Every image has a story
Measured in numbers, in seconds in time, all those we preach to discover new rhyme, but forced to comply with all that we know, forced move forward to stay in the flow.
But time never started it got used to conform, to bring us together to create the true norm, but if we have infinite ticking the clock, why not to move backwards to end this rot.
I taking the bridge no matter the cost, cos time we spend watered will calm what we’ve got.
Sometimes the picture does all the talking for you. It’s simply beautiful. Roots intertwined with rocks hovering over the water, reflections formed through the sun and shade, stillness and movement all rolled into one. Just look at it and enjoy it will arouse your eye.
‘Right we got seven minutes.’ Sean said as they walked purposefully through the maze of shelves, using the light from their phones to illuminate their path to the counter. They jumped over and entered the office closing the door behind them. On a wooden desk they saw the safe perched precariously on top, a large dial and lock on the front. Sean handed Biola the scrap of paper and put the key in the lock.
‘read out the numbers’
Biola responded.
‘clockwise – 18’
Sean twisted the dial so the number 18 was in line with the red marker at the top of the dial where 12 would be on a clock.
‘Anti-clockwise – 33’
Again Sean twisted the dial, but this time in the opposite direction. ‘clockwise – 46’
The dial make a click as if something had released behind the door, they looked at each other and then Sean turned the key with the red tag in the lock. It ran smoothly, and there was a louder click as the heavy door swung open with its own weight and the angle of the desk the safe was sitting upon.
‘Boooom’ Biola cried as he peered into the safe, there were wads and wads of cash, it seemed like more than they had anticipated, it looked like something out of Ocean’s Eleven, it felt like Ocean’s Eleven, maybe they had more than they were expecting? Maybe they could all go home with 5K Biola thought.
‘Shhhhh’ Sean interrupted. ‘Pass me the bag’ Biola paused
‘The bag’ Sean demanded raising his voice a little.
Biola looked around as if he had dropped the bag, but he knew straight away that he had forgotten it, it wasn’t even in the car, he knew exactly where it was, he knew it was back at the flat on the sofa in Sean’s living room.
‘Sh*t man, sorry..’
Sean looked up at him, ‘you kidding me? You chump. F**k man’
But this was no time to despair, The clock was ticking and they needed a solution. Sean was thinking quickly.
‘Get some X-change bags’
‘From where?’ Biola replied
‘F**k knows, behind the counter.’ Sean guessed
Biola quickly responded walking out of the office to the area behind the counter. He started looking through the cupboards, nothing in the first, then he looked into the second, just a load of random stationary and plastic figures from cartoons and computer games that mostly came as freebees when new games came into the shop to help promote the new releases. Biola opened the third door and there was a stack of plastic bags neatly folded.
‘Yees bruv’ he called out to Sean, ‘How many do we want?’ ‘Bring two’ Sean estimated.
They stuffed all the notes into the plastic bags, the wads mainly in tens, a few twenties and some blocks of fives. The denominations low to reflect the value of the sales that the shop made to its customers.
‘Pikeys’ Sean murmured under his breath as if he was justifying the robbery to himself by creating a Robin Hood type of persona.
‘Right, lets go, check Tyrell is cool.’ Sean indicated as he pushed the safe door shut turned the key and picked up his bag.
Good morning – said the voice from somewhere up above, good morning squeaky replied with a little yawn. He rolled over in his little bed, scrunched up his little face and let out a looooong sigh. And who will you be today the voice continued. Squeaky paused for a moment and then let out his reply.
“Today I want to be squeaky” he announced proudly.
Squeaky lived in a little hole on the north side of moss valley, he had lived there for as long as he could remember, and he loved his little house, it had a little bed, a small stove, (that he frequently bumped his tail on) a set of shelves and of course a cupboard for all his clothes.
However despite squeaky being a happy sort of a fellow there was one this missing from his home, his mummy.
‘There ain’t no thing man, it’s like a constant movement, constant state of flux’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There is no forever’
‘Shut up, you are just using words to try and say something controversial, forever has as much weight as a word as constant movement.’
‘Eeeeerrr well constant movement is two words for starters, and has more letters so for sure it has more weight.’
Tom sneered at Greg, he was always coming up with these weird and sometimes wonderful, sometimes not, impressions or cliches, but Tom liked it. Even if he did put him down all the time.
‘Look all I am saying is the road won’t go on forever… at one point it will stop, there will be a red light or a round about or simply a dead end.’
Greg was in full swing.
‘Okay you want to play that game… If we look at the road system all across the country I think you will find that they all connect in one way or another, therefore the road does go on forever.’
Greg paused for thought, ‘but it has to stop at the sea.’
‘Well hold on’ an idea popped into Tom’s head and he smiled, ‘take a circle would you agree that if we put a pulse, you know like the one in France that races around a circle…’
‘I feel sorry for that pulse, it must be so tired’ Greg interjected.
‘Shhhh, I am making a point… if we put a pulse into a circle it would continue forever.’
‘Well…’
‘Shut up’ Tom snapped, ‘I realise it will need force and all that but we are discussing forever, a circle goes on forever.’
‘Okay okay’ Greg agreed, he wanted to hear more
‘If we look at the road system as an interconnected forever circle, put a pulse through it, it would go on forever, despite the sea, all roads lead to London and all that.’
‘Hmmmm… I am not sure’
‘We need a map, I bet you all the roads in the country are interconnected. They have to be… Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get from A to B… I’ll prove it, get on the bike we need to buy a map… wheres the nearest shop?’
The boys got on the bike and set off Greg turned to Tom.
‘Mate I don’t think we will find a shop around here, this road goes on forever…’
The boys burst into laughter as they raced away.
She stumbled around inside the house looking for something to protect herself with. The dogs had been barking for the last 10 minutes and she now would have to be brave.
‘Nobody passed by…’ she said to herself. ‘No one…’ She scolded herself. ‘Stop it… It’s probably just a…’ The dogs let out a loud chorus. She picked up a knife and walked to the door.
Slowly she prised the door open to catch a glimpse of the intruder. The dogs howled again, but she couldn’t see, what was the cause of their anxiety? Then from behind the petrol pump stood a man dressed in black, black leather trousers and a jacket to match, his shoulders square and eyes shaded from the sun behind dark lenses. She pushed the door toward the frame reducing her vision but adding a greater sense of safety.
She held her breath as the man walked towards the gap in the fence, as he moved the dogs backed down, maintaining the volume of their alarm high starting to cower. All bark and no bite.
‘Kalimera’ the man cried out and she slammed the door shut.
We all sat there listening, but the day had been long and the workshops tiring. It felt like the heat from the sun had been bottled and poured into the room, the doors sealed, windows locked, suffocating our minds. But we tried. The content of the lecture was interesting but concentration hard. As I looked around the room I saw many yawns growing and eyes shutting, but I scolded myself and listened.
It is interesting when you start to think, words and sentences connect to your experiences and thoughts and then you start to make sense of a conversation you are having in your head, but then, something in the explanation doesn’t add up or there are words you don’t want to hear, so you change the narrative to make it fit. I suppose you will always see what you want to see, but the difficult part is to know what you are looking for.
I kept listening trying to come to a conclusion, but in the end it seemed like the lecturer was offering a silver bullet, the answer, he made his thoughts clear and told us the truth. I felt anxious, it wasn’t the truth I wanted to hear, but in made a lot of sense. Was I willing to listen to it? I suppose only time will tell. Are we all so similar that we can analyse behaviour and find the answer, or is life a little more individual than that. I hope we are more individual.
The lecture stopped and they opened the doors, a rush of cool evening air poured in and my mind immediately felt refreshed, time and thoughts, time and thoughts I said to myself. But not too many thoughts.
The car passed through the gap in the mountains and then they saw it, in all its vastness, the ocean, drawing the eye away from the rugged, arid landscape all the way to the horizon, to the blue. To the edge of the earth where you where unsure what was sky and what was sea. It was magnificent.
They continued along the coast road for ten minutes hoping for a glimpse, hoping that the stories heard for years over countless numbers of pints would be true. The story of the dragon. How when the winds changed direction and blew up the side of the cliff, out from his cave would come the creature, out from his hibernation to stamp his footprint back on the earth.
Up and down the valley they searched, their eyes desperately following every movement in their view and then… they saw it. The air changed, became cold, the sun brightened piercing the eyes of the travellers making them squint for a moment. The Dragon roared, the sound boomed across the valley and out to the sea, the cliffs shook with the vibration and the Dragon soared into the sky, twisting, spinning and stretching its every limb. Then it was gone, as it crossed from one blue to another, it vanished, gone… as if it were just a cloud.
‘Sorry mate. It’s a nightmare, there are so many conversations going on at once, I don’t know who to answer.’
‘I didn’t have one conversation’
‘Yes we did, we talked about Muji’
‘You talked about Muji’
Silence… John sat back in his seat and drank his coffee, his mind was a blur with questions and answers, for jobs he had to do that day, for people he had to see and for Mary, he had to spend some time with her. But he knew those things should wait, he needed to speak honestly with Chris, he knew he was unhappy and he wanted to listen to him, but then he had to go and help Rebecca.
‘What you gonna do for Christmas?’
There was a long pause as Chris stared out of the window toward the sea. ‘Duno, go to Turkey?’ He said asking the question to himself.
‘Or stay here?’ John encouraged.
‘Hmmmm…’
Chris picked up his empty glass and walked toward the bar. As he did Elizabeth burst through the door.
‘John, hey mate, how’s it going?’
‘Yeeees, how the fuck are you?’ John shrieked standing from his seat.
Elizabeth slalomed through the tables and jumped up into John’s arms, they held each other smiling.
‘I missed you’
‘Yea me too’
‘We need to…’ Elizabeth burst into a long monologue about the potential theatre ideas she and John had been discussing over the last three months, John listened and in the background Chis slipped away. He attempted a goodbye, but it was too late Elizabeth had all of John’s attention.
Chris walked toward the beach, along the promenade, his mind empty, not angry, not sad, just empty. The path was deserted, old, abandoned and in need of a lick of paint. His eyes jumped from one closed building to the next. Bored, the grey on grey reminded him of his own thoughts. He sighed to himself desperate for some inspiration, but kinda happy there wasn’t anything there. He kept walking until he was far enough away from the hubbub of the cafe and sat down next to kiosk.
They ran, they ran and ran, they couldn’t stop, not to think, not to look, not to pause for thought. They were making all the wrong decisions, they went right instead of left, they tried to scramble when they should have stuck to the path. They called to each other when they needed silence. But they tried. They both knew that there was a way, they both wanted to find a way, but every decision they made ended in a clash and because of this, they stopped. They stopped trying to escape and were caught.
And here only when hope was gone, when captivity was inevitable did they see each other, they felt each others touch, the pain and friction between them melted away, they looked into each other’s eyes and their hearts beat together. Despite the desperation in their situation, they smiled and felt the warm glow of each other’s love.
They turned away from each other, away from their captors and looked out across the countryside, the landscape was wild, unkept, the terrain uneven and the fauna sharp and aggressive. But there was a peacefulness to the energy, an acceptance from the couple in their fate. They smiled together and looked up to the clouds. As they stared towards the sky the autumn leaves rose up above them swirling, spinning, drifting, bouncing like a butterfly… sometimes leaves go up.
Life From the Dirt 