Elysium

It was here, here by this little bridge, by the river, right by the yellow fields of a flower I don’t know, all swinging and blowing in the wind under the sun. It was right here, where now the rain falls and the crops and flowers have all died and there’s blood and where I kneel in the mud and the ruin in the rain. It was here…. I know it was here. It can’t have gone away, not like this.

Maybe if I roam here long enough I’ll figure it out, I’ll figure out where its gone and why. Maybe I’ll see ghosts before me, trying to find the same thing.

When I was little, I remember a woman. A lovely woman in a white dress who smiled at me and beckoned me to come with her, elsewhere, always calling. Whenever I used to see her it was in this white soft haze of glamorous glossy pages of magazines. And I looked at this woman and I would think, this was an angel. This was the angel I read about all the time. And I used to run to her but she would always run faster, away from me, in the mist of a slow motion nightmare.

But once I did catch up. The billions of alpha centauries etched across the cool dark background greeted me with her. She was there, right in front of me, I could touch her if I wanted to. And I did. She smiled. She gave me a flower, a wild flower white all over except for the blood red parts in the middle, and somehow I knew, somehow I was convinced that this was an artist’s blood spilled across his canvas, somehow I was convinced this flower was a failed poet’s dream, his ultimate creation that never sprouted wings and never left the pages of his creativity.

I see those flowers strewn all across the scorched earth right now, all over the amalgam of ash and mud that the field is, now. There is that tree under which I first kissed her, felt her ruby lips on mine, felt her lips touch mine and melt into mine, felt my body close, so very close to hers, and then engulfed in a womb of warmth.

Was that when innocence was lost?

Or was it when I killed him?

Saw the blood flow freely, saw the general barking orders, saw the prisoner being tortured, saw the hell on earth that was our battlefield, saw the bullet tearing through his flesh, blood and bone, exit wound near the top of the skull, blowing away chunks of gray matter. Saw his body hit the ground, teeth clenched in a macabre grin as his eyeballs were blown out. Felt the blood and the tears and the rain and the smell of death in the air and none of it mattered.

None of it mattered any more, his blood was justified, her tears couldn’t save him, their death was as inevitable as the unborn’s when the mother dies, and the rain…the rain would wash all the above away, forever. It would wipe the slate clean for another future, another chance, another world, and a better fate.

When it was over I’d found myself in green, rolling meadows. I’d stepped through a door and been blinded by the light, white, pure, cleansing. And there it was. Lovely fresh green set against a glowing blue sky fettered with white clouds. And…and in this field there was a tree, just the one tree. And under this tree there was a girl, a girl with a herd of sheep. They looked perfectly at ease, munching on the olive green grass and bleating demurely, while there was this, this sheep who was different from the rest of the heard. It was all black, in stark contrast to the white fluff of its brethren, and it was separated from them. The herd, it seemed, maintained a conscious distance with it. But there was this girl, this lovely girl of about twelve, she was with the black sheep, holding it lovingly and, it seemed, was shearing it with a tiny pair of scissors. It was so strikingly disproportionate with the fur but it seemed to do the job perfectly.

And then I realize, I’m walking forward, barefoot through the grass. In a daze, I walk forward, past a man with a vintage camera who’s telling my parents to smile with a baby in their arms, past a scrawny little kid who’s fighting back against the school bully, repeating an endless cycle of getting knocked down and getting up, nose a mess of blood and cartilage, and past a glorified murderer.

And I’ve reached the girl. She looks at me as if she’s known me since time immemorial, as if she’s always known I’d be here, now, to see her, and she’s glad to finally see me here. She smiles. I smile back. I feel so complete, I feel whole again, I feel as if a huge weight is off my heart, as if I’m free, my debt paid in full, and my song sung.

And here I am, back at the start, back in the field again, back where the rains have now stopped and where moments ago there was a dull cold that pawed its way in, an old pain, a grief that faded and yet did not, an ache I cannot quite pinpoint, but it’s here and now, and I’ve realized that feeling makes me who I am now. But it was gone, now. In its place a bliss of freedom, a freedom akin to the widening and all encompassing air.

And then I find it.

All is well now, everything is as it should be.



R.I.P

1978-2001

That which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.



I’m dead, but its fine.

Because I was buried right here, by these fields,

……..the fields where I died.