at the end.
The beginning is at the end. Always. When one door closes, another one opens. It is simply the rhythm of the natural world — of life. We have fungi to thank for that. The mycelium that connects us all.
I’m grateful for endings. They are to be approached with openness. With love. Society teaches us to approach them with fear because if something ends then, well, production stops. This society breeds a continuum. It does not allow for the end — only the beginning. ‘All hail the Industrial Revolution!’ And if it stops? It all stops. The state falls, and in its wake? Another beginning. ‘Thank you!’ cry the sorry people who suffered under previous rule. Revolution. The next beginning. And so runs the next geopolitical landscape. And so runs the course of humanity. And so runs the course of the solar system until — BANG. The sun in our night sky implodes upon itself, and then… what?
The end? The beginning? A new collection of gases, of particles, or rocks, of forces beyond our material comprehension enter stage left for the beginning of the next act.
We are not defined by our beginning. We are not defined by our end. We are defined by the in-between — which route we take around that inevitable circle. Perhaps some travel more squarely. With more angles. Perhaps some with more curves. But we all reach the same point eventually. We meet the same end. So what’s the point in rushing?
And now, I think, where did this end? 82 damp, windy, bitingly cold trauma cycles later, hand-in-hand with my six-year-old self as we leave the psychological refuge of the skip. In the arms of my sisters. In the last clay particles that swirl down the shower drain along with the impulse to seek comfort in the familiar, even if it is harmful.
Head back. Smile wide. Warm stream.
at the beginning.
Ethereal Sibling
MISCARRIED FOETUS: Where did mum go?
ABORTED FOETUS: She had to go out to get ready.
MISCARRIED FOETUS: Did she say when she’s coming back?
ABORTED FOETUS: No not exactly. Why?
MISCARRIED FOETUS: Oh. Its just – I didn’t get to say goodbye.
KNITTING NEEDLE: Careful. They’ll accuse you of witchcraft.
WOMAN: Witchcraft? What do you mean, witchcraft?
KNITTING NEEDLE: I’m just saying. Women were burnt at the stake for having the kinds of thoughts you’re having right now.
WOMAN: That was a long time ago. People don’t believe in witches anymore. Things are different now.
KNITTING NEEDLE: Are they? You’re the one contemplating inserting me into your uterus.
WOMAN: Well, I haven’t really got a choice. They’ve made it impossible to access the abortion pill in my State.
KNITTING NEEDLE: You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m in no place to judge. I’ve helped more women terminate unwanted pregnancies than you’ve had hot dinners. I’m just warning you; a lot of those women were burnt at the stake.
WOMAN: They haven’t burnt women at the stake for centuries. This isn’t the Middle Ages. We have the technology now to prove that witches aren’t real.
KNITTING NEEDLE: Ah, yes. Of course you have. In the same way that you have the technology to perform safe abortions.
WOMAN: What? You can’t... that’s different. You’re being unfair. I’m just trying to... to.... [woman begins to cry].
KNITTING NEEDLE: Sorry. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so callous. I want to help you. It’s just... well it’s impossible to bear. Having the blood of so many helpless women on my hands. Women who were deserted by society. Women who had no other choice but to seek my counsel. And I, well I thought we were past this. That humanity was past this. That my role in reproductive health would remain a ghost of my former self.
WOMAN: Blood? They died at your hand, those women?
KNITTING NEEDLE: Many of them, yes, I’m ashamed to say. The risk I posed to their life, that I pose to your life, is not insignificant. Inserting anything like me into your uterus could cause lacerations and perforations, leading to haemorrhaging or sepsis, or, or worse.
WOMAN: Didn’t you tell them that?
KNITTING NEEDLE: Of course I told them. Much like I’m telling you now. But the risk to their life paled in the face of being forced to bring a child into the world against their will.
WOMAN: Yes, I can see why.
KNITTING NEEDLE: So, what will you do?
WOMAN: I don’t know. There’s no way I can afford to leave Alabama. And I haven’t got the first idea about where to obtain the abortion pill illegally. So that leaves you. Or a coat hanger. Or I could drink bleach, I guess.
Woman looks up and speaks directly to the audience.
WOMAN: Well, what do you think?
Short pause
WOMAN: Hands up for the knitting needle?
Short pause
WOMAN: Coat hanger?
Short pause
WOMAN: Bleach?
Short pause
KNITTING NEEDLE: I can’t image they will be of much help.
Woman turns her attention back to the knitting needle in her hands.
WOMAN: Well, I guess we’re alone in this then.
I embraced the rain, recalling an interview with Dame Deborah James in the last years of her life. Whenever it rained, she asked to be taken outside in her wheelchair, because she never knew when it would be the last time she’d feel raindrops gracing the skin of her face. Loss is a strange beast. We’re often not conscious of the last time we experience something. The last time we see something. A place. Someone. So we don't savour it. I’m fortunate enough to be conscious of the fact that this is the last time we'll ride together. My trusty steed. She carried me through the weightiest milestones of my adult life. My law degree. My legal career. My first pregnancy. The decision to terminate that pregnancy. The termination. The decision to leave my legal career to pursue my dream of becoming an artist. Becoming an artist. And its at this juncture that I leave her.
The Last Journey, 10 November 2023
The day before remembrance day, I set off on my trusty blue. She's carried me through the first 10 years of my adult life. My 18th birthday present. As I wheeled her out of the door of my hallway and down the concrete steps, her chain came loose. I patiently re-threaded it on the oily cogs. The mudguard over the back wheel came loose. I de-attached it and placed it carefully in her basket. As I set off, waiting for a van to pass just outside my garden gate, it struck me that this would be the last time. Our final ride together. Should I film it? The thought crossed my mind. But I dismissed it. This should be a private, intimate experience between the two of us.
The sentimentality I attach to objects is a character trait inherited from my grandfather. The son of my great-grandmother, who for the entirety of the overlapping years of our lives, wore a gold chain with a heart-shaped locket around her neck. She left it to me when she passed. Inside it, a picture of the great grandfather I never had the pleasure of meeting, and an old English farthing that served as my great-grandmother’s father’s good luck charm on the battle fields of World War I. He was buried alive with that farthing in his breast pocket. The earth around him protecting him from enemy shrapnel. He lost his best friend during that battle. My great-great-grandfather left that battlefield with PTSD and that farthing. What would he say if he knew his own kin, 4 generations along the familial line, kept that same farthing on the windowsill in her bedroom in Southeast London, approximately 20 minutes from where his daughter was born over 100 years earlier? Don’t tell me objects can't retain memory. Sentimental value cannot be monetised.
I felt her struggle on the uphill ascents. Her tyres are worn. I made a mental note of the songs that played through my headphones. I put my liked songs on shuffle. All 2,194 of them. As it began to rain, the unmistakable opening chords of The Beatles, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ spill through the tinny speaker. I promised my own Father I'd play that song at his funeral.
The wind was icy. I began to lose feeling in my fingertips. In my haste this morning, I could only find a single glove. My Mother’s brown leather gloves. There’s a hole in the seam where the thumb meets the palm of the hand. I couldn’t bare to see her throw them away. The embodied feeling of holding her leathery hand on the morning school-run. When she got a new pair for Christmas one year, I offered to take her old ones. I imagined holding the hand of my own daughter in an alternate reality.
As her tyres slow in the approach to the art school gates, Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ declares itslef as the last song of the journey. The perfect song. My eyes glaze over. Oh, it's such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you. Oh, such a perfect day. You just keep me hanging on. You keep me hanging on.
My cheeks are wet. I’m filled with a confusing mixture of subdued solace and anticipatory excitement as I prepare for a meeting that relates to digging her grave. There’s some poetic justice in her final resting place being the only patch of grass at my art school. I think I’ll scrape some of the blue paint from her frame and collect it in a jar. An urn. Spread her ashes somewhere out at sea, in the place my childhood ended – where our lives together began.
Do you ever get
a sense of yourself?
A complete photograph
Not seen through the frame
of the hundreds of eyes
you brush consciousnesses with
In a mirror
untainted
In the surface of a lake
unrippled
At this juncture in life
Is it even possible?
Are we now
not the sum of all the parts of those
who inhaled our exhale?
And did you know that
Every time we kiss
83 million of our bacterial tenants
Immigrate
As they begin to reside in the fleshy folds of
Our trachea
Does not their love for
Virginia Woolf’s inky stream of consciousness
Embed itself comfortably in the
Wall of a neuron?
Does not their disdain
for pigeons as the subject of
A photograph get trapped in
A synaptic transmission?
The blind
sale and purchase of character traits
until the weather turns
and
Wait.
How can you call yourself
a true Arctic Monkey’s fan
when you don’t even know which album
Dance Little Liar is on?
You’re the liar
And that’s not really you
And I liked that before you did and
FUCK YOU.
One baseball bat to the mirror later and
My hands are bleeding
Trying to piece back together
The reflection I no longer recognize and
I guess
Yes.
On reflection
How could I possibly expect you to see me
When I couldn't catch sight
Of my self?