The Flight

I had three ideas I was sure would work. First, I could barricade her into my flat. Second, I could barricade her out of my flat. Third, I could hide her Green Card. Once I realised that I'd not quite got the heart or the neurosis to put any of these plans into practice, I knew I'd have to resort to other tactics.

     
Jo was of course leaving for Seattle in the early hours of this morning, after five weeks in England, and the last eight nights staying in my flat. The bestest friend I could ever hope to have - after eleven years of love passing between us, five years of living together. I can't remember a single row we've had in that time, or a time I didn't trust her implicitly. My family, my sister, my confidante, my spiritual ally. And she was sodding off back to Seattle forever.

     
I decided "I shall be a rock, impervious to all emotion." I certainly wasn't going to be reduced to a blubbering mess. We had only one hour left before bedtime so my plan didn't seem too ambitious. I ensured that my Itunes played no music with an acoustic guitar in it or worse, a harp. Then I sat like a wooden post at the end of my sofa, pondering whether to just put on Eastenders and pretend she wasn't there. I even considered informing her that I couldn't get upset for health reasons. Since my recent discovery of two frown lines on my forehead, any kind of emotional stimulus that worsened them would be quite out of the question.

     
Then she cuddled me. The cow. We squawked like two chicks in a nest, tears flying out from our eyes and landing on each other. Tissues streamed between us like great, soggy clouds. I knew it was too late to lock her in my cupboard. Jo, my loveliest of all Jos, was flying the coop.

     
She left at 4.30 am, as I hunched in my bed feeling a strange ache in my chest. I pulled up the duvet as she scuttled round in the hallway outside my door, collecting up her things. Then I flung it open and we hugged, my eyes stuck together with tiredness, my hair no doubt standing on end.

     
Now there's a Jo-shaped hole in my living-room, but I'm imagining her winging her way across the ocean as I write this, towards her new life. It's a beautiful image. And I got a chance to say goodbye this time, to wave her off, to wish her well, and hear her close the door behind her.

     
Never underestimate the preciousness of true friendship. It's like family - it runs in the blood, it is a tract that crosses all land and sea, returning home, again and again, no matter the miles.

A couple of nights ago we watched Lars and the Real Girl. They played this Talking Heads song in it, and it's one of my favourites. So this is for Jo. It's nicely weird, especially towards the end.

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of The Moon ..

We made a routine out of sitting by that cliff edge. We nipped back and forth from our tent as though the cliff, the seamless sky and the sea below it were simply the corner shop or the loo.

I lay back and looked. He was constantly naming stars and constellations, happiest to sit and gaze up. I was constantly discovering all the things I still feel I need to do in my life, things that I probably never will, but somewhere still hold a light to, hoping that one day ... when I'm rich, when my life is different, when I've completed the training, when I'm older and more settled, when I win 35 million on the Lottery.

And we would scuttle back to the tent and sleep or wake or giggle, and then we would be back there again, lying back, gazing upwards, him naming constellations, me discovering yet more things that I still want to do in my life and possibly never will. The list became endless ...

I must go up in a space shuttle and orbit the Earth. I have to fly to the Moon. I want to go to Mars as well. I want to be a rockclimber. A mountaineer. Go paragliding. Own and fly my own bi plane. Do formation dancing whilst strapped to its wing. I've got to climb Everest before I die. I will one day go to Antarctica. Can I live without having stood at least once amongst penguins and ice? I must understand all religions. I want to be wealthy. I must become Enlightened. I want to know Christ; journey to France to live alone with nothing but the clothes on my back. I want to be a mother. I will be a writer. How far off is that journey in a tour bus? What about the record deal? Can I build that home in the desert with my own hands? Will I ever really know what it is like to live as a drunken poet, willing to sacrifice all decency? Where is that great movie script inside me? How can I live to the end of my days without knowing what it's like to be a man? Is there any bird that could bear my weight on its back as it flies across whole continents? Why can't I write a PHD on Quantum Physics? Why do I still think stars are little candles in the sky? Why does my head explode when he tells me that the star I'm looking at isn't a star, but is actually a whole galaxy which itself contains millions upon millions of suns just like our own sun in it, and it is 2.5 million million light years away, with each light year itself being the equivalent of 6 million million miles away?

This cliff edge is strong. It's pulling me out towards the fulmars and the black-backs. Then it's taking me further, out into the inky mass of blackened planets, to where my craving meets my soul and both explode in starlight. These dreams are not the work of idle moments. They live in me like a constant heart beat; most of them since I was a child. Back in those days, so much was fantasy, an unattainable goal. These days it is not always easy to know what is far fetched and what's real. The moon landing or the record deal. The bi plane or the novel. The Big Bang or the Holy Spirit. However, craving, and the vision it brings does not usually possess me as much as it has on this cliff top; on this strange and beautiful cliff of longing.

I look at him. He has some secret I cannot yet discover. He simply watches and looks, his nose edging upwards towards the wings that pass above him. If I could be so content. If I could sit and remember it is all here now - the moon, the stars, the space shuttles and the backs of birds. My dreams are always of travelling, of flying, of taking off, or else they are of being struck down, struck by a lightning bolt that illluminates everything. Do I dream of angels? Yes, sometimes; as much as I dream of dirty bars. Is it here, now? Of course it is.

I like it here. There are no signs of a normal life lived here in these parts. We are happy. Him and me. At the edge. Both of us dreaming, in our own ways.