The Well- taken from the published book Our Lives as Fiction- Copyright 2013

THE WELL

taken from the published book Our Lives as Fiction- Copyright 2013

I fell deep into the mouth of a hidden well, that was lying vacant and forgotten at the side of a field and I struggled to catch my strength, for the wounds were deep and I bled little drops of crimson blood against a bed of mountain ash and alder leaves.

Fear took me, and I felt as if were in the middle of a dream sequence lost in the loneliness of my mind, amongst a labyrinth of anxiety and distorted resolve.

My left leg was like a log, it was heavy, numb and the sting of pain bore down on me in excruciating pain. I looked up at a distant ring, at the top of the well, to look out in wishful thinking and saw the blue sky in its metamorphoses, as the stars were growing in the heights of the scarlet flames above me.

It grew dark, and the day had truly tired for its attention and now I lay like a dormouse in a place where people would not find me.

“Hello, Hello, is there someone there?”

“Help me, I’m trapped in the well, someone please help.”

Nothing stirred, not man or beast, but the faint thrilling echoes of the songbirds somewhere in the trees beside me. I could not see anything around me, as darkness grew every minute, but still I’d watch the stars above looking out like a child again.

I began to fear for my life, and in desperation, every part of my body began to cause me, for I felt nausea in my stomach, my hearted belted on, my brain was filled with an emotional imbalance and my legs and wrists felt cramped and sore as I lay almost curled up against a small mound of damp leaves, moss and dirty residue against the cold, underground fortress of brick and twisting ivy.

I began to say “This is it, this is death!”

“There’s no escape! No one will find me tonight, and no one will find me in the morning, even if I’m still alive.”

I wept aloud, like a child weeps when he feels he is all alone, and is concerned with the usual traumas which typify many childhoods. But now I knew that I was alone with my breathing, with my body heat and the stars above, but yet as I moved out my legs to adjust my them from a foetal position, so to sit up and cross my legs, my mind was moving side to side and thoughts began to fill my head.

I could see my mother like a vision, so transparent all before me, and she stood wearing her finest and oldest dinner apron and a held a spatula in her grip while a scent of beef and onions filled my fantasy. But it was only fantasy. In the pitch dark I looked up at my midnight lamp above and this inspired me to remember once more a girl who once held my heart in a wild entrapment of emotion long ago, I lost all trace of her like a stone swept through a river onto a distant ocean far away. I reimbursed my memory and watched her face glow in delight, it was her birthday and I made her breakfast in bed, and on the carpet there were pink posies and red roses all arrayed in a romantic effort to bring sweet bliss to her and show the enormity of my feelings.

But I knew then and now, eternally, even as I watched the vision of her sallow skin covered in pink petals, even then I knew that it was a dream, about a lady and her lover, a shy and loving boy, with big ambitions and beliefs. He was a child, a poet and a dreamer, and felt that his phase with in love was to be sacrificed to the demands for his life and his mission. She would not leave me after I announced my wish to stay away from her and I stated that I would never be fit or strong enough to uphold a relationship with a woman in a generation where almost every influence in every person comes from society’s beliefs and their social position. Second I stated that I hated having a relationship which was built on sex or that which revolved around a psychological and sexual mesh and imbalance. To me a perfect relationship is formed on a common agreement and a plutonic love that outlasts every physical defect and every challenge of any kind and this love in every way only fuels a marriage of admiration and union between two sexual opposites, man and woman. A perfect love is like a friendship between two children, where innocence is uncorrupted, where age is defied and joy is exalted above ordinary reason. Two children are at ease in play and in full use of their imagination and their minds and so for every lust to be removed and then such a love will lead to a new and reformed form of Eros between the lovers.

But I knew that she would move on and be content with another man to keep her company and give her adoration.

As I lay like a woodlouse that struggles and wriggles with a frantic movement of feet in a feeble effort to get off its side again, I began to feel certain pangs of hunger in my belly and I began to reminisce about every Saturday morning fry up, the bacon, the sausages, the works and also on every childhood speciality from Chicken Kiev to a freshly cooked lasagne piping hot and sizzling as it came out from the oven all ready to serve up to the guests.

“Help, help”

No one heard, my muffled cries, and muffled they always seemed to me. If you have a problem, shout it out to the others, let them know, don’t suffer another day with a problem all alone. “Never be alone in life”, said mother, “every body must be made of other lives and contacts, why go alone against a storm when there are shelters and abodes with many people and friendships to seek shelter while the storm in life comes and goes. When the storm is over, you can walk the distance to you’re destination in a calm repose of happiness”, But I never really dwelled too much on her words and yet they lingered on in me as I could not go the distance to my next crossing in the fields above me since I could do nothing now but dwell and rest on time.

I began weep, and sob uncontrollably in a state of shock, I wrestled against my numb sensations and I tried to climb at both side of the damp and ivy ridden well. I clutched onto the ropes of ivy and watched them break and found myself tumble down again and again onto a bed of leaves. My leg was sorer than ever and my head was throbbing in a pulse that gave a sense of fate and destiny, in the sweat and tearful stomach of the well.

I sat attentively, peering up at the stars to see if anything would happen as the hours past before me, like a man looking straight into a mirror which reflected every feeling in his soul. I began to wonder why such fear had taken me all my days and why I was afraid to swim and yet conquered the salty bath of the sea and why I was afraid of the dark and yet grew to accept its lease of time at night amongst the day. But wondered truly and more importantly why I had always been so petrified of other people, people who had come and gone and were now just faces in my memory, who never came to register in my days again. Even the cruelty of these people was in opposition to life itself. They were wandering in an innumerable city which they were trapped in and part of an education which was untruthful to themselves and to life itself. They were like castaways on a desert island who sent out the wrong signals on their insecurity.

They became demons in my mind, playing out unhappy tribulations in the darkness of my dreams, but every morning their tiny traces disappeared and the morning came like a guardian willing and ready to scare them off.

“Help, help, help”, I shouted out as loud as a megaphone and a man facing the desperate enclosed situation, called reality.

Would my family be out looking for me?

Would they be thinking of me and be concerned for me and worried why I had not returned when I said I would only be a half an hour.

I could only guess what everyone was doing, they were getting ready to head for their beds and go asleep. Maybe they were out looking for me, searching restlessly for me with a torch and a crowd of neighbours, with a prayer to help me out?

When I thought about death, I was afraid of the uncertainty ahead and a typical vision of darkness and fear came up swelling in my mind like a mental ulcer which irritates one for hours on end. But I came to a reasonable conclusion, that nothing truly final can be stated on death, only speculation can be given, on those who have not tried and have not know. As I child was afraid of the water, afraid to ride my bike, afraid to climb the dizzying heights of the Wicklow Mountains with my father and afraid to face other people, but yet every time I came to learn, to accept and overcome these because I had to learn, the wisdom and the truth which sets you free. Such wisdom is a weapon against every fear within us. I had taken for granted the vast potential which life gives in its diversity and I knew not where this consciousness had come from or where it went. In my calculation, I could concur that every thing was so vast and sufficient and yet stable for life to exist and what stopped me from believing that it stopped with a physical human death. I knew that God that made the scent of wild poppies beside the scene of the stars in the great intoxication of the night. All I had to do was adjust my thinking and believe that pain is overcome in our lifestyles and beliefs more easy than in worry and so in death, we must release ourselves in the situation and strike our oars against the water very slowly. All my past experiences made me feel as if I was on a mission and the well was my cocoon and my eyes onto the world as I began to calm myself all I had to do was rest and wait for the morning to come. In the well I saw all time measured in certain journeys and travels to accumulate more wisdom upon wisdom and strength upon strength. How could life end when everything was incomplete, man was not finished but left at great length to wonder and question everything.

But as I sat beside the leaves I found myself getting tired and ever more tired by the minute and so I fell asleep.