Poem - When it was early

When it was early

At some time it was this:

Who could you not be?

What need had I for others?

Even when I washed up angry,

the dishes clattered your name.

The problem is,

(Yes you knew this was coming),

you fill up the space too much.

Me, I come into a room,

but you, you pour in.

Do you remember when it was early?

When it was uncomfortable to be naked?

When we whispered,

lying back, folded in.

I stroked your hair then didn’t I?

Then you covered me,

your long hair falling to my face.

And your quiet mouth open.

Now we have grown.

And your new interests;

sequins, sex, Sondheim and psychotherapy.

Pity the sex is not with me.

Listen while I say this.

I have been building to this.

You know those feelings,

that you need to talk about, that

you say you need to talk about?

why don’t you just bottle them up.

 - Sketched 2001, Revised Jan 2004

Story - How to deal with a Panic Attack

HOW TO DEAL WITH A PANIC ATTACK

A You can do this™ series pamphlet

By

Doctor Nik Riew

Summary: Nothing is going to happen to you. Time is going to pass. The situation is going to change. Take action. Tell your story. Use a script.

Summary Considerations: You can take a walk

You can think things through

You can take a pill

You can read the Bible or another book

You can think of all the others

You can take your own life

You can script your own story

You can do, and re-do the exercises, keep writing

Summary Tips: Other people cannot see your panic

Don’t worry about time

On the exercises: Do not be scared by the blank boxes. They are there for your use but there is no hurry. When you are ready, anchor your cursor there and begin typing. The boxes will expand for you as you type.

Do this first. Plan to get yourself to a safe place. Figuratively speaking, you need to take steps that will close and lock the doors, securely shut the windows, draw the curtains and one by one turn out the lights downstairs. Do this slowly, in a measured way. Normal habits are important just now. Wash yourself, clean your teeth, whatever is usual before coming up the stairs to the bedroom. It is better to be in, or to create, the most personal, comfortable, space.

What I mean is this. If it is at night you might actually takes those steps. But if it is on the bus, at work, in a queue, or whilst you are talking - if it is like that, then that is what I mean by figuratively speaking. Your safe state might be simply sitting and looking at papers, or the computer screen.

EXERCISE

Write in this box where your safe places will be (or your safe “states”)

.

I have been doing this a long time now. I am not a doctor or a qualified therapist but I know my business. I am a professor of panic attacks. I call the people having these attacks a “panicker”. For many years I was a panicker myself which began when I had to meet a certain person towards whom I felt deeply guilty. After a time, during which I did not address the problem, the malaise became more general and I began to panic at times that were not connected to a specific person or event. Some animal was let loose that I could not catch. And it was growing. Tighter and tighter I folded my arms across me to hold my life together. More and more I averted my eyes from the world and began to picture the insides of my physical body. I became aware of the dangers that this fragile vessel and collection of organs faced. My fear of disease and death grew. The internal clock that measures the mathematics of life began to tick louder.

And then I went to Siberia where I met Doctor Mikhail P. Artsibashev. My public welfare job of the time had arranged an exchange trip following a temporary thaw in relations between the United States and the USSR. A group of us went to talk about child welfare. When I met Doctor Artsibashev he was no longer practising medicine for he had been banished away from Moscow following his work on anxiety and panic associated with the fear of “a knock at the door in the night”. He was a giant, genial, bearded man with a hearty laugh and great sense of humour, and a deep love for the plays of Chekov[1]. He had become a shoemaker because he wanted to remain helpful to humankind. When I first met him he was sitting on the floor of his basement shop surrounded by scraps of leather, blocks and old boots. He had struggled to get some newly made boots on and now held his arms up in disgust. Our guide translated. “Just like the Soviet Union”, Artsibashev was exclaiming, “the left boot pinches and the right creases!”

It was Artsibashev who, over those few cold and happy weeks, first outlined to me the series of considerations that I outline here for you, which I now call “script therapy”. For a while we corresponded but sadly he died.

The truth is that when I examined the considerations, developed the exercises and wrote through the panic, I stopped having a problem. I discovered that by simply writing a script for myself I could take control of my life and overcome my fears. I have my script that I constantly hone and rework. I follow this and I remain the star of my own life.

You can do this™ too.

You will notice that I use the phrase “series of considerations”. I could have replaced this with “series of steps” but this would seem odd considering that one possible step could be to take your own life. And I am not an advocate of that! I want you to consider what the cause of your problem is and I want to you complete the exercise boxes, and write your script for living. I want you to do this more than once. My guess is that for many people the safety of the shore is some distance away and the trip back may be a long one. So it will be necessary to take small steps with each round of exercises.

Some of you will find it unusual writing stories about yourself. Try to think of this as liberating! I want you to be truthful with yourself about what is happening to you but there is also no problem in reinventing yourself and then devising a plan to become the new you. Either may be positive.

Lets now look at the considerations.

I.

You can take a walk.

The blood supply has been pushed away from the body’s extremities and driven into the major organs. It’s so you can prepare for fight or flight reactions. It’s a sensible built in response to anxiety and fear. The problem with the panicker is that the body is doing this when there is no real cause to.

However, I have a cutting about someone without the fight or flight reaction. He had damaged his mind in an accident and now he could not perceive danger. I don’t mean that if an object was going to fall on him that he would not get out of the way. In this situation he would move as soon as the falling object got near. He could do that somehow. His mind could not, however, interpret and link a series of signs like a dark alley, a group of boys, low murmuring talk, glances, the danger signals. It made him vulnerable. He was killed, and able to be more easily killed, because of it. He was killed by a group of boys. So fear and anxiety have a positive function when they are related to real threats.

When you take a walk you give the heart a real reason to slightly race or quicken. Do not do major exercise as you will scare yourself even more. You will be convinced that this time it is a heart attack. That something catastrophic is going to happen to you.

A park is good, even at night. As you walk the effect of the attack may lessen a little because of the bodily distraction. You have to take advantage of that space – the distance you create between the body and the mind - and put some new element in place. Some train of thought that it going to lessen your consciousness towards panic. Lessening your awareness of the problem, so that you can look at the next consideration. It’s a behavioural first and then analytical second, way out.

EXERCISE

Write in this box the kind of physical activity that you can do in response to a panic attack. Remember to include activity that you can do at your work desk as well as outside.

.

Here is a tip. Other people cannot see your panic. For a long time I was convinced that, whilst I walked light-headed into town, taking my pulse, and watching my reflection in windows and mirrors, other people could actually see me in terror. Then Dr Artsibashev told me that this is not so. If a person had a look of fear on their face and an obvious cause was nearby, say, a soldier with a gun, then we can interpret their fear. If not, the look could be mistaken for confusion, tiredness, stress, or even contentment. You look around you and try to spot the people in fear.

II.

You can think things through.

Everybody has a narrative script. I have a narrative script that I can begin to tell and against which I could claim what doctors call “reactive depression”, with associated panic attacks as a more general symptom. That story is one of relationship problems, and the death of sex and communication. This was followed by behaviour that resulted in full relationship breakdown, and estrangement from children. I became ill for the first time.

That kind of description gets you some way along the line but is only the start. It is not only the understanding of what has happened in the past that is important but also the “now-ness” value of any self-narrative. You have to get at what has just happened to bring on terror.

This is because the reason, cause and effect all become detached in time and place like a boat pushed out to sea for no purpose. We might say that the reasons are back on the shore, and the cause is now hidden in the sea that is all around. Something lost in the sea. The sea looks forever the same. The sea is covering and enveloping the cause and then presenting the problem. The effect is unsteadying, make it difficult to move and respond. Get used to the movement first. Then you need to catch and collect your “triggers”. What were you thinking about before the light-headed feeling came over you? What words, images and physical or emotional feelings do you associate with terror? Do you notice changes in your body temperature that is associated with certain events?

EXERCISE

Write, in a sentence, a self-narrative about you. Don’t think of the immediate past. Make a sweeping statement that covers a long period of time. Does it suggest triggers? What are they?

.

What a thing is the mind! The mind plays tricks. The panicker gets too near the mind. Once you lose your peace of mind you can never get it back. Don’t expect to. Look for a different frame of mind that you can live with.

Our minds have the ability not only to discover facts but to screen them also. One of the things the screen should hide is the body, its interior, and its inner state. We wander through the journey of the day creating and responding to images of the outside world. Our minds are designed to create a film of the world. My mind tells me that there is a film, then it tells me that it is my film, and finally that I am in the film. A film made by me about a film about me within a film.

The panicker when affected cannot concentrate on this. He or she turns inwards, to the interior. Most panic attacks for example are concerned with bad events happening to the body. They do not concern, for example, bad events happening to the country or the city. Panickers, in short, lose sight of the big picture.

In my case I walked, racked with fear, feeling for my heart, worrying about my cells, looking tired and thinking about the medical history in my family. I became so afraid of death that I could not live. The film went on but I was absent. I was not in any of the scenes.

The brain should know much more than the conscious mind. When the conscious mind gets access to this extra information, the horror comes. This condition is specifically related to medical advancement in the nineteenth century, which created modern American Man. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new discipline - physiology. Before this Doctors talked to the patient and maybe they looked at the colour of their tongue. The new discipline focused upon gaining knowledge of the body through physical examination. New instruments were invented to look at temperature, blood pressures, heart activity, pulse rates. Memory and intuition died. Graphs and numbers emerged. In the space of just a few years our conscious mind had a new access to information about our physical insides. For some, and especially for panickers, this internal picture is enough to shift focus away from real life.

Understanding this fact alone does not in itself provide a response. You have to find a way of living with it instead. You need to un-learn the extra facts that the conscious mind has learned. Forget your essence. Remember your existence.

III.

You can take a pill.

There are many on the market. Mostly you need a prescription and advice from a medical professional or nurse. Do not consider herbal remedies. They are just taking your money. They do not work. Medicines fall into two main categories; anti-depressants and sedatives. Not everyone can use anti-depressants and in some ways they only mask the problem. I tried an anti-depressant called "--" but I never even made the ten days that you need for it to kick in because of fear. Anti-depressants can actually make panic attacks much worse. Some day you have to stop using them.

A good example of a sedative is “—“. I took a low dose, just 10 mgs. The effect was dramatic. It slowed me wonderfully to create a gentle heart beat allowing the muscles, which had contracted to prepare for death, to relax gently. It gave me the space to do the kind of programme that I am outlining to you now. Suddenly I had a walk on part in the film again. Eventually I became the central character again. Don’t take pills without doing the other actions I suggest here.

IV.

You can read the Bible or another book.

My mother’s respite was the church. On Thursdays and Sundays she would send her children to church school for instruction. An old couple who knew nothing about God ran it, and they would organise us into two circles and we would read from the Bible. I got to know pretty well most of the wisdom books, histories, and the Gospels and Acts. Later I found that Mark was the shortest and the most effective remedy. Everyone in the action, and those passing by to look, seem confused. Events happen quickly, snapping between scenes and racing through time. I found it absorbing. It lifted me from my situation. Find a book that does this for you. Keep it alongside this pamphlet and remain on task.

V.

You can think of all the others.

Many people suffer from the condition. We talk about it little. Find out who you know that suffers also. Collect their stories and consider putting these into your own script.

I have collected many stories. A man was waiting on a train platform. He was waiting for the train to arrive with his daughter on it. The train pulled up on time and as he stood up to greet the train there was a shadow, which had suddenly blocked out the sun. He looked up and he saw the wing of a plane silhouetted against the sky. It was falling like a bird, he said. It hit the train, right there in front of him. His daughter was not on the train because she had been late for it. This made his story more newsworthy. After this he began to suffer attacks. At first, birds were the immediate cause, but then they became general.

You are not on your own. Think about this. If you found someone who had the same experience you might find it easier to deal with your situation. You can talk it through. You can swap narratives. Be careful though! Many people, even friends, back off when they find that you have these needs.

Here’s a further tip. Don’t worry about time. Try not to look at the clock. This can be a problem at night when you are trying to sleep.

VI.

You can take your own life.

Some people conclude that. It is a valid point of view but not one I agree with. There are ways to deal with panic attacks, however bad they get. Don’t ponder or keep your eyes here for longer than you need to.

VII.

You can script your own story.

As I write these words I have a sense of me. I have the sense of the image of me writing and I have the image of a reader who is reading and creating their sense of the writer. As you read these words what do you have of the sense of you? Beyond your mind representing the printed words and displaying the conceptual knowledge required to understand what I write, is there something more going on, moment by moment, to indicate to you that it is you who is reading and understanding? Do you know where you will be in a moment? Do you see your future? Are you in the film or at the moment are you absent without leave? Are you here and not here? If you are to step into the light again, to enter the film, you will need a script. Won’t you? Write this now.

EXERCISE

Use this box to begin telling your story and writing your script. Write about the immediate past. Write intensely about what has just happened to you. Try to be as truthful as possible. If you are not able to be totally honest this time don’t worry, even if what you write is complete fiction. Next time you can get nearer and make things a little plainer. Sometimes you can only glimpse what you need to from the corner of your eye. Some sea spray catches your attention. When you move your head to look the sea has swallowed up the mystery again. Try to bring together all of the reasons, causes and effects. Be sure to create safe places. Picture yourself acting normal even in the most bizarre circumstances. Good luck!

How truthful were you this time? % Target for next time? %

.

VIII.

You can do, and re-do these exercises. Keep writing.

It helps. Keep writing until your script and reality can become one. From writing about the immediate past, you need to progress to writing about the future, stretching the horizon a little each time.

You probably need only one or two pages per day outlining the essential future action. Most of the day will be concerned with hanging around or rehearsing. You need not include all of the dialogue. Actors often improvise.

The concentration in this is both a healing process and a diversion away from thinking about the body. The “at risk” body. Your poor despised body is waiting for easing, for cooler times, for the clearing of the full up feeling inside, for the chest pain that is real or imagined to ease and the breast-plate bone to unclick when you can finally stand up straight, and come ashore. Then you can stop hugging yourself and you can stretch. And you can again become sleepy, and then you can sleep. And it doesn’t matter about the time. Keep writing.

****™ Murder Mile Publications, Hackney, London E5, England

James A Bullion - Written March 2004 ; Revised December 2007.

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[1] A famous Russian writer concerned with issues of morality including, actually, panic.

Poem - Nychthemeron

Nychthemeron

i) Still up

His Honour Judge Elma Fudd is drawn aloof

Beneath the justice eagle, lulling between shots,

Sideways on; slow blinking large at wabbit, wearing

Grey-black silks and puffing on a carrot. Green smoke. Pudding eyes.

At imaginary camera. No mood.

TV watcher sits, Ifan a dark nympholet

Not hearing or understanding now

A crisis, an accident, a summing, the end

What is on this screen? A Tarantino cartoon?

Pan out. Head eclipse of screen. Dialogue that fits.

‘Tch Tch Tch There was a girl in the case.

A g-g-g-girl? Is she perwitty?

Tch Simply. There a ghost in the house. Traditional

A g-g-g-ghost! Aaaar That’s scary!’

The chewing patter drops. Ifan, third person, reflects.

Memory walks him every day in obstinate condolement

Nature, whose common theme is death of fathers

Has lost a daughter. Stay a little. Huh? So he’ll

Live and sing, and tell old tales and laugh.

A fist smacking somewhere. Laughter at the back.

A clatter dance of sketched curved plates and

They go thumping one another,

Shooting gone smoke, hammering down with spite.

When flattened they fill out, bounce back, and go on.

Smashing, loud, drawn out, life.

And so the noise gives birth again to Ifan

who stands and stretches like smoke,

who is delivered like the dead returned by the sea.

Washed up to bed.

It’s next day. Hours cropped.

ii) Wanking in the 40s

In bed Ifan thinks to construct a flashback

INT. Restaurant. Evening. Summer. At dinner two. He sips his drink.

Wine. She touches his arm. Casual contact. He stops and looks at her. Pause. Confessional look on his face. Then, their eyes. Sideways view of their eyes. People movement, going on behind them. People getting on. Producing an evening.

FADE – to black and voice. And breathing. Two people breathing.

Ifan (V/O) Narrates in a story making voice;

- Oh but when your arm brushed mine and I was watching through wine. It was such a gentle stroke. I had mixed emotions for your eyes. So much clearer and. Well you know. You nearly scared me off. I never thought you’d be interested. Because for a long time, or for as long as it has been so, I have wanted to slant my head out of the light and take you somewhere where you want to be told what to do and…

A cartoon anvil shalutes down. Wang!

Ifan (V/O) confesses;

- This skin flick. All this quiet-close will-you-let-me-lick-you stuff with half-closed eyes

A rallentando heel-to-point-of bow smorzando sound.

Ifan a darkly-lit bed shape with now and then

Gentle bed sounds and slowly moving limbs under

Slowly shifting wave of covers.

A graceful school of submarine limbs rise, dock.

He thinks to read his Daniel C Dennett.

Decides to stay in the dark

And beckon forward sleep from a line of single hours.

He lies fingernail-tight though just at first.

For he is experienced at letting go,

At spreading his hands, using space,

Knocking books to the floor and yawnfully, stretchfully

Eventually he will sleep.

iii) The cats

An ancient fear provoked

The pule and mewl of cats.

A curdling baby human cry.

An infant left outside at night

Surely not. Even today –

Who would be so cruel?

The caterwaul sound of sorrow.

A lack of determined control.

A panic. Mechanically Back

A circle; bristle; externalized

Make yourself small

Why can’t you find a new path?

In the dozing hours they have arrived

Gently lithely padding down from roof

A wall,

A fence,

Bin.

From opposite ends. Into the cartoon cone of light.

Nations rob sleep. This time his own.

With humming waiting bombs

Set at something o’clock.

They have been patient years long

Unforgotten and feeding alone.

This is no place for children

Ifan marches, not so far

His bedroom flash of light to catch their eye

A clap of his hands and they scram

with escaladdling feet and

circle of cartoon gone smoke

Ifan the victor, framed in the window

iv) He walks to the lab, works, and walks home

Very early to the city unrefreshed

His hands are in his pocket

The shoulder bag bobs away

It is always there

Watch him switch it from left to right

See. He did it

So deeply thinking he does not hear the bus

That whooshes from behind along its vein

And with its kerbside square plate mirror thwacks

The outstretched sunny branch of oak.

A cartoon rook flaps scared to the sky

Quietened by the bread in its beak.

Ifan stops and watches the bird and bus part

He stays to let the wonder fall. Eyes down.

Upon the ground a stamped unposted letter.

A good deed. Eyes closed. Bending.

The damp paving first. Wet edges of finger. Found.

The day passes at work. It’s alright.

People stream and shed the offices

It’s winter now. Evenings early dark. Greys,

black and brown. They are shades

Evening shadows. Ifan sees shadow,

The first consequence of creation, drawn everywhere.

v) That evening at the end of dinner out

- You should end it bleakly, Ifan says lazily; empty.

- Meaning what then? Asked the host fat bellied; full

- All we know of the last century. A second fall. Death of narration, the big picture, fractures in the land, films burning to white. Marching feet, backwards.

Ifan accepts the shrug

The hostess’s half full laugh

A shake of her head

Ifan gives his look

His no listen, precatory look.

He bounces back, fills out and goes on

- The last pages should have a perforated tear off line so that they can be removed for those who think it was abandoned even then. After the Eloi, Eloi part I mean

Ifan drinks summore. His hands, his palms in flight.

- Look, when the sky lightens again and the evening sun is strong there are three lines of people at the foot of the cross of a cartoon Jesus. The sun is setting over the mount to the right. And those that are in the line on the left cast their shadows upon the ground because their faith is the strongest. Those in the middle line cast theirs on those with that strongest faith because they need to be helped to faith. To hear logia. Finally those on the right cast their shadows on those in some doubt. These are the observers, the can’t live with something lot, and the faddists looking for a way of living. You know, the fuckers boasting about drinking fresh water. They sap the energy of the lines is the point. And as the sun goes down the shadows become longer and the fuckers in the right hand line grow in influence in the darkness. And in the morning it begins again. Calling for conversions and that.

Later in bed they lay on their sides

Folded in.

Some small movement

A hair stroked

Night glances

And talk of their friend

‘It seems to me’, she said; tired,

‘That he is searching for something’.

‘Hmmm’.

vi) Impenetrable and unscientific

She turns to the scientist a weak drawn smile

She is there impenetrable

By turns old, animal, ill and dead

She is not past, not future

And the drink and the food and his heart boom

And the TV room dark visibly dark

For him and her the same quick

Scribbled cartoon galaxy eyes, swirling black and white mess

This clumsy weight skin

He pulls at it, it regroups

He marks it, hard as he can, it fades anyway

He has failed even to be drunk

He has….no. Not there.

It is a short distance to drink

His hand, the pour, the sound of the sea

A dream about breathing, rising, going,

James A Bullion - January 2001 - March 2007

Poem - Working in a Garage

Working in a garage

They had had a hard coming of it, naturally

ripening amongst the unlovely statistics so

that one by one they entered bearing

a bar, a gun, a warm tongue

They came straight in, talking about it

ever since they could talk perhaps so that

it was practised by now and ever since they

could hold on to it and not profit

from any other way. Or not enough

so that when it becomes my turn

they loped in looking wrong.

The sound of the shop door, the metal stretch

of a backed-up hinge too far too quick.

A bar, a gun, a man's tongue.

A queue. A fan of heads. At the counter

The bar held out. Pointing

at me, at the till. At me,

'The cash', he said, 'now.'

James Bullion. March 2011 Draft 4

Story - The Preacher

When I wrote this I was deliberately trying to emulate that wonderfully bleak 19th century Prussian tone I so admired.

THE PREACHER

I

‘In America everyone is born twice over’. The Preacher was giving a sermon following his return from his trip there. His wife, who was ill and tired, had gone to the wall of the Church to sit sideways and listen to him, her head stooped down.

The Preacher looked at his hearers and continued, ‘Let me ask you this. Is it naïve to insert into your constitution the pursuit of happiness? Let me answer you like this. The perfectability of man is a myth and has led to a damaging cult of re-invention and the false notion that happiness is an achievable state of being’.

The Preacher stopped to consider where he was and moved lightly with his hand the typed sheets in front of him that the hearers could not see. With his free hand he picked up his bible and held it aloft, ‘Self help books sell by the millions, therapists prosper, plastic surgeons believe that they can add to our lives, and lawyers grow fat through payments for divorce. The pursuit of inner illumination and knowledge grows thinner and threadbare.’

He looked down towards the pulpit and shook his head as if he were disagreeing with a question that had only been posed to him. Raising it again he raised his voice.

‘In America there is a fundamental problem with Jesus. Those who find Him there are not interested in turning back the tide of secular belief and in creating the Kingdom of God on Earth. They are not interested in finding truth. Instead they use Jesus to make themselves feel good about themselves. They think as individuals. They are seeking to make truth. And they have equated faith with happiness.’

The Preacher paused, and he held up a forefinger of warning. ‘If Christ came back today and heard what was being said in His name He would condemn this mortal sin. He would tell them that they have turned away, that they have cut themselves off from Grace. Yes, like the woman’, he said as he stretched his arm and hand out and up, ‘who vomits the sinful fox from her mouth in the oak rood screen’.

In the silence that followed he brought back his hand like the downward swoop of a hawk.

The Preacher looked, for a while, at his wife.

‘Let me tell you where I think happiness is. It is living with the unknown. Christ was a clever shadow. Yet we could not live without knowing His actual face and so we abandoned His rejection of images and we invented Him again. And still the doubt remains. It is living within the open air. And yet we have crept inside, and when we are inside, we doubt the outside and we fear the stranger who may come in through the door. And so still the doubt remains. It is receiving the love of another being. For me this is, most preciously, my Christ. But for many it is the love of a wife or a family member too. Yet we do not trust them, and still the doubt remains. It is living without desperation, free of personal ambition, but also in hope’.

The Preacher paused and looked at those listening and he said with emphasis, ‘We must live with doubt’.

Grace Stonechat was the Preacher’s wife and she got up and left the Church. Behind her the Preacher was continuing and did not hear the rasp of the door as it closed.

He continued. ‘I went out to the forest recently and I had to wait two days for the weather to break. It had been raining for all of that time, creating impassable pools, and it had softly opened the earth so that a man could not walk upon it. I had had to wait but now I was there, in the early morning. And as I walked a fog descended so that I could not see, and the fog silenced everything, even all of the small animals and the birds. And as it became denser I could hear and see nothing. It was not dark. It was a changeless, milky, light. I was not afraid. So I stopped. I just stopped, and I closed my eyes and I leaned upon my stick and I felt in those moments before the sun’s heat cleared it away, I felt a calmness and a stillness and happiness. It was borne of the knowledge that it would not last, of the understanding that it was not a state of being, and that it was built upon a previous and necessary melancholy’.

The Preacher stopped, then waited, and then led those hearing him in prayer.

II

Grace finished all other possible tasks and washed and wrung her hands bone-dry and then finally went to her husband’s study and begged him again to talk to Ruth.

‘Why will she talk to me when she has her psychiatrist?’ she heard him answer her over his book, without looking. She said his name once, gently but he was continuing,

‘I cannot stand it’, Grace interrupted him, and ‘I cannot cope with it any more. She rises before us in the morning and goes God knows where…’. The Preacher said gently her name to chide her but she continued, ‘and she will eat nothing, she rattles around with just pills inside her, and she isn’t getting better, and she says that she is lost to God’.

He came to her and held her, and then he stroked with both hands slowly and gently her hair and he whispered to reassure her now, as best he could. Finally, when she had calmed a little, she heard him relent and say, ‘Come on then, lets try together’.

In her room Ruth was sat at her table with her head resting forwards on her arms and turned sideways, towards the wall. She was lightly, fitfully, asleep. In front of her on the table was the list that she had been working on for some weeks. The Preacher picked it up to see if any additions had been made. She had added two new headings, Firstly ‘Understand from Mani why what has happened has happened’ and then ‘What I will need for the trip?’ Under the first heading were seven neat question marks. Under the second she had begun a list which consisted of ‘Rucksack, matches, gas, plates – two? -, torch, maps’.

They waited whilst she slept. When Ruth woke she snapped at them, ‘What are you doing here?’

Grace was speechless and put her hand to her mouth and her other hand on her husband’s shoulder. The Preacher said, ‘Ruth, we’ve come to talk’ but Ruth snapped again, ‘Why don’t you bloody leave me alone, I am OK. And anyway it is none of your concern. Please. Just go’.

His voice began to break as the Preacher continued, ‘Ruth, please tell me what we can do to help you, how we can help you through this. Whatever you need us to do we will arrange for you’.

Ruth shouted at him, ‘Leave me alone!’

‘Can’t you see that this is difficult for us, that we do not understand what we should do, that we are torn?’, the Preacher paused and began to add, ‘ if only you would let God…’

Ruth screamed and rose immediately and spun round and picked up a book and threw it at him. It hit him hard, fully in the face, which he then covered with his hands. Grace cried loudly and Ruth was crying too. ‘Come on Grace’, the Preacher was saying, ‘Come on, let’s leave her, and we will come back when she is quieter’.

III

Ruth woke at four as usual and she lay stiffen-still and listened to her heart. Then, as she lay there still more, she gently placed each hand at her sides and with spiders’ fingers she scrunched up the bed sheet and set it free. And by this repeated action she lessened and then removed the tingling in her hands.

And then she rose.

She walked through the streets of the town in darkness and hugged the rucksack, which had been packed the night before. At the station she was alone and through the three-pronged metal automated barrier she went and she crouched back against the damp mossy wall and waited. Rolling a cigarette she then smoked and closed her eyes and rested her head on her outstretched arms and eased her breathing.

The fizz from the cable overhead awoke her again to the outside world and flicking the butt of her cigarette on to the track, she caught the first train. This rattled her east and east until it had carried her to Hainault and no further because it was early and the first peak train to take her further along this dotted line was not yet running.

By dawdling back away from the small group of other-travellers which the train had gathered together, and then by fake bag searching she was left alone in the empty station. The driver of the train locked his cab and walked quietly to the other end of the platform where he entered the first car and closed the door with a slam. She waited and smoked again and then with a hum and a guided clatter the train eased forward out of the station and across the track to pursue its way back.

She turned and walked herself along the mile of dead track to Ongar. She walked through the lifeless station at Ongar and then into to the fields of farmed huckleberries which resemble Solanium Nigrum, the deadly nightshade.

She arrived there with a feeling of relief. She hooked her rucksack in the usual place at the corner post of the field and walked towards the middle. At the middle she wept and panicked and walked until the day broke. The sun was up and the temperature began a slow rise. It would be warm, clear. She would go to Central London and browse in a bookshop, buy a coffee, read a magazine and then go see Doctor Basaf.

She went back the way she came, walking the crack-and-crunch neatly stone strewn track, placing each of her steps between the sleepers. She was hit by the first train, which slammed into her, tossing her aside, ripping off one arm, dead.

The Preacher’s wife collapsed. She was not at the Church for the funeral service. She had suffered a stroke at the news of her daughter’s death. She was struck dumb. And so she lay, that day (and every one since), in silence, with a calm face, unmoving and without even the skill to cry.

The Preacher planned and wrote the service but he did not read it well. He kept his arms by his side, his back straight and his voice was quiet as he unevenly wove events from his daughter’s experience into the shape of her life. He outlined the mathematics of how long she had lived, the length of her marriage, her education, and her illness. He put into a wider pattern his daughter’s experience of faith, of relationships, of philosophy and of the fears that she had and which she could not quell. He comforted, he met some of his hearer’s doubts halfway and he gently encouraged them to trust but also to question. He lowered his daughter from the world and for the only time that day he held out his hand to let her slip through his fingers.

And then he let them go.

The Preacher cared for his wife. He washed her carefully and quietly and he spoke to her softly every day, and he asked her how she was and told her how she seemed. When he was quietly preaching he made sure that she was comfortable and that someone was always with her. And he told her of the condition of Ruth’s grave and what was in flower and what was going to be. Then, when he had learned to move her, he took her there, and into the forest where they could sit and watch and listen to the movement of the trees.

The Preacher, through tending the grave, learned what would grow and then slowly, quietly, he filled the house with flowers and with plants.

James A Bullion – Revised November 2007.