Engineering confusion

Comes a time when your tediously long train of perfectly linked, smoothly drawn carriages on unshakeable rails, their insides insulated from the grim air and jaunty light begins to rattle. The engine, so long disciplined to move, station to station, trained to learn and know only the next direction - and to know it well - to think nothing but onward momentum, forward draw, to know only the pull, the roll, the pusrposeful slicing of air and fog and dark and day, and to whistle and blow, that it could all move that way or that - that engine, draws to an abrupt halt because someone somewhere, a human hand, has pulled upon a dangling chain of questions that have the power to slow, confuse the mindless pistons, stop - and I am afraid, even derail.

So AJ, what way, and with what new certitudes? And how do you know there is a station at the end of this journeying, with light and sandwiches and the promise of warmth in a restless waiting room.

A Crocodile story begins

Once there was a crocodile and his name was crocodile. He lived in the marshes with no crocodile. He had crocodile skin, crocodile soul and crocodile mind. And he knew all the crocodile rules well -

1. Do not seek them out in the forest, they all come to the waterplace.
2. Be patient. Let them find you.
3. Do not scratch your own back. There will always be someone who finds benefit in scratching it.
4. Always keep your head above the water.
5. When hungry, eat without guilt.
6. Everything the world has to offer is in the marshes.
7. Move only when you cant help it.
8. Human beings walk and talk. They haven't evolved to still-life and silence. Avoid the unevolved.
9. Food comes before thought. Body before soul.
10. Want what you dont have. Want beauty.

And he sat and learned the rules again and again and again. And did the crocodile-do in the marshes.

We are unsettled with us

I know we are unsettled with us. The life we lead is too much in the light. And then the hands we have, look at them. We know each line, each growing wrinkle. And then our commerce with ourselves - observe, how we know it all - each joke, each sad memory, each corner of our minds.

I told you yesterday to seek out someone and you did. And you invited to our table a new creature. What shall we call him? He looked pleased with himself. He was a hungry shifty bright-eyed unfeeling floating person. I saw him. I did not speak with him. I wanted to see what he could do. And he did much. He did not seem capable of friendship. Friendship does not devour. And, frankly, I thought his humour acerbic and unsavoury, not quite the kind we share. But he was different. And he did things.

And then, it was refreshing. After all we have been unsettled and cramped in our little space. There's you with your brooding against the wall, there's him with his dialectics at the desk, and him with his contemplative cover on the bed, and him with his cunning at the window, and him with his memories frantically rummaging through the cupboards, and him with his keen eye and twitching fingers fixing the eisel, and him with his tireless ambitions - cleaning washing fixing mending making, and then, there's that keeper of rhythms and songs who walked off the roof some nights back and will not return.

It's been a crowded place with us. And maybe we need to get ourselves a new home. A larger one. And call a few more faces to run the show.

It's like having just one story and one script for a million nights. When you are done with the reading, you know you cannot change the words. But you hope - sitting on the fan, dangling your legs, looking down with curiousity - that maybe the story will tell you something of the gardens and the cities outside, if only you screwed a new face into the reader's neck, a new pair of hands into his shoulder sockets and a new set of lips that will whisper in a new tongue.

What do we do now AJ?

You know, AJ, the second innings is often more difficult than the first. So as we walk out to the middle, with the stadium buzzing with expectation, and as we survey the field spread out around us, what do we do?

Do we think of what is expected of us? Do we think of what we should do or not do to stay there -at the wicket - a little longer? Do we think of how we'd deal with the red cherry that will zip past our ears? Do we think runs? Do we think of the bowler who licks his lips with anticipation?

Or do we feel the white flannel on our skin, smell the willow, see the sun soak up the green, smile, grimace, screw up our eyes, and take guard?