Paragliding between peaks.

He came over for a beer this evening, he was depressed and listless; post event blues he called it.

I said why do you do it.

he said it is not a matter of choice any more. I have to do it. but each time it gets easier.

How is that I asked.

He said: Each event is like a hill. at first a small hill, steep but not very high. you climb to the top and it is a struggle. you spend a couple of hours at the top of that hill and then fall, tumbling down the other side. Landing with a bump. you look behind you and all you see is the wall you have fallen down, you look ahead and all you see is an endless plain but there is no option other than to start walking.

eventually after a few days you see in the distance a purple haze which in time makes itself known as another hill; larger this time and more challenging but your pace quickens and you relish the challenge of climbing it.

But again, after a couple of hours on the peak you fall to the plain on the other side and the long trudge repeats itself.

After a number of ascents and falls you learn to take a paraglider with you and instead of falling to the plain below after an ascent you glide towards the next peak landing closer and closer with each flight. Eventually you soar from peak to peak making good use of the thermals that rise from the plain below.

As long as you refrain from soaring, Icarus like, too close to the sun you can maintain this momentum... A series of ecstatic flights between heights, your ears filled with your own whoops of joy.

Nothing gets better than that.

An imaginary overheard conversation

"She never uses my name. I will phone her and she will never use my name. she will call me darling or sweetheart or love but never my name. it is as if she cnnot be bothered to use my name or she has forgotten my name."

"Thank god we have never spent a Christmas together; imagine the horror of recieving a gift with a tag that says: whatshisname or the bloke I live with. Imagine your lover ringing your friends to ask the name of the man she sleeps with. Imagine her phoning your mum to ask her the name of her son.

I would love her to use my name just once.

but she won't

She hasn't forgotten it... She just didn't learn it in the first place."

The reason perhaps for shoes lost from bridges.

http://tristanssecretsofmagic.blogspot.com/

the lonliness of the long distance blogger.

In blogging regularly one creates a rod for ones own back. one becomes a slave to the blog.

It is a lonely, thankless task (occasionally brightened by the odd comment from a reader).

However it is encouraging to note that this is read in far flung corners of the planet and that people return to it regularly.
Feel free to comment or even email.

The most difficult question

This morning at 8.27 my telephone rang, waking me. I could not get to it in time. I missed the call. I did not recognise the number.

At 10.00 I redialed the number and before I had time to speak a childs voice said: "Daddy". That was all, nothing more, just "Daddy".

I was thrown into confusion, I was thrown back in time. My mind filled with the image of a four year old child, walking through a meadow high above the river Dart. A four year old child who asked: "Are you my daddy?" The easiest question to answer but hardest question to be asked.

This morning all I could say to that child was "I'm sorry".

"I'm not your daddy. I'm sorry."

Essential listening

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00mj7nc

Don Letts on Notting Hill/Ladbroke Grove. check it out.

Ditto TV

Nelson has eaten barbie

Bridges I have lost shoes from. No.3

I slid into the party like a well oiled houseboy

holiday romance

Baltimore, Ireland. 1970

We talked of red roses
we talked of sorrento
while the other kids drank to their pledge

We walked to the beacon
then out at the beacon
held hands and then
went to the edge

she told me she loved me
I told her my fears
we talked of red roses
we talked of Sorrento

Her name was Penelope
the same as my sister
which smacked of incest
each time that I kissed her

On the well rounded bottom
of an overturned inflatable
and all was in reach
but how far was debatable
down there
down on the beach

Under a mans checked shirt

we talked of red roses
we talked of sorrento
we parted agreeing no contact was best

On a postcard weeks later
she wrote of red roses
she wrote of sorrento
she wrote of red roses on a card from sorrento

Without a return address.

Another Event

It doesn't seem like ten minutes since the last one but we are at it again.

Tabernacle, Notting Hill this time, tomorrow night. come and see. should be interesting.

I think tristan is going to be in a bright place.

Lee scratch perry