Departure and Arrivals + Horizon + Green Jean (photo)

Desolation; Departures and Arrivals

Walking, as I do slouched and humble, I feel the cold blow of the rain on my face and resent the hill for its existence. Its a tedious winter trip to a station lightened by a ticket hall attendant with a thousand reasons to smile. Down the escalator my carriage awaits crowded with sullen faces directed to screens and assorted paraphenalia. They ignore me as I find the last seat, allow my sodden coat to drip onto my neighbour, pull out the latest headlines and munch on a Bounty bar, dreaming of coffee at the end of the line. Steam relief before facing the next investigation into my slack work practice.

First into the office again. A stifled chat with half deaf security – another happy face enthusing about the coming day. There are so few of them. Our shared space empty, tangled wires, mounds of paper, punched chards litter the floors, broken biscuits crumbling to death in the red tin of romanicised endings, and a tedium of telephone messages remaining from last nights lonely, depressed callers seeking contact. A blowed sigh leaves my lips. I lift a cup and go to meet my dreamed steam. Coffee powder coagulates in a kitchen full of condensation. Thick, brown almost treaclely. Moist windows try to hide unkempt courtyards.

I’m not worried by the forthcoming meeting. I’m not down with or on management. They trade their status daily in exchange for distance, their own space and lonely days. We have a shared interest in surviving the next eight hours before wending home where heat takes on a more loving dimension in the night time, the right time of our lives, where we coalesce around food and friendly banter, soap operas and bedtime. So this was your day, these were the words you’d heard say, this was the reason for despair and these are my arms and this is my warmth and this is my heart beat beating, the reason for everything.

Colleagues drop in one by one their perfunctory greetings soiling the air with a lack of respect or care as they race to hide their insecurities behind a wall of desks. Their minds blank with nothing much to say or share. Positioned in place they wait for someone weaker to spit on. Each and everyone bent out of shape by expectation emanating from mothers, fathers, line managers, line manager managers, boards of directors, corporate brands and political thought patterns and each and everyone bent on bending others. Some of us get by. We know our way around. Rules and regulations conduct the flow here. The weaker, younger staff use them to understand what they can do and how. The older, more sophisticated drone worker use them to know what they can get away with. Interpretation of the rules will be my defence when we meet, when words are used to seek further methods of control. The early morning rain splatters the window, the higher hill has already been climbed, this slacker rebel remains. At home later we will discuss process, laugh in the face of work place oppression, talk up our means, our motives, reasons for what we do and why we really exist, come together and move forward. Love they say is the answer.

Love and only love. The things we do for one another extends the list we write on. Each indignity that keeps us apart is just another indignity on top of the last one. These build and mount and grow ever higher to the point the oppression enters our homes and stands to come between us. Work becomes the only expression for our voices. Our songs, stories and rhymes deserve better words. Our spirits need to soar and not lie down there in the slime, the mire, the mud and dog shit we have enabled to grow all around us. We are creators who forget how to create, lovers who forget how to love. We break down, recognise intrusion and make up singing the best part of breaking up is the making up but the scars of breaking up makes us wonder and every time we break we wonder more, seek and consider alternatives knowing truly there are none.

And still it rains outdoors. I am in her enclave. She is laying down her case. I watch drops dribble down the pane, tiny rivulets making their way, forking off in different directions. Distracted, careless, I am still mostly able to follow the drivel. Accountable. Transparent. “Have you ever read A and B. They are in the staff manual. Do you know what this means? Tell me how you see that?” She did her homework last night. I give half answers, obfuscating the answers she knows she is right to require in accordance with her limited parameters. Throw in confusions. Blur boundaries. Wait a chance to throw in the hand grenade. Simple interpretations delineate, demonstrate unexplored ground, gaps in policy, procedure which enable lesser practice. She knows she has lost this one. She understands that she needs to amend the manual, find agreement with the board, present to the team. She knows at every turn the democratic voice may throw a curve ball and she knows she rarely loses. He knows he just needs to get through a few more days and find his way back home where she is waiting, listening for the news, offering embraces.

Coming out the station the sun is shining. The hill goes down. My legs move faster. I arrive.

Richard Downes
11th January 2021
(From the Desolation series)

In response to Yoko Ono’s Earth Piece IV

Horizon

I sit looking blankly at the wall
Waiting for a plan to form
Pages, papers, pens with nibs
The tools with which to disguise
Intentions. The scheme is called escape.
Pages, papers full of words
Designed to empty pens of ink
The nibs remain to pick and scrape
At masonry cementing bricks together.
Bricks together that hold uniform
Uniformity, rules, regulations, routine
Courtyard exercise and selected special duties
The travails of a life inside
Fear and unsafe friendships.
Yet as I write I still might find
Reflections on a better time
Past, stuck in the frame of yester year
Or waiting for tomorrow.
Tomorrow when the bricks come down
Tomorrow when these walls I formed
No longer tie me down
And I am free to roam
Safe in a sunshine state of mind
With long horizons to walk toward
Long horizons to walk toward

Richard Downes
3^rd June 2019
(from the Acorn series)