How Can I Cope

 Posted by at 8:07 pm  Catastrophe Games, OUT in the WILDERNESS  Comments Off
Oct 222013
 
DCIM100MEDIA

It’s a covering, a cloak, or perhaps just a towel. Or a cappa ‘cape’, or pluviale ‘rain coat’ (if you prefer in latin). But whatever name we give it, it is still only a covering. Like skin. Or the hull of a boat. Cope.

Any kind of covering will do, to throw over us when we need a howl, and for protection; from the weather, from the wet, from everything outside and whatever may be alive and kicking there. Whatever outside that is strange and different. The scary. But I can cope with scary on the fear/excitement boundary if the covering holds. If it doesn’t leak. If it is impermeable. If it is only imagination.

Except in the real world it does leak. In fact, these last sixty years it has been leaking all the time. This is the realm of fear.

Mr Fox was on holiday. On a sunny and warm morning he looked down into the calm sea waters over the side of the boat. Together with his friend Harry Otter and wife and daughter, the four of them watched the plentiful shoals of fish slowly moving under the water. The fish suddenly scattered as a single long predator darted in among them.

“Time to go”, said Harry Otter.

Mr Fox turned away to help with the preparations to leave. “I’ll do the anchor”, he said.

“Look there’s a snake”, Harry Otter’s daughter suddenly shouted.

Mr Fox and Harry Otter turned back to look. A small thin adder was swimming on the smooth surface of the sea, its slim head raised out of the water. Later Mr Fox considered his several alternative explanations how it got to be there. Perhaps it fell from the mouth of a large bird of prey. He had seen one gliding besides the surrounding cliffs and in and out of a pine wooded area. Perhaps the bird had its nest there and the adder was a lost meal for its young.

The snake disappeared under the hull of the boat. A few minutes later the anchor was raised and all was ready for their departure. Then a sharp cry came from down below.

“The snake is in the boat”, Harry Otter’s wife screamed.

As equally improbable Mr Fox thought later was the fact that Mrs Otter had found it. By all rights the snake shouldn’t have been there of course. How could there be a hole in a boat he thought – however small the snake was, it made no sense for it to have been there. However it came to be there in the boat – unless it leaked, past believing – it made even less sense that it had been discovered Mr Fox thought. It should have gone into immediate hiding beneath the decking. To emerge at night, and slide between the covers where each of us slept. Or lie in a coil waiting to be trodden on in the dark.

Later they watched the sun set, and then the full moon cross the night sky, and the sun rise on the next day into a cloudless sky.

Fear arises, to harm or to heal, whichever way the augury turns.

Do you see that fire-breathing dragon

 Posted by at 3:06 pm  Atelier  Comments Off
Oct 182013
 

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Fear must have its uses as we are trapped here, in this skin, in this cage, in this dark alley.

Time passes, the plot thickens along with the fog – a real pea-souper – slightly thinner than mushy peas I suppose but all the same it is avowedly pea soup based on a ham stock made from that bone – let’s call it a thigh bone. From which all the ham has been gnawed. By whom you ask. Well not me.

By rats at least that’s how it looked to me and while we are on the subject when you say thigh bone, do you mean human thigh?

Who cares! Fear has its uses.

Uses? Well . . . Panic . . . Paralysis . . . Flight, fight . . . But of course on this occasion we are trapped here because the enemy are too powerful – whoever they are, we don’t know, we can’t even guess, we just know that they are an evil bunch who wish us a bad end – and they are fast. Young and fast.

Whereas, well what shall I say, the years have passed, slipping away towards those blue remembered hills. And, to say the least, we are somewhat slower than we used to be.

But like the man says, fear drops away, drops away into indifference perhaps. Who gives a damn? It’s of no consequence.

Though even as I put that into words, it begins to shift again. I care. I care whether I live or die.

I care how I die even if I have little control over the when or the how.

Selfhood has a certain rickety sounding construction as though the letter of doom is already in the post. Washed away in the flood. Painstakingly reconstructed with whatever materials are to hand. Sticks and mud. Bits of plastic extrusions. Metal if we can find it, though the competition is tough from the scowling faces of those crowded near the top of the pile. Especially aluminium, favoured for its lightness and strength. Some coils of copper wire and old batteries reconstituted for their new use.

Good as new, mate. Fear and pain and business as usual.

I will paint myself with lichen, drape myself with extravagant purple and joyfully skip these last thousands of miles. There’s a long way to go, much to do and not a sod out there who can tell me how long we have.

But apparently we must be in good voice because the word comes down the line that we have to sing; like it’s some stupendous opera and I have some small walk-on role to perform though, of course they are not telling me what it is exactly. Don’t worry, have no fear, it will all become clear round the next bend in the road. No expense will be spared there will be water spouts and fire-breathing dragons, snakes in our beds and a chorus of angels. And no doubt trumpets will announce the new dawn.