Love's Sweet Exile

[The Convalescent]

I think I’ve Found It. A Design For Life. My Rendition of how to live. I write this in the Indian Summer of my life. How did I get here? I’d felt low before, but after The Descent in to The Second Great Depression I recognised the Black Dog On My Shoulder and decided that Everything Must Go. I wanted to live Faster in an attempt to Stay Beautiful. I had realised that life is short and is Born To End – my brother William’s Last Words to me. Fed up of being asked “So Why So Sad?” or being told I felt like this because “You’re Tender and You’re Tired”, and under a Tsunami of criticism from family and friends that made me feel Ready For Drowning, I told my understanding partner Emily “You’re Love Alone is Not Enough”, packed up my bags and left. I left my job – I was the Royal Correspondent for the local paper – as well. But where to go? From Despair to Where? Then I remembered where I’d felt happiest and headed to Hazleton Avenue in Australia. It was painful, but now it feels like The Future Has Been Here Forever. She wrote to me once, saying “You Stole the Sun from My Heart”. She took it badly and never really recovered.

We had a lot of differences. Music for instance – she loved that Motown Junk. I wanted to Let Robeson Sing. Her habit of Peeled Apples for breakfast annoyed me. Her insistence on Tennessee Fried Chicken after a night out made me feel ill. And The Love of Richard Nixon was just plain weird. We did have some things in common. We both loved art and photography – we met at a Kevin Carter exhibition in 1985. There were good times too - a holiday in a busy resort in Spain was a highlight – endless beaches and A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun. At times it was intense – No Surface, All Feeling. It was too much for me. She was getting closer to me while I was getting Further Away. If I could have found a way out occasionally perhaps things would have been different, but all I found was Doors Closing Slowly. We were poisoning each other, like a type of relationship Autointoxication. As much as we tried to deal with it properly – I tried to say “It’s not War – Just the End of Love”, we were in reality driving each other up Suicide Alley. The background music to our lives – family, friends, art – was playing A Song for Departure.

She had a son from a previous relationship. We got on well. He was a child when I left – now I get Postcards From a Young Man. I love the contact, but it’s a constant reminder that La Tristesse Durera. He wrote to me not long after I left and said “She is Suffering”. I ignored it. I later found out that she dropped to 4st 7lb, and then She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach. I still feel bad now. If anyone ever tells you Suicide is Painless, I can tell you they are wrong.

Life is good here. I have a small place, a nice garden and a little fishing boat. My Little Empire. The sea is my Epicentre. I have a quiet life – I Live to Fall Asleep. The first year – or as I called it, The Year of Purification – I tried to distance myself from everything I ever knew. And then my father died. You can’t just disappear. He was an artist, a very good one – His Last Painting hangs proudly on my wall. Sorry I let you down Dad – you thought Nobody Loved You. You were wrong – I did. I still do. Fragments of my previous life remain, a large collection in my Archives of Pain. The pendant she gave me to hang above my bed To Repel Ghosts is still with me. It doesn’t work.

Moving across the world isn’t easy. There are some practical issues, like what to do with your money. Natwest, Barclays, Midlands, Lloyds – none of them exist over here. The Everlasting cultural confusion can make you feel Enola/Alone. But there’s great SYMMetry here too. The Convalescent in me recognises that alone is what I wanted to be and couldn’t be in the UK. Now that I am, I often feel afflicted by self-imposed loneliness – Another Invented Disease. Overall though, I’m happier here. I always thought there was something missing in the UK – like we were Empty Souls. Now, sitting on the Golden Platitudes that are the sandbanks that line thebeach enjoying the Ocean Spray I feel I have Found That Soul. I always said I would Die in the Summertime. Now I can, and when I go home, they can play me one last Autumnsong. And then I will hopefully find Some Kind of Nothingness and finally complete the phrase “Solitude Sometimes Is”…