THE OTHER HALF OF EVERYTHING
METHOD ACT 1.
He woke in a tiny bedsit 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 rippled
with the hum of his landlady doing her washing on a wash-
board over the bath. The tune was probably handed down
from her mother’s mother, 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 maneuver in massive strides, standing
on the cat that scared him and jolted him closer to
the front door. The fear of what that hologram of his
son meant drifted 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
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 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 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-uptown in England while everything
was across the Irish Sea.
He discarded the book Charles Bukowski’s
hot water music with a vengeance into
the corner of the room left him cold
he 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 sup-
press his inner lament and 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's 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 everywhre the sight of built-up grey
areas filled with drunks, , and perverts clambering the streets
in of some temporary nirvana.
That vexed feeling came fleeting back at the sight of the river-
boat pumping along unnaturally like filth on the river.
It's cheap-colored lights flashed cutting the reflection of the line
of trees from the far bank like a chainsaw. Idling towards the boat
was a train of swans at point, 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 boat exterior and the lights within clashed creating
silhouette shapes that pranced around out of sync with
the nightclub's 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 a 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's
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 and 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 jfilth of the boat on the river. As the train of swans
met the boat two silhouette shapes stood on the 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's edge. He was about to get up and run
when he told himself to stall, and 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 they 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, its
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 they're 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 Northern 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 being taken to hospital with a strain of meningitis.
