You may have noticed I’ve been pushing out more entries. The prime reason for this is to try to enforce some discipline in myself to write something, occasionally, resembling English. This in its turn is a reaction to a sense that I’ve lost the ability or time to create anything other than work-related documents and code. A dull boy indeed, with no play.
Here then, something inspired by a comment I heard in an interview from a victim of the recent terrorist attack in London…
Angel
It wasn’t until afterward that I understood that there had been a sound. At the time it was too huge to have been heard and understood as a sound. It was more like God had stood up from his chair, reached out and smacked the world off its axis. After it had passed, this single massive clap of noiseless noise, I could recall that for a moment every inch of my body had been exposed to a fathomless and insane pressure. We like to think that we’re akin to gods, that we stand outside and above and beyond the world. Every so often the world grabs us by the back of the neck and rubs our face in the dirt by making Something happen. And Something had very definitely Happened.
I wasn’t even supposed to have been here. I’d spent a lot of time telling anyone who would listen that sending me on this trip was a pointless waste of time and money. I was, of course, ignored. I knew I would be, but it’s part of my role in life to bitch and whine and moan and make sure everyone knew that I didn’t think things were going my way. Some managers fretted about this, and thought they had to do something about it. The smart ones ignored me, knowing that my whining was as meaningful as a dog barking at passing airplanes. The stupid ones seized on it as an excuse to teach me a lesson. It was a particularly stupid one who forced this trip on me.
At one workplace I’d had a sign up on the wall “Does not work and play well with others”. Most people thought it was a wittiscism, not a warning. I’m really not a people person, in case you hadn’t noticed, and am much better sitting in the back room building programs. The last thing any sane organisation should want is to put me on a plane, fly me around the world, and sit me down with customers, because when I get there I’m likely to tell the truth. This particularly stupid manager not only arranged that, he also pretty well guaranteed it was going to end in tears by arranging for me fly around the world, go to a meeting, then get on a plane and fly back.
I had the last laugh though. When the plane landed, and I turned my phone on, I found out that the client had cancelled the meeting. Sixteen hours I had. Enough time to get into town from Heathrow, check out the shoes in the Museum of London, do the Tower, and eat somewhere riducoulsly expensive on the company credit card. All of which is why I came to be riding inside one of the underground trains they’ve got here. The Tube. Mind The Gap, and that fantastic typeface they used for the signs, and huge crushes of people, and suprisingly little graffiti.
Then, Something Happened. Did you know when most people start stuffing about with video editing programs, they go bezerk putting all sorts of fancy transitions between shots, and never notice that professional editors just use simple jump cuts? It’s so obvious and simple, you never even notice it happening in films. Probably because that’s the way it happens in real life as well. No cross-fades, no barn-door blends, no shot-within-a-shot. Just bang, change. Something Happens. The world is one way, then it’s different. No duration in the transition, just change.
I guess you’ve already noticed. I talk too much. The bigger it is, the more I circle around it, waving my right hand so you can’t see what I’m holding in my left. Or so I can’t see what I’m holding. The way I see it, some things are too big just to tackle head on. Only by walking around them, looking from different angles, trimming some of the foliage that shrouds them, can I understand what I’m seeing. So. Something Happened.
One moment, it’s just rattling rocking through the dark, with a slightly sickly sort of yellow light turning everyone’s face slightly unreal. Jump cut. It’s dark, and the air tastes of hot metal and I’m on the ground, on my side, sort of propped up against something, like a post-modern Pieta. Bang. Jump cut. Something Happened.
After a few moments I started to be able to gather my scattered senses into something like thought. This must have been what it was like for the first proto-human. Without transition the raw animal input - noise, touch, smell, oh yes, the smell - comes together and the world divides into Me and Not-Me, and Now and Before and Soon are born. It wasn’t completely dark. There was grainy smoky light coming in through the window - above me? How did the window get up there? - enough to see that the carriage had been rammed through some sort of Dali-esque transformation. No, not Dali. Hieronymous Bosch. I could see things broken apart, inserted into each other, twisted together, with that sort of awful clarity Bosch used. I didn’t know what he was on when he painted this one, but I was glad I hadn’t had any of it. And still all only partially visible in this smoky noisy grainy light.
After smell, and sight, hearing began to return. My ears were ringing, and aching, and felt like I’d stuffed socks in them. On consideration, my eyes were aching and teary as well, burning, itching. I blinked a few times, and it eased, but the dipytch in front of me got no clearer. I realised my glasses had come off, and at the same time I realised that I could hear a woman sobbing. A little way in the distance, I could hear quiet murmuring, a sussuration of prayer or cursing. Have you ever noticed that? From a distance they can sound the same. You have to wonder if that’s why prayers are never answered. The angels can’t tell them from all that under-the-breath cursing we do. Closer, there wass a horrid keening whimper, like some small animal in pain. With a shock of shame I understood that it’s me making this horrid sound, and I flushed with embarrassment and fear that somebody else would hear.
I was slumped to one side, with my back against what I assumed was the train seat that I’d fallen from. How did that happen? My legs were stretched in front of me, but pinned beneath the weight of what I now saw was a man’s body. His back was to me, and I could see that he was wearing a suit that had a rip in it, up high, on one shoulder. He was lying very still. I tried to sit up straighter, to look over to my left, toward the front of the carriage, but the weight on my legs held me in place. Inconsiderate sod, couldn’t he have realised that the way he was lying was really, really uncomfortable for me? Let alone the whole personal-space thing. I know England is the home of rugby and buggery and all that, but I’ve never been comfortable with other men touching me, and now this one was just lolling about across my legs.
That whimpering got louder when I tried to sit up straighter, and started sounding really nasty and bubbly. God, I wished whoever it was would just shut up, stop embarrassing me, then I remembered that it was me whimpering and snivelling and oh God there was something sticking through me. Something Happened, and now I was sitting there, slumped to the right, with this Thing sticking into me. I bought my hand up and felt around in front of me. Something massive and jagged and metallic is in front of me, and as I ran my hand along it, toward my body, I knew that this Thing was rammed through me, and had pinned me down. When God wants you to stay in one place and stop moving, he doesn’t muck around. I could feel the sticky wetness on my hand, and knew that it was blood I could smell. My blood. I’ve got very firm ideas about that. Stuff that’s outside stays outside, stuff that’s inside stays inside, and that includes blood. I was still making that horrid sound, but that was alright, because it really, really hurt. Something Happened, and now I was sitting there, slumped to one side, bleeding to death.
It’s a myth that your life flashes in front of your eyes at times like this. Or maybe it happens for other people. I know I didn’t get a parade of highlights and warm fuzzy memories. All I got was a cascade of regrets, thoughts about things that I didn’t finish, that nobody else was going to finish or could finish. And deeper regrets. Things I wished I’d never done, because now I could never undo them - but hey, that’s what I woke up to everyday, what we all wake up to if we’re honest with ourselves. And mundane, foolish, pointless regrets. I regretted, most of all, that I’d never get a chance to apologise for the trouble it was going to cause, me lying here with the blood trickling out of me. Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about your life passing in front of your eyes. Perhaps other people got what I got: not the life they’d had, but the life they could have had, should have had, and the the rest of the life they were never going to get.
A slightly brighter light washed over the back of the man on my legs, revealing his greenish shirt through the tear in his suit coat. A figure moved into my line of sight, crouched over, placing her feet with care. Her. I could see it was a woman, lighting her way with a torch, dim, but still scattering enough light around that I could see her fully. Even dying, I looked at her and thought that she was a bit plump, a bit plain. Bizarrely, she grinned at me just as that thought passed, and I could see she had those awful teeth that so many English still have. Sixty years since the war, and they behaved as though Blighty was under attack and rationing was still enforced.
That was the other thing. Weird country. Some things are ultra-modern, terribly cutting edge, but at the same time they retain so many elements of the past. The Tower. That lovely typeface for the Tube signs. And this woman was wearing some sort of rough greenish-brown uniform that looked like it was hand-knitted four centuries ago and handed down through generations. It probably had been, come to think of it, just like the rest of her equipment. I could see she was obviously some sort of rescue worker, with her torch, and dicky flat-brimmed helmet, and a kind of breathing mask at her waist.
“Please”, I whimpered, coughed a little. “Don’t leave me here, I’m scared”.
“Don’t worry love, you’ll be right”. Cheerful. God, how could she sound so cheerful, couldn’t she see this Thing inside me? “Just a bomb, but everything will be right as rain. Can’t say as much for this bloke, but you’ll be up in no time.”
“Please, it hurts”
“This?”. She played the torch over me, in front of me. I could see that a metal beam was running down from the roof - now in front of me - pointing straight through me like a frozen beam of light. Exactly like a frozen beam of light, except it was hard, cold, jagged, bloody, and killing me. I’d stopped making that sound, but I could hear my breathing now. Little rapid pants, light, too quick. I knew it was bad. Something Happened. Yeah, that’s putting it mildly, isn’t it. Something Happened, and now I was pinned to the floor of a train, and I was dying, and I had Mary Poppins keeping me company. Hieronymous Bosch with a touch of Walt Disney.
“Don’t worry about that, we’ll get you sorted soon enough. Here, pop this behind your head and lean back.” She pressed something down behind me, something soft.It helped. I leant back a little, and the pain receded.
“You just close your eyes and rest love”.
I lifted my head.
“I’m scared, it hurts”
“Just rest a bit. The other’s will be here shortly, and you’ll be out in no time”.
I was so tired. Just breathing was tiring. I let my head fall back, and closed my eyes, heard her moving further down the carriage to the right, murmuring as she went. After a time, she faded away, or I faded away, because the next thing I heard was a sharp grinding noise from my left. A bright light shone through my eyelids, and I opened them. Voices, loud male voices, were calling to each other from out of the light, and I could see figures from a cheap 80’s sci-fi movie. All black and yellow and plastic, with huge plastic face masks, huffing and hissing like intergalactic villains.
“There’s one alive here!”
The light was throwing everything into sharp relief, like a flashbulb stuck forever on. I could see that the man on my legs, the man with the green shirt and torn suit, was dead. It’s a bit of a giveaway, really, nobody’s head twists all the way around like that in real life. I was sorry, then, that I had called him an inconsiderate sod.
“Over here! Lift him off!”
Two men bent, lifted the man in the suit off my legs, and I revelled in twitching my toes in my shoes, flexing my knees slightly. Another put his arm over my shoulder, slid me sideways. The Thing pointed an accusing finger at me but no longer pinned me in place, no longer breached my chest.
“The first girl said it was a bomb?” I whispered.
“Eh? What are you talking about?”
“The girl who came through first said it was a bomb. Was it a bomb?”
“Bombs all over the place mate.” he replied, as he helped me to my feet, his arm around me now.
Under some circumstances, I guess it’s ok for men to touch. I leant on him, started moving toward the front of the carriage. “Tell her I’m sorry I thought she was Mary Poppins”.
“Who’s that then mate?”
“The girl, the girl in the old khaki uniform who came through first.”
He paused then, looked at me with concern in his eyes. Through the mask, I could see that he’d cut himself shaving.
“Mate, you must have got a bit of a bang on the head, don’t you think? There’s not been anyone else through, we’re the first in here. It’s our job, rescuing people, innit.”
We started moving again. “Yep,” he continued, almost to himself, “bit of a tradition this, bombs going off, rescuing people down the Tube. Doing it for over sixty years, Londoners have.”
Something Happened. And it’s all jump cuts, no fancy transitions. But sometimes the editor gets to play around a bit, move things backwards and forwards, make changes, and you walk out of the cinema, not completely sure what happened, or who did what, or what it all really meant, in the end.