of their shedding water, the clear drops falling at the roadside, onto the leaf matter, making sound, applauding the passing corpse . . .

I vow to meditate on at least one verse a day.

Mystery Lane

S’a strange thing to be walkin’ east-west through this town and to know that there is a lane, a cut, part of the medieval grid that can get you shortcutwise into town BUT when you return i.e. west-east, the lane has gone, disappeared, not to be found despite lengthy meanderings up and down the locale. Yep, jus’ gawn. Medieval alchemy and divination at work? Some wrinkled furrow-brow sitting in his garret with the stench of quicksilver ‘n’ lead pouring forth in the lee of the Norman gate, putting a curse on some enemy and ne’er getting it off again so we still tumble down the confusion centuries later? I think so. Yes. So Whiting Street and Bridewell lane be accursed! Sheesh. Disorientation, enthralling disorientation like Alice, up and down we go without any real chance of deciding for ourselves . . . who shall we be following, sirrah?

The party howlers arrive and disgorge their fat love in the living room, urinating epithets of mutual appreciation and pseudo-celebrity love-in-ness. Fantasy island in the Suffolk hollows . . .

And bleary eyed ne’er do wells linger in the doorway eager to fry the fat and taste it too. Shittin’ a brick for jesus replacements and other class A’s. S’all in there for a few hours. While the older man upstairs, his lingering scribe ancestry depleted for an evening, sleeps fitfully, disturbed by their reverie and calls out (unheard) for the world to shut its mouth til morning and leave him in peace approximately. Oh aye! How they move these magi. Wandering and arched down Sparhawk Lane or lost in the Kevelaer shadows, with the brook idling in their ears and the sweet marjoram stuffed in gills and nostrils.

e$den – the fold (no misprint)

Arguably the day should have begun like any other except this one never did and never will – atmospherics hemmed us in, insolent rain and low slung mist like a poison gas cloud, eradicating all matter beyond a couple hundred yards (petro-dollar cloud?); we become prisoners, artificial for hours, on the brink of knowing but learning nothing of ourselves except paranoia and doubling, the consequences of that (sheepish dreams, bounding nightmares, Gothic masterpieces played out on the inner screen); lazy hours pass as the world attempts to clarify itself, coughing and spluttering back into existence, stepping out – the smells of roasting and frying wafting along the street, the old dear next door attempting bizarrely to clamber over the wall at the foot of the garden, her wild hair soon bedraggled by the damp, matting on her shoulders and against her cheeks; scratching beneath the surface, she becomes simply another fruitcake on the watch, another howler for the charnel house poor love – all matters are delinquent today as far as I’m concerned –

A message in a bottle is found by two young(ish) men whilst walking along a beach (Hebridean?) - there is a pencilled sketch of the ichthys (Christian fish symbol) and the handwritten words: keep pure thy heart among the mortals - at the bottom of the page the name LAURA is scrawled in quick, flighty capitals – attached to the whole by a paper clip is a photograph of a woman (maybe twenty-one or two), long auburn hair and red lips, standing at an old-style box microphone evidently in the midst of a song, her eyes turned dolefully toward the camera, blue half-light across her face from a spot maybe – both hands touch the microphone, one grips just below the head and the other deftly touches with fingertips the stand itself, it’s a classic pose caught somewhere between 1940 and now, who knows? Who is she, beyond the evidence that she is the aforementioned Laura? That’s what they’ll aim to find out I’m sure, these two logger boys. Or at least one of them will. He’ll become obsessed with discovering her identity and why it is she’s sent the message out across the ocean. Whilst the other will think of his friend as just a crazy –

This is a story rattling round my head . . .

Malister

Teenage mums laid in the glory of god under queen bitches and snitches with bedraggled eyes and upended nerve endings in the sugary cloud of the Brit Sugar factory; twenty four hour puppets on call with halitosis and cheap suits, all walking toward Bedlam for a pint whilst still blindly surfing the internet internally, playing it out, milking it for all it might mean –

Bury St Edmund’s