DEPARTURE:

I walk faster, hunching shoulders against the straps of my pack, against the relentless damp, against the world. A decision was made short minutes ago, catapulting me into this moment of action. If the decision had been hard, the walking was harder. Buildings press in, grey and unrelenting, turning the street to a loveless chasm. The rain-slick pavement beneath my feet threatens what little balance remains. My pack, the weight of my life, threatening to throw my balance further. Around me Saturday shoppers gawp and idle. I see little of them, downcast eyes not able to rise from the ground at my feet. Crowds become a forest of legs I must second-guess, weave and avoid. My route is laid in stages on a city that exists in memory. I have not the energy to observe the city as it stands. I cannot become part of this present I have decided to return to, not yet. Everything I had I used up being apart. I am drained.

The pavement leads on, I navigate on broken instinct. Side streets loom and pass. The glow of a shopping centre, doorways of blowing warmth, stationary smokers to side step. Smooth surfaces, floors trodden slick by rain-soaked shoes threaten my balance once more. Insidious muzak threatens my mind, but little remains free for it to irritate; all resources are focused on feet and movement, forward. Forward through this muggy, mindless space of light to stairs plunging down, slippery with rain and darkness. The dark is welcome to my broken eyes, my battered mind. I stalk through it, shaking legs winding autonomous through puddles and debris. The station arcs above, darkness gives way to open emptiness, a directionless space in which you must choose your own path. I can see the train, my train, waiting with engine running at the platform; guarded by half-glass walls, barriers and staff. I buy a ticket, mould the last of my strength in a face to present to the world, pass through the gauntlet.

Over the dull rumble of engine I listen for the doors closing, a mechanical fanfare to this final action. When the doors are closed the decision is sealed; I am no longer here, I am going there. My course was set an hour ago, the time had come; the past used up and squeezed of all it could contain. I saw the end approaching, grabbed my route out, the only sensible dismount from that wild ride. Retreat, regroup, and return home. A final act to place me on the path, set the controls, and let the world take me away. As the doors close and the train rumbles away into the dark, I fall to the table, finished and broken.

The noise presses around me, tunnelled darkness holding the vibrations of our passage to a throb, felt rather than heard. Through slit eyes and dirty windows I see forgotten doorways, pointless grime-covered windows, uncared for, lit too briefly by our passing. How many hidden holes must exist in this place? How many lives have led here, forgotten and abandoned in this endless sprawl? Places once designed, built, constructed and cared for, then discarded as life moves on, moves up. Streets become cellars; cellars become tombs, forgotten in the great drive for the future.

The train crawls from beneath the tunnel roof, cowering still under cliffs and towering buildings. Dun earth and black rock melt upward into regimented blocks, faceless and bleak. Oppressive cloud obscures the high roofline, a pregnant ceiling of grey rains and mist. I shut my eyes, hiding my shattered soul from this precipitous feeling of dark, obliterating depth. I let the world, the train, take me on, and take me away from all this. The hideousness remains, hanging in the air in waves of subtle noise, assailing the ears, throbbing through the feet, buzzing through the table into the mind. A resonance begins in my skull, a dull grey note in tune with the world I try to shut out. It grinds against the psyche, a rising choir of despair and loss, building layer upon layer, blocking all else, eating light and joy as it comes. A wave, towering in my inner vision, rises to crash through my memories, rinsing them of happiness. Past horrors remain, sodden islands in a black sea. How many pasts have come to this? How many times have I been here? I am no stranger to this little death, this end of things. I slip into dark dreams.

... Through a tunnel of sodium light I see a small circle of pavement, swaying with the movement of my head. At the bottom of the circle feet flap forward, monotonous, an endlessly suspended stumble taking all my concentration. I fight as the circle threatens to close, refusing the end so obviously in sight. Each slab that passes beneath the disembodied feet is a victory, another step against easy oblivion, another step towards a distant destination.

... I sit in a taxi, the world fuzzy around me, a grey tinge to the edges of vision. It pulls up at a grey box; blank eyes stare down at milling crowds, pillared teeth bite into paving at its base. A smokescreen hazes the doors as I sway between trolleys and faces to enter a cramped hell of confusion, queues, waiting and fear. I crawl stop-start to the desk, legs shaking, forcing energy I need for thought into keeping my body upright, moving. I fear my mask will slip, my efforts for nothing if someone with power notices my state and denies me passage. I almost collapse with relief as my documents are handed back, and stumble through signs and steps, funnelled helpfully to my place. I am wedged between judgements, compressed by passengers who watch as I hunch and pull myself literally together, only an act of will holding body parts around me as I crumble in my seat.

... In the dark we are corralled, prodded, shouted at, made to sign who knows what. Dark little faces consider us with disdain, more of the broken human cattle they feed on, shoving us this way and that through the night. A group are made to stand. I join them, mindless, out of depth and language. We are marched to a waiting bus, cartoon characters chase each other over its skin of virulent pink as we climb on in single file, drained and vacant, and it swallows our lives.

The wave flows over me, through me, stirring my darkest of moments as I lie here, drowning in this sea of black thought, falling into the grip of paralysing depth. Sinking down and further down, until the very bottom is in sight: a bottom that shines with a light unthought-of of at this dark end of all things. A light that speaks with a voice of survival, of continuity.

“You are still here,” it says. “You have been here before, and every time returned, to be you. This is no end”.

The dreams swirl about me again.

... The circle of pavement gives way to cobbles, steps, the last effort of a winding stair, then a familiar door and a bed that claims me. I relax with a smile into oblivion.

... Time passes, I am brought food, water. I slowly rebuild my shattered self until, hours later, we touch down, and I walk steadily into the warm dawn of a new continent.

... The sun shines hot through the glass, onto a new world, green and alive. We are thrust forth in a confusion of accents and destinations, but it is daylight, and I am strong again. I reclaim my life, find my place, and await my future.

The light grows in me, strengthening my will. I know now that I can survive, my past tells me so. I turn, gaze fixed now on a distant surface, begin to rise against the sucking depth. I am not broken; I can still fight, fight but not win, not without help. Partial control, my body responds to probing thought. I stir; drag myself from the table to my pack, rooting blind through pockets for support. Music comes to hand, one small container of captured emotions; somewhere within is a crutch, a lifesaver. I force my eyes to open, to focus on this most vital music choice, fingers fumbling to fit headphones. The music washes over me, and I give myself up to it.

SALVATION:

Music fills the head, the ears, the soul; the walls are gone, the drone of the train recedes. Control is restored as music flows like chocolate and honey through my body, calming panicked flesh, relaxing posture, stabilising and sweetening my thoughts. I ease into my seat, realise how close I was, how far I’d come, what distant beach I’d almost been stranded on. The wave has gone, banished to the edge of this fragile void. This void, kept clean and clear by the music alone, my raw psyche laid out to be played by the emotions of the tune, my tattered soul lending endless aching depth to this song I know so well, yet am hearing again for the first time.

An unexpected choice, this modest saviour. A portion of the past lost since leaving home years ago; returned by coincidence and chance. From that past a face swims, denying the dark wave. A blonde girl, younger, so sure at this age. She speaks with such authority of what is right, so mature. I am in awe, despite my inner laughter at such conformity, as she hands me the tape and smiles. With her come unbidden images; fields of golden wheat under endless summer sun; lying tired from laughing in houses made of straw, a clear blue sky framed by prickled walls; green fields lead to far horizons. In one distance a smudge of wood to be explored, in another a folded line in the view tells of a stream to paddle. The endless possibilities of a childhood future, the surety of existence; all that we live for is now, this time, these people, this fun.

The wave presses in, threatening to drown this happy past, but the music holds and more faces swim free, faces not bound in time. I see girls grown to womanhood, laughter cherished and curtailed; boys grown tall and grave, men shaking sincere hands. Adults become equals, no longer towering, relinquishing care. Equals become adults, brows furrowed with responsibility. Time is written on these faces, pencilled in as reminder of its passage, yet the essence does not change. A mother with child observes me with the eyes of a smiling, giggling girl. A tall, stern face softens, is shortened by pride and the passing years. Parents go grey; wrinkle like apples left to autumn, but shine still with that same light of love. It washes over me, a new wave, different; swirling with this music of the past. I am buoyed on years of love; these people who love me, these people whom I love. I am carried away, swept up from the depths as this new wave pours into the void. The music surrounds me, dancing as the water fills me, clear and sweet, soaking into nooks and corners, banishing the dark. I am shaking, holding myself together. As I breathe again the water pricks at my dams, wells in my eyes; tears course down my cheeks. I let them run, clawing at the table, concentrating on the simple rhythms of breath, riding this wave as I rode the other. I am strong, neither light nor dark will break me.

I wipe tears down my face, leaning back for support. Outside, the city has gone, no more the boarded eyes of leering tower blocks and the close, frowning ceiling of cloud. Now neat rows of houses with tidy gardens, a park, town hall, churches, garden centres, all washed by a thin fresh rain. Rattling over streets of comfortable shoppers, under mellowed stone bridges. The conductor passes, asking for tickets. I laugh gently inside, glad of his timing, glad he waited till I found my strength. I cannot look as I pass my ticket for his scrawl, waves of thankfulness batter my face, threatening to leak onto my cheeks. I can ride the waves, I am not broken. The certainty fills me with a survivor’s joy, and tears run again through my fitful smile.

I have survived this experience of my creation, this moment building for months, since a decision was made. Like the one an hour ago, a decision made in a moment, and swiftly acted upon. The decision had been made while at sea, off a distant foreign shore, bound by my own chains to a profession that no longer fulfilled. A decision of an end of things. A decision for friends, for freedom, for myself. A step into the unknown, denying reason, trusting fate to be something more. I had dropped everything on the far side of the world, certain of where I needed to be, certain I would find my friends in all that distance on the way.

... I’d found them too, on the beach as we’d joked, yards from where I’d stopped to look. They crowded round me, broad smiles on incredulous faces, hugs and kisses. I was immediately swept up and along into the world they had created, a month spent in a haze of enjoyment. First a perfect beach house, all lazy hammocks and hazy afternoons, until epic thunderstorms chased us north; then train and bus across the country to high mountains and clean crisp air. It was a journey of extremes, too many tales to tell, all shared, all taken as one. Back in our country the highs continued; friends swapped for family, more smiling faces and loving arms; then a reunion, arriving soaked and half-naked through thunder and lightning to a tent-full of friends in a festival field. We relived foreign memories, adding new highs and excitements for a weekend, and then moved on. I left to meet more friends, touching my past, renewing old acquaintance. Another festival, more friends, friends of friends, fields full of strangers; all with that light, that love in their eyes. So on to now, the past few days, as full and far as I’d ever been. Making my tangled way through friends, parties, wild excitements and endless highs to that moment, that ending, the swift decision that set me on this train home.

Love winds through every encounter, confirmed at every memory with glowing smiles. Each thought of love, face after face, is a ripple on the sea that fills me; breaching defences built against hurt, to contain love. My defences are useless, there can be no restraint; this love is no hurt, but wild and true. Dykes crumble and are washed away, a calming sea fills my horizons. I am humbled at this insistence of love, all I have received and all I have to give. The inner sea golden now as faces of memory spread through me and beyond, touching an unseen blanket, a glowing coverlet of love for the world.

As I glance at the window I see the town has fallen behind. Now fields and green hedges pass, a sinuous river reflecting a purple sky, all lit by a low sun that has chased away the rain. I recognise the landscape; it is my memory, my past, here and now. I am travelling back to the beginning, the first love the last to face in this journey: parents, home, waiting for me. I breathe and smile as the wave swells again, leaving my face wet.

REVELATION:

The conductor returns, leaning against a seat, watching me. I ignore him, my blurred eyes turned to the passing scenery. Outside beauty parades before me, a landscape of memory, seen so many times before. Like the music that dragged me from the depths it is familiar, yet experienced again for the first time. Memory seems closer to dream, the land seems too perfect, a cliché of countryside. The river swings near and far across the valley floor in lazy arcs; bearded with reeds on the slow deep bends, outer curves of green undercut by faster water. The banks are pocked here and there, churned by drinking cows. An occasional fence bows a wooden neck to the water. Across the valley a road bordered by hedges shadows the train, a boundary to fields that rise to the close horizon. Flat fields golden with wheat on the turn, blond barley nodding as a light breeze dries the rain just past. Steeper fields of fresh-washed grass, lumped and hillocked by grazing, are dotted by puffs of sheep, brown patches of cow. They sweep up, crowned by trees decked in summer leaf, resplendent against the deep sky.

Every colour is more than it could be. The sun ducks rain clouds to break free across the view, gifting to every shade a vibrant note of joy, of thunder passed, saturated with glorious contrast. Here the land steepens, the valley narrows, its sides now clad with trees. Storybook woodland, smooth beech stretch tall over winding lanes dappled with shade. Ivied gates open to forgotten tracks, brown with last year’s fallen leaves, begging exploration. The woods become deeper, the floor littered with fallen boughs, half-rotted, glimpses of fungi and impressions of decay as the train sweeps past. Narrow fields leap from the close green wall, dotted with clumps of marsh grass, bordered by walls of tumbled boulders and lichen, drunken posts and wire. High behind the woods rise bare hills, short-cropped grass flecked with boulders bordering a lightening sky. It is more than dream could make it, more real than it needs to be, yet no more real than it has been at any other time. This beauty has been here always, waiting for me to find the mind to see.

My tears are dry now, the inner sea stilled by gasping realisation. How long, how far have I been, searching for just this? How many journeys in far lands to find a match for this beauty? How many golden fields have I seen? Skies painted this purple of thunder?

... A massive storm sky above a tropical beach, watched drink in hand with friends from a palm-roofed beach bar, laughing as the warm rain spatters our bare skin.

... Under a dark sky, lightning spearing the rim of the grassy dell as I slip and slide my way, pack on back, to meet those same friends, somewhere in a sea of rain-hazed tents.

... Far out at sea, an endless horizon of towering cloud, bruised with rain and rising high to a murky grey, lit from within by massive jagged forks of light, my hair whipped by wind rushing to join the storm.

... A storm settled over jungled cliffs, swathed by curtains of torrential rain, deafening on tin roofs; everything stark as lightning cracks down, thunder echoing from cliff to cliff.

... A summer storm on the horizon, all before it lit bright by a low sun. Fields of glowing golden straw where straw houses are built; the hot, dry taste of the air on my tongue, tingling with electricity.

I am carried aloft by the truth of understanding; all of this has been before. I have been so far, so long, finding again and again that which is here, has been here all this time. I am swept away.

... I pad silent through deep green jungle full of alien colour and noise. Smooth trees trailing creepers stretch tall over a winding path, strewn with decaying debris. I find openings grown with vine, begging to be explored, streambeds leading into undergrowth, an adventure waiting for eager feet.

... I walk barefoot in a winding stream, silt beneath my toes as clear water swirls past bare legs. Strands of weed borne on the stream brush me, threaten to stick, are washed clear. Familiar bushes grow out from the banks, hiding the fields, not quite shading my neck from the warm sun.

... I climb among massive twisted fallen boughs, the ground far below choked with nettle and bramble, these sky paths the only safe route through this jungle. At every visit they wear a different cloak; castles in the sky, outlaw hideout, wolf refuge, alien city; at all times alive with difference and adventure.

... I whistle for the dog as I swing down from the gate, lifting it for him to pass. About me skylarks rise in song from the long grass. The slope is gentle, enough to raise colour on my cheeks as I climb. Ahead short-cropped grass reaches up to the blue horizon, behind the land falls away over field and lane; hedges border green and gold patchwork, hidden cottages, farms; a river winds to the sea, a suggestion of a deeper blue on the horizon.

I return slowly from my reverie, mind reeling after wave upon wave, layers of comprehension weaving through my thought and memory. Unseen threads connect all that I have seen, all that I have done, all I have thought and experienced, to me, to my core. I am overwhelmed at this relentless re-ordering of all I have known, this mind-bomb awareness. I grasp at the table, bolt straight in my chair as the ocean rises within me. I feel I will burst, awareness stretching outside myself to contain all that it must, and I am breaking apart.

As I can bear no more, the music changes. A guitar gently sings of infinite sadness. I recognise the tune, one heard many times before, suffering all the contempt of familiarity, overuse. As the clear, pure vocal creeps under my skin I laugh for all the times I have scoffed at others obsession with it. Clean-scrubbed faces scowling with innocent feeling as they try to pour unknown heartache into their jam-night rendition, a snatch used as background to an earnest television appeal, or worse a friend who should know better sincerely trying his best. I laugh harder at the love I suddenly feel for that friend, the love I feel for his abortive effort, the love I feel for that group of friends. My laughter swells with my love, for all the friends in that city, all the friends in that country, in my wide world. I laugh, accepting this love, the song pouring through me, spreading across that inner ocean, calming like oil on the water. I realise in a sense they were all right: this is the most beautiful song in the world. The song rises higher, taking me with it full of love, riding a train through such familiar beauty; tears of pure joy run down my face to gather in the corners of my mouth, open wide in silent laughter.

I am in the most beautiful place in the world.

DESTINATION:

The conductor seems happy with my progress, my fragile state no longer his concern; he moves off down the carriage. I watch his retreating back with smiling eyes, at once laughing and thanking him for his care. As I turn to the window my face, drawn and sallow, stares back. My journey, from low to high to higher still, is written in sunken eyes, cheeks trailed damp with salt, window to a battered soul. My station is drawing near. I have an image of my parents waiting for me on the platform. They wait for the person they last saw, not this person I have become, this broken angel, worn from exultation. Familiar fears prick the edge of thought- parental expectation, the ubiquitous judgements, standards and ideals. Not just of parents, the standards and expectations of society, passengers, the conductor, what must they think? I look through myself to the land outside, trying to compose my face.

The countryside has changed, the wooded valleys and storybook landscape replaced by those bare hills that had marched on the borders, reaching to the blue sky. We are climbing and winding among them now, their steep slopes overlain with a weave of trodden sheep-paths, foot-wide terraces of woolly habit between bare grey-black rock, poking bones through the short grass. At the base of the hill a small flat space, still water glinting brown with peat through tussocks of marsh grass, a harsh place compared to ordered golden fields and delicate winding rivers. The hills stretch above me, hiding the sky, trying to match grey city walls and their ceiling of clouds. The tops of these hills though are clear; in my mind I feel the blast of the wind as it curls over summits and ridges, the joy of that wind, wild, free. There is a rugged beauty in this place, there to find if you have the mind. I know these hills, have walked them, and appreciated their wildness. Their beauty too lies in my past.

I have no need to be afraid here. I have strength, it is a part of me, has always been there. I have ridden that wave and it cannot break me again. What does it matter what passengers, a conductor, or parents think? Again I thank him for his concern, a concern that altered nothing. I am me, this is proven beyond doubt. My parents wait for me, a past version of a person now forever changed. Just as I saw my parents both young and old, glowing with that light of love, I am every person I have ever been, yet haven’t changed at all. There is love, that also is proven beyond doubt- I have accepted the love of the world, and whatever differences are in me make no difference to that love.

Sitting and breathing, I watching the world pass. The sound of wheels on the track is pleasant now, a friend I remember from so many journeys, the gentle clack-clack of passing distance, change, moving on to new adventure. This adventure: going home. To see a familiar past through fresh eyes, experiencing with all the passion of a child, tempered by accumulated wisdom. I am steady now, whole; the ocean inside accepted, assimilated. Hills outside the window drop steadily to fields, rolling among leafy valleys, folded views, nestled houses. I recognise these fields, I grew up here after all. This beauty of my past still remains, I absorb it again and for the first time, smiling.

A barn I remember from winter journeys, a cosy memory of a separate past, is a landmark for the approaching station. I gather my things, composed now. No more need for music, my crutch. I am battered and swept clean, but I am whole, and strong. Tears still prick my eyes, but they come with each smile, tears of happiness, of joy, of relief. I am here, I returned for respite, but found a new beginning. A chapter is complete. I shoulder my pack as the train slows, ready to step forward into the future. As the platform shadows into view behind the smoked glass of the door I wipe my face, slip dark glasses over weary eyes. I have returned to a reality of sorts, and though my parent’s love is unconditional, love must go two ways. I straighten myself, the man I have become wrapped in a man I used to be, and step smiling toward their glowing faces.

I am home.