Thoughts Between Wells Cathedral & Cheddar Gorge.

 I suppose I am just not comfortable unless I am walking about the silent stones of historic places. Be them Graves, statues or the walls of Cathedrals. Even the leaning towers of 13th Century churches (Little Puxton reference).
 And I had been spoilt for History, being born in England. Basildon was once home to a shiney and glittering new maternity ward, that housed the likes of my family come the day of my birth. Since then of course, said place has crumbled (and not literally enough perhaps), and I have branched out. Quite thoroughly. Though not enough.

 Wells Cathedral. Where the dead sit together as candles.
The heat was certainly heat, perhaps it could be passed as a Winter nearer the southern hemisphere, but it was sweltering for the likes of our English blood. In beige trainers and a net dress covered in birds, by the arm of my darling, I strolled beside a medieval moat, lined in the finest greens through the clearest waters, home to a dozen snap-happy fish and skimmed by the silver-blue of a dragonfly larger than my own finches.
 There were people, and how I dislike people, but even in company their lack of clothing, their red raw skin and foul & smoking mouths - I was happy. Because some how, near such history, the air was summer-quiet. That serene, strange light of the air, where a thousand creatures live in flight, and each will seek the shade just to be near -but not in- the heat. Small children fed the ducks, and Swan statues graced the pathway surrounding the waters.
 Of course it had a moat, and of course there were weight restrictions, by which my daring and I agreed certain individuals need never cross.
 In this town, people lived in the castle grounds, in this town, a small stream ran down the road sides of the high street, and in this town a woman played green sleeves by flute in a sheltered archway, and gave polite and well spoken thanks for busking change given.

 The sun gave a roaring beauty to the greens of the grass surrounding the Cathedral. Yes, have you ever read my writing? Oh beauty still is night, beauty still lies under the Frost of winter, but this is the rare post that appreciates summer. And I suppose it is sweet, it is tranquil, on the arm of another, with the cool stones in which to shelter from the heat.
 If you step from the sunlight into the shelter of the entrance of a cave, the icey breath of the earths depths envelop you hauntingly, and yet enticingly. That is what summer is worth. (Reference, a little Cheddar Gorge Caves).
 The Cathedral grounds were large, they were grand, they were eloquent and of course a little religous. Well, very religous. But open to any one in the modern day (And by any one, we mean the worlds tourists, accompanied by flashing electronical devices and ringing modem shiney communicator boxes).
 Many twists, many turns, many ancient steps. And I'm allowed to say ancient, surely. For although the Cathedral was built some where around 1175 (No Young Ones reference yet) and 1490 - The grounds of the Church have been there since 705.
705. That was a three digit year. By the Gods, what a wonderful time ago.(Must watch modern lingo, did accidently say 'Oh my god' quite, very loudly within the quiet Cathedral at one rather rash and east-end moment).
 The graves within the grounds lie above a stream, or perhaps quite in line with it, that you can hear, and just about see from behind a fence. Steps descending into the earth beneath the church grounds, beneath the graves seated about the area. A sight giving a beautiful nod to Palais Garnier. (The French Opera House of which Phantom Of The Opera was based upon).

 And then I stood beside the Church Monument of John Dokensford. The cool air of ancient stone surrounding my ankles, the quiet breath and rabble of other people beginning to blur. John Drokensford was a Bishop of Bath & Wells. He died when he was 20, and that was in 1329. 
 Another beautiful amount of years ago. A man two years younger than me lying in eternal stone recognition, and he was a man at 20, in 1329. I then found a Church Monument of another man who died in 1033.
I guess you have read this far, and are finding my fascinations morbid or thoroughly interesting. Either way, continuation if you please. I have never seen a grave site so old, not even in Puxton.

 After the bitterly sweet moment that I lit a candle for Sue, and Mark lit a candle for Brad, and we sat them together in a corner near the top of the candle holder - we rounded a corner to find a grave from the very late 900s.
 I cannot tell you how that feels, I can only write of what it was. Having litten a candle for two people who have only left this realm within the past couple of years - that feeling like a lifetime without them - and yet here, remembered in stone only, a person from around 1000 years ago. It is little. It doesn't feel like you are so little. It -is- little.
 It is not sad, as that might be read. But it is little.

 A small mechanical man, much like an automaton, rang a bell and a group of jousters above an ornate astronomical clock ran their event for around a minute. The surviving mechanism is from the 1300s, and is the second oldest surving clock of England. Time has not varied for such a thing, it has just kept going, over all the dead it lingers before.
The Quarter Jack (the automaton) has been ringing that bell every fifteen minutes (With breaks for services) for hundreds of years. A simple job, but a lasting one.

~
 The rest of the day saw myself and Mark strolling by the rustling river of Cheddar Gorge, gazing at the cliffsides and stealing the icey air from the lungs of the earth.
 I suppose, in recognition of happiness in life, that if I am always surrounded by History, or mythical wonders, or ancient tales and folklore, of heroes and of legends, scaled beasts and galloping steeds, life would simply be life - and not living.
I spend these last sunny days on the West of the country painting childrens faces in the zoo, and telling the public of the nature of butterflies, the feeding habits of Lorikeets and the scoundrel behavious of the Lemars. And in my spare time, visiting the places of History and breathing in the years I was not present for.

 I'm watching the television now, many runs of Only Fools & Horses - and I am remembering. And cherishing what I am about to do.

Late July, 2012.

Sharp Waters.

Sadness has not suited you well,
And I have waited ever near,
I have paced the cobbled streets,
of which we once took to together.
And whilst it was my leaving,
That soured all that it did,
I have sweetened the splendor,
By dipping my feet in sea water. 

I recall the skeletal being,
That was erected beyond dangerous waves,
And the water was so black there,
Beneath the stars it hates.

Perhaps I will always write of the sea,
And I shall become close to it once more,
Come Autumn and it's bitter browning,
Come driving toward the shore. 
 It's likely that the shops have closed,
The rides have long since broken,
The hinge of each old door we took,
Has rusted and disintigrated.

But it seems so nearby, 
When the photographs emerge,
My steps, I still hear, on the wood of the pier,
And your laughter as we ran for the train.

I've got a few ticket stubs,
But even without sun, the letters have faded,
The dates have fallen out of time,
And not a one of them had our names on.

Yet they breathe you still,
They linger at your back,
As you enter the dark of a coffee house,
As you sip at the wine of a sour bunch. 
As the chair barely creaks at your sitting down,
As I linger still, in the lane running along the back of the town.

I've come to find you here, 
So terribly low,
I've fallen beneath the waves some how,
And it's so difficult to shield you from the blows.

We'll never see the sky,
From where we lay,
And we'll never become involved,
In what the world has to say.
I doubt we could speak again,
Despite being side by side,
But if it is all the same to you,
It will be here that I remain, here that I hide - 
In the sands of the sea, in the hilt of the tide.
 

Even the stone will crumble.

 Without water to drown the pages, we were perhaps safe. But in a ramble upon nothing that you may have read if you know my name, I discovered.

There beside the tree, a book of the tree, with solvent in ornate font swirled about the page. 
And without it all, it would seem, that only the grave marks remain, and should each word disintigrate. 

Shall i go on as I had no means to attempt? For I have little to say this day, other than I am lonely. Rather so, you know, lonely in your head kind of lonely. Like, the voice up there tires of itself and has simply given in to silence. And when you are silent within your head (which I had once thought impossible) you begin to fear for your sanity. You find yourself laughing at rather mundane or insulting things (in particular, yourself), and you bare your foolish and rather dismaying grin as if you might be pleased for your not-so-pearly whites to be on show.
And no one else is.
That's the thing, you laugh and you laugh and you hit things and you almost cry in laughter, and the laughter continues because you hear a knock at the door, and then you laugh in the knocker's innocent face as he attempts to continue his own solemn life, and you bash through a wall without hesitance of spreading the silence of your mind.
And the mind is silent. 
It waits again, because you've tired yourself out in excitement. And when you wake up on the floor it becomes obvious that you've been irrational, or have misbehaved beyond your knowledge. And a deep and dreamless sleep tries to tackle you to the ground again, and once it has you there, it lets you for a while, it lets you just sleep without resting.
 Then it wakes you, your silent mind, and it sings you a song in the voice of a child you once were, but it does not allow you to move your body. It doesn't allow you to touch reality, or breathe into it, it just holds you at the throat and sings and waits. 
Yes, I am tired of waiting for myself to take action, it says. It blames me for being dull and lifeless. 

There was yesterday. Yesterday was a fine day, I walked around an unpriced zoo, and took in the creatures as closer to me than the sun. For that's what they are, though the sun burned at the reds of my hair moreso than the animals breathed the same air, and illuminated me like a devil's child.
When not even he'd have me. 
I'm not sure what this is, actually. I mean I've been talking for a while. Which is hilarious because I don't think I've spoken today, and it seems that is becoming a regular occurance, going until 5pm without speaking. 
But! Positives!
Lie within, does my voice, saves itself for the story telling I might one day be so good for.
Where? 

I can't even state or confirm an apology for my writing being so mislead, because it's never really been any thing. Unfortunately, I can't structure writing, I can't even write, I'm simply stringing together styles already read and terribly so, misspelling words and using incorrect meanings and... oh heaven knows.
And it does you know. Know of the silence in my head.

I wake up, and I'll drink the sweetest and most strongest tea imagineable, then I'll stretch like a cat might stretch, then a bit like a yoga instructor might - and then I do routined exercises. To supposedly flow my blood freely, to pump my heart a little faster and make myself feel ... human. Only, I never feel it. I never feel human.
I do not quite see the skin that wraps me as any thing to do with me.
And it's perfect, to be in such a balanced and delicate place of hilarious misery, feeling egotistical and yet extreme self-loathing - but I must be from another realm.
Tell me I cannot write something?


"I'm not from here", she said suddenly, as though waking. The shopkeeper paused momentarily, the receipt halfway in the bag, and said nothing. He seemed confused, as though she had just appeared before him, and until then he had not known even what job he was undertaking.
Perplexed by her own realisation, she took the bag silently, smiled like something she'd seen polite women do in films, and left the shop. 
The sun was vacant of it's placing, but baring down heavily nonetheless, and she'd much rather it wasn't. 
It would only be submerged in water where she was from.

Will you still love me tomorrow?

I had been looking for a voice,
With a sweet and by-gone grace,
I had been wishing to deliver the delicate thoughts,
With an eloquent and divine hum. My unfortunate admittance is that I shall never possess a voice, not one worth hearing, of course. I will write so practised and curled as might wish to be read due to it's beauty alone, but the stringing together of verbal release may not come to me. 
 I was once given an honest and well said opinion, that it was so shocking; the difference when I speak as to the words I am able to get down. Some one who might write as I, mightn't deliver a song as such.
As it is, I must cut this a little short, and write to absolutely no one that my writing has continued, for I have written every day, at least a word, detested or not. But I have not spoken every day.

I am not sure.

I may not have the words, you will find,
Each day of whisper, and each evening in quiet comfort,
You will see the words that bleed the page,
Only do,
And I am just the creature, the machine, that leaks them.

 I have felt the be,
The have, and the dance of words within my throat.
They flutter! they do! But such a different place,
Is the one they reside in before speech.

A stutter, my lips refused, I had found,
To release this to just any person before me!
Oh how my words knew who I was trying to paint with them!
And how they had refused!
So pleased am I now!