A Morning

The previous day, I had woken around four in the quiet morning. My unemployment benefit was in the bank, poised for spending. I was certain that alcohol would be involved, but I couldn't get to it until my parents went to work. So I waited. Reading the life of Churchill and leaning at my open window to smoke and watch the city in the pale light of an early September dawn. It was grey and green and electric with dream-like sameness.

A breath of sadness welled in me and escaped through a smile. In all the things that shone under the brightening sky there was an unending sense of beauty that could never be held quite long enough to love. But it was there. It was everything. It was the sweet sting of a joy so near that could never be held in mind.

I had considered this issue most days over the past few years, but guessed that attaining a state of radiant calm was an impossible quest that would lead me beyond my final heartbeat. Trying was perhaps life itself, and would at least take me through some interesting moments, with some great, fucked-up people.

That morning I began in an early-opening bar, and got dressed when I heard the scrape and thud of the main door closing. I checked three times that my keys, wallet and phone were in my pockets, then I checked twice that the cooker and toaster were off, before walking to the front door then going back to the kitchen to check everything twice more. Then I left.

The bus soon arrived. Crammed by the window on the upper-deck, I could have been heading for work or a slaughterhouse. But I was awake. Leaving the bus a stop early, I smoked a rolled cigarette walking down the Bridges where things were busy and loud, just moving. It was good to be purposeless in the rush.

Turning into the gloom and winding staircase of the bar was like stepping outside an imaginary circle of drudgery and decency. I could live by the outskirts, hopping to and fro. I could be nothing in nowhere.

At the bar I bought a beer, and asked the man in the brown tattered suit next to me how he was doing. He said something about being Jim, and that he was meeting his brother-in-law a few hours later to borrow money. I asked him if he was buying anything special, to which he raised his glass, smiled the saddest smile I had seen in over two years, and motioned his head towards the drink.

"I'm an alcoholic," he said.

"Well, then you're home," I replied.

"I'm going to drink myself to death," Jim muttered. uncertain. "It's all that's left." He stared down at the bar, glimpsing eye contact sporadically through his slow words.

"That's no easy feat. Not you're talking about a non-stop binge until your liver packs-in and your lights go out. It demands a lot of cash and a real fucked-up gritty style of determination. You have to want it, Jim. The drink and the dying."

"I'll do it," he said. "I don't have long. Three months maybe."

"Well you'd maybe better start knocking-back double whiskies with that beer if you don't want to see the next Christmas."

Jim smiled, amused in sadness, and said thanks for the talk. I didn't think he'd go through with it. Shaking his clammy hand I wished him luck, and took my leave in order to adjust the style blaring from the jukebox. The music had to be varied, with each song a hypnotic montage of secret emotion. All the bar was inspiration and the music was it's heart, with the booze flowing through. In the smoky darkness I could breather freer that at home. It was simpler to get wasted than to dwell in uncertain moods of inactivity, watching the clock tick by in the confusion of unfounded anxiety, feeling shit for feeling depressed with all I had. So I started with Hendrix's 'Purple Haze.' I don't remember the specifics of the rest other than that they were just right for drinking, and I was finding things better with every encouraging sip.

I found a chair at a table with two guys and a girl who all looked normal. None of us knew each other but we started talking. Derek had gone out to watch the football the night before and soon decided that the night would go on until sleep became imperative to his survival. He'd met Sara waiting for the pub to open. Mike, who was of a pale green countenance, was an insomniac, and was drinking to pass some of his many painful waking hours. His eyes were red and dirty-white, and every facial expression was half of what it could have been. His talk and his whole being were imbued with a passive desperation for the peace of a rested mind. He was lost but quite hilarious, inspiring smiles drawn tight by sympathy for this amiable stranger. When you meet people like that you know it's going to be a fine morning.

I asked Mike about the strange condition that had led him to us, if he was ever able to find sleep after heavy drinking or a few good spliffs. With bowed head he replied that he might pass-out for an unsettled hour or two, but would always rise to the same state of blankness, that his dreams weren't worth going to sleep for.

Even the strands of his brown hair appeared tired and empty in the dusty light. Only by looking past his first somnolent eyes could his distant vitality be believed, hovering somewhere in the memory of his former selves. So I bought him a large whisky to help, and beers for myself, Derek, and Sara, who had finally ceased to yell unreasonable musical jukebox requests to anyone passing our table. Anyway, it was clear by their interlocked hands that Derek has assumed responsibility for her in the event of ridiculousness.

When I returned from the toilets, which had the vicious stench of a serious medical condition, the others were talking about making a move. I said I'd probably buy some mushrooms from the tobacco shop which sold them legally at the time, and they said great, we'll get some beers and enjoy the dying sun on the city's central hill.

At first it seemed that I would be the sole partaker of the Mexicana magic, but Mike roused a spark of intrigue from some hidden depth of his apathetic core, and soon resolved to eat half of a thirty-gram bag.

"Double it to change your life," I said.

"I'm new to psychedelia, and I don't want to break my brain," he answered, "... more than it is."

We rode a taxi through the park until we came to a slope with a view where we could sit back from the noise of traffic and the disturbing characters of the normals. We drank beer as we ate the mushrooms to veil the putrid taste, though that's an encouraging element in psychedelics.

An amount of time passed away. I could see that Mike was aglow with expectation, gently tearing at patches of grass and glancing with off-white peacock eyes at the approaching strangeness he felt rising inside, closing in on his brain and about to burst through his perception. No advice for the mind or tales of bizarre personal experience could help him now. He simply had to kick-back and let it run; a request that can't be effortlessly adhered to when you're presented with lively flowers and trees of terrifying reverence, who's rustling leaves seem to be muttering the indecipherable wisdom of their age.

He might believe that he's seeing clearly for the first time, or certainly that something's changed dramatically in his world. And for at least one solid moment of dread he won't remember why. He'd retrace his thoughts, try to organize his mind and pull his idea of himself back together, nervously, to some precarious original that simply isn't there. He'd find the answers to questions never asked. He'd learn the meaning of life then forget it almost immediately, somewhere in the glory of seeing that time isn't real and that every single thing might just be one.

But Mike would have to lear by himself, and question it still. So I stayed quiet and opened a new beer, lit an unsteadily rolled cherry-menthol cigarette, and listened to Derek's abbreviated explanation of himself, which Sara had demanded as a soothing lullaby to her crapulent slumber.

He told us that his father had hung himself a couple of years ago and that he had accepted the fact, and was at peace with his memories of the man. Now Derek worked in telephone sales and didn't have any plans. Derek and Sara drank vodka from plastic cups, lying back on their elbows, talking in quiet voices.

Imagining that the clouds were collectives of sublime consciousness whose pleasure was floating around observing the stories of Earth, I pointed this out to Mike, who proclaimed that he understood entirely, and not just about the clouds. From his astonished eyes, as they scanned the surrounding greenery, it was clear that he now saw every blade of grass as an unknowable metaphor for the purpose of all existence.

But this was simply the first rush and we were perhaps too drunk to appreciate things in full-flowing majesty. And so after a few hours of rambling and attempts to find meaning in the shape of the hill we sat on, the beer had run out and we agreed to phone a taxi to take us back into town where we would part ways.

Back at the bridges I wished them all luck finding whatever it was the might be looking for in life, and told Mike to get well soon.

I went to a bar, remembering the last day and waiting for the next one. A fine morning.