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The Plough And Orion
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My teacher did give me one piece of advice which I still
remember. He told me never to be too autobiographical in what I wrote.
It may me tempting when your young to write about yourself and what you
are, he told me, but that is just ego, to truly be a writer you must
live outside yourself. Most of the rest of his advice he gave I forgot
instantly. I was too busy watching the way the morning light caught his
bald head, glinting like it was polished.
As you're reading this, you dont need me to tell you that I
ignored his advice. The thing is you see, I kinda suspect that he was
wrong and that all writers write about themselves, just some more
obliquely than others. This is the first time I've ever tried to write
anything and I kinda wanted to explain myself, in that longwinded way,
first. Anyway, I want to tell you about the time I saw a spaceship.
It was just an another day in a summer I was wasting according
to plan. I was eighteen and directionless, spending all my time just
grinning and sitting still as countless adults tried to push me this
way, then that; trying to point out the signposts and set me on the
right path. It was one of those days that are so hot that theres nothing
to do but slump next to a clear fresh brook on a low squat hill, and
just lay there with a pack of Marlboro and a copy of `On the Road'. I
was just sitting up there on the hilltop as it got dark, trying to read
in the halflight and watching the darkness as it crept silently around
me and began to envelop me. I loved the slow darkness of summer and the
stealthy emergence of the stars. I always tried to watch for the first
star so I could make a wish, but Id never see it in time. Suddenly I'd
look and there'd be two stars and it would be too late. That day was no
exception.
After a while I gave up trying to read and just kinda lay back
with my bottle of wine and stared up as the constellations began to
appear. The ground was still warm and I lay in a little trough I'd dug
in the heather so that no-one could see me. I always wished I knew more
ofthe names of the stars. I could pick out Orion and the plough but I got
bored of looking at them after a while. So instead I just tried to
arrange the others into shapes and animals and made up my own
constellations, much as the ancients must have done. I could see shapes
that looked like penguins and camels and icecreams. I stared at them for
a long time. I felt like I was peeling away time like a banana,
civilisation vanishing around me, and was so happy I thought I might
implode.
I thought about a lot of things. I was thinking that maybe I'd
go to America, Alabama maybe, and I'd work in one of those ramshackle
petrol stations, stuck right out in the middle of nowhere. I'd serve a
couple of customers an hour and the rest of the time I'd maybe dream
about being an Eskimo, something silly like that. At night I'd go back
to the camper van I called home, itd be parked out in the woods. I'd
chop some logs and make a fire, then I'd sit and drink bourbon and strum
my guitar till I was so tired I couldnt move. When I was old I'd live in
one of those wooden shacks, and I'd spend the days on the veranda in my
rocking chair watching cars going past, listening to dirty blues music
and slowly going senile. I wondered if I'd still be able to see Orion
and the plough
from Alabama.
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