I have been blogging for over ten years, as I don’t have memory recall, I tidied this up.

THE OTHER HALF OF EVERYTHING (REWRIT)

METHOD ACT 1.

  

He woke in a tiny bed-sit in Reading, Berkshire, England. 

An image of his son's face falling away from his eyes like 

a rainbow drifting into the filthy walls.

The drumbeat rippling with the hummmmm of his land lady 

doing her washing on a washboard over the bath. 

The tune handed down from her mother’s mother like 

a tribal lady washing on stone by a river. 

In a dream state of confusion, he clambered into his clothes 

along with the three flights of stairs he managed to manoeuvre 

in massive strides, standing on the cat that scared him half to 

death and jolted him closer to the front door. 

The fear of what that hologram of his son meant drifting 

through his mind. 

The Queen Lizzy pub was quiet for a change the drunks and junkies 

were asleep or still locked up in the cells after the dawn raid. 

He ran to the end of the street where the kebab van parks 

and sat on the wall awaiting the girl to exit the phone booth. 

For fuck's sake hurry up he told her silently, my motives losing 

momentum. He turned to the street and watched the creeds 

of the world clamber along, among them the lost and the lonely 

released into the community, the mad ones, the real people. 

An old lady with a white painted face shoved a shopping trolley 

along the middle of the road the rush hour traffic swerving to 

miss her.

 Elvis in a sequined waistcoat posing for a shout-singing Love me Tender 

across the street. A man in a long black coat who never spoke to anyone 

just walked around with a scrunched up ball of paper in his hand wiping 

crayons taken from his breast pocket across the page. 

He remembered meeting him once in the Irish cafe and like a tourist, 

he bought him a cup of tea and asked can I have a look. Without 

a sound and half a smile, he handed me his sketchpad while another 

appeared instantly from within his coat and he began drawing the scene 

outside the window.

Only he could see what he was drawing his back was to the view he watched 

him draw half a man, half a car and half a street like the aftermath of a blitz. 

The other ones, with crayons, he said and he took the ball of paper from his 

pocket and rolled it across the artificial marble Formica topped table. 

As he unfolded the ball of paper Monet’s, Lilies, Van Gogh’s trees and Vermeer's light filled his eyes, he looked at him and saw in his eyes the other half of everything.

METHOD ACT 2.

He rushed past the girl and shoved the coins in the slot his heart beating wildly like electronic codes gathering in his head, a dead tone. He took the rejected coins and shoved them home again and again only to hear the same dead tones ringing like a thumping headache, she must have changed the number, he thought as he returned to his little room. 

Feeling caged like an animal trying so hard to concentrate on a book but it only brought confusion. Unable to erase the sight of the picture of his son appearing like that hologram and the worrying thoughts attached to it. Your conscience is the prison of the mind, he thought no matter how hard you try you just can't run from it, oh how he wished at that moment that he was one of the dispossessed shuffling through life, oblivious of any moral obligations. 

He thought of his father trying to run all his life from his bastard past, each one of 5 siblings were born in a different town and staying no longer than a year in each English town. Belfast during the 60s and 70s being the longest they stayed anywhere then that it was probably one of the safest places in the world for him, what past would want to find you in Belfast during the nightmare of the troubles. 

When he gave up running from his past a secret family exploded after thirty-one years of marriage to his mother and showered down on us like emotional shrapnel, sending the family to the four winds to lick their wounds.  Killing my father and devastating my mother with five strokes.  He always swore he would never be like him and here he was in a fucked up town in England while everything is across the Irish Sea. He discarded the book Charles Bukowskis hot water music  with a vengeance into the corner of the room it left him as cold as ice,took his only coat from the only chair and left the still ordinary madness of the room and joined the frantic streets. 

It was warm summer's evening, which didn't help much as the town's grim sights clashed with the elements and his void. He called at the Asian shop and purchased a bottle of overpriced wine (uncorked), without a care for paying over the odds, anything to suppress his inner lament and to awaken his mind to simpler things. 

He walked south of the town intent on not opening the wine until he reached his destination. Beneath a filthy old railway bridge, he uncorked the wine and took a deep swig while in his mind he told the roaring train thundering overhead to fuck off. He passed the roundabout where the cars waited impatiently for their little piece of space in a mad hurry to get nowhere.

Dusk fell on reaching his destination, his space by the river, He went there often to clear his head of the modern filth. He sat by the river edge smoking and chugging the wine; a warm slight breeze blew with the river flow creating short sharp waves that gleamed with the red dye injected sky. A treat for his eyes after the usual week of air-conditioned factories, traffic jams and everywhere the sight of built up Grey areas filled with drunks, junkies, and perverts clambering the streets in search of some temporary nirvana. That vexed feeling came fleeting back at the sight of the riverboat pumping along unnaturally like filth on the river.  

I

It's cheap coloured lights flashing and cutting the reflection of the line of trees from the far bank like a chainsaw. Idling towards the boat where a train of swans at point was a beautiful white bird followed by four black cygnets, guarding the rear was the majestic male. Pleasantly they blended with the scenery, belonging.

The bright lights of the boats exterior and the lights within clashed creating silhouette shapes  that pranced around out of sync with the nightclub thumping beats. Man’s celebration driving like a nightmare on the surpassing river.

He recalled a night he was on board that very boat, The Princess, a cruise or so he thought and pleasure trip. One of the girls in work arranged it in anticipation he pictured the scene, relaxing on the starboard bow with a beer mellowing with the sights and the natural flow of nature passing by. Most of the people he worked with were assholes their form of chilling out after work was glued to the box in the corner that pumped garbage into their minute recesses.

METHOD ACT 3.

He was excommunicated, he's an oddball, they said because he couldn't make a comment on the latest goings on in the soap operas or who scored the vital goal in the football or give  his opinion on the lunatic on the news that murdered twenty-seven men and women and ate their genitals He liked poetry and literature they can keep their electrified dementia, I'll stay quietly insane.

He got a beer and left the swarm of people within, He sat on the deck ready for the world's natural flow. The disco beat pumped decibels of thumping sounds through the hull, echoing tremors through the river capacity. It's no wonder it's a good river for fishing they want to be caught and have their necks smashed on the nearest rock, he was so pissed off he wanted to catch the hook pull back on it and be hauled to freedom. He was starving wanted to hear classical and let his mind wander off to take it in then pour this experience out on paper. He tried he best to relax and push those stupid sounds away, just when he thought he had it sorted one of his fellow workers broke his concentration to talk shop. He had riverboat sickness, leaving the deck he returned to the madness and sat with his fellow used and the presence of beer and whisky flowed. The booze took its toll and he was no longer in control, letting it flow with the filth of the boat on the river. 

As the train of swans met the boat two silhouette shapes stood on deck drinking from glasses that flashed in the moonlight, pouring their substance from the glasses down on the flock, their strict security broke in shock. He yelled at the shapes, you think it's fucking funny, ya mindless wankers. In his rage he didn't notice the swan swimming towards him bolting onto the bank honking and hissing wildly flapping its outstretched wings. He stumbled back and ran for cover behind the trees with the echoes of laughter from the boat. He zigzagged the line of trees and by the time he reached the river’s edge again after finishing the wine, it seemed the moon and stars were out for his benefit only. Mellowing in solitude pondering his circumstance watching the shadows from the far shore rippling a picture for the album of his mind, until something caught his eye. 

He turned to see the swans silently coming along the river edge. He was about to get up and run when he told himself stall, relax, his heart beat wildly and shook with fear like the flowing river when the majestic bird broke the water with great ease onto the bank and idled towards him. The massive bird came strolling along the grass verge for a second we made eye contact before he lowered his head closed his eyes and braced himself. He felt the strength of its breast as it pressed against him, it's cold beak brushed his forehead and flowed to the nape of his neck with the affection of a lover’s touch and a sensation flowed through his mind and body, a new sensation.

Something he had only come close to experiencing seeing his children being born. It cleared his mind of every trivial thought he ever had. he opened his eyes, left the river and returned to the town, got his gear together from the corner of the filthy room and left. On the train, he thought maybe I should leave her alone, maybe their better off without me.On the ferry crossing, the rough Irish Sea political parties condemned murder in the TV lounge. As he sipped a pint of Guinness, It's winter in Ireland all things are dying, the rain and the sea spray cut with the coldness of steel but he held in his hands a picture of sons, the reality was pulsing with a rhythm he never wanted to lose. Returning to the news of his son taken to hospital with a strain of meningitis.