Prologue to Le Puy and beyond. Part 11.

The stones of the Town Hall groan under the pressure of age. I took the bus. Nothing could stop me disappearing today? As I waited and waited the time questioned my decisions. Some subconscious feed provoking my torturous ego. There I was barely coping and overwhelmed with overt thoughts of my insignificance. All the plans within me coming unravelled as the things I need fight against that I have become. As I look up at the blank faced yawning gape of the bus driver as the routine X98 pulls up to alight the pensioners Wetherby welcomes I am straining to vanish. For a number of years I have been numb to what happens around me. It happens; I hear it, but it leaves me emptied of life’s essential beat. Rat-Tat-Tat. Have I become so distanced from the reality of these conversational needs that the booming voiced chorus delivers in waves of banality. I repeat that I am a ghost. I can't imagine when this happened as I was unaware of my own death.

This Thursday I am sat hearing voices and watching the passing of a multitude in the silence beyond the grave. At a weekly market that I challenge to find locally produced fayre. The selection of garments due to fray, un-stitch, detach or dissemble. Mothers, Mothers of mothers, pensioners; gummily frail and beyond redemption. I need to fly this amber trap. It isn't just one level deep; the cage from which I am to pluck will present me out of purgatory. The detachment from this reality is cutting me in twain. However much I am told I should not judge, I doubt I should do anything but judge. If my perception is ruled by the ego only is all I 'seem' not a fact?

The morning began with an early exeunt out of a chaotic home; forty two is in a state of dereliction (but the answer to the universe is forty two – what was the question again?). Should I remain conceited again or literally break with force unchained and bold? There is nothing that means anything there. I thought I must acquire to exist therefore I built a wardrobe from which I now hide. I bought enough training shoes for a millipede to achieve a marathon; they sit slowly drying out and corrupting; atrophied: the plastics have a finite potential, react slowly with the air and the fabrics fade to greyed shades of once vibrant colours so that yellows are dusty and oranges lost their zest. I have three storage crates filled with t-shirts. Variously manufactured in China, Honduras, Mexico, Bangladesh to a format required by Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, etc..

The dog flees out of the back door around 6:45am and flies down the back passage to consume the tender shoots of fresh grass. His stomach gurgles in a piston like churns. I guess his diet of canine food and rich titbits, provided daily by fond, but destructive mother, sister and I, has created a problem now he is in later life. I provide him dainty and delicate pinches of the tips of this grass. He trusts my notions and always accepts what I present him with. Snoopy I adore you, but I really worry that the heavy sleeping, slowing down and the lumps and this grass obsession is the signal to some badness to come. Mother is convinced he is also looking more distant. I still talk to him and confide sweetness at any chance I get. I whisper our symbolic truths. He is my existence really. No other factor keeps me breathing, but he will go, I will be broken and that is not all I can be?

What I need I don't find here. Ninety nine to one Filmore & Union is natteringly gossipingly female. All discussions are significantly blank of truth, but forced, rushed, enthused upon each other. The higher frequencies out competing my slower 'drifty' needs. I have been sent on an errand for bland repressive Morrison's Bread – two for a pound. Bread being the diet of the thinking less dullard. One day of porridge being too much for number forty two. Here I sit and wait for fate to deliver me along the path where this demented insanity fades back to the cornered crevice that Wetherby must be? 'Go now Daniel,' my other voice says 'Why are you waiting for anything here? You know that nothing means anything to you any more.'