Previous | Next :: Looking Back : New York Taxi Driver : USA | May 13, 2011, 6:58 pm

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Today I sat in a garden....... and dozed a little in the sun............ I never do this...... just never......... well I guess I have done it before now........ but so long ago ........ It almost started to remind me of another life........ sitting in the garden with my parents as a child ........ kind of made me think back to other times between sleep and waking.............. I was dreaming and looking back .........

I am 10 years old on a wide beach in Wales ....... I am on the edge of sleeping.......... I am feeling the sun on my face and body .......... the sensation of sand......... I see the reed stalks blowing through my half closed eyelids......... highlights of sunlight in my eyelashes ........ The sensation of sunlight and blue sky....... the wind..... the sensation of this abandoned beach.... Almost in the dunes the sea and the wind are no match for the warmth of the sun .......... I am sliding into sleep as happy as I have ever been in my life ...........

I am walking home from junior school with my brother Michael, but we have stopped in the park. We are looking up at the sky through the leaves of the oak tree as we lie on or backs in the grass...........

We are older now........ I have been drunkenly helping my brother to get on a random horse on the way home from the pub........ but it bolted away.......... we lie in the pitch dark field, we have drunk way too much and we laugh uncontrollably.

I am in the bath trying to clear Ken's blood from inside my nose and from my ears..... and from my hair...... and from where it still clung to my eyebrows and hid under my finger nails........... Like Lady Macbeth I am washing but it stays with me.......... I am almost completely submerged lying in the bath ......... the water is on my face and the horror is in my head.

I have been crying in my sleep ..... Outside beyond the wire a mother screams for her dead child .......... I'm in a tent on the Rwandan border surrounded by death ....... I am weeping for my brother............

I am under the bar with Keith... its 3AM in Belize .......... The storm is thrashing the shore and the lightening is incredible....... To avoid the horizontal rain he and I sit on the metal rail placed below the barstools for drinkers feet........... The wind is howling but in this one spot we are warm and dry....... beer in hand I shut my eyes and lean my head back against the bar.

I am listening to the radio....... the BBC World Service is coming through my sleep....... It is dawn...... I am in Gaza ....... "and now back to the main news of the day"....... "Chinese tanks and other military vehicles have entered Tiananmen Square part of a bloody military crack down to crush the student pro democracy protest "..............

I am a child watching the magical dappled sunlight dancing on the orange canvass of our tent, my mum is making breakfast and talking to my dad. My brother and sister are with me, they are still sleeping................

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

www.jezblog.com

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