LETTERS TO FRANK

March

Fragments of memory and limescale collide. Moments, time and two parts forged together. The time was rotten like meat that had been forgotten for months. The horror of the bombshells like war in Germany – the horrific scenes of mutilated flesh and chambers of gas. The cruel intensity of suffocation and what a human body does not endure.

How can anyone give advice or know right from wrong – no man truly knows. No man truly knows himself nevermind another.

It is one day, and one day at a time only, that reflections start to submerge or at least dwindle into a fainter existence. Reflections of them all, not worth mentioning, for the pain they transport. Reflections of a short semester of life being ripped out and apart at points where raw flesh would be left. A reminder, or course, of the torment and agony of such an existence.

Unreliability like the worst sailor at sea, who never knew what it was to mature. How can they expect me to digest these things, to travel smoothly forwards on the path as if the wall of China had not just been destroyed. Frank you never did grow up, although you thought your mind an ageing man, what of the rest? Single kids are selfish, they say, and true to the saying, I’d say.

April

They didn’t tell me Frank, I mean, they didn’t tell me things would be like this. They didn’t tell me things would go this way. Did you know Frank? You did, didn’t you? I can’t believe you never told me – how could you Frank?

May

It’s Monday, who knows what the date is… near to a time of celebration on the calendar and this year I’m not even counting the days.

Nobody knows about the country I’m in, a far and distant land with unchartered waters and undiscovered zones.

You know, it’s not even about Ziola. It’s about the friction and the now terrible festering wounds. The puss is there, flowing and oozing, making the body gag.

None of this existed before I met THEM, and of course it is plural. A horrible little triangle. Oh Frank, I hate the triangle – don’t counsel me to return to it. Triangles don’t work in the natural. Tell me Frank, what do you honestly think?

Will you let me know, find out if Mava agrees – she always did have a great sensitivity for these things. It’s just that … now, it’s my life we’re talking about. My life that seems to have been blocked and stopped, like a clock that stops ticking. I don’t even think it’s the batteries, I think it’s broken, completely broken.

Can Mava fix that?

Really Frank you know me, and I think I just really love to be alone. Especially in comparison to what some ‘togetherness’ can constitute.

It’s me, you know Frank. Not some horrible person. Remember how we used to tallk for hours as the sun set over the coffee house. Life was eternal and the beginning. The days of ‘anything can be achieved,’ and ‘anything could be conquered.’

Now, well, I can’t even write it Frank nevermind say it. Of course my life is no longer my own and has been utterly ransacked. And I know how it goes – the honeymoon is pretense, a reeling in of an unsuspecting fish (a tadpole). The sharks have to bite at some point. They did never did relent from day one.

Frank, the worst of it is this: what never was my fault or problem (like baggage that isn’t yours), is all of a sudden, overnight on a train, all my fault… all blame, guilt and ‘responsibility’ at my door! Like Israel was born in a day – miraculous – I reaped a whirlwind and tragedy overnight.

One has to ask someone knowing like Mava, how does one explain this and where in all the world’s libraries would an appropriate and soul-satisfying answer be located? The age-old question goes: what did one do so wrong?

Frank, you must reply without delay. For amongst the seething ----------, is great anguish. Tears as hot as flames and heartache as precise as the stabbing of a knife.

You have no idea how ‘easy’ some things are, Frank. Horrid things. People may say ‘how is this and that possible?’ And my answer Frank is, simply, easy. You’d be surprised how easy it is, how quick and how natural these things come to the natural soul.

I know for a fact today, Frank, that they await for me to sign up again to that which brings…

Dangling like a Christmas bauble in Spring

Fred is in the garden hacking away at the potato plant and they come flying off.

Fred has become incessant of late in wearing his green tracksuit bottoms all day.

Fred has taken to watching the most ludicrous serial comedy on Tuesday nights and he laughs himself sick when they perform the most usual of tasks on a daily basis.

At night, I'm sure Fred recalls the comedy in his sleep as he retells of events during his outspoken dreams.  Of course there are a million irritating habits that he brings. 

Fred thinks he's a 'forest' man.  He thinks he can talk about it as one who has had experience, he thinks he can meddle in the forest, and he thinks I see him as an expert in the field.  And guess what, I do not.  Fred knows nothing of the forest. 

Time

Wasted hours, precious time stolen and time goneby.
Tomorrow is almost here
Another day arrives
The time thief must steal no longer
For our time, you know, is almost up.

The Field

Early in the morning I could hear the horses softly crunching their hooves on the wet grass outside the window.  They were standing close to the fence that borders their field and lines the edge of the pathway at the end of the garden.  The foals leapt about and playfully tugged at each other whilst the adults walked serenely by and without any commotion.  The fresh and crisp country air marked the start of a new morning.

It had been an interesting time... the week before ... and the weeks before that.

And yet every day continued to march on to the next one that followed.

At times the mountains seem so incredibly high and perilous - the challenges that lie ahead of us, the drudgeries of life and the heartaches.  Then, all of a sudden, a new day dawns and the sunrise seems brighter than it has ever been before and it serves as a stark reminder of the infallibility of the Creator to surpass all that we know and think we know.

New Housewife in the South

And so a brand new record begins...

Late July, a new family is born and must live together - happily, together, and in peace.

Thirty-one, twenty-nine and nine. 

Each one with their own character, their own mind and their own experience of the world.

Routines established, a home set up, work routines to follow, higher purposes to achieve and oh - of course - time to write.  Then there is the rest of the world - the world that is in need of something else and is at war in some significant parts. 

Yet I'll be in the kitchen, using the hand mixer that matches the other kitchen appliances all dressed in creme, mixing in the cupcake bowl and staring out the window into an idyllically set garden - hopefully not wondering 'where have the roses gone?'

June Tunes

This was it, Ava was set to marry.

The weeks sped by and every day something was crossed off the list. For there was an exhaustive list of things to do and to accomplish all within a relatively short frame of time.

January to June had come and gone like winter to spring and then summer.

The time knew no constraints and no-one had control over it.

It would wind its own way around the months of the year and direct the calendar.

Who would have thought there were that many details to consider for a wedding?

One by one, she ticked them off slowly:-

Date, Venue, Theme, Layout, Booking, Invitations, Time, Guest List, Menu, Music, Photography, The Blessing, The Schedule, Dress, Hair, Car, Bridal Team, Kitchen Tea and on and on it seemed to go.

Just as it seemed to calm down, it would result in revealing itself as the calm before the storm...

where there was always something else to still do.

Rainbows

The month of May had passed on by and it would soon be the 1st of June.

It had been a learned path so far as the year continued at a pace and new elements of life beckoned Ava to branch out and alter many ways.

A myriad of colours spread across the rainbows that loomed on the horizon of what seemed to be a very new life. From one season to the next, and in fact, from one day to the next, the colours changed and so did purpose. The purpose of existence and the purpose of life.

One day a student.

Another day a tutor.

Things would certainly evolve and in their perfect timing, blossom to full potential.

Ava laughed as the mannequin in the study caught her attention - there was one way to go and she knew which way it was. She would know that the only way would be to 'write' and 'dance' her way through it all ...