WRITING PRACTICE AND STUDY SHOWCASE:“Cracked, part two” by Stephen Carruthers

                           The degree of abuse suffered is not always obvious
                            to the observer but only known by the victim who is 
                            reluctant to share it with others.               
                            (Please feel free to handle the pieces)

                                                                                    Ralph Mavin

 

----

A man gets up one morning and he leaves his family.

----

A man gets up one morning and he finally leaves his family. They need him now more than ever. This is the fear that he wakes up with every morning.

—-

There is the fear that he wakes up with every morning, that he is back there and it is still happening and they never got out. It is still happening and they never got out and he wakes up every morning, never knowing when they might come.

There is the fear that he wakes up with every morning,

that every morning he will wake up

           

                                                                        and he will see

There is the fear that he wakes up with every morning that he is still here. Won’t ever go back.

This too is a fear he wakes up with and

There is the fear that he will forget,

that he will forget because he never again will see                 his mosque                  his
zouhourat             his nargilah                                   

His taste buds.  His taste buds will no longer be his taste buds.

He will never see, his kids will never see

                                    his dusty road                          his stinking sewer

There is a kind of tree blossom there

He knows he will forget.

—-

There is the fear that his wife wakes with, every morning. And there is the fear that he can’t ever make that go away

the fear of his daughter                       the fear of his son      the waking every single morning

his                   

He wakes up                           with fear.

So he gets up one morning and he leaves his family.

—-

He leaves his family and he walks down the stairs of a tenement building.

A tenement building

A tenement man

He walks down the stairs of a tenement building and it is sleeping and the building is sleeping because it is early and

                        When it comes to the good old Scottish tenement close,
                        the rear-view mirror of historic recollection always has a
                        rosy tint to it. It’s a staple of Scottish urban folklore, for
                        instance, that no close door was ever locked against a  
                       neighbour.

                                                                                                The Herald

He goes down the stairs in the tenement building and every door is locked and he does not and he does not how to speak to any of them.

How to say hello.

How to say hello in a way that
 

It is early and he does not even know where these people work.

It is early and his family are sleeping, so he goes down the stairs. He steps into the street. It is not so early that it should still be dark. But it is still dark.

Orange glow                street lights

                                                            the street lights shine through his curtains when he can’t sleep and it is still dark but it is already morning.

It is his street. He walks down the street, the hill, and down to the city and

 

To what?

To work?

To go and get the smell of early morning bread?
 

He walks down the hill to the city and it is dark when he gets there, and everywhere morning things          morning things, he can understand that much                                     are happening

 

People run                   walk dogs                     call out to people         to stop in the square for a cigarette                 drink coffee     paper cups

They pay to drink coffee. Out of paper cups.

 

This is his city now, he thinks. This is his city square. So he walks right                      down                the                  middle              of         the road

 

He walks right down the middle of a road and he might as well raise his hands and scream    “I am crazy!      I know I am crazy!”

No one notices him.

 

This street is pedestrianized. This street is a zig-zag of grey bricks that he already knows soak up the rain and are treacherous to old people with sticks and bags in winter                                 in winter

This street is pedestrianized.               He is a pedestrian.

                                                          

—-

He gets up another morning and he leaves his family.

He walks away and he leaves them sleeping. He walks down the stairs of his tenement, down his street, down the hill that leads to his city and its sickly, orange glow. And no one looks at him because it is early, no one even sees where he might be going, what he might do, in the state of mind that he is in

Why does no one watch                      watch every single little thing that he is doing?

He knew people who looked.

And this dark dark dark

—-

The dark morning is a refuge of sorts

Is it safe in the early morning, in the darkness and the rain?

 
While no one is looking?

—-

His coat is stupidly thin, to keep out the cold of winter, to keep out any of the cold of winter, let alone the rain seeping in.

But his small rucksack is heavy. It too is wet in the rain.

They tell him they are looking for a better coat for him. They tell him they are looking for a suitable coat and he does not know what that means but at least there is a coat for his son and a coat for his daughter.

He walks down the street. He walks right down the middle of the street, in his stupidly, woefully thin coat, and the nothing underneath it, the absolute nothing it conceals and

 

He walks up to an old building, and to a new building. It is pillars and stone. It is steel and glass. It is                     and

                        A whole formed by identical separate parts. Would it look
                        better all smoothed into one cohesive mass or do the
                        corroded crevices add to the interest?
                       The individual layers are lacking in definition and hence
                        of less interest.

                        It is the message not the image which is of interest.

                                                                                                Ralph Mavin

He walks up to the building and he knows that it is important. He supposes that the building is beautiful. He supposes that in its own way, it is meant to look beautiful.

He walks up to it and it is an art gallery and he remembers. Art. Such things.

He thinks of pictures and words and shapes and colours and explosions He thinks of songs and rhymes and sculpture and music and a roar of noise. He thinks of dreams and drama and messages and ideas. He thinks of voices.

He thinks of people’s voices being heard.

He thinks of everything art can be,                  that he knows that art can be.

He knows, and when it comes to the important stuff, he needs to remember

None of

 

He sees a sign.

    
                                    “Open 10 – 5”
                                                                Gallery of Modern Art

 

He sees a sign. So it is time to act.

   

                                                                                                    “Ceramics        by Ralph Mavin”
                                                  
                                                                                                                        Gallery of Modern Art
He sits down on stone steps, lets damp seep into his trousers. They are thin and he does not care and they are stretched at the seams, but it does not matter.

   

They will not let him in the building for another three hours.

   
They will not

But at least                                           he will be ready                       

           

He sees pots. He sees pots and signs and writing.

                        The part which is folded back on the bottom left still
                        shows the same ribbed markings forming a pictorial link
                        and identifying it as a whole rather than two separate
                        pieces.

                        This is very subtle, but there is something there which
                        could be developed.  It just needs some cerebral soak time
                        to find it.

                        Note – the hole was not made by a bullet.

                                                                                                            Ralph Mavin

He will wait.
 

For the creative dissertation of the MLITT, Stephen submitted the first section of an experimental, fragmented novel based loosely around the Japanese art of Kintsugi. This artistic philosophy treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than as something to conceal which, lends itself to exploring issues to do with mental health and belonging. Cracked, part two is one fragment from this novel in progress.