Night & Day in the City

Busan

Bucharest

Grey morning. Scurrying, heads down, isolated together
A moment's eye contact with a stranger
Walls that move in and out
A moan, a whisper, a fearful cry, an angry shout

It's not all bad, it's not all bad
A madman muttering underground
Heads bury deeper into papers
Night descends, dark suits replaced by neon ravers.

Emotion-drained faces framed by windows
Shuddering pipes and throbbing floors
3am, the time for new love and old death
Is when I wake up and decide that tomorrow I will try to leave

The city

The History of Love in Afghanistan 3

"All right".

The watch on her breast pocket moved.

I hadn't expected her to say yes.

Neither of us smiled. It was, if anything, a moment of extreme gravity. My head, until then empty of everything other than memories of school and family, suddenly flooded with future possibilties.

Some of the patients stopped to watch us; two continued walking towards the trees at the edge of the lawn.

"How about going to the pictures?" My voice seemed to have found a higher pitch.

"All right." Hers was so calm.

"What time do you finish work?"

"Six, but I'd like to go home to change first."

That first encounter was so matter of fact and innocent. In the light of what has just happened, that seems almost shocking.

To be contd.

The History of Love in Afghanistan 2

Amidst the aimlessness, Elaine appeared so definitely: jet black hair and deep blue eyes. Already an assured woman, her walk was confident and purposeful. I approached, unsure of myself, still anything but definite, somewhere between a boy and a man; hair neither dark nor fair, eyes somewhere between green and brown. Some Grade Ones were watching us now. Unlike the Grade Twos, they had some awareness of the real world.

"Will you go out with me?"

I noticed something move fast to my right: the blackbird had just caught a worm.

Elaine's beautiful lips started to part.

To be contd.

The History of Love in Afghanistan 1

Elaine was half-French, half-Irish, and I met her in a mental hospital. I'd always been attracted to foreign girls, even though I'd been brought up in a small village where there weren't any. I was a ten-year-old boy in short trousers, standing in a school playground when I saw my first foreign girl. Her clothes were different, her hair, her skin, and she brought with her the exotic beauty of the world beyond my village. But, she wasn't Elaine. Elaine came into my life much later. It was my eighteenth summer and her nineteenth. I remember the pale August sunlight, a slight breeze that rustled the leaves of the oak trees, and the clouds that hinted at the cold and rain, waiting in the wings, as it always is in green England. I remember lush lawns, darting squirrels and a blackbird, head tilted to one side, waiting for a worm to pop its head up, and I remember the mad people wandering, rudderless, in all directions.

To be contd.

Aiming for everything and hitting nothing

To say I've had writer's block would be misnomer as it would suggest that I am, or ever have been, a real writer. Instead, all I can say is that the words have been falling out of my head and I have been failing to catch them. Why even try to fish when your net has a gaping hole at the bottom of it? I am sure that you all, at some time or another, have woken up with a start, having dreamed the most incredible story and thought, if only I could get this down on paper, it would be a bestseller, but then, by the time you have got out of bed, it has all fallen into that great void into which unwritten words disappear forever. Then I think you'll understand.

My strengths and, even more so, my weaknesses, are as clear to me now as my right and left hands. My greatest strength is my creativity, but my even greater weakness is my almost total lack of self-discipline. Dilettante, dabbler, butterfly, Jack of all trades, master of none; dare I say, Renaissance man? No, I dare not, for that would merely be giving in to my own weaknesses. More oft than not, there are so many things that I want to do, that I do nothing.

In Mexico, they say, a todo le tiras, y a nada le pegas: you aim for everything, but you hit nothing. That's me, and I have to change. I really have to hit something: the keyboard. Or I will be that would-be fisherman standing in a bleak seaside bar one winter's day, holding out his arms and saying, 'It was that big, but I let it get away.'

Write Away

I was invited to contribute to the WriteUp Cafe. I have posted an extract from The Mongolian Girl there. Please visit the site and rate and comment on it.

Also, Jade Meng kindly invited me to write a guest article for her site Dream of Jade. Please take time to pay a call there too and leave a comment. Thank you.