A white screen

A white screen. Shut it down, open it. Start from the bottom, then, where you are. Start with what you see. (Why this need to type anyway, to start again?) Rescue what you can, or let it return to life. From nowhere. But you aren’t nowhere, you’re here. A desk under a white lamp… Runny nose, slight fever, things a little surreal. A pot of white tea… And your surroundings? Endless rain. No run today then? It’s been a week, hasn’t it? A week of illness and drunkenness, of lying in sweaty sheets. You miss the park, your beloved Victorian park, flanked by tennis courts and the pitch-and put, with the anachronistic concert pagoda in the centre. The reflecting pool where they race model speedboats. Lawn bowling, croquet, mini railway tracks. The putting green, the bush that smells of hops, the skate ramps always, in dry weather, full of kids with their boards and bikes. Dogs begging for balls to be thrown… No run for a week… Again the wish to get straight, to get right with your body, with the world, with God. To get the drink and drugs out of your system once and for all and never need them again. A massive detox: healthy at last. To have done and dealt with everything: to allow peace to grow from the inside out… Or to start over and over until all has been said that needs to be said and your life is once more a white screen and the need to blacken it has ceased. To be free of me at last.