A farewell in silk and shadow.
The day she came for me, I knew I was going to die — albeit a glorious death.
At 7 years old you can barely see beyond the sparkle and romance of a shining christmas bauble. The reflection of a family together, acceptance, belonging, a time for happiness. A time of friends, except it wasn't, just stabbing pains and a deep trauma from a frighteningly gruesome monster inside a dark bottomless well that I dared not seek within. But, through the slits of my fingers and out of the gloom she appeared. She had come to rescue me. All power and guile, enchanting, mesmerising with the soft charms of a fluffy soft rabbit, a smiling club of waiting friends, and the kaleidoscope adventures of sweet and distant lands. Unmoored, I was hers for the taking.
If I liked a lot of chocolate — which all kids do, by the way — then a sugary whisper promised me access. I could join the club, be a secret lemonade drinker and tell others about the honey. These were definitely not the droids they were looking for, but the early, iridescent threads of her loom, drawing me somewhere over the rainbow, into the gilded cage of persuasive dreams.
Whilst bathing in a luscious panorama of wonder, my grubby hands once capable of yielding only crayons coupled with a sensitive, creative and malleable mind, became the tools of an apprentice sculptor, an imagineer innocently creating multi coloured vistas of life, tentatively forging truces and alliances in my particular niche, fostering secret opinions and advancing awkward, probing failures.
Nudged towards a compliant future by my unknowing, burdened and conflicted parents, I was soon in the preordained groove that had been cut for me. To be a worker. To wear the familiar and acceptable threads of an expected society.
So I toed the line in my uncomfortable skin. I did the jobs, put up with the slobs and the snobs — but all the while, she swooned me with music, art, engineering, love, lust, colour, vibrancy, and things of wonder — of magic and bright lustre. She turned words into warfare, and warfare into words. What goddess, what parent, what mistress was she — all three that wanted my attention. Soon I was moving, dancing and clothing myself in the colours of the acceptable club but unlike the others I was fascinated and curious and beguiled by her possessive touch. What magic was this? What miracles she performed, turning the sad into happy, the downtrodden into hopeful and the ambitious into dreamers of ultimate dreams.
Yearning for the touch of her magnificent mesmerism, I spurned the club and augered deep into the tendrils of her belly. There amongst the Hellenic roots I discovered the genesis of her code. So I traced it forwards throughout the ages and all at once, I saw a crowd: a fleet of imagineers flashing upon my inward eye.
I felt the wonder deep within, I felt the control, it was the real thing, I was jacked, O villain, o villain, smiling damned villain, my sweet medusa. My secret weapon. My aphrodite. The captive apprentice had become the architect, a playful and powerful Eros.
Shall we profit, they said, profit we shall, I replied. In your name I rose, strong and proud, Rolex on wrist, Brioni on body, washed with a smooth and volcanic hit of Dalmore down the throat. I learned to gracefully saunter through the doors of the secret gardens of influence. Eggs Benedict, a nod and a deal was sealed. Exquisite shoes, silken ties and yet, there was something in the air, or was it inside? An eerie synthetic undercurrent took hold. What was going on here? Who exactly was winning in this game of life? And who really was I?
The laughs and the nods that were once a welcoming sight, became a disturbing painting of eerie shadows, a grotesque parade of gargoyles, awaiting the final hanging of the child in the night. There was an uneasiness about me, like maybe I was as full of bullshit as every smart plan I had ever made.
Who could I lean on, who could I trust? Glass in hand, seeking comfort, the driest of the wise, the late great Kenneth Williams, hit me between the eyes: "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". I was no king, nor even a jester, I was the punchline, no more than a puppet of your addictive silken charms, I felt the weight of my inevitable death. My heart, a handful of dust, crumbled under your shadow. Your whispers turned to chains, your colours a cage. The primed trails of engineered acceptance, your levers of control, woven by masters of the ages. Your threads became noose and net. You were not my saviour; you were the silken shadow that held me captive with synthetic dreams and false promises. My abductor, my betrayer.
The turbulence kicked in, a rising swell of troubles in the dark well of the monster inside. You talk of freedom, fulfillment and the pursuit of happiness but smother me in fixation, a vexation of repetition, addiction and longing, but not love. You bombard me with sensation to keep me from thinking, please — o pleasure my mistress my lover, how can I break free when I am deep in the lust of your wonder. Your surgical charms, the wisps of your blade — please — o please release your twisted embrace.
I cannot bear the sight of my own reflection. I cannot meet the eye of the demon within.
Words, facts, rhetoric and logic spout from my mouth, to defend the foundations of my manufactured self. A defence of intellectual masturbation to justify one's place. Surely a large intelligence and a deep heart must be right? But it's just a hideously pathetic disguise. The cold hard reality is that somewhere deep within I have destroyed and betrayed myself for nothing.
We hide behind the conscious mind, iPhone in hand, news at the ready, golf carts and whisky to keep us steady. We, I mean I — am a fool. But be an animal, to feed at the trough? Never! Never! Never! War must be declared. Blood it will be my love — or I will be naught else.
Lines are drawn and fear takes hold, rippling through my body like volcanic tremors shaking the once-mighty skyscraper of engineered steel, glass, and polished perfection. An intravenous lava of frustration, foreboding and isolation floods my system.
What have I done? The mortar of my foundations liquefies from the violence within. The loss of her pleasure, her comfort, the distractions that mask the pain — and the hard-fought identity I so carefully built. I feel unsure and unsteady: an uncomfortable heel, an outlier, perhaps even a rebel. I can no longer hold an even keel.
I feel utterly alone, except I see that I am just one of the many — face down in the swim. I am drifting away from the friends that are not.
I sense the choking of the birth that was buried deep inside, captured and smothered by a saccharine-sweet engineered love. My muscles have atrophied and must be reforged in the fire of persistence, becoming my core foundations of silken granite.
But how can I hate the thing that I love? That brought me the lines, exquisitely refined, beautifully crafted, colourful raptures, sculpted thoughts from whimsical engineered masters? I must rebuild anew! I must rise again as Odysseus once did. Perhaps then, beyond the flames of the forge, to truly love, I must learn to love once more.
In the time of that shaking death, I began to rise from the ashes, assisted by the words of the greats of the dead. I took the strides and sought out death and found there was nothing to fear but a new grounding instead. My body fortified, my soul recaptured, my mind as clear as a glacial pool in the crisp, sun-filled silence of the blue winter air. I broke my mighty staff and drowned the books of my behavioural fabrications. Now my seductive deceptions have been replaced, and I am left as a man, standing as one who is — and all that I can be. A kaleidoscope of adventure awaits. Time to travel. To rebuild. To reach the outstretched hands above the sea.
The foundations are strong, the child released. Time to build, to meet the outstretched hands above the sea, to love and to paint.