(INTRODUCTION to Fragments series.
For the last few years, I have used this website for occasional photos, poems, short stories and essays. Mostly essays, and mostly under the heading: RAINSHINE. I’ve been so busy with other things – trying to finish a book, working in mental health, and fighting fascists – that I have not often had time to post as much as I’d like to here. So, recently I wondered if there were any ways I could post more often, without burning myself out completely. One idea I came up with was semi-regular short posts: ‘Fragments’. There are writers who specialise in this form, and it is useful for people learning to write. For me, it’s a handy way to play around with words and ideas, much in the way I do in my RAINSHINE posts, but on a smaller scale.)
Here’s the first Fragment.
I have breathed in and out millions of times. I have lived through millions of moments, seen a great many things. Used all my senses on many occasions, and often jumbled them up: smelling a memory of seeing inside a Spanish cathedral through the aroma of coffee; chewing a pencil and remembering a Dundee classroom with high windows and paints and brushes on every desk, and small faces looking happy and sad, puzzled and excited, as the teacher said: “Right, today we are going to paint ocean waves.”
One second, it seemed, I was a small child in Baxter Park, chasing an elusive football, black and white squares, plastic, a ‘floater’ – which meant if you booted it too hard it could go anywhere, as it was too light to make its mind up where it wanted to go.
The next second, I’m a grandad, in a small Arbroath park, lifting my granddaughter on to a red and blue metal spider climbing frame. Her chuckling feels as good to me as being young because suddenly I don’t feel old.
Blue skies. White clouds as high up in the sky as memories from so long ago that I wasn’t even born then. Stories I heard of a war long ago, and Spitfires. If once you hear their engines, you never forget that special metallic purr and roar.
HARVEY DUKE 