July 2014
Writings by the Say It Right Writers Circle themed around SPIRITUALITY
FICTION: The Gods Of Maeshowe – Alan Marshall FICTION: Angela – Ali H FICTION: All They Want is Your Money – Ozark Bule FICTION: Hungry Ghosts – Phil Chokeword FICTION: They’re Just Waiting, Waiting to Begin – Ben Smith
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The Gods of Maeshowe By Alan Marshall Maeshowe is a Prehistoric chamber tomb circa 2800bce. This story and its characters are loosely based on real events – as recorded in the Viking Orkneyinga saga, and copious runic graffiti within the mound itself. --------------------Orkney, 1152 Harald Erland pushed his broad hands into the packed snow across the entrance and pulled wads of white into the dark stone passageway. The low doorway to the outside world remained blocked and the storm raged on. “You still think Hodr is on our side?” asked Benedikt, “Seems to me we are trapped in this godforsaken tomb until springtime or death, whichever arrives sooner, gods or no gods.” “Baldir and Hodr will listen, you’ll see. They understand winter better than your lone Christ,” replied the big man solemnly and set off at a stoop towards the main chamber. He passed the smaller side chamber where Ragnarr and Erlingr already lay dead, discovered yesterday wide-eyed and with mysterious black soot ringed around their open mouths. Harald knew madness and panic were taking hold of his crew, they had to get to the longboat soon or Benedikt and his single god would be proved right. Before they ducked under the lintel, the reek of trapped men and women filled his nose. The walls of the howe were lit with dull fire light, and around the embers his band of Viking traders passed the time as best they could until the storm dropped. Lines of swirling, branched runes grew across the stone walls as the days drew on - private prayers and curses to the old and new gods they hoped would hear, carved with their blunted knives. As the runes increased, decorum and civility ebbed away. The group acted on instinct now, fighting for the last food scraps or what warmth remained in their meagre fire. He scanned the room – Ofram squatted in one corner shitting onto the dirt, whilst Thorir wept and prayed loudly and Thorni and Helgi fucked noisily in another. These were proud people but the loss of two companions in the dead of night, alongside the loss of freedom and daylight took its toll. He slumped in the least piss-soaked spot he could find and leant against the immovable stones. Benedikt joined him. “This is where pagan gods lead, my friend,” he goaded, fingering his iron crucifix, “debauchery and sin.” “And your Jesus Christ? This is not his place, how will he hear you here? One man as the salvation for everything?” he rubbed his beard with calloused hands, “No, the wisdom of many is greater than one alone.” Benedikt laughed. “Wisdom? Wisdom and magic is one thing, what we must pray for here are miracles. Do so and he will find you.” “Then we must trust in any gods who will listen, or die here,” he concluded, and both men lapsed into silence. Despite the lack of sunlight, when night arrived outside, the madness inside the mound seemed to fade and as the fire shrank, Harald lay on his back staring at the black
stone ceiling. Lines of corbelled slabs stretched away into a dark cone, slick with years upon years of soot from countless refugees’ fires. Suddenly a tiny movement made him think he was dreaming. He rubbed his tired eyes and glanced at the snoring group around him – no, he was definitely awake. From the apex of the roof a shape crawled across the facets of the stones, black against black and visible only by the glint of embers reflected on its spindle legs. The shape uncurled like smoke, fluid and precise movements slowly revealing the pitchblack mass of a great spider’s body. Gradually it set out across the stones towards him. “Child of Hel, what are you?” Harald muttered, transfixed. As it came nearer, the spider’s bulk glistened like tar, and a black tongue probed from its unnatural mouth. “Gods deliver me,” he tried, too scared to disturb its silent approach. Down the wall and across the earth it came, until at last it touched his skin, tacky and warm and leaving soot where its legs crept. “Jesus Christ,” he tried in desperation; “save me!” before the black tongue sealed his own mouth and he felt the weight of ages suck the life from him like smoke. Both men had been wrong of course. The gods could hear their plight – but older, darker gods befitting the ancestry of the place. It was her duty to answer. Talk to gods and be sure you know who’s listening. Fatter than before, the tar spider retreated slowly to the inky roof. Before the spring thaw she would save them all.
Angela By Ali H The Swiss Cottage is a two hundred year old Hansel and Gretel-style pub that sits uncomfortably in the middle of a busy inner-London interchange, surrounded by all the ugliness the area could muster; an Odeon cinema, multiple lanes of traffic and subways and a spattering of sad-looking kebab shops. It was sleeting when I walked there. The ice was soft and thick and slid down my neck and under my scarf, making my throat and chest damp. On the bus stop by the traffic lights I waited at it said: ‘FUCK AMY SKANKY BITCH.’ Inside the pub was orange-lit and warm. It was full of the kind of afternoon drinkers who make you feel sad and tender at the same time: old men in knitted hats sipping dark ales in ones and, occasionally, twos. I got a beer and sat on one of the seats that ran along the back wall, glad to have a quiet place to spend an hour. I rested my drink on the paper and watched the headline turn golden and distort through the glass: ‘16 YEAR OOOLD GIRL GROOMS TEAAACHER.’ ‘What a load of nonsense.’ I looked over to see a woman in her late seventies slowly un-wrapping an impossibly long scarf from around her neck and setting down a Guinness at the table next to me. ‘Bloody non-sense,’ she cut the word up in her thick north London accent and raised her eyebrows, first at me and then at the paper on the table. ‘Excuse my French but you shouldn’t read that rubbish my love; it’ll rot your brain. They all lie, you know.’ She shook her head and held up a crossword from the table in front of her. ‘This is much better for you’ she grinned. I smiled politely and got out my phone, inwardly wishing her away. She persisted: ‘they save this for me every day and keep it on my table – this is my table – so I can have a drink and a bit of a think,’ she tapped her head. I nodded, still keeping my eyes on my phone. ‘Well you need that, don’t you?’ she continued, ‘we use so little of our brains you’d think we were adverse to it. That’s how them politicians get away with what they do. We want to keep our ears closed and just get on with our lives and have no trouble. We want to keep ourselves safe, but the stupid thing is we’re making everything more unsafe by not thinking about them.’ I began to write a pretend text message. She leant over and touched my arm. ‘Have you heard of an old man called James Lovelock?’ The contact made it impossible to disengage. I looked at her properly for the first time. Her eyes were a pale grey but they sparkled ferociously. Her waxy skin was almost luminous in the dim light and a halo of matted, white hair framed her face. A cigarette poked out from behind one ear. ‘I think so.’
She took a sip of her drink. ‘You need to look him up my love. We all need to think about what we’re doing to this planet. It’s hard to have hope at my age – probably at your age too these days,’ she motioned back at the paper. ‘It’s hard to have faith in the kind of people who manage to get into power, and believe that they would act in anyone’s bloody interest except their own. But you have to. I’ve always said you have to keep trying, and you have to keep working together. You have to look to the people who have heart. What about Tony Benn?’ I nodded and put down my phone, conceding defeat. ‘Oh he was one of the good ones. He had heart. Well that all went to hell with Tony Blair, didn’t it? War criminals, he and Margaret Thatcher both.’ She shook her head and went quiet for a moment before looking at me carefully. ‘Do you believe in God?’ I shook my head, ‘not anymore.’ ‘Me neither. Lapsed Catholic!’ she laughed ‘I’ve always said it’s not about believing in someone up in the sky it’s about believing in all of us down here,’ she tapped her finger on the table, ‘it’s about us talking to each other and helping each other, together. That’s love, that’s what God is.’ She looked at me straight in the eye with such feeling that I smiled and looked away, embarrassed. She whistled through her teeth. ‘Anyway… Silly old woman! I’ve taken up enough of your time my love, and you looked very busy on your phone. It must be time for me to have a smoke.’ She began winding her scarf around her neck and then paused and leant shakily over and took one of my hands in both of hers. They were soft and papery and warm. ‘My name’s Angela, love. If you ever want to come and talk to a mad old lady, you know where my table is now.’ She smiled gently, pulled the cigarette out from behind her ear and headed out into the orange light.
All They Want Is Your Money By Orzark Bule Inspired by Pomarańczowa Alternatywa (Orange Alternative) - an underground protest movement that formed in Wrocław, Poland, during the 1980s to offer people an opportunity to creatively oppose the absurdity of communist oppression, the Church of Liberation and Love (CLL) is a British movement that seeks to disrupt the spectacle of neo-liberal oppression by organising spontaneous and creative actions. I spoke to an anonymous activist from the West Midlands: OB: Can you start by explaining a bit about the Church, what’s its purpose and… Err, yes, well the CLL has been going for about six years, it emerged from a group of Christian anarchists who squatted Worcester Cathedral during a re-enactment of the English Civil War. They, erm, squatted they building after the battle had finished – they don’t use the term occupied – they squatted the building in the spirit of the diggers. So, that’s why it’s Church although there aren’t many Christian anarchists involved now so we might… so some people want to change the name. OB: But the early actions were religious? Well, no I wouldn’t say religious because even the Christians were against organised religion. Erm, but, so, for one of our early actions we turned up at the BBC studios as a CoE clergy to record the Thought for the Day message. We called for fellow clergy to resist the hierarchy and the err patriarchy of the church. We didn’t think, you know, it was meant as a joke but there are now two Tolstoyan communes in parishes in Uptonupon-Severn. OB: Most of your actions seem to be about disrupting erm… everyday occurrences, or making people think…. Yes, but we try to have practical implications. Our Eton Sports Day event was, it wasn’t just a stunt that highlighted inequality that got in the papers, it gave kids who would never have had the opportunity to use that equipment the chance. We didn’t get kicked off because the security didn’t want to bring embarrassment [to Eton], and hopefully they will become radicalised when they’re older. OB: The most famous ‘stunt’, if I can call it a stunt, was the protest against the No Fly Zone in Libya. Yes. OB: Can you say a bit about that? Ok… I’m not sure if stunt is the right word. In May 2011 NATO forces bombed Libya. The media here were supportive of the so called ‘No Fly Zone’. By the end of May almost 800 civilians had been killed, although that wasn’t really reported. The RAF, the Royal Air Force, sent 16 Tornado and 10 Typhoon fighters. I mean, and some others. But we did our best to damage this property. The RAF sent a VC10 – which is an air-toair refuelling tanker. We damaged that, which was one of the vegan’s ideas, by filling the tank with cupcake mixture. That was, that was err to highlight the intersectionality of oppression. OB: Was that in the papers? It got a bit in the media, the Daily Mirror. But not really. The UK continued to send bombs but from, erm, it was from the Italian base at Gioia del Colle. OB: No one was ever caught? No one, touch wood. Erm… no the police haven’t focused on the group yet because we’re mainly seen to do pranks, like jokes. One thing is that one of our activists has applied, he’s been accepted and done all the training, and now he works for the Metropolitan Police, so now we’re… we’re now infiltrating them as well as them infiltrating activist groups. OB: What future actions are planned?
Well‌ I don’t know. Haha. I mean, it will be a surprise for everyone! Anyone can undertake a CLL action as long as it challenges all forms of oppression and hierarchy. They can carry out an action and say it was the CLL. So any action could be next.
Hungry Ghosts By Phil Chokeword Starts the day after I heard about the bus, which was when I stopped checking tickets if I thought I could get away with it. The idea you see was that the last train would turn into a bus somewhere around the half way point. What I heard was, the replacement bus didn’t actually turn up. When the service point was repeatedly buzzed, they checked up on it. Management hadn’t ordered a bus because they wanted to save the money. They deliberately stranded 30 people at 2am. Hungry ghosts - no amount of profit was enough, you know? Eventually the service point ordered a fleet of taxis to take the passengers home after deciding that they couldn’t fuck people over like that no matter what the management thought. They got a written warning for their trouble. That was when I knew I was finally done with that job, so I just stopped doing it. I still walked up and down checking tickets when I had to but mostly, I just walked up and down. I put in for redundancy and let the fare dodgers get a free ride. The company were worse con artists than they were. On my last day, I made sure everyone rode for free. So I had enough money to get by but no plan. So I sat in my bedsit for a week or so and just read and drank cheap beer. Then I kind of got my act together and decided I’d go to the coast. Since I didn’t currently have a job or money troubles and I knew how to bunk the trains, I figured I might as well make the most of it, right? When I got to the coastal path, the hungry ghosts were there too, comparing expensive outdoor gear, like fucking Top Trumps but with raincoats and Goretex boots. I watched from a distance, sipping builder’s tea and shuddered. It was as if you couldn’t do anything without spending a hundred quid on a piece of kit. Never mind that people have been walking since they evolved legs and done just fine. Now, in retrospect, it seems a bit obvious but at the time, I didn’t think anything of it except to wonder how it would affect visibility. The sea cliffs around here are like mountains, and there is often low cloud that hangs like fog over them. It muffles the sound of the ocean and makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world sometimes, walking through cold cotton wool. Anyhow, what seems clear now is that what I was doing was a bit like those eastern sages who went up misty mountains and meditated and eventually came down spiritual warriors. Yeah... Maybe these only exist in martial arts films but it was pretty much what I did. I don’t know exactly what it was but an hour in, it was only me – all the ghosts had dropped away. I sat on top of the sea cliff and the fog swirled around me and I just thought how amazing it was and how you couldn’t put a price on this. Then, in a burst, I saw the interconnectedness of everything – it wasn’t an intellectual understanding, mind, it was an emotional one. I actually felt it for a split second, it hit me like a wave and left me tired on the grass. I can’t explain it, except to say the closest thing I’d felt prior to it – sorry to the ladies present - was really great sex. You all know what I mean, right? What I saw in that moment was the exact same greed that had made me leave the railway – it was the same hunger that put this place at risk, that put everything at risk. It didn’t really matter if it was deciding to ignore a duty of care or turning the countryside into a car park. It was all the same when you got down to it. Know what I mean? So I used my redundancy to put down a deposit on the flat. I have to work a bit now to make ends meet but when I’m able I take tourists to the sea cliffs. I talk about how they came about and do the whole wildlife guide thing in the hope that they get it. I spend quiet days walking the shoreline and pick up the rubbish that floats ashore. I hide from the ghosts and feel part of something. Now... That’s my story. I’ll have another pint of mild, cheers.
We're Just Waiting, Waiting to Begin.* By Ben Smith I made affirmative noises and nodded my head whilst taking a sip from my mug of mint tea. The hot liquid felt soothing as it passed down my neck and warmed my lungs. “Basically all major religions stem from the same root” she said. “There are clear parallels in their teachings and stories. That's why I wear a crucifix as it's an appropriate cultural demonstration of my faith in those teachings”. The crucifix around her neck glinted slightly in the light. I wondered where the gold had been mined and processed that it was made from and under what working conditions and political regime. I tried to make a point about modern interpretations of religious writing and thought. Her eyes glazed and I could see that it wasn't getting through. This is going nowhere, time to look for an exit. I looked into the blue of her eyes and got lost for what seemed like hours. I was in awe of her beauty. I couldn't believe she was sat across from me smiling at me and laughing at my terrible jokes. “I guess if I put my faith in anything then it's science” I said glibly. “You won't believe in any of the healing I do then” she responded. “I'm open minded” was my reply. Am I really I thought? I turned over that thought in my mind. “I do respect other peoples beliefs even if I don't necessarily agree with them” I said with conviction. I knew deep down I meant that. I thought of other people I knew who I had respect and admiration for despite knowing they had convictions I disagreed with and put their faith in things I couldn't myself. She leaned over from where she was sat and kissed me full on the lips, her hand brushed lightly against the centre of my chest. “I like you” she said as her mouth left mine. My heart pounded in my ears and I could feel my breathing start to become more ragged. No more gears left I thought, keep pushing. Ahead I could see the apex of the climb, final effort. I lifted myself from the saddle and looked for reserves of energy. Reaching the top I shifted up a few gears and tried to maintain my momentum as the road and landscape fell away in front of me. I tried to fill my lungs with air and get my breath back as I started on the descent. The valley dropped away to my right and I could see a reservoir further up bounded by a large stone dam. Sheep dotted the hills penned in by dry stone walls. A strange feeling of elation gripped me and I thought about how lucky and privileged I was. Pulling myself back into the present I realised I needed to concentrate on the road ahead. I moved my hands onto the drops and used the brakes to scrub some speed so I could negotiate the oncoming corner. I sat on the grassy bank and looked at the large grey clouds that filled the sky. That one sorts of looks like a face gazing down at the earth I thought. Randomly the term Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process flashed through my head. My memory strained to dredge up what that actually was from the recesses of my mind. A sudden burst of brightness from a fork of lightning away to my left caught my eye. I started counting until the thunder rumbled across the field. I lay back into the grass as the rain started to fall. It quickly soaked through my t-shirt feeling cool against my skin. It was something about ice crystals, I was sure of it. When did that knowledge ever help me in my life I thought. * Jawbreaker – 'Chemistry'