Skip to main content

Life Outside The Boundry


This is a Blog I follow on WordPress by 
 in his blog called CountingDucks. 
https://countingducks.wordpress.com


All, well and good. Pat on the back for the big man, and mine’s a large one. Oh yes, I could  ” Hang out”  with the crowd and sniff a line of something: drink without regard to safety and spread the word that life’s a party once you find the invitation. Sometimes I might go “missing after action” and wander the streets recalling fragments of my childhood.
I am the product of Manchester parents, a cleaner and a decorator, later divorced. My childhood was scrapped together in those fleeting moments when my father was sober enough to remember he had a home, and my mother was not accepting her compensations from passing strangers. Me and my older sister used to sit up in the attic pretending we had parents, and that somewhere just out of sight, there really was a field of green.
My sister is my only friend: my constancy. She lives a quiet life married  to a man of routine and then there is me. I have been that watchful, wild man, who knows more than he should and takes more than is his, because we are all bandits are we not: some braver than others?  I walk through a landscape of my own making and leave others to talk of world peace and comfort themselves with new furnishings, until now that is.
Out late at night, and slightly drunk, I met a lady sitting on a step, and of similar mind to mine, staring up at what London street lights allow us to enjoy of the night sky. She looked at me and her face filled with recognition.  “Your that famous fucker” she said and I nodded as modestly as drunks  can do. Just as I was about to accept her admiration she followed up with “You’re full of shit, and the sad thing is you know it.”
Truth is seldom comfortable  and often arrives unexpectedly so I was silent and then I asked her “What her grief was?” and she introduced me to her life. She had been a photographer in Afghanistan, recording the pain and trauma of a besieged population. She had travelled across the Arctic, and sat in deserts in India swapping languages. ” And as for you, ” she said, ” You made money and used it to avoid criticism: the cowards victory. Do something better with yourself.”   I offered to help her, of course, because that’s what patrons do, but she just laughed it off and walked into the night. Brave and independent. she was a women who travelled through life without the aid of maps.
The light does not shine on every diamond. Some jewels are wrapped in modesty and never worn for display, but in her anger, born of weariness and contempt, she brought me to a life of context. In her I found another sister.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Letter to My Father

Originally POSTED ON  JUNE 3, 2015   BY  AMANDALYLE1986 Read the ORIGINAL post https://insidethelifeofmoi.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/a-letter-to-my-father/ I have included this post on Brilliant Blog share because it ENCOMPASSES everything that this blog has set out to discover, basically the most exceptional blog posts around and this post IS exceptional. 229 Dear Dad, It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since I said goodbye. The absence in my heart still yearns louder than ever. A missing piece, forever lost and irreplaceable. All that remains are memories, ever-fading and ragged around the edges. I grasp onto them with all my might, trying to savour each one, but as time trickles by like sand in an hourglass, so do the memories I have of you. Five years on, I still find it hard to look at old photographs without feeling overwhelmed by sadness. I tread cautiously through a minefield of memories in fear of setting off an explosion o...

The Vineyard

A short story by Elizabeth Newton  Originaly published on http://elizabethnnewton.com/2015/07/01/the-vineyard/ Elizabeth Newton has (so far), published two amazing books. 'Riddle' a twisted and interwoven story about murder, betrayal and revenge in a small town. The second is ' View from the Sixth Floor: An Oswald Tale'  which is a story of “what-if's?" What if the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 was a conspiracy? What if accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent? What if....Below is one of Elisabeth's short stories, it may just give you reason to take a look at her books.  The Vineyard   My family has been producing one of the finest wines from the Carmargue region for several generations. Although we are a very small vineyard many have said our grapes are the sweetest and our wine has an indefinable “something”. Of course the distinctive color known as “grey of grey” contributes to the uniqueness of...

A confession... or at least a revelation.

I’m jotting this as I travel in a car, it's okay, I’m a passenger, not the driver. I realise many people like to know about the authors whose books they read, so this post is a reveal, a confession... I am a bit of a petrolhead. I'm on the right, wearing sunglasses. Although I do mention cars in several of my books, I do not often go into any intricate descriptions. I like to leave much of the detail in my stories to the reader's imagination. I think this respects the reader, allowing them the freedom to create such subjective images, and for their imaginings to become an integral part of the story. My belief is allowing the reader personal visualisation is what makes books far superior to a film, or a movie, where every detail is spoon-fed to those watching, it leaves nothing, or very little to the imagination. Whereas with a book the author simply suggests many things, it is the reader whose mind interprets and creates the fictitious, fanciful world they find the...