Catalyst

CATALYST

A time has come so momentous its necessity is terrifying. Decision time. I must utter decisions. Admit to them, own them, take responsibility for. But how to utter that which has always been unthinkable? Or perhaps denied because it has been unimaginable. The foundation stone of wishful thinking was firmly laid. We shaped a relationship around it: she and I. Creatively and with love, but there was a truth we avoided; and truth must eventually be spoken, or it corrodes, even the love and creativity. I have avoided confrontation. Leave well alone. But this moment has long lain coiled and waiting and I have sidestepped it. Just as I have sidestepped that coiled visitor sunning in the garden, our sanctuary. Do not disturb. It might uncoil and be calamitous.

But truth is stirring. Acknowledge me, it demands, and I will set you free. Deny me and be forever bound. How to negotiate such a tension? How to be seemingly traitorous yet honest? The usual, accepted, and treasured patterns are becoming smudged. Guilt, that most destructive of emotions, sours what was sweet.

I distract myself in the garden: banishing thoughts I cannot allow through physical activity. Reassuring rhythms: Raking, turning, weeding, mulching. Encouraging growth not endings. Hard yakka. Worked body feeling it. But keep going I tell myself. Turn the soil not your thoughts, sod it. Relieved to find there is still humour.

I am spent. I throw off all my clothes, stretch my body and embrace the sky. Savour the shiver of delight as the irrigation jet peppers my body. Move away and spread myself face up on the wide, clover-patched path beside the asparagus bed: arms flung out like a child playing dead. No thoughts. Sensation only. Sun. heat. Blinkered snatches of burning blue sky. Breath and heartbeat. Coming down. Soaked in sunshine and sensation. Thoughts assemble. I disperse them. All thoughts banished. I pluck a handful of clover and confetti it over my evaporating body. A zephyr ripples across my torso. Sensations only. Thoughts assemble. I dismiss them. Fond images arise: the blue wren, radar tailed, settling onto the old stump, cock-eyed and wary. A wriggle of fat worms in the turned compost. Smells: fresh hay, growth, abundance, decay. Cycles. Cherish this moment.

Thoughts arise. I survey them. What ifs, buts, supposings, if onlys, look at it this way. I inspect the troops. Recognising that, all in all, my life is in chaos. But, nevertheless, here is this golden moment. So rich. Even in all the heartache and fear and questing: heartrendingly beautiful. Blessed. Cherish this moment; it is a gift, fleeting. I have no idea what will eventuate, only that, as Beckett said, ‘something is taking its course’. No thoughts. Breathe......

Another image: Scarlett O’Hara silhouetted in a turnip field, fist held high in defiance, “As God is my witness, I'm going to live through this.” I laugh in spite of myself. Cherish this moment. Golden, golden moment. I could weep. I am so confused by this emotional downloading. Thoughts press, so unruly. Like a mob about to riot. Eyeball them. Tell them, "Everything is under control.” They leer. The hairline crack in the beautifully constructed facade of normality has now formed a running seam, a fracture. Denial now will mean collapse: a family of five buried in rubble. Repair will be an attempt to return to what was normal. Not viable, it is the one thing I have failed to be. Dismantle. Yes, that’s the word. But …Where to begin?

Fear has kept me passive. All will be revealed. There will be a way. I shall conjure one......... Breathe. Gently. Allow awareness, not thought. Breathe. Allow.

A sudden tightening in my gut. A drawing in. An attention-grabbing sensation. And now a message in my head. "Be still, don’t move! "A ripple of fear. Hold! Says a voice with no words. Sensation, cool, silken. A thought arises. A single thought I cannot allow. I do not want this thought, it’s …. "Breathe, Be still." A picture now to anchor the thought I mustn’t think. Yes, it’s got weight, it’s moving. I can picture it: undeniably, it’s moving. Undeniably. "Don't move” the inner voice commands. Yes! It is moving up and onto my belly. A snake. Undeniably. I want to slowly raise my head and look, but I know I must not move a muscle. "Don’t move! Attend." This is the most authoritative voice I have ever heard. "Listen: be Still. There is a snake gliding up between your legs and onto your belly". I am convulsed with stillness. My loins stir. Pure sensation. Loins. It is biblical. There is a snake.

Now, from just below my sternum to my inner thigh the serpent pauses in its progress. I feel its weight more keenly. Total cessation of movement: not a breath, not a twitch. Though I am wired: electric. Every nerve a conduit for a sense spectrum well beyond the five. In Extremis: that phrase fully comprehended. "Breathe. Gently. Gently exhale. Slowly and rhythmically: slowly and easily." My voice teacher from 27 years ago tunes in. ‘Hold, and gently.... in two three four: hold, and gently ...out two three four. "Oh, thank you Peter, thank you." "Be Still! " And the remembered choir boy within whispers ‘And know that I am God’. Oh, Jesus!’

This bombardment of sensations flashes through me in the brief seconds of stillness before the creature released its coiled energy backwards with a weighted tremor that rippled down my torso. Blood flows against itself and collects in a burning tide beneath the snake's body pattern. Silent cacophony. I wait. Conduit becomes a verb. I wait for the direction of movement to change, as I know it must. Anticipate, prepare, focus and here it is "release 2,3,4 "… and I silently orchestrate the next slither, which is to just above the collarbone and in towards my neck, where the pulse is a Darkest Africa drumming. The snake senses the pulse and pauses. I concentrate on the throbbing I have become. The signature in muscle reverses again: now down the entire length of my body and finally the tail section flickers and curls passingly under my balls. And it is only now that the throbbing relocates itself into consciousness of the staggering erection that announces itself. All rational is deserted. No logical sequence to thoughts or events. All is random. Simultaneous. I just am. A pulsing. The seat of fear and pleasure one point only. Centred. coiled. For an eternal moment we are one. The thing most feared and its prey are one. I am volcanic. “Be still.” Totally surrendered, totally in control. "Hold, and out 2,3,4 "… as it begins its descent over my shoulder. It slithers across a nipple and lightening arcs through me. All is random but I convince it into sequence. I nudge chaos into a meaningless collage of my own patterning.

“Breathe”

The snake continued in a hideously beautiful caligraphied glide across my chest: burning wound and silken caress. Down over my shoulder and onto solid ground. I breathe my head sideways and roll my eyes achingly upwards to watch the snake’s progress onto the newly mulched onion patch.

I knew instantly that I was changed and I have to make noises. Words are unthinkable. I execute a beautiful, slow, quiveringly exhaled sit-up. Over: onto knees. Stand. Walk backwards a few paces as if exiting from majestic audience then turn. Make the wide path by the sweetcorn, roll my head and gibbering begins to elbow its way forward. At first there is the beginning of a hideous laugh that goes nowhere before it is arrested by a huge sob that draws up all my neck tendons causing a snort to release them. This is followed by a great outrushing of air and a further pushing out of any residue. A complete emptying out. Then a great inflowing of clear, sweet air. Filling me. Lifting my arms. Then down again with another great emptying sigh. My jaw drops open, my knees sag, my shoulders slump and I being to slap my lips together as gibbering finally has its turn. It doesn’t last long. Just until the next lifting intake of air when I become aware of my nakedness. I have never been so wonderfully, freely naked. Exultant. Ga-Ga.

There is the experience of being completely bombarded by new sensations, witnessing the assimilation of data and connections in general while, at the same time, being in an emotional condition that allowed none of that to proceed. Madness! I am radiant. Incandescent. Illuminated with the certain knowledge that my way is now clear.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.