Dying is easy; it's living that scares me to death (Annie Lennox) 16/02/10

1) In a big house in a small town there was born a little girl into a great fear. She painted pictures where the earth didn't meet the sky. They faced one another with a gaping void between them and this space housed the terror in her heart. She knew her past was waiting for her years down the line.

I remember little or nothing, whichever hurts less. And for as long as I can forget it's the same veil I've worn blurring out the shape and form of a messy genesis. In the beginning was the mistake and mistake was made king of the castle, the dirty rascal.

My father was a healer of men but a stealer of peaceful slumbers. His bloodshot eyes hurled into the pitch nights foundering through the vapours of drink and ash. The sandman was on standby till the witching hour most nights.

That terror has not left me still for more than a thought and the trigger is precariously receptive to a song, to a smell, to the most glorious of trivia. There is no quiet to be had, there is no balm to annoint the first cut. There is no medecine man so skilful as to staunch that pain. There is no guide more sure than the vaguest of memories; no certitude more cruel than the gaps in the truth.

2) You ought to be ashamed of yourself - a grown woman.

You are.

Ashamed of choosing a man like your father for a partner.
Ashamed of scuppering the family craft.
Ashamed of fretting about the future and harrowed because it does not glow with any promise.
Ashamed of accepting handouts with chirpy faced bravado.
Ashamed of a house that is tumbling into ruin.
Ashamed of the electric wires that hang from the bedroom ceiling, of the paper that peels off the walls.
Ashamed at having to ask for help to survive in the grown up world.
Ashamed that you don't know how you'll get them through.
Ashamed that you didn't learn the ropes when God knows you knew what we are capable of.

3) There was something desperate in her planning and rushing around, her hunger for displacement. Paris here, Rome there, Berlin. 'I have to do the things I've always wanted to'. Bangkok, Kyoto, Maine and the Eastern Seaboard. The concerts, the parties, the bucket-shop flights, the beautification of her ostentatious, overbearing house. She was desperate to be interesting, to tower above the common mortal in their humdrum existence. To assuage the vacuous hold on her gut with material nonsense. Trying to make sense of the emptiness, the sense of life without a purpose as if it existed in doing, moving and shaking. The Vulgar and the Futile exalted, disguised as clean old fun, but with the edges of greed, envy and despair peeking out over the rim.

4) And yet. Could it be that just for once there is no reason to fear what's next. No-one to catch you when you fall but yourself, buoyed up by all those who hold you in their loving web. The things you didn't know till now on any other plane but intellectually, finally taking hold of your makeup. A grounding of the floating vessel, becoming a blessing not a wreck after all. Not dashed but hope renewed after the ghastly storms and harrowing gales. How did your tiny craft survive? With no direction it wasn't easy but we just need to believe that the rudder came into its own.

5) Me? A role model? Spot the fraud. He says I've done something with my life. Can it be true? Even when it's not star-spangled and blazing? I'd like to go back to school with him, to breathe the memory into my aged, jaded, jagging lungs. The photo shots of dotted moments from my pale history. I long for the swell again that carries me forward despite the dragging current. It's been so hard and harsh, so grazing like sandpaper on the skin, like the pith on an orange unprotected by the rind. I'm not asking the dangerous question this time. I miss my dog. What? Not your wife? The land of what would have been in all its treacherous splendour cajoling you. He won't know the schemes of your soul. Not this time round. Be passive ô my voice. Let action man show his true colours.

6) Be very careful about wanting to move to another land. Be even more wary when you consider having your children there. Never believe that your homeland will be enough to anchor who you are. Believe that this new soil will tangle with your roots and nurture quite a different fruit. Your offspring, the fruit of your aspiration will blossom in majestic apartheid. If ever you redoubted the generation gap try the landmass abyss for size. We all say we will go back long after the sense has been pressed from the idea. Back to no-man's land, back to the melted past. And our progeny can't bolster up our foundations in any shape or form known to their virgin universe. To be a parent is to need nerves of steel; to be an immigrant, no forge can shape that metal. You just have to exist within each breathing fibre, in the air you consume, the water you absorb, the taste of solitude you befriend. So when plans for the future only render the past lacking, where is the new Eldorado? What leap frog idea can lay the new landscape with meaningful content? When 'been there done that' leaves a rancid tidemark around one's ego, what is the way forward? When instant remedies have made the instant eternal and infernal what is the third way that a third eye could view? So this is my tale. I left my cradle with a baby's innocence and trusted in the natural boundaries of humanity. Naive and off course, of course, once again. Trusting where only fools would dare to tread despite my scolding inner voice. 'don't put your hand in the fire, don't play with flames. Don't condemn your life to ashes'.