Taking the Post Bus - UK Series

35,000 feet in the air above a dream and still thinking of Bhutan. Still perpetually thinking beyond this moment. Still feeling around in the darkness, uncertain, realizing concretion happiness will remain, for me at least, a fluctuating wind. As I continue to keel and balast in serindipity and certainty a dormant promise burst through binding me fornow and forevermore to pull life in all its indistinguishable paradoxical bleak madness, all its creative Godless phenomenon backwards through my eyes and regurgitate the world; an indistinguishable mush,trademarked and without mercy. Regardless of my failures or successes as a human, I will cast a shadow, even up here. . .

When meeting new people, who also happen to be old friends, one is anxious to recreate what may or may not have been there through an exaggerated welcome. Defining past, present and future terms with a greeting betwen two people who know what home looks like; a million miles and a million years later. For better or worse we've pledged to continue to spiral away from dead centre and have wound-up, for a night at least, each others arms. As for the fate and consequence that continue to try to suffocated me, a small resolve squeaks out when I see her eyes. Forever alive forever forward.

All else must be ignored. Until all fires are burnt. Until my skin is peeling away. Until this larger solo runs. All else must remain ignored. This is ferment-cementum of character. If for nothing else then to stand at my own grave. If nothing else, than a decisive testament – I will never cease to fight the desire and obligation to do otherwise.

Three days now past arrival. Excitement, awkwardness, instant friends, instant love. Hedonistic joy, mild flattery, desperate shoulders with no tears left to pour on them.  Gothic castles, cheap shopping, wandering in redundant circles, broken laws, grey days, breaking into noon day sunshine that does not please the eyes. Narnia paths and street lights we returned to again and again to find Tumnus. To find the year, we first found out he existed. Oh that year! A piece of that here, its safe to say, artificially reproduced, but tastes just the same. Eating these new cookies by the mouthful, no matter what the caloric cost. After, lying in a sugar stupor, legs and cloths askew, things missing, broken and changed. Rolling around in crumbs to recreate the biggest lie in the in this cold Scottish Highland. Up here, sixteen year hangovers, toasty exposed flesh and cross patterned scarves do not ease the sting of expectation and remembering. Its like being a human ghost, lurking in the shadows of the earth. Is it just my ectoplasm, or does this fog of inebriation that make me see-through too?

Exhausted and cold, stuffed with poor food and so many promises of love eternal this little village remains a place where time stops and revolves backwards around the inside of the pub and occasionally spills on to the roadway. It is constant attention, constant comradery, constant engulfment of life, soul, limb. Pieces of me, pieces like you, in aggregation piled high and set on fire. For the good of it. For the bad and for no reason at all except there wouldn't be much else to do. Knives strike through the evolution of the night, showing layers of depth and mistaken homes, revealing adjunct attention focusing sideways in silence at a glowing warm fireplace. I am a wobbly top. Drinking,  late meals, no sleep, moving, pushing though the cold and bathing in the warm blood from the heart of attention.

Stepping into the postal delivery truck, hopeful Christmas packages, a very special soul and I made waves back to manna. I told him I would wish him a Merry Christmas, but seeing as how he didn't celebrate Christmas, I would just said Happy Birthday. He provided free of charge a verbal tour given in inches, a world recreated for me in reflections through memory. I let him disappear, eyes fluttering, closing and opening like wet butterfly wings, trying to pull back the relevant details and push down the rest. Like the why he doesn't go into the pubs on his birthday anymore. Not for nine years now as you see, he states in beautiful simplicity, when people drink, they change. And while he continues to point out every snow covered castle hovel and through which generations they are owned, the mind reels, wanting to relieve him from this world years ago, goodness intact.

 I could have listened to him all day. Listened to the pure ethereal wisdom about innocuous land masses, old LP records, air-plane flight paths and the alphabetical listings of the villages within 500 kilometres Knowledge at it's purest. So I let him disappear into the day, hat crooked, ear flaps as eye patches. A mirage of goodness and photographic memories. Most convincingly the first human-being I have met in a long time.