Salavation Lies Within (Feb/Mar 2004)

The hotel was the kind of place where the guests come because they've lost it all; they've nowhere else to go; the broken & the broken-hearted.
The strasse disappeared into snow & shadow & disappeared off into archways & around corners. Behind me & over the road there was only darkness & the spiny, scratchy fingers of leafless, lifeless tress. Perhaps a park. I thought of vampires & spies coming in from the cold. And Vienna is very cold in February.
A sickly, septic light oozed from the unimpressive looking door of the hotel while on either side of it imposing & impenetrable buildings looked on stoically.
Even the front desk couldn't bear to enter the hotel and was pressed up against one wall in the vestibule, barely big enough to corral the night clerk; himself barely big enough to fill out his ridiculous bandstand jacket. As I stood halfway up the stairs & leaning on the front desk filling out my registration card I noticed, over the gold-tasseled, sofa-trim epaulets, boxes of cigarettes for sale alongside bottles of vodka & whiskey. I was already preparing to check out as I was checking in...
I imagined the hotel beyond would be antiquated cage elevators humming between floors, casting film noir-shadows on the half hidden faces of men with piercing eyes, trench coats & trilbies. All I found was the echo of my footsteps leading me up some distinctly institutional stairs to my room.
The room looked as if it had never seen a joyful day or tasted a sun-kissed afternoon. There was a bed, a nightstand & a brown bulb. I twitched at the spider web of lace at the window & saw only dark walls & the empty eyes of empty rooms glaring greyly back at me. I lay on the bed & smoked a cigarette. I considered the bottles of spirits downstairs & knew that would be the end of me. I'm sure if I'd enquired  I'd find, under the counter, the hotel had an equally impressive selection of razor blades, nooses & big bottles of almond-scented cyanide. It was that kind of place; a guesthouse for the broken & broken-hearted. A place to check-in & then check-out once & for all; the place you come when you've lost it all.
But this isn't that kind of story. I had lost it. But only a bit...

3 months had passed since my mother had too & we were midway through what my brother described as "the longest winter of our lives". The drip drip drip of sorrow will keep you awake at night & as it fills up your life you've got to find a way to bail or you start to sink.
& that's when I lost it.
My boss finally suggested I take some time to come to terms with everything & despite my protestations & claims as to my "fine-ness" her suggestion was final. I was like a balloon drifting over the zoo; beautiful, free & sad.
Somewhere you know a child is crying.

So, I drifted into a travel agents & booked a ticket for Vienna the very next day. It seemed as good a place as any, maybe it was. But it was also cold.
Did I mention the cold?

So I lay on the bed of Hotel Suicide & smoked my cigarette & listened to my walkman & wondered for the thousandth time what the fuck I was doing. I chased my thoughts around my head until they tired me out enough to sleep.
I awoke early the next day, dressed & left the hotel as quickly as I could. Breakfast wasn't included in the hotels modest price range. I doubt most guests make it that far.

 The sky was white & heavy with snow; much of which had already hidden half the city from me. What I could see was dark, brooding and Baroque. Red trams screeched & scraped through the streets.
I consulted my map & checked my bearings through the fog of condensing oxygen that slipped from my lips. My cheeks already felt pink & flushed. I adjusted the messenger bag across my shoulders, pressed Play & set off across the city in search of new lodgings.

The city was still stirring it's early morning coffee as I found myself amidst the Prater; cold & empty; long before opening & the breath of life that would fill it's lungs long after I had passed through; candyfloss, laughter & gumdrop lights amidst the cold, cold night.But there was a strange and lonely beauty about a sleeping, snow smothered funfair; like the balloon above the zoo.
I walked into the city & marveled at the architecture & the circumstances of my situation; I was alone & far from home. My life existed somewhere else & while I was here it was on hold. I was a ghost, haunting Vienna while the ghost of me haunted the rooms of my life back in England. Perhaps my life haunted me too.
Through the ice & the snow I found somewhere better to stay; somewhere with a European joie de vive & a snoring room-mate; somewhere to store the toothbrush & changes of underwear I'd brought.

I returned to the city, following my feet through the snow, guided only by the capricious compass of the idle wanderer. I passed through courtyards & plazas, gardens & and archways; I followed tramlines & busy roads of chugging exhausts & condensing breath; I exchanged glances with the cast-iron gazes of a hundred statues as they looked out over this beautiful city, as they had for centuries, as they always would. I was searching for something I had come here to find; a sense of perspective, and it was this search that, eventually & without warning, brought me to The Vontiv Park Cafe.
Vienna is famous for it's Cafe & it's coffee-culture- Sachertorte & opera, waiters in shirts as crisp & clean as the snow; but the Vontiv Park was not like that at all. The Vontiv Park was hidden in plain sight, just out of sight of St. Stephan's Cathedral. It was the kind of place you would walk by everyday & not take a second glance at, and if you did you would have trouble recalling it's existence. There was nothing special about this place, it was a coffee shop and nothing more, but the significance of places is borne not from its location but from what transpires there. As I stepped inside this thought couldn't have been further from my mind.

The interior was as dark & warm as the aroma of coffee that embraced me as I entered. Light bled in through the large but grimy window at the front  but was slowed and thickened by the heavy, blue fog of cigarette smoke; dark wooden tables, scratched and chipped by a lifetime of coffee cups & conversation clamoured for space, flanked by creaking chairs with pretzel-shaped backs. I eased myself into a small booth in the corner, ordered a coffee, lit a cigarette. From my bag I produced a shiny, new Moleskine notebook, the first of many I've had since then, & began to write.

I wrote for hours & then I wrote for days, confessing all to the cream-coloured pages in the chaotic, unrelenting scrawl of my own hand. Each day I would breakfast on 2 bananas & a carton of milk ("The Breakfast of Champions") before making my way to The Vontiv Park to unburden myself of all the thoughts that had drifted up from a heavy heart. I wrote about the hospital, I wrote about my mum, I wrote about the man who was my father, I wrote about myself, I wrote about the girl & the one I'd left behind. I wore out pens & pages & batteries; I emptied cigarette packs & coffee cups; I shed tears.

In the evenings I would leave & find someplace for dinner or sip a beer at a lonely bar. With each passing day, with each completed page I felt better & better while my bag, it seemed, grew heavier & heavier with the weight of an unburdened heart.  One night I lost myself in a park amidst a snowstorm, my ears filled with the soundtrack to my Vienna (the greatest mix-tape I ever got). I was listening to Sigur Ros' #3 & I was overcome with a sense of life & joy & I knew things were going to be okay.
Or, at least, they would be if I could find my way out of the park before I froze to death.

On the final day I headed once more toward the cafe that had become synonymous with my salvation. I had a few more pages let in my journal & a few more thoughts to get down to finish what I had started. It was still cold, the sun shone out of an icy blue sky, but I was smiling & feeling better than I had in months. I turned the corner, away from the cathedral, into the now familiar street. I tried the handle then tried it again, then I stood for a long empty moment & simply stared at the door. No light's of any kind shone from within, only the faintest glimmer of sunlight reflected in the glass bottles & steel fixtures of the bar. If salvation lay within then I would never find it. The Vontiv Park was closed.

I looked up & down the street as if some passer-by might rush to aid me in some way I could not comprehend how. I shielded my eyes with my hand as I peered desperately through the window as if I would discover that it was all some mistake. I checked my watch, hoping I'd made some gross miscalculation of the time, that perhaps I was too early. But no, there was no mistake & presently the proprietor arrived at the window, unlocked the door & informed me that today was a holiday.
I thanked her meekly & stumbled away from the door. I wandered down the street, once more at the mercy of the same idiosyncratic compass that had brought me here. I peered in at other cafes as I passed but nowhere else seemed to hold a sense of salvation.  So I hopped on a Ringstrasse tram & followed the route without a ticket, unsure as how or where to purchase one. I have a memory of a rose that may or may not be true.
 I looked out of the window & wondered if I could be considered a tourist for I had taken in the sights of this beautiful city only in passing. I could be anywhere, I could've gone anywhere & it was now that the thouht blossomed in my mind;
 The significance of places is borne not from its location but from what transpires there. 

I was one stop from a complete circuit; the conductor got on so I got off.
(Did I mention how cold Vienna is in February?) The cold & declining caffeine levels & my pocket-sized epiphany pushed me into another coffee shop; a bustling, no frills affair that bordered a bustling plaza. I ordered a Vienna Coffee & sat down to complete what I'd started.

Draining time from the clock & the coffee from my cup I set down my pen & flexed my wrist. I was finished. I did not go back & re-read any of what I wrote (It is only in the years since then, that I have, in times of trouble, gone back to look at the words contained therein & tried to make sense of now from the sense I found then.) I simply returned the journal to my bag, my burdens now weighing so much my shoulder ached & complained.  My last night in Vienna was spent toasting my future & acknowledging my past in a cafe that only years late did I come to know was used as a location in one of my favourite films, Before Sunrise. In the morning I took an early bus to the airport, I looked out of the window & waved goodbye to this stranger of a city that had held me in it's arms for a time in a moment of anonymous tenderness. For a moment I thought I saw a pale reflection of myself waving back. He was all that I'd left behind & we were both happy for it.
The future that lay ahead would not be easy, futures never are, but it would be easier now from the perspective I had gained as I clambered to the top of my pile of woe.

"We are broken..." (Oct 2010)

...her error couldn't have said it better.

Dec 5th 2010, Yoyogi Park

Shibuya X-ing (Nov 2010)

(Jan 2010)

"And the fact that it was black-and-white made it look all old and wise, belonging to a different, vanished, therefore better world"

~Aleksandar Hemon

 

Holding Hands in Autumn

I read the words:

"It's not impossible that they fell in love. They were both past the age of foolish passion, so they were passionate without being fools"

-(Michael Chabon's 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union')

and in that moment I see the seats opposite me taken by a man & a woman; they are older, much older than me & yet there is a glow about them that lies beyond the ruddy cheeks of Autumns kiss. The pair of them smiling & giddy, the woman wriggles her hand into his with eager excitement as if on a cold day, as if with the love that has brewed long enough to no longer hesitate but has not grown cold & awkward. These people seem not to have lost a drop of love in all the years they've been together & I wonder how long it's been; twenty, thirty years?
I look again at the words I have just read, their ink on my memory still wet. I smile; eyes that reflect the sorrows of a long life lived & yet etched around each in wrinkles of joy I see that these people have known as much happiness, if not more. They laugh & smile & the man holds the woman's hand tightly, happily, lovingly in his. I can't recall the last time I saw 2 people so in love. They smile & talk & too soon my stop arrives & I watch their light disappear along the train tracks.

Mum's Birthday

Today is my mother's birthday. She'd be 65.
My mum was the strongest person I've ever known; she bore the brunt of an alcoholic husband destroying everything they'd created, she watched her parents, her brother, her sister & her dear friends die & throughout all of this she was the shoulder for everyone else to cry on, she was the shield that stood between her children & all the darknesses of the world.
And despite being a tiny woman, flighty & slight of frame, she could still beat my 18 year old self at Mercy & was the one who could get the lid off the jar of jam.

I only ever saw my mother sick a handful of times & it terrified me. My mother was invulnerable.
Almost.
She carried on regardless & somehow, somewhere, always, always, always found the strength to smile & was quick to do so. She was good fun.
She would iron my socks & underpants in winter so they'd be warm, despite me telling her how pointless it was. She always wanted to hold my readybrek hands in winter even when I was far too old to agree.
I'd give anything to have her hold those hands now.
There was no pretense with my mum, no bullshit, & I admired her for that the most; she was kind, generous & forgiving. I never knew her to be malicious in anyway. She had no time for it. She would often say, when as a boy I'd fallen out with friends, or later with girlfriends; "I don't know why you just all can't get along". I often think the world should've taken note.
After I was unfairly dismissed from a job my mother, unbeknown to me called my boss & then his boss & then his until she got to the top of the company, berating each one in turn until they offered me my job back, a reluctant handshake from a recalcitrant child. I have no idea what she said but I can imagine her making each of them feel like they were 7 years old, caught shoplifting Woolworths pick n mix.
My favourite story is from my graduation; I had tickets pus extra tickets for my mum, her friend & a whole host of other friends who wanted to come & see me in my cap & gown. Unfortunately those tickets were still in my pocket when I went off to get the aforementioned attire. With the ceremony about to start I ran back to where I'd left everyone to find them gone. My head spinning wildly as I entered the hall I saw everyone seated & smiling from a balcony above the stage. Later I discovered my mother had waved everyone through to the seats & when stopped & questioned by an usher stated simply "I don't need tickets" in a way that suggested that that was that & that that was enough. It was.
She would give you all she had and more even if all she had was nothing.
But don't take this from me- it's easy for a grieving son to idolise the dear departed, understand as it became even more clear to me; the funeral hall could not contain all the people who had come out to say their final goodbyes to my mother. People who were strangers to me but not I to them for my mother was friend to everyone she met & she always told them about her sons. I have never felt so proud to know any one person in all my life, on the day I said goodbye.

Of course, things weren't always idyllic- far from it at times. But those things seem so much less important now. I only wish they had at the time.

My Mum didn't understand a lot about my life, or my brothers, she'd probably understand even less about it now but that never stopped her from supporting either of us in what we did, no matter how unfathomable it might be. If there was ever to be a role model it would be her; she taught me to be generous & kind & considerate although perhaps she taught me, inadvertently, to worry too much too. She taught me a strength, although I can't always find it & good humour, ditto.
I miss my mum every day & while I'm thankful for the time we had, although I'll always wish we'd had more, I think the saddest thing is that you never got to meet her & the friend she would have been to you & the love she would have given.
She was mother, friend, sister, aunty & more to more than just those within her family.
I leave you with this photo- it's my favourite & yet it's of a woman I never really knew, taken years before I was born & yet it captures the spirit and the joy my mum carried with her her whole life, no matter what.

Happy birthday Mum. Ciders at half mast!. xx