11 May 2008

60. Breaking a Promise – Part Two

I shouldn’t be communicating with anyone at all - that was the promise I made to myself when I moved into this house. And it was a promise I made for my own good.

No technology meant no temptations. No TV and DVD player meant I couldn’t watch old Kidman movies or hear news of her. I couldn’t feed my obsession with information. No telephone meant I couldn’t make unwanted calls to her agent. Being out in the wilderness was to keep me away from the mainstream media and the general gossiping conversation which is the staple diet of cities. All would play their part in ensuring that I didn’t infringe my court order. If I infringed then the stakes for me would be high. Next court appearance would see me end up in jail.

Jail! I remember the words being said to me in court. I was amazed at the sound of them! For them to be directed at me! The shock! The shame! How had it all come to this? What had I been thinking? What had I been doing? How could I have sunk so low? How could it all have gone so wrong that I was on the verge of being locked away for the good of another? Who had I become?

The internet connection in Mordan House was a gamble though. A security blanket, of sorts, yes – like I said at the start of this blog, just in case I needed to find out what was going on in the outside world. But I was always worried about having it, lest I should exploit it by using it to try and contact her.

I haven’t though! Really I haven’t! This blog has been everything! Believe me!

Wasn’t it Lotte Lakeside who asked me in one of her comments on this blog why I hadn’t let my best friend Dizzy Lizzie email me? Why she had to go through the rigmarole of sending physical letters when I could send her an email address? You see, I couldn’t let Lizzie know I was connected to the internet! She would have worried. I’m not sure she would have trusted me to keep from contacting Kidman.

Kidman? Well, Nicole. She had always been Nicole to me before Mordan House. Only the Imaginary Kidman was called Kidman. But, really, Nicole had never existed. There was a space inside of me, a vacuum, and her shape seemed to fit it. What a deception for us both! No, she never fitted that empty space. I cajoled and kneaded the properties and the idea of Kidman into such a shape that it seemed to fit. I jammed it into the space as best I could. And it was Nicole Kidman – the real Nicole Kidman! – who suffered as a consequence. She felt the physical and emotional pain of my trying to make her fit the shape of my needs.

The real Nicole Kidman? Even as I type the words I wonder what I’m on about! I don’t know who the real Nicole Kidman is! She probably doesn’t know either! It’s not for any of us to know or even care! It’s all just illusions of identity, all just characters, all flat and at best colourful and dazzling, but still just images and all entirely meaningless. It’s like falling in love with a totem pole or an ancient statue of a mythological entity. It no more exists in our so-called real world as does the Cyclops, or Circe or the Sirens. In this myth of my own that I’m perhaps living, I’m not Penelope waiting for her husband to return from the wars, I’m Odysseus, bound for home and charting a path through a world of illusions! Most of my own making! How many of us are exactly that in our own lives!

How dark the ideas in me! What words are these? Whose voice? I don't recognise any of this. I don't recognise me! I used to. Before Philip. But that’s what’s happened by degrees. Everything inside has steadily been chilled and darkness has grown in me like tight, clambering, unstoppable ivy, its leaves black and icy.

It’s not all over for me though. Now there’s no more Kidman to keep me company, and I’m left with the bitter feel of what I’ve done and who I’ve been. Yet also with the bitter emptiness of self-realisation, and the hole inside seems greater than it has ever been before.

There are times when the wind encircles this house, its dark teeth eat away at the stone façade, gnawing the wooden window frames and the slate roof, making holes for itself to push through. Looking for a cold companion to huddle together with. Once inside, it scurries through the passageways, charges into empty rooms, tumbles noisily down stairs, in search of the history of this house.

Cold winds love personal history. Personal history is cold like itself. History is empty, as shallow as palimpsest, as fragile as a child’s cough. And this house is full of empty history more than most. What love has it ever known? What arms have welcomed it? What plans have been made with hope and joy within it? What kiss has ever warmed it? What new life has gladdened its walls, revitalised its shape and reminded it what it was like to be alive? None, none, none.

No Kidman and no progress, just the realisation of exactly how empty I’ve become. That’s all I have. As I think the words, a wind chills me and I hear its whoosh through my soul. What progress have I made in identifying if there’s any reality to this astronaut business? None, none, none. Still all just empty questions. Just a myth to push through, and hopefully defeat in my long journey home.

Here I am waiting in the cold of this house. James drove off without taking me back to my car in the neighbouring town. I’m stranded here. I could walk for about 4 hours to get to the town but I haven’t the energy. Or the inclination. I deserve to be here. Stuck. Land-locked. Waiting for life to visit me. Life never calls here though. That’s why the void of space dropped down and settled in and around this house where I am. There’s a funnel. Of emptiness. From space, all the way down to the ground where I am.

Maybe I’m not venturing, tenacious, purposeful Odysseus, after all. Maybe I am Penelope. Waiting. Just waiting. Ten years she waited. It’s not so long. Hell, I’ve been doing it all my life. Huh! And that bitch thought she had it bad! At least she had suitors! Mine screwed my best friend – okay, sure, she was imaginary – and then buggered off in his 4x4 without a ‘cheerio’, a last tittie-cup as he pecked my cheek, a fried egg or even a potato scone! Jeez, they didn’t half do it differently back in those non-existent mythological days! I’m sure Penelope’s suitors would have waited around for a potato scone in the morning!

18:29 Posted in Part Two: Getting Some Answers | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: haunted house, ghost story, horror story, astronaut, space, nicole kidman, journal