Into the Redwoods: A Journey of Self

‘...to escape is the greatest of pleasures ... the greatest of adventures. Still as we approach our own doorstep again, it is comforting to feel the old possessions, the old prejudices, fold us round; and the self ... sheltered and enclosed.’ - Virginia Woolf

Or is it?

~

As I pulled away from the box-like greyhound bus station in Eugene, Oregon, I thoroughly enjoyed the sight of Matthew disappearing in my rear-view mirror. I felt a weight lift. My irritating companion successfully off loaded, I could now enjoy the 650-mile journey back to Santa Cruz, where I was living in California, and stop wherever I damn well wanted.


When I tell people about my road trip with Matthew, in August 2002, they generally mention such likely examples as, “Ah, yes, ‘A Walk in the Woods’!” But Bill Bryson’s story of taking on the Appalachian Trail and (almost as a by-product) re-awakening a long-neglected friendship, is quite a different story. Bryson’s book is about the walk, as indicated in the opening paragraphs where he describes the trail itself: the length, the states passed through, the names of the various hills, listed almost as old friends: ‘Blue Ridge, Smokies, Cumberlands, Catskills’ and so on. A book about the walk and the companionship. Yet this memoir is not about the journey, nor even Matthew – it’s about me. It is about what happened inside me, on that way back, and has something to do with why I question Woolf in the opening epigraph: the idea that who we are at home is not who we are when we travel.


It came about when Matthew had contacted me and asked if he could stop by and say hello on his way up the West Coast of the USA. I was eager to see him again and suggested we make a road trip of it together. I had been living in Santa Cruz for a few months and was keen to see more of the country that was currently my home. So I borrowed some camping gear, and loaded it along with his into my 1986 Honda Accord and we headed off, driving up to through San Francisco, over the Golden Gate bridge (a car related thrill even greater for me than getting my Californian Driving licence), and headed up Highway 101, the coastal road that leads passed some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. Six hundred and fifty miles later however, I was more than pleased to see the back of him.

I had met Matthew two years before, when we were both in an Indian ashram during the millennium. He was the newish partner of a lady with two children, who was a friend of my then wife, Ocean, and we were there with her son, Elijah. Together we formed a party of seven, and got along well. In both cases, it was the women who were keener to be there, to discover the spirituality of the ashram, so Matthew and I shared a bemusement that bonded us. The ashram in question (Sai Baba’s) could hold up to 50,000 people and during the two months we spent there it went from a few thousand up to about twenty and then back down again, as the new millennium passed. Making that scale of gathering work took a phenomenal amount of organisation, and the army of devoted helpers, known as Savas, were both impressive and formidable. Consequently, for Matthew and I, the intense spiritual and devotional goings-on was at times challenging, and we found solace in shared humour: one day, for instance, Matthew had wondered out loud why they kept putting little red dots between our eyebrows, and I’d replied it was probably to give God something to aim at. It was a reflection of my stress at the time (Ocean – not a natural mother – had volunteered herself as part of the Christmas celebrations, leaving me alone with a sick child). But Matthew appreciated that kind of humour, and to me he was a sense of support.


One could say that since then he had moved on, while I had not. But whichever explanation you want to give it, since our last meeting he had been ‘studying’ under a guru himself, and developed a spiritual zealousness I was unprepared for. As we travelled north, I came to see he had adopted the infamous spiritual practice of being utterly honest in every moment – known as ‘being authentic’. It works well when everybody is doing it by mutual consent, but it clashes badly with normal, everyday manners and customs. This was the kind of ‘spiritual makeover’ I discovered had taken place within Matthew since our last meeting, and I was stuck in a small car with it. As we travelled, he shared his new enlightenment freely: he passed judgement on everything we encountered; refused to stop anywhere that had a sniff of tourism about it; insisted on telling the people we met exactly what he thought of them, and above all, made it his mission to critique any part of my personality he felt needed spiritual cleansing. The aim of this last part was intended to force me to be equally ‘authentic in every moment’ – otherwise known as, getting a reaction. But since I am – or used to be –too meek to do that, he became increasingly determined and thus unpleasant until, when we had stopped for a swim in a creek near our camp site, he jumped me in a mock attack. No maliciousness was intended; he had simply decided to use a physical assault as a way to force me to be ‘authentic’. In a sense, it worked: the next day I informed him, authentically, that I was not enjoying the trip with him; and would authentically take him to the nearest greyhound bus station and authentically bid him an authentic farewell. I then refused, to his utter frustration, to discuss it, saying it was simply something I was going to do. I won’t pretend I didn’t rather enjoy doing it though, and felt no guilt about it whatsoever. And that was the end of that. So no, not really ‘a walk in the woods’ friendship bonding adventure, and once having said goodbye, albeit with a hug, I joyfully turned my car around and headed home, my way.

 

Although I had been to America a few times in the past, and had now come to live there, I am by nature quite nervous of the world. This is partly a side effect of boarding school, which does tend to teach that the world is fundamentally unsafe. Ironically though, it also leaves you with a sense of not belonging anywhere, which can evolve into a tendency to drift. Consequently, I had left home almost immediately upon leaving school, and moved through numerous places across the south of England, before confronting my fear of travelling abroad by going to work in Spain. Indeed, this pattern of wandering had continued throughout my 20s and 30s to such an extent that by the time I reached 40, I could work out that the length of time I had stayed in any one dwelling averaged out to only 7 months. Given this, it seemed incongruous to me that I still found leaving home made me nervous, even though once I had, I seem to enjoy the change and feel a powerful sense of freedom, and peace. Yet it was not until this trip, that I started to have a sense of why.

 

Travelling with Matthew had been a buffer against the unexpected, I had used him as an excuse to do what I wanted to do anyway: to go for a wander. But now that I was on my own, and some distance from home, I had been bridged from safe-at-homeness into that wonderful state where there is nothing familiar around me and nowhere in particular to have to go or be. Moreover, I started to get a sense that being alone, with hundreds of miles of Northern California between me and where I called home, mirrored my own inner world. I was in my mid 30s: old enough to know something of myself, but young enough to still be confused by much of it. That sense of not belonging anywhere, of not having a true hometown or even family home (my own family had long since scattered), was like a bereavement for something I’d never had. It hung over me as a gentle sadness, and no doubt was partly responsible for inspiring Matthew to be so irritatingly provocative towards my less-than-delighted-with-the-world perspectives. However, those of us who have lived a significant amount of time in that state of mind, have a lot of experience of our own company, and depending on the degree of self-awareness that goes with it, we can be at peace with that. It isn’t realistic to think we should be happy all the time, after all. If we were, there would be no incentive to look within and learn more about ourselves. This truth seems to become even greater when experiencing a journey through foreign lands — foreign to oneself that is — because travel has the unique effect of making us more conscious of each moment. When we spend almost every day in the same place, doing the same thing, we don’t notice time go by, and although my own experience, being based on having lived in so many places, meant my life had already seemed a lot longer to me than the sum of its years, travel still greatly intensified it.

To make the most of this phenomenon, I decided to once again stick to the smaller roads going back. I could have zoomed the whole way on Interstate 5 at the exciting maximum speed of 65mph. But I already knew Highway 101 to be more diverse and changing in scenery. It was also the road that would lead back to one of the places I had wanted to stop at on the way up, which Matthew had been so against. Highway 101 (as can be seen by the 3d map above) goes through the north Californian Redwood Forests, and that was what I most wanted to see. 

So, I let the I5 take me 140miles down to Grants Pass, then slipped across via Highway 199, to settle back onto the coast road from Crescent City onwards. I will admit, that this memoire isn’t allowing for every adventure or stop I made, for I did also cross to visit Mount Shasta around this point, a diversion of 300 miles (because who wouldn’t want to boast they’d climbed 9000 feet up a mountain without getting out of their car), but for the most part I stuck to the 101, the coast, and the Redwoods.

I adore Redwoods, and among the many forest trails, which visitors could follow, was a stop called Trees of Mystery. This one has a cable car option, to take visitors high into the forest mountains. Unfortunately, in the car park entrance was a giant statue of an American folklore hero, known as Paul Bunyan, along with his pet ox, Babe. This highly colourful example of American tourist art had made Matthew – authentically and forcefully – refuse to stop, so for me it was a must do visit on my way back. I almost rushed to get there – probably my rebellion against Matthew’s ‘spiritual purity’. Whatever the motivation, it proved to be a powerful and significant experience for me.


The well-prepared, laid pathway wound slowly and peacefully among the redwoods, gently sloping upwards. If you’ve never been around Redwood trees, it’s difficult to imagine. Even photos don’t really do it justice. It’s not just that they go so far upwards that you cannot see the tops, its more how enormously wide they are. It could take a large family to be able to hold hands around a single tree, and in some cases, it would require several generations of that family. A poignant thought if one thinks of ones like the Grandfather Tree, near the Richardson Grove State park: 265 feet high with a circumference of 55 feet and a life span reaching back 1800 years). There are many such ‘tree destinations’ along this Highway and if I’m honest some broke my heart. It is the norm of these amazing beings to hollow out during forest fires yet continue to live and grow, but it cannot be normal for them to find themselves turned into human experiments – like tree houses and drive throughs. I visited many of these places, and felt both wonder and sadness – certainly when I saw the drive thru tree, I instantly decided that there was no way on earth I was going to drive through a living tree. Instead I parked, walked into it, touched it, and mumbled a sort of sorry for my fellow men. 

For these reasons the Trees of Mystery and its SkyTrail was my favourite. For the most part, the path was the only interference and being narrow and at times steep, sparser of people – the less fit did not venture so far. So I was soon alone and, as far as my own senses were concerned, lost. Lost in thought, lost in mind, lost (almost) in place. Truly on my own.

There is something that happens when travelling alone: a feeling you get when you see a site and cannot share it with someone. It makes the experience curiously more intense. Your thoughts become louder, your feelings more impressing. And without the opportunity to release those pressures through conversation, you become very aware of yourself in a way that does not happen when you have the distraction of companions around you. Yet, this time, that intensity was increased exponentially because, as I wandered through the trees, I was conscious of a couple trailing me. I don’t mean to suggest that they were following me, or even very aware of me, they were far too much in love with each other to be aware of anything else bar the trees and themselves. But having this example of human joy close enough to taste (yet significant by its absence in my own life), added to my own feelings. For half an hour or so, we moved with each other at a consistent distance, but once we arrived at the top, the viewing platform that lies at the top of the cable car ride, we were finally forced together. Here we met, when I was asked to take some photos for them, and I took the opportunity to seek answers to some of the questions that had been nagging my mind, as I’d jealously watched their obvious deep happiness.





“If you don’t mind me saying,” I said as I took at their pictures. “You guys seem very in love, have you been together long?”

 

They looked at each other and smiled, then giggled. “About 18 months,” said the woman who I later learned (and admit, with snobby British disappointment), was named Brandi. I didn’t intrude further and after a while, they headed on their way, returning back down via the cable car while I remained on the viewing platform, utterly alone, looking out across the top of the world – for some considerable time. I felt so completely unaware of where I was, or even, for a while, who I was. I was feeling something I did not understand, nor would for some years to come.





Many people write about travelling and comment on the joy of not knowing where one is, of becoming lost. And some writers acknowledge the connection between being lost on the outside and the internal feelings of being lost in one’s life. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf writes, ‘For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. ... To be silent; to be alone.’ It was something of that feeling I had back then, standing there alone high up in that Redwood forest, able to look a great distance across the top of thousands of trees — with no one else. It was beautiful – perhaps all the more so because there was no way to release that intense influx of sensations. I began to feel something new, something I had never felt before. It was something I was not able to verbalise until I saw a film that would not be made for another 4 years, in which this feeling, which so many travellers have felt, was beautifully and perfectly vocalised.


"Then something happened, something difficult to describe. Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I’d never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something I’d forgotten or something I’d been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness because I felt alive. Yes, alive."

The film is called Paris Je t’aime (2006), and the scene I’m referring to is when an American woman explains in clumsy but poignantly learnt French, the story of her recent trip to Paris. At that time, there among the top of the Redwoods, I could not have vocalised it at all, let alone as well. But the feeling was one of the most powerful experiences of being alive I have ever felt. It is without doubt necessary to be somewhere unfamiliar and, I think, at a distance from whatever home currently is, to feel it. And it is not easy to stay with that feeling, though it is beautiful, for there is also such an intense ‘alone-liness’ that it changes you, I believe. When I returned to my car, I was not the same.

 

I had and did make several stops along Highway 101, too many to list, but that night, 130 odd miles south of the SkyTrail, and still in the heightened state of its gift, I turned off the 101 into Garberville. It was just one of those spontaneous decisions we make when travelling, looking for somewhere to sleep, but as I drove through the town I passed a bar with saloon style, red swinging doors. Outside was a sign reading “Wednesday Night Music Night”. Back then, I had no idea that this kind of bar could be dangerous, so armed with my newly acquired joie de vivre, and the kind of naïveté necessary to survive tricky situations when travelling, I checked into a motel down the street, and walked back for what I hoped would be an entertaining night.

 

It was about 9 o’clock when I arrived at the bar and I very soon discovered that the Wednesday Music Night sign had been referring to the weekly karaoke. An event that was clearly a popular occurrence with the twenty or so people there. It was large, spacious with many tables and a long bar at one end. American bars are often dim, but it was brightly lit by the karaoke DJ lights and everyone was in a good mood. I sat at the bar and ordered beer and listened to the various locals sing their chosen songs. Everybody knew everyone and had their own well practised track, and they sang them with a familiarity very much their own. The best song to be re-rendered was To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before. The microphones were wireless and passed around to where the lyrics were provided to the singers via a number of screens, set up around the bar. The two older men singing this one were just a few feet away from me and it was immediately apparent that although they were watching the video playback intently, they were not reading a damn thing, and were in fact making up their own words. This was done with great skill, for their words fitted both the music and the sentiment of the story – indeed, I half suspected what we were hearing were personal fantasies, or even autobiographical revealings, for these guys were old enough to have lived and loved abundantly. But however it was that they came to be using their own lyrics, the reason was obvious: the backdrop to the official lyrics was an abundance of bikini clad young women cavorting through or on an assortment of swimming pools, beach scenes, classic American car bonnets (or hoods I should say) and of course, horses. All in all, it was one of the most amusing four minutes of my life – helped, I must say, in no small part by their rather good voices.

 

That was not the case with Ruby. Ruby was certainly entertaining, but she did not so much sing as shriek. I could probably be mistaken for thinking I was the only person in the bar who was aware of that, because whenever Ruby went up to sing, a surprisingly large number of times, nobody dampened in their appreciation or enthusiasm. Yet, she was terrible, truly terrible, so I bravely dealt with the dilemma (by which I mean trying not to laugh) by swinging my barstool away from Ruby and her admirers and ordered more beer – which I began to chase down with bourbon. In between Ruby’s numerous assaults on the world of music we were treated to a few erotic-dance-cum-pop-song numbers by “The Mill Girls” and various other regulars. I watched all this in the same solitary observation that had accompanied me on my walk among the Redwoods. However, unlike Redwoods, people notice you and eventually a few became curious about me.


The first person to actively engage with me was a woman probably in her late 40s. Perfectly pleasant and friendly and curious. When she discovered that I was not only an out of towner (though I think that was obvious to everybody), but also British, she seemed to think it important that everybody in the bar knew me. By this point, being somewhere between 11 o’clock and midnight, I’d had quite a bit to drink and the invitation to be introduced one by one to everybody seemed quite amusing, if a little strange, so I happily agreed to let myself be guided round the bar by her. For the most part this was just a case of simple hellos, fielding the odd question and demonstrating my British accent. However, it did get a little hairy at one moment:


“This is Tim, he’s from England,” my new guide explained to a young couple. “This is Tiny and Cherri.”

I suppressed my first thought that it must be somehow compulsory for everybody in America to have a name that ended in ‘y’ or ‘i’, and just smiled happily and said hello and it was nice to meet them.

“Oh my God,” Cherri cooed. “Your accent is just so cute.” (The ‘so’ lasted quite a long time).

 

The enthusiasm which she said this clearly upset Tiny and, even drunk, that worried me instantly. Whoever said that Americans don’t get irony was wrong (well, they weren’t actually), but in this particular case his name was highly ironic. Tiny was huge: at least six and a half foot high, made from apparently only muscle, with shoulder length hair with a handlebar moustache that was itself so long that it dropped below his neckline. I placed him mid to late twenties at most and in the peak of physical fitness. From a distance, he would have looked like an impressive rodeo star (I had already been told by my guide it was essential to be able to ride horses to live in the town), close up he looked like a cage fighter. As his girlfriend enthused about my accent, Tiny stood up in a way that was undoubtedly threatening. Some automatic sense of self-preservation and innate knowledge of how to deal with the single-minded male brain clicked in, and I cried out: “Oh no! You guys have way cuter accents than we do, we just sound stuck up.” Tiny stopped, looked surprised, oddly pleased, and then sat down.

 

Generally speaking, this really ought not to have worked. I had already learned that you can’t pay an American a compliment, because they tend to think you’re just stating the obvious and look confused. But what they are less used to is modesty – it’s completely alien. I appreciate this sounds like criticism, a put down, but I don’t mean it that way. Americans it seems, are conditioned from young to be highly patriotic. A child making their way to school across a playground, I was told, who was arriving too late to be in class for the morning national anthem, will stop and stand outside, hand on heart, while it plays. The American greeting of, “How’s it going?” or similar, has to be answered with something positive. It’s a ritual identical to our obsession with the weather, attuned instead to an obsession with how great life is. When they say, “Have a nice day”, they genuinely mean it. It’s almost compulsory. So, me making a flattering remark about their accents while ridiculing my own might not have worked, but it did, fortunately.

Eventually I made my way back to my barstool, ordered another drink, and turned around to find another local wanting to know all about me. I was already familiar with the highly enthusiastic friendliness of the average American, but this lady really surprised me. She was probably not much older than myself, and explained to me, uninvited, that she was single and lived with her four children and — adding, sincerely and with great pride — that, “Oh yes! I’ve travelled a lot too!” It turned out to mean that she had lived in four different states. But I didn’t argue: I was already aware that Americans see different states as effectively different countries. What was interesting and surprising was that regardless of what I said about where I did live, had lived, or what I was doing, or what my plans were, she was convinced that Garberville was, “you know, this is absolutely the best town - anywhere in the world! You should come and live here!” I honestly thought I was being picked up, or groomed, and even being drunk it was a little disconcerting. I really did not want to become the father to four children overnight. As it turned out, she was genuinely just being friendly and when the evening ended, she melted away into the general crowd as we all headed out to the street. Relieved not to have to try and disengage myself from an awkward situation, I floated down the sidewalk to my motel and a contented night’s sleep, much the wiser about out of town American culture. Odd, dogmatic, dangerous, but undoubtedly beautiful. One might even call it authentic.


The point of including the above in this memoire-cum-personal-essay, my ‘messy’, is that I am a shy person, I don’t do that sort of thing. I don’t go to bars, or clubs. I don’t like crowds. I don’t join in. For instance, by some strange chance of fate, I found myself at the 1985 Live Aid Concert, when I was 19. Yet when in the middle of the crowd, near the front, during the Queen set in which everyone around me was performing the Radio Gaga synchronised hand clap, I was the only one who wasn’t. I’m just not that person. But on this trip, on that mountain and in that bar – and other places too – I was free, different, able to be whoever emerged. I had an emptiness that was peaceful, intriguing and – in ways that are hard to explain – felt safer.


When I look back on this trip, and in particular what happened to me up amongst the Redwoods, I’m reminded of something that had happened to me when I had arrived in India, those two years previously. Something I had completely misunderstood at the time. I’d had the feeling, when I got off the plane and first stood on Indian soil, that I had in some way come home. I felt more like myself than I had ever done. At the time my mind made up all sorts of imaginings about having lived in India in a past life or being in love with its spirituality — or something like that. But since then I’ve come to understand that what happened to me in India, and to a degree in the Redwood Park, was that I, the me I had always had to be, had gone, it had got lost. In her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit talks about this strange phenomenon:

‘For Woolf, getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are. This dissolution of identity is familiar to travellers in foreign places and remote fastness...’

The truth was that I had experienced culture shock. Nothing at all was familiar, and so neither was I. However, rather than be distressed by it as some are, I experienced it as a liberation. My experience of not having a permanent home for so many years meant I was experiencing, there, a ‘coming home to myself’. I was free of any of the associations and baggage of culture, family, or social expectations. Things I had never liked or felt at peace with. Likewise, living in America (and before that in Spain), I was able to be myself more than when I was in England; able to live with more of my insides showing. Travelling, being somewhere unfamiliar, being somewhere where we are not required to be what we have always been, allows us to be ourselves.

So, ultimately, and perhaps to be fair to Matthew, what he had done by following a guru, I had begun to do by following territories unknown. In our own ways, we had both lost something of the old self that stopped us finding our true selves.

New book out

Below is a link to my most recent book; this time a collection of short stories.

viewbook.at/ChanteShortStories

Old Voices, Anew (The Little Mermaid)

This is a re-imaging of The Little Mermaid. It will likely strike a chord with those who teach children. 

OLD VOICES, ANEW

“No miss,” Chloe said. “I just thought it was obvious. Just because she lost her tongue, doesn’t mean that she can’t say stuff. Why wouldn’t she draw him pictures of what happened? It’s like, obvious!”

Pramiti, Chloe’s teacher, momentarily closed her eyes.

“Chloe, the point is to rewrite the story following the same plotline. If you change it, if you make the little mermaid tell the Prince who she is and what she’s done, the rest of the story can’t happen. He can’t un-know she saved him, so she won’t then lose him and have to face the choice of her own death or killing him, and make Right Choices, and be saved and raised into a higher level.”

“I know, miss. That’s the point! The story’s dumb. No wonders Disney made it better!”

“Wond-er, Chloe, not wonders. But anyway, don’t you see, in the Disney version, the Little Mermaid gets told boys like girls that don’t talk? It’s almost as if the whole film is about telling girls to keep quiet and you-”

“Not really, miss. That’s just the witch talking. And she gets her voice back. And she gets the guy. And-”

“And in the original story the witch is honest! She tells her what is going to happen, and tells her it is foolish, which is-“

“Which is because she really is stupid! She spends all that time with the prince but doesn’t draw some pictures of who she is an’ all, so then-. Oh, and my mum says it’s women stops women talking, like the sea-witch did, not only men, and when I gets married, I wouldn’t give up nothing for a guy, and…” Chloe paused before continuing. “Are you married, miss?”

“Yes, Chloe.”

“So, did you give anything up - to get your husband, I mean?”

~

“Don’t let it worry you. You get that with Year 6. Once they get to the top they always think they know everything.” Mary, a much older teacher and currently happily in charge of the much sweeter Year 4s, tried to reassure Pramiti during break. “Mind you,” she went on. “Chloe has always been like that anyway. Always got an answer for everything. Mind you,” she said again, her pet phrase for interrupting herself – or to stop others doing it, “when you get to meet her mother, you’ll know why. She is the most… assertive mother I have ever met.”

“You mean she gets it from her mother?” Pramiti asked.

“No, I mean she’s that way because she has to be. Mind you, she might be growing into her mother! That’s a scary thought – well, not for us, thank God. That’s Secondary’s problem.”

“So, what should I do?” Pramiti asked, trying to ignore a sudden and unexpected empathy with Chloe. “If I let her do it her way, it won’t be the right story.”

“Hmm. You surprise me, Pramiti? When you came here, you weren’t so keen to stick to the rules either. Maybe, this time, for once, Chloe has a point.”

~

As the door closed, slightly harder than necessary, her husband’s words repeated in her head – ‘For God’s sake, I married you because you have a voice!’

Pramiti wasn’t sure how the argument had started, but she was already suspecting it was a fight she’d picked. After Mary’s comment that perhaps she’d lost something of herself, perhaps her own voice, she’d come home sensitive and defensive – it had been all too close for comfort. When she had set the task, she’d wanted the children to see the feminist interpretation of the story: the pressure for girls to be, as the Walt Disney film suggested, quiet, nice girls. But after looking at some of the non-feminist interpretations of Anderson’s story, she saw she’d missed something. That yes, she had got her prince and hadn’t had to give up her voice for him, but she’d given it up anyway, and ultimately for exactly the same thing as Anderson’s mermaid – to ascend. As she sat thinking about this, emotionally as well as mentally reviewing the past few years of her career, the uncomfortable feeling was growing.

She knew her husband would not be back for a while; he was not one to storm out and stay away. And his choice to ‘do the shopping now’ showed he accepted her need to be in a bad mood for a bit – despite the slightly sarcastic tone with which he’d added, ‘I’ll get you some wine too’. Knowing she had the house to herself, and time to think it through, she walked back and forth, listening (as she often did when she needed to remember herself) Lonestar’s song, Unusually Unusual on constant repeat.

By the time Pramiti’s husband placed a large glass of wine within reach, but safely to one side of her laptop, she’d abandoned her original purpose in setting the story, gone through a few personal revelations, and made some decisions. First of which was that if she was going to be the teacher she’d truly wanted to be when she first set herself on that course (which, she admitted to herself, was at the age Chloe and her class were now), then she was going to have to do and demonstrate what she was asking of them. Pushing her laptop away and taking a large slurp of the wine, she opened a notepad and began to write.

Once, in a not so long-ago time, there was a young girl who came from an ambitious and well-to-do family.

Or, rather, Pramiti grimly acknowledged to herself, a family of snobbish overachievers.

The girl had a strong-minded mother, and an even stronger minded grandmother, who both had strong feelings about what young girl should be like and what she should do. The young girl did not like that very much, so developed a strong mind of her own. She grew to hate the way girls were told what to do, and her greatest ambition became to help them become strong enough to think for themselves. She decided that the best way to do this is to become an adventure and teller of tales.

Or, as Pramiti knew, she’d decided to become a Girls’ School teacher.

So, the little girl learned about everything and anything, and grew up to be strong, and brave, and very very determined. Her first adventure went well, and was one where she travelled to a new land and learned many new things. It went so well in fact, that at the end of this first adventure she was given a special certificate which told her how brilliant she was, and how brave, and how important all the things that she had learned would be for those that she would tell them to. After that, the now grown-up little girl looked around for somewhere she could go, where she could tell her stories, and very soon found somewhere because she now lived in a land where there weren’t enough storytellers.

For a whole year she told her stories, and although the children that she told them to were very young, she felt sure that she was inspiring them to be adventurers of their own.

Just as if she was tending beautiful little flowers that would all bloom into a beautiful garden, that a mermaid might keep.

Pramiti added, reminding herself this was supposed to be a Little Mermaid re-write.

But then, the place where she told her stories, to her beautiful little ones, was invaded by a horrible monster. A sort of Sea-Witch monster.

Or, Pramiti grumbled to herself, a new headmistress.

This horrible, evil, nasty, small minded and pernicious monster had a really big mouth but no ears, none at all, and apparently could not hear anything anyone said. The girl tried many times to talk to the monster, to try to get the monster to be less horrible, to explain what she was doing, but it was never, ever any good. The monster was absolutely insistent that everybody should only ever say what the monster wanted them to say; and do what the monster wanted them to do; and be what the monster wanted them to be. The monster said this was because it knew the truth, and the right way, and the best way. Because it came from the land of Offal-sted, and that was where the truth came from. As if.

Pramiti paused, drank some more wine, and crossed out the last two words.

But the girl knew this was a lie, and what the monster really wanted was that nobody should argue with it, and only ever tell the stories that the monster wanted told – and ignore the fact that all the Offal-sted stories were silly, and a waste of time. So, the girl tried to say so more forcefully, really using her voice, but when she did, a terrible thing happened. The monster said that if the girl did not tell the stories the monster wanted, then she would never be able to become a monster herself — or even carry on being a storyteller.

Pramiti stopped again, for another few sips.

Now, I know you are probably wondering why would anybody want to become a monster. But, unfortunately, all storytellers work for monsters, because when you become in charge, you automatically become a monster.

Pramiti paused, wondering if she was going too far.

But don’t think this is as bad as it sounds, because not all monsters are nasty. Like in Monsters Inc. some are nice. It’s just that to be in charge, you must be a monster. And that is what the girl did want. She did want to be an in-charge monster, one day. And so, without even realising it, she began telling the monster’s Offal-sted stories and only the Offal-sted stories, and (remember to pause for dramatic effect) she gave up her voice. The girl stopped telling the stories she wanted to tell. And when, at last, she realised this, she saw she had done it for so long that she’d nearly forgotten her own stories.

Pramiti’s hand froze. The last line had come out of her by surprise. It was a few minutes before she went on.

In fact, she only realised it when, one day, she had to tell a story about another little girl, a little mermaid, who had also given away her voice, and all because she had believed a terrible lie about herself.

The lie that the little mermaid had been told and believed was that she was not enough as she was. That to be something, anything at all, she had to give up who she was. And more than just give up her voice, she had to give up being a mermaid.

But, unlike the little mermaid, the girl, our storytelling girl, said no. She liked her voice, she liked who and what she was, and she liked her own stories. And, moreover, she remembered that while it was fine to walk along a path that already existed, it was important to remember that it meant you were following someone else, not making a new way. Her dream had always been to tell her stories, her new stories, so that that they would inspire others to make their own stories too, their new stories, and their new paths.

~

Pramiti lowered her notebook and looked around the class. There were some confused faces, but many looked bright eyed. She cleared her throat, realising that despite the risks she was taking, she was excited in a way she hadn’t been since she’d begun teaching.

“Okay. So, what we are going to do is this: in at least one class a week we will do things… differently. Our way. Today, I want you to re-write your little mermaid story in any way you want. Totally mix it up - if you want to. But, and this is the important part, you have to save her – you have to save her as she is. And… you have to save her your way.”

The Hunter’s Gloves

I wrote this for my father. 

There was once a Hunter, living high in the frozen north of the world, who had never taken off his gloves. It was the custom of his tribe to sew thick mittens on the hands of their children, to protect them from freezing winds and snow that never fully left their lands. But the hunter had become separated and lost from his clan in a blizzard when he was still a child, and with them he had also lost the chance to remove the thick furs. He had grown up, surviving by the indifferent acceptance of a wolf-pack, forgetting much of his former life, unaware of who or what he was. He had even forgotten what lay below the bulky skins wrapped around his hands; believing them to be no different in nature to the paws of the animals who were his company.

As he grew, the gloves, which were large and baggy when first put on him, had become tight and constricting. Yet despite the restriction and reduced sensitivity of his hands, he had become skilled and dextrous, and able to do all he needed. His life seemed as it should be and he was unaware of the un-natural lack of contact he had with his surroundings. So much so that he would have continued this way had he not one day come across a tree, still burning from the strike of lightning.

At first cautious and unsure the hunter found himself drawn close to the fire by his little challenged curiosity. He put out his hands to touch the shimmering flames and watched in fascination as they melted the tips of his furry limbs. When the gloves started to burn, the hunter was more bewildered than worried. In fact he enjoyed the gentle heat that came through his thick layers. By the time he felt pain his hands were too well aflame to be easily doused.

A terrifying scream ripped through the forest as the hunter entered a world of agony unlike any he had known. In a mad frenzy he danced and jumped, wailed and raged; his face twisted in the torture of the burning, his mind contorted with fear and despair at his ignorance of what to do. So complete was his innocence of fire that he had suffered a long journey of anguish before the flames finally exhausted their fuel. The hunter, weak from the torment he had endured, staggered back to his shelter and fell into a sleep of many days. As he slept he healed, and as he healed he dreamed.

His dream was a curious one: in it he found himself looking into the Sun, feeling its heat on his face. As he watched it pulled and lifted him from the ground, drawing him spinning and falling towards it. It grew hotter and larger as he fell so that soon he could feel its heat - first against and then within his body. He saw his flesh, blacken and smoulder, melt and crackle, and finally fall away in lumps. There was little pain though, and what there was fell away with his burning flesh. More curious though was that despite this his body became no less - he felt the stripping, yet still he was whole. As the hunter looked at his new limbs and body he saw them filled with a light and brilliance that seemed to thrive on the Sun’s heat in a way that empowered and renewed it. In his dreaming the hunter, who did not understand, wondered that if he was still whole, what could it be that had burnt away.

Awake, the hunter sat up and shook his head clear - the dream faded. He quickly became aware of his damaged hands, and looking down saw the tattered remains of his mittens. He gently pulled at the fur, both marvelling and fearing at how easily it came away, and when it did he stared in amazement at what lay beneath. Seeing for the first time fingers and knuckles unlike any he had known on the wolfs or other animals. He wriggled them in wonder. He cupped his palms, then spread his fingers wide, and laughed with delight when he discovered the game of moving each finger individually. All this he discovered with joy and child-like surprise until - startled by a bird’s cry - he touched something. His hand had fallen on a jagged stone and he jumped back from the unfamiliar feeling - further increased by the sensitivity of his tender skin. The hunter trembled as he reached again for the stone, gripping it in his new-born touch, and lifting it in his palm. He held it lightly, feeling the rough contours and edges, then gripped it hard, knowing the prick of those edges in his skin. With a cry of pure wildness the hunter began the game of feeling.

The furs he wore and slept on, told him about softness and warmth. His shelter, the smooth surfaces of the cave he’d made his home, spoke of cold hardness and strength. Outside, pushing his fingers into the snow, he discovered with shock the freezing bite he’d long been protected from, and going further he felt the cool streams, knowing their purity and the renewing cleansing offered for his damaged skin. In the trees and plants sticking through the thin summer snow, he found a myriad variants of smooth and rough, tender and strong, delicate and hard, all whispering to his senses of worlds yet to be discovered.

Slowly but with eager wonderment the hunter learnt of that world, searching out each new sensation, each new pleasure; discovering all until his hands fell, perhaps by accident, upon the most amazing and depth-less wonder of all - his own face.

The Third Mirror

This was written for a unhappily married daughter, requested by her mother. 

One day a young princess set out on a journey. Her mother, the queen, had years before lost a magical mirror and now that her daughter had come of age, she had been sent to search for it.

“Look for a beautiful meadow by a stream in the middle of a forest,” the queen had told her. “I rested there when travelling to this place, and I’m sure that’s where I lost it.”

The princess left happily, eager to be outside in the sun. She walked swiftly too, skipping over fresh grasses with abandon. Don’t go too quickly, came the sound of the queen’s voice. You may miss the meadow. Without turning to acknowledge her mother, the princess slowed down, walking more steadily. Soon she was looking at the countryside around her, noticing everything, but when she stopped to smell the flowers, almost immediately she heard the queen calling, Don’t dawdle; you’ll never get there.

This time the princess spun around, ready to snap a retort. But when she looked back she saw that she had travelled further than she thought, and that her home had long disappeared from view. Curious, she turned back to her journey and walked on.

As night neared on the first day, she found herself in a narrow valley, which led into a forbidding forest. Unsure of what to do, she decided to climb the valley side and see what lay beyond the dark trees before her. Scrambling up the steep stony scree she was able to gain enough height to see that the forest stretched many miles, yet not far inside the embrace of the trees there was a wide clearing which caught the evening sun. It reflected a brilliant light towards her, and she felt sure it was the meadow she sought. The princess slid back down the slope and entered the forest in the direction of the clearing.
It was certainly spooky passing through the dark trees, and her heart jumped several times when the wind whistled the leaves and the brambles caught her skirts, but nothing untoward happened and she reached the opening without mishap. And there, lying by the swaying grasses was a stream. Excited, she rushed forward, certain she was in the right place.

However, it was too dark to look for the mirror that evening, so after a light supper from the food she had brought, and a drink from the stream, she unpacked her bed roll and settled for the night in the embrace of a huge and magnificent oak.

The next morning she began her search, and though it would make her story more exciting to say she search for hours and hours, in truth she discovered a mirror almost right away. In fact, it was almost as if it jumped out at her.

Pulling it with trembling fingers from the tangled grasses that had grown around it, she sat it on her knee and tenderly wiped its face with her sleeve. It was almost a foot and a half high with flowing ornate carvings around its frame. It was very grand. ‘Are you the queen’s mirror?’ she whispered gently. Whether it was magic or not, the mirror made no reply. But the reflection it showed the princess of herself was so beautiful that she felt sure it was truly enchanted. Her hair seemed brighter, her eyes larger, her skin smoother. ‘My,’ she said, with an appreciative laugh. ‘You are quite the flatterer.’ She was delighted by the mirror’s attentions.

When finally, she looked up she saw that the sun had crossed the mid-point. Unsure of how long it would take her to return through the stretch of forest between the clearing and the valley, she decided to climb the oak and view it. It proved not to be far, but on turning the other way she got a shock.

Not more than a short distance away through the trees was a second clearing. She knew she could not leave without checking, so climbing back down she picked up the mirror, and made off through the woods.

Though it was the middle of the day, the forest floor was at once dark and cool. She felt the urge to push and hurry through the undergrowth, but found that the mirror was heavy in her hands, and the loops and hooks in its frame caught easily in the forest vines. For a while her love of it lessened - especially when she caught a glimpse of herself in its face, showing her features dark and heavy in the forest gloom.

But at last she broke out into the new clearing, and fell in a thankful heap against a beech of outstanding grandeur. So tired was she by her struggle through the forest, that she might have slept straight away - had not something particularly painful stuck in her back. Something that turned out to be… another mirror.

The princess was shocked. She had not expected this. Her trip to the new clearing was more from a need to be thorough, than because she truly expected another find. And now, when she looked into this new reflection, she was troubled. This mirror - a smaller, plain, metal banded glass - showed her not as more beautiful, but as wiser. In the reflection she saw a broad forehead, deep knowing eyes, and a wide mouth capable of great speech. Truly, in her experience, such an image of herself could only be one of wonder.

Both mirrors showed her as special; both must therefore be magical. Which could be the one for which she searched? Tired as much from the mystery as from the journey, she slept. 

And she dreamt:

‘Knowledge is much more important than flattery,’ the smaller mirror croaked at her. ‘Don’t be deluded by that puffed-up fellow. A princess needs to know things to conquer her world. Gaze into me, and I will teach you how to be better than others.’

‘Rubbish,’ cried the other, waving its ornate loops in the air. ‘Brainy people are despised. No one will love you for cleverness. And none CAN love you as I do. Look at me, look at me – I am the one to show you what you are.’ And with this, the larger mirror curved its loops and folds towards her - in ways that the princess found disturbing.

Leaving them arguing with each other she turned away, only to find herself trapped. In the dream, her home was a tiny windowless room, shared with only the two mirrors. A home that had little space in its own right, and none that she could call hers.

Days seemed to pass in the altered reality of her dream; then months, even years went by. And throughout it all the two mirrors continued their competitive pursuit of her favours. Moreover, they grew. The princess found herself cramped more and more by their reaching clutches, their whiny voices, and their incessant arguing. She tried to find some space for herself but trapped in the box-like room, there was nowhere for her to go.

Then one day she deliberately turned away from the them, clamped her hands over her ears and stared resolutely at the wall. And as she did, she faintly started to see something she had not noticed before. At first she was dismayed, because what was appearing - as if from nothing – was yet another mirror. But as she looked at it, she felt a warmth and comfort from it that she did not experienced from the others. Moreover, it reflected nothing, instead giving out a beautiful golden light. The princess leaned closer to examine it – and to her great surprise saw the following words embedded in the frame:

‘In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass’.

The idea that a mirror should itself tell her to break it seemed preposterous. Yet the princess intuitively knew a deeper magic was being offered by this sacrifice. With her heart in her mouth - and to the sound of sudden terrified silence from the two arguing mirrors behind her - she took off her shoe and thumped the glass.

The mirror cracked with a noise like laughing rain. The broken bits crumbled in on themselves until they were no longer visible, and the golden light bulged outwards. Freed from its glass barrier it grew outwards and the princess, transfixed in front of it, became completely immersed by it.

For long blissful moments, she saw nothing but gold, felt nothing but joy, and heard nothing but her own heart. When at last her eyesight cleared, everything around her had altered. The walls of the room had become translucent, then transparent, and no longer were they a prison to contain her. They were simply the boundaries of her being – her own internal world, her sacred space. A space that moved as she moved, and grew or shrank as she dictated. Moreover, a space that nothing should enter uninvited. She knew this instantly – and the two mirrors, watching her anxiously, knew it too. Without words, with merely the knowing of it, she banished them beyond the walls of the room. Her ‘room’. She was freed within herself. Freed to be herself.

And she awoke.

The princess sat up. It was early dawn of the next day, the sun just starting to creep into the clearing. The mirrors lay beside her. Silent. Passive. She got up and without a backward glance, walked away through the trees.

When she arrived home that evening, tired but complete, the queen asked her where the mirror was.

‘There is only one mirror, mother’ the princess said, kissing the queen on the cheek. ‘And it is me.’

Not dying yet, then.

Last month I found out that I don’t have prostrate cancer. I’d been in the state of unknowing for a few months, so it was a huge shift in perspective - like something leaving that you don’t even remember arriving. A weird feeling.

I'm sure it is weird for most people who go through that, but for me it has another edge to it. Because of childhood trauma I'd always found life more scary than death, so when I got told back in early March that I might have cancer I had mixed feelings: some surprise, and curiosity, but not fear. All my concerns were about what it meant for my wife.

The journey since then has been most odd. At the start of it I lost what I had thought of as my closest friend. In part through telling her I might have cancer and her not wanting to be the one I talked to about it. That in turn led me into a place where I felt I had to keep it a secret from anyone other than my wife, who I also felt I needed to protect from knowing too much. To cope, or deal with that, I put it out of my mind and convinced myself that the symptoms were probably something else (as it turned out to be) and just carried on living with a weird, background feeling that my life might not be as long as I'd previously expected. And since I was kind of okay with that, I was also avoiding finding out for sure by turning down potentially damaging investigative procedures and delaying blood tests. 

Then, I did a 3 Day Intensive Zen Retreat.  

The purpose of this practise/retreat is to ‘find out who you are’. In my case, I had always been basically just fear, both of life here now and of where we come from (i.e. our source, whatever that may be). 

To my great surprise, the retreat (which was very intense) shifted so much of that I found myself in a state of love with life and - for the first time - with myself. And even more oddly and also for the first time, I felt at peace with my origin. 

All this was not just some sort of spiritual high, it was the removal of a lot of negativity and past pain. I didn't gain anything new in terms of a faith of some sort of god or something, nothing like that; it was just a letting go of all the ‘old me’ stuff - like a few years of therapy in one weekend. Which was the point of the retreat.

This was great, obviously, but brought with it a new challenge: for the first time since I was about 10, I wanted to live - and thus wanted to not have cancer. I had the curious feeling of suddenly being okay about life, while also being aware I might be about to lose it. Very bitter sweet. It was like that feeling we get when we're in a foreign or new place, and see great natural beauty, but are alone and have no one to share it with. Joy and sadness at the same time. (See what the Postwoman says in the 2006 film, Paris, Je T'aime for a great explanation of this). 

I think that's what life is: joy and sadness at the same time. And heck of a lot of it. 

And as ever, it left the question: okay, still here, what now? 

The Tower Woman

A story... 

Once there was a woman who lived in the land of the tower people. The tower people were just like any other kind of people, they just happened to live in towers. Some were small and near the ground, while others were tall. Some were strong and some were neglected and some were very weak. And while most were made of wood, some were made of the thickest stone.

The woman’s tower looked very normal from the outside and the people around her thought she was exactly like them. But hidden in her tower were a lot of unseen rooms. So many in fact, that she had developed a habit of keeping them locked and hidden – especially when other people came to visit. She even went so far as to create a whole section of her tower for other people to see, just so they would think she was like them. She had to, she was very pretty and a lot of people wanted to visit.

As the years went by she grew tired of this, and spent more of her time at the top of her tower, where she could relax in the bright sunshine and look across the lands, exploring with her eyes and mind. She grew to love the height and what it revealed to her, and how it made her mind wander and wonder. So much so that she tried to make her tower as high as she could. Every day she dragged stones up the long winding stairs inside, fixing them to the top, and adding floor after floor, room after room. She loved her tower deeply and especially the top where she could feel the sun and forget some of the dark rooms near the bottom - rooms she tried not to go to anymore.

However, there was a problem: the tower was now so much higher than the ones around her that how different she was had become harder to hide. When she looked down at her friends’ towers, she felt so different that it was uncomfortable. She knew she wasn’t normal – all her hidden rooms were proof of that - so she began to keep to herself more and put all her attention on her tower, each day increasing its height.

After many years, it finally became high enough for her to see over a hill that lay to the west, which excited her because one of her favourite things was to sit on the top platform of her tower and watch the sun go down. In her dreams she had imagined there was a mystical land and people who lived on the far side of the hill; people who did not live in towers, but roamed free among trees and meadows. So she was a little shocked, but intrigued, when her tower grew high enough for her to see over the hill and into the valley beyond and see that, there, another tower had been built – one that was very tall, and standing almost on its own.

The tower woman had a telescope and holding it up she could see the top of the other tower and there, looking back at her though his own telescope was a man. He did not seem like her old friends, but that pleased her, and so she started to signal to him. It was slow at first, because although all tower people instinctively know signal language, the woman and the man used slightly different signals. But as time went by she realised that if she let go and used her intuition she knew exactly what he was saying. He was funny and random, and made her laugh. She loved how geeky he was and it meant she was able to be herself with him – and how the nagging fear of all the dark rooms beneath her feet was smaller when she talked to him. Over time, they became close friends and her fears and need to hide lessoned.

However, as her fear retreated it left a hole, and she felt a loneliness and longing she’d never had before. She so loved talking to her tower friend, the geeky guy who lived alone in the valley, that she wanted more. She wanted to hold him, and be held by him. To touch and be together.





This new feeling grew and she began to realise how long it had been since she had left her tower. So much so that she wasn’t even that sure how to do it. The entrance had grown stiff and just getting to the bottom, passed the dark rooms, was hard work. But in the end she managed it and she began to make her way from her tower to his. When she got to it though, she got a shock. The man’s tower was incredibly high; at least twice the height of hers. She smiled with delight, and wonder, realising that it was only because of the height of her tower, and extraordinary height of the man’s, that had made them visible to each other. She loved how they had found each other that way. She also longed to see what could be seen from the top.

However, she could also now see that there was no door. If she was honest that scared her a bit, but it also appealed to her and so she began to climb.

At first it was easy; the man’s tower was enveloped in creeping vines that made it simple to get a hand hold on – in fact, she even loved that his tower was covered in the twisted vegetation, since she had noticed some creepers beginning around the base of her own tower when she’d left it. So the fact that her tower man had many more just made her all the more determined that he would love her for who she was.

As she climbed, she called out the man, telling him she was coming – and more than once asking him about a door. But when he looked over the top, down to where she was climbing, all she heard was him shout down that now was not a good time, and that she should go home and he’d tell her when it was a good time to come. He even promised to make a door just for her if she would just go home and wait. But the woman had come too far and wanted his touch too much to be able to go back. Besides, she was sure that even if there was no door she would at least be able to get in a window. And being a woman who knew she was always right, her head was full of happy ideas and thoughts: she imagined finding a way in, hugging her new friend, and finally – after exploring a few of his own dark rooms, which just thinking about made her feel excited – that they would make their way together to the very top of his tower and sit and watch the sun set together, where they would finally be no longer alone. And so, with all this in her mind, she climbed fervently, shouting back that she could not wait, and not noticing that the man had disappeared.

Before long, she was able to make out a window ledge far above her. Excited, she climbed faster, covering the distance quickly so that she was soon able to pull herself up and over the ledge and sit breathing deeply with the exhaustion. However, her breathing became a gasp when she saw that, although it was a window, it was filled in and brick up. Moreover, shuffling forwards to see if there was any way to work the bricks loose, she discovered a truth that nearly broke her heart, the cement around the bricks was fresh – all the time she had been climbing, the man had been bricking up the window.

In the hours that passed after the woman discovered the bricked up window, she had sat numb and scared on the ledge. She knew she was very high and that a fall might kill her. She knew she ought to climb down, but the thought of doing so and returning to her own tower alone was painful. She also knew there was no point in climbing higher – even if there was another window, she knew that it too would be bricked up by the time she got there. She did wonder if she could make it to the top and pull herself over the parapet and chase the man around the platform until he gave in and let her hold him. But that seemed impossible, even for her. So instead she just sat, and tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

After a while, she heard a noise and realised that the man was on the other side of the window. That though he had shut her out, he still wanted to contact with her. She felt angry and called out to him, telling him so. He replied, although his voice was muffled, she heard him tell her again that it was too soon and that he was not ready to have guests in his tower. She shouted back that she was not a guest, that she was like him and wanted to be with him. But then he said that he could not let her in that window as it led into a room he did not want her to see, to which she replied that it was those rooms that she particularly did want to see because she had rooms of her, and that she understood and wanted to be understood in return. Finally, he said that he did not want her to be disappointed, but she immediately called back that he was probably disappointed in himself and that with her help he would be fine. But the man did not like that and grew angry that she wanted to change him, which made the woman confused, as she did not understand how someone could be not what they wanted to be, yet not want to be changed, and before she could stop herself she said some horrible things that later she wished she hadn’t.

It was quiet after that, so that she was not sure if the man was still there. She called out again, but his voice was so faint she was not sure if he was still inside or had retreated to the top of the tower. The wind made it hard to hear too; it had picked up and even seemed to want to tear her from the ledge. Clinging to the ledge, she started to feel afraid. What if he left her there? What if he didn’t pull down the bricks and let her in? What if she was left on the ledge until exhaustion made her fall asleep and she fell? She knew that she had to make a decision: she had to either give in climb down or somehow stay awake and keep trying to persuade him to let her in.

And it was then, as she sat trying to decide which to do, that she heard a terrifying rumble. Looking back towards her home she was able to make out the top of her own tower and see that there was a problem. She had been away too long and neglect meant some stones were becoming loose and her tower was starting to crumble. If she was to save it, to have a tower to go back to, she would have to leave soon. For a while, she cried in frustration and pain and fear.

However, she knew she had to make a decision. She loved towers, and still wanted to live in one, but if this man would not share his with her, then she would move on. She would find a new place and build her own again. She build on rock and make it even higher. So high that she could see everything and everyone, long before they could see her.