Who are you?

Glasses on my head, book in my hand, I can be found anywhere. I might be in my Mother's house of an evening, the prisoner of Azkaban in full flow, conjuring a spell beyond any number of dementors.
Or maybe you passed prefab 4 during the Great Gatsby? A foolish Nick Carraway living with morals while the Toms and Gatsby types do what they want?
Did you join me on the Metro when I read Catch 22? When I missed my stop to see what happened to Major Major? I laughed out loud and shuddered simultaneously. Remember Slaughterhouse 5? God, I was as flattened as Dresden after it. As flat as a moonscape. Did you join me on a journey through Spain in The Sun Also Rises? Did we have a beer in the square or fish together on the Factory river? Maybe you held the wine bag up as I drank? I honestly can't remember!
Remember reading Nesbo's The Snowman as snow fell outside? Jesus, I triple checked the doors were locked for a week. Did you ever read James Lee Burke? Imagining who you knew was just like Clete Purcell? And we all know someone that thinks they are Serpico, right?
So much of life is in a book. The thirst to beat all thirsts in Ice Cold in Alex. Life's shadows in Hogwarts. Our isolation in the New York trilogy. Sven Hassell's stark, glory-less war. The countless heroes and zeros of print; characters we embrace or run from.
I was Joyce strolling Dublin from the outside. I was Hemingway at the San Isidro bullfights. I may even have been Jeanette Winterson once, when lost in Venice. I've been Tim Krabbe more than I'd have liked and for sure I've been swallowed up by the system like Heller. And now I'm in the middle of the novel. My own. And it's damned hard to ignore the illustrious list above or to channel one of the characters that lit the way for me in the past. 116 pages so far, of steering clear of all the literature in my life imprinted like a tattoo on my soul. Maybe when its all over I'll be free. I won't be them. I'll be me.

Nobody gets outta here alive

Life kills. No doubt about it. So let's not fool ourselves, there's pressure out there. We need to deal with it. Blame whatever you like; heartless banks, societal expectations, Facebook, your genes, Roundup in your bread, dementors in your head from the cradle, your boss or yourself. It doesn't matter. But I want you well. I just want you to keep going and realise you are as vital and necessary a part of humanity as anyone. Of course we don't all deal with life head-on like a Hollywood hero. Some of us are quite beaten by the madness life flings, so we deal with it our own way. That can take on a number of forms and outcomes. What do we need to get through?
Could be a leopard print underpants on in front of the tv, using your belly as a beer mat. It might be the syringe with whatever opiates you crave, a slice of a Fentanyl patch tucked neatly between gum and cheek perhaps? Wine often worked for me. It makes other people interesting in social situations and is a key player in keeping you comfortably numb when life stops being a mill pond and instead sucks out your shoreline to come at you with tsunami proportions. Maybe you're one of the ghosts gliding around from pharmacy to pharmacy, bagging enough codeine to kill the pain, the one that isn't really there but won't go away.
Sometimes it just takes an hour of The Cube to right the ship. Or a Tele-evangelist saying that perfect phrase that seems to reach all the way from your flat-screen to your flat soul. An episode of Friends to kill the white noise? Maybe you could hurtle a car down lanes at break-neck speed or painstakingly paint in watercolours.

A cuppa doesn't work for me so I try to hit the road. The road talks to me and I talk back. Asphalt is a good listener. I let it all out; the anger, elation, brutality and euphoria of life. I transmit it all through my Bike to the road and it whispers sweet nothings back, dulcet tones of forgiveness. And the road has never betrayed me yet.
But cycling is nothing. I don't care as long as you do something. Jump around a stage, walk the impossibly-short-legged dog somewhere, take a stroll under amber street lights at midnight, drive with the window down or turn up the Ramones to eleven. Go to church, get stuck in, light enough candles for everyone that loves you. Read a book with the tv off. Watch the sky after dusk for bats or just stop and listen. Listen beyond the fridge-hum. Hear that? It's you listening. You are there.
Say hello to everyone. Feel the sun on the nape of your neck. Look up. Taste the food instead of just using it. Say sorry. To hell with the rain, go out in it. Smell the turned soil from a field. Get your hands dirty. Allow yourself to feel tired. If someone asks how you are, tell them the truth. Have the second coffee and stay awake. And say thanks. A lot. And don't waste your time on random bloggers trying to keep you switched on. But always, always hang in there for the next sun-up. Promise?

Still here.

So I'm walking through the graveyard with four students. It's a field trip. I'm surrounded by the living and the dead. The living are the four lads, enjoying Spring weather, full of banter, stories and a lust for life. The dead are... well, I don't have to explain, do I?
Saint Stephen's cemetery has 'em all. The unmarked graves, the familiar plots of my loved ones and distant relations. And friends that broke my heart. It also has the marble mausoleums befitting Roman generals that can be seen from space. It's all irrelevant really. Those in the ground have left an impression on those above it. Those above it are wasting their time building monoliths. Of course my Father-in-law used to say 'there's no pockets in a shroud' so if you feel like emptying Tuscany of all it's marble, then go ahead!
Me personally, I'm kinda hoping for something small. And I'd really like to be alone in it for a very long time. I mean, I'd be hoping my missus and kids would have crazy-long lives and leave me to it for a while. They'd deserve a break anyway. Besides, somehow I can't see me being around, sarcastic and irreverent at 90. But then that's the beauty of life, ain't it? We have no clue! I might be around in forty years, a bitter old man and still smiling gummily. I may have won the lottery and decided on a crypt bigger than any warehouse. Or I might be laid to rest in a pauper's grave, forgotten, unknown, unloved. Who knows?
The main thing is I'm not worried. You see, I'm living right now. I feel life. I'm aware, still moving, thinking. Still HERE.
I walked between the rows of graves and headstones today in the balm of sunlight and fresh air. I had the great company of my students. They exude life. Have a healthy disdain for authority. Come from vastly different backgrounds and situations. There they were, eating ice-cream cones, as we strolled through a who's who of the loved and the damned, the revered and forgotten. And it felt important. Why? I think the living have a duty to be alive. I know that those I loved and lost and who now lie in graves we passed today did... they LIVED. And I know that taking a half-hour and traipsing around the graveyard with a group of happy-go-lucky young souls for company, reminded me that, yes, I am living, I'm still HERE, keeping good company. If "Every day above ground is a good one", then today was great.

Missile Crisis

Oh Lord its April!!!! Time for Heidi to go skipping along through alpine pastures following a goat herd, intoxicated with flower perfumes and the new-air of the season. If you were farmer John you'd be sowing corn, the fine smell of green diesel, earth and hope in your nostrils. If you were fifteen again, life would be busting out of every corner, possibilities firing off like an electrical storm in your brain.
Ah... I must be dreaming!!! I'm a cyclist. So far Spring has hidden like Bin Laden, petrified to peek out. I never remember having a race cancelled because of snow. I never remember watching the weathergirl as she tells me the roads will be too dangerous to drive to an event. Even when she is dressed just this side of cute and gives a smile that has led people to do stupid things, she can't make the roads safe, can't melt snow. A decade ago I had sunburn behind my knees and arms on Paddy's day. What's going on????!
I've been looking for signs. Leafy trees. Grass growing. Ivory-legs in shorts. The need for sunglasses. Muffin-tops. Beer bellies cascading over waistlines. Pink foreheads from beer gardens. No chance! Instead I've trained in full winter gear until mid-april , managed to get to one race, disintegrated a rear-wheel, blown two sets of bearings, sucked up a whole damn month of Ozzy flu and it's aftermath, and nearly, not quite, but nearly... actually called it a day.
So what, I'm writing nature blogs now? No! I'm one of hundreds in the same situation... kindred souls hamstrung by a damn-near nuclear Winter in terms of length. So when I rock up to a race I'm up against it. Everyone is firing a salvo of what they've developed over the off-season. Missile after missile of strength, endurance, frustration. Serious energy and fire-power.
I've picked one hell of a year for a final season. On the grid, the joules bursting forth from likely, Lycra lads, would power a town. The season will be shorter, as will tempers, recovery, odds for a win and length between hospital/ Physio visits. And packed into that will be Joe the slice of Gouda cheese, looking razzled already before being placed in the sandwich of race-winners and hardy bucks that spit the likes of me out daily.
That long winter hit me hard. I am, in my fiftieth year, a finite element. Winter training is a beautiful thing with an endgame. The endgame is racing from March 1st. That's a reward for turning yourself inside-out in grey, S.A.D.-inducing dead months where the fields look the same and you are alone to test your will and sanity. So to not get to race hurts. And now, finally back racing, everyone is taking their frustration out in earnest. Closure, revenge, rage, catharsis... call it what you want... but it hurts real good. It seems I'll just have to get on with it. Make that hurt pay dividends.
Heidi would have skipped along, avoiding goat shite in her patent leather shoes and smiled up every mountain. Farmer John would look at the thunderheads gathering, spread slurry for soakage and laughed in the face of failure.
And the fifteen year old boy with a head and heart full of possibilities? Well, that was me. And it's been one helluva ride!

Creole Belle

Two days now and not a word. The phone is silent. Ironic that, silence. Down the strand just over the beaten fence of the beach house, the surf pounds. It should be beautiful, isolated, a refuge. Instead all I can think of is her wind-blown, shoulder-length hair as she left. It wasn't an argument, more a disagreement. I don't raise my voice and she doesn't hold her ground. She'd often take the car, get some air, come back an hour later as though nothing had happened.
Not this time. Her phone was resolutely OFF. I sat in the sunroom staring out. Bleached cushions, bleached cane furniture. A smell of heat off everything now in the height of Summer. But I felt cold. Was she gone back to him? Would I want her back now if she did show up? I sipped the almost-cold coffee and watched in the distance as kids played down by the water's edge. A car door slamming woke me from my daze. I jumped up. Whatever it was we would work it out. We would. I rushed to the screen door and pulled it open for her. Sergeant Williams faced me, hat in hand. "Hey John", he said, eyes lowered.