‘Nowhere Man’ is set in concentric airports, literal and then increasingly metaphoric and spiritual. Ivan, the central character, escapes his thirteen years of life in an unnamed airport, only to discover his need for the safety of a psychic terminal. Nowhere Man offers a bleak vision of contemporary identity, nation, citizenship and freedom and a spectacular, satiric, anti-Dickensian view of London’s streets.’
Dr Eva Sallis
Chapter One
Ivan tastes every angle of his moment. It is sweet, but tinged with bitterness. With a sweeping gesture he brushes the bitterness aside. It is not important. Today he is going somewhere. Today he is brimming with well being. He brings his hands to his mouth, kisses the ends of his fingers and waves benevolently to the air hostesses, so perfect in their little uniforms, their hair tucked neatly into place, their well wishes gratefully received.
‘Farewell, farewell,’ he cries before being whisked into a tunnel and sucked along with the hundreds of passengers. And in this tunnel there is just the faintest hint of the seasons. Underneath the stifling internal atmosphere he is so used to, Ivan can sense, almost smell the cold winter air of outside. He can’t believe it. Not really. After so long he has finally arrived. A dream has come true.
But at the very last moment the people before him stop suddenly, quite arbitrarily it seems, and everyone is forced to stand around under the ugly glare of fluorescent lighting with nothing to look at but each other. All of a sudden they are shy, they fiddle with baggage, peer at their passports, straighten hair and collars, avoid each others eyes. Ivan stands on the tip of his toes, staring wildly out over the sea of heads, trying to grasp what is happening ahead. He too avoids the eyes of others, not wanting to witness their guilt and fear, nor wishing to reveal his own, sensing somehow that when eyes begin to meet, then panic will follow. (more…)
in the darkness behind
closed eyelids
you can sometimes see
the rounded belly
flying fists
a foetus curling
away
only at dawn
when dews golden drops
sit glistening poised
on the perfect symmetry
of the spider’s web
can you see
the baby
strung
trembling
between worlds
I’m sitting next to Tim in the van, daydreaming, hands cradling my rounded belly, the baby lulled quiet by the engine and the gentle rhythm of the road. In the back, the children are asleep, mouths wide open, red hot faces and damp sticking hair. When they wake we will stop for lunch and after lunch we will move on again. We’re not going anywhere in particular, just meandering, letting one thing lead to the next.
After months on the road our days have formed a regular rhythm. Sometimes the children cry and grumble and the van fills with a sharp tension. Sometimes they play happily together and Tim and I spend time savouring long conversations. Often we sing along to children’s tapes, songs and nursery rhymes, played over and over. But there are also quiet times like now, when the children sleep or just stare out. Then we pass hours moving through flat landscape with low bush, termite mounds for as far as we can see, dry riverbeds, the occasional car … Regularly we see kangaroos, usually dead on the side of the road, their bodies swollen with the heat, or carcasses half devoured by Wedge Tailed Eagles who rise into the sky as we pass. The monotony has its own sort of beauty. There’s something hypnotic about it, something about the vast expanses that makes us look inward.
People give all sorts of things away:
opportunities, newspapers,
old clothes, poker hands,
even their hearts.
Sometimes a baby.
There are things at which I cannot look:
waves crashing on rocks far below
my children hovering at the edge
of an abyss
just out of my reach.
I cannot look at the second it takes
to turn one thing
into another.
And the way time doesn’t heal
though they say it will.
Averting my eyes
I circle
this seeping wound,
afraid of what I might see:
a knife embedded deep within,
or rough hands tearing a baby
from its mother.
it is still
winter
bare branches
trace an abstract pattern
of light and dark
daffodils
paint a pointillist picture
under the oak tree
it feels safe
branches curve
across the sky
sweep the ground
a giant skirt
I am safe inside its circle
how steady it is
how certain
in the midst of blaring traffic
scurrying feet
the frenzied rush of time
cradled here like this
I am sturdy and strong
roots reaching deep into the earth
trunk stretching to the sky
limbs moving in nature’s dance
cradled here like this
the centre of me is
still
I’ve lost my voice.
I left it behind, one ragged night
when the moon didn’t rise,
to help guide me back from the dark place inside.
I need a new voice,
or even an old.
Something raw and quite fresh,
fearless and strong
that shouts out to the sky,
falls gentle as snow.
Are you a fool?
Do you embrace the absurd?
Inhabit the wide spaces between black and white?
Do you speak only truth,
stick pins into dogma,
and cry out from the depths of your soul?
If you reach towards loneliness,
like a flower to the sun,
and can sit with the stillness. . .
Then please apply.