flight

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

 

And into air I spin and twist:

I never knew my scattered world

This high, this bright, this burning light.

And down below they swirl in blue.

 

The forests and the fields, they flow.

Their dizzy hearts, their green and grey

Are fading out, escaping from

The boxes and the traps we built.

 

And here, I hang on cirrus lines,

On eddies at the edge of space,

In jouissance, in points beyond

The passing earth and all it was.

 

It slips away: a distant star,

A point of light in boundless light.

 

Journal Entry – 23/11/1998

The privacy of my writing is becoming of greatest importance to me. I contort myself into all kinds of shapes so that people cannot read. It is not that I am ashamed of the words I write, nor that I am particularly bothered by people reading. It is simply that I cannot be sure what I am about to write. You see the words come to me, not me to them. I am not in control, am merely a receiver. From where they come I’m not overly sure. For certain it is not this place, this time. They simply pass through me and on to the page. This subject is, of course, circular here. Like this journey. It will – all things being equal – be a return.

I find all the greatest points in life follow this pattern. And they are not for me to question, merely to receive.

 

Photography by Cheryl Garner (2013)

poetry by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

 

commuter

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll see her standing in the rain.
The place, the time: they never change.
She hugs her bag in front of her,
Her toes are on the yellow line.

It’s rare to see her raise her head.
On days like this her hair is wet
And darker than its usual brown.
She stares on to the tracks, unmoved.

For years we’ve shared the same routine:
She stands, I wait – anticipate
Her being there, existing there -
A confirmation of our lives,

And how our lives are drifting by.
Her toes are on the yellow line.

 

Journal Entry – 17/11/1998

Where does this fear come from… the fear of travel? Every day a journey, there and back. A movement through space, there and back. But can’t escape myself and neither can anyone else.

 

Photograph by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)

 

Broken

(Cheryl Garner, 2013)

He broke his journey on that day.

No reason why, no thought before,

He simply picked his bag and left,

Four stops before the usual place.

 

And still without a question raised

He left the station, walked into

The town whose name he’d always seen

But never thought a real place.

 

He wandered on without a goal,

Just looking at the streets and shops,

And people on their way to work,

And none of it made any sense.

 

He stopped and stared up at the sky.

Same sky, same day: different life.

 

Journal Entry – 19/11/1998

Who is to say what is anachronistic and what “just is because it is”? The is nothing intrinsically odd about how fields are arranged: they “just are”. If one landowner tried to straighten out their field, all hell would – more than likely – break out. People protect what is, no matter how absurd, no matter how bizarre the chance configuration of elements that produced such a ridiculous status quo.

Writing on a journey changes the way that I travel. Rather than sporadic and unfocussed thoughts I fill my time with words I can return to. It imposes a form upon my thoughts, which are by their nature scatter gun. I look up from the book and it is a kind of freedom, as if I am stepping out into some kind of dream. Then I return back to the blue lines of the page, and I am back into reflection and into the strictures of the world of writing: the world of work.

 

Photography by Cheryl Garner (2013)

Poem by thecheesewolf (2013)

Train Journal by Gavin Jones (1998)