Taosurfing cont...

***

So ....where was I ?

Oh yes

Stoke on Trent

illicitly living

with

two greeks.

***

Well, actually

it all began ......

this particular chapter

of

The Book- One

started in Cheshire.

***

Life

is a bit of a continuum isn't it

so

it's tricky to ever say

where events begin & end.

***

However ......

becoming of no fixed abode

happened

in Cheshire. The slide began with the Foot & Mouth

"outbreak"

Though, much trauma had torrented through

the preceeding 10yrs.... a lot of loss

waiting in my life theatre wings.

After the year of Foot & Mouth and 911.

My working life suffered as I fell apart.

***

2001

The year had started with huge change, moving

onto a farm, an organic and natural, ancient farm.

I was to work with my plant oils from there. I specialised in Horses and Cows

The government didn't.

***

It was all going so well ......

In the mayhem andmadness of the slaughtering

I stayed sane befriending the Internet

finally enjoying Damion the computer demon

who gives me fatal error panic attacks

One afternoon, I wrote an e mail to a web group

I just said

please

is anybody out there

please

send the Animals

and the Farmers and all, healing and prayers.

***

15,000 amazing people e mailed me that long terrible summer

kept me strong, helped the Animals.

But then, I fell apart.

***

Of course, no one must know. So, you get on with it

Cope by not coping. Do what you can.

Stay on the burning deck in the storm to end all storms

You know somewhere inside, it's not right, how it is, life i mean, yourself too,

it's a time of discovering clarity

but you can't quite hear it

clearly enough.

***

The day to day stuff delays the inevitable crash. It went on for three & a half years.

Only when given my notice the tenancy was ending and violence happened

when a man was shot outside my front door, did I let go.

There was no longer a deck nor a ship and the captain was a wreck.

On the day before I left my home

I cracked a bone in my arm

So I was all broken and out and pretty down

And alone as the day I was born.

***