THE BIGGER PICTURE.

          ''For those people who are struggling for
physical or mental survival in their lives, 
there is another Human Being
doing the very same thing
not far from you at this time.''

Not just another day ..... 

        ''Ned ... please .. turn around and look at me, I want to help you, you can't go on like this on your own .. I know this is hard on you, but if I can say my piece here, and I have been thinking about it now for quite some while but, figuratively, literally, metaphorically, any way you want to look at it, it's all still B.S. and trying to run from it won't help you in any way. You can turn it inside-out-upside-down if you feel better about it but there is nothing you can do about the past, except at the best of times maybe keep it there, but remember Ned I am not trying to hurt you with my words, you are already hurt enough as it is, God knows, and we can move on in time hard as it is but it takes effort physically and mentally to live with the pain of keeping it all locked up inside Ned and in the natural course of pain it can kill you many times over if you do not let it go. Please Ned, I need you to open up to me, you have to talk to help me to help me to get to grips with what's going on here ... This is Nina. You have got to tell me ... 
What happened to you out there 
on your last assignment ... 

I want to help you Ned ... please

                                Ned, thirty eight years old and looking much older this time for his age since his return sat outside in the  rehab grounds in the warm morning sun. It was his second time in rehab this year, and it was only mid June now, if there is a third time he may not be so lucky, lucky that is if he is remotely alive to stay alive. This time he was found unconscious in the bathroom come office of his rented 

one  bedroom house by Nina, once wife and now ex-wife but both still in 'good friends' talking stage. The marriage was a mistake. They were the best of friends from early collage days. They were always close from the first day in meeting each other in the coffee house when Ned caught her eye 
watching him and within the next minute she was sitting beside him 
and from that day, they were rarely apart day or night. 

Everybody thought they were the 'perfect couple' together 

but marriage and being married was not the same thing for Ned, he saw and lived through the hell his own parents went living through. He could not handle the everyday 'thing' of having to hide behind his 'I told you so' thoughts, and in that he had that 'fear' it would be the same for him as it was for his parents, he was like his father in so many ways that it haunted him day and night but Nina knew Ned was like this before they hitched-up two years ago 24/7 'till-death-do-us-apart' and now he had to listen to her non-stop-kick-ass every day words that were the truth and he knew it, but right now she was trying to pull Ned back from the edge, what ever it took. So what, if he felt the 'words' were hurting deep, but without fail and in time they either sink-in or fade away into that 'no memory' zone in the brain, that part where we file away the parts we hate about ourselves. Ned was a problem to himself and apart from being content with himself in feeling comfortable in his 'do or die' thoughts which he put into action at the times when he least expected. He was a perfectionist in his work but he didn't see it that way. He could be dumb-as-a-plum but when he was working on all his creative 'juice' you could not keep up with him ... hell, he couldn't even keep up with himself ... it a was a fine-line he was crossing over each time. There were days and nights and if not sometimes weeks that could run into months where he was living-out his creativity in 'real life'. The memories were coming in too often now. He was running on free-flow-micro-waved-turbo  thoughts coming in loud and clear as if he was back there in the thick of the action. With no remote-controle-button to turn on or off, Ned was one way or the other either in 'reverse' or moving 'forward' at top speed. It was hard to tell at times where he was in the real world physically in  his body and where he was in his mind mentally ... he didn't know most of the time himself. He kept moving from one assignment to another and sometimes without letting Nina know and this would piss her off because she cared about him too much, but he didn't see it that way. He was on a self imposed quest and so long as he was with the camera and in the thick of the action there was nothing else literally that mattered at that time. He took on any assignment and went into any situation, regardless for the safety for his own life, which never came into the equation anyway. Some say he was on a suicide-run and took too many risks with his own life, bad enough that people were dying all around him and that he wanted to document it as it was, but it all came with a big personal price. When he was off assignment he could not handle the normal everyday things because of the non-stop-pop-up memories ... so, it was the booze to forget and the tabs to sleep or stay awake. Day and night were one. He was driven to capture that 'picture' that would put him at the top, just like it had done for his father, but his father lost his life in capturing that 'event in time'. He was caught in a 'cross fire' of bullets in another power and greed war in a smaller country on a big continent unheard of before by most people who pride themselves in keeping up with world events ... but if this little 'in-house' war was to spill out into the rest of the world as a political mud slinging match there would be some heads rolling in other 'big-say' foreign power countries that would have had an interest in starting that war in the first place and to keep other foreign powers from moving in and setting up 'shop'. What ever it took to move their 'players' into the arena for their own interests of greed, 
and total power control ... 
There was no shortage of
bad money for war. 

                                  Ned's father went into countries like this and it was only after when they found and developed 

his father's film from his damage camera after he had fallen 

on it and washed the blood out did they find the picture that would put his name into the all time 'great photos in action' ... but it was not just that 'picture' Ned was after,  he was trying to live up to what he expected was his fathers reputation. The truth is, and Ned was to keep denying it to himself all the time, is that he was constantly bridging the gap between the world of external reality and the inner world of his mind. He wanted to feel that his life was worth living. It was a deep rooted complex relationship he had between himself, depression and creative achievement, also his self imposed regime with his life and his expectations of what he thought his father might have expected from his only son, it was Ned stepping in and acting out the role of his father and not as himself. He was playing out to all his expectations his endless mind-game in seeking an understanding and new 

connections for himself in the world and at the same time trying to satisfy a hunger for understanding his own 

creativity within his mind ... a tall order to full-fill. He was setting the bar too high for everything in his life and all of this was because Ned created Ned. All the 'balls' were up in the air and he only had two hands and the way he saw it ..
they were for holding the camera.
This was the Ned sitting in the Rehab grounds
and trying his best to focus on Nina
and what she was saying.

                                  Nina put her small hand on his knee and Ned slowly turning his head looked down at her hand as if it was a new experience for him. She leaned towards him and just stopped short of wanting to put her arms around him to comfort him, which she really wanted to do but she knew he could reject her concern for him. She knew too that he needed love and understanding now. He was already two weeks in rehab but this was his first day outside in the grounds, at least he wanted to go outside when Nina arrived on her almost daily visits to him. It was a good sign too, she felt he was starting to improve and coming to terms with himself and what had happened and this was what she was telling herself now as the two of them sat together as if on their first date, but their first date was a little more fiery than this now ... but there was more to it than what she had thought when she looked into Ned's eyes,
he was lost in his thoughts and she was lost as to what to do
so she was going to follow her intuition on this one ... 
she thought as she gave him
a reassuring smile.

        ''Tell me the truth Ned ... what happened ...
why didn't you phone me, what's wrong with picking up the phone, you know dame well I would come over to you even if it's the other side of town, but that was your choice ... you wanted to move to be near the airport in case you had to get a flight out quickly for your assignment, I can understand that Ned but you do remember you collapsed into a heap onto the floor ... you fell over like a rag-doll, passed out into never-never land, just like the other times from exhaustion  .. is that where you wanted to go Ned ... never-never land, Ned you have to face 'it' .... the booze and the tabs are not the answer if you still want to stay in your body and be 'that artist' you are always talking about, 'that artist' Ned ... remember your dream, well make it happen Ned .. I don't want you as a memory in my life. I want to see you with what is rightfully yours Ned by destiny .. yours. Your name, you yourself Ned, is good in the business, you don't have to keep trying to be your father Ned ... though events seem to pass on and repeat themselves in the next generation. Look Ned, I am certain he would be very proud of you and your achievements to date. You know it that people can rely on you for something unique and different in your photographs, you have the 'third eye' Ned, you always said you had the 'third eye' once that camera was in your hands. Please Ned ... 
Talk to me about your last trip out ..
Talk to me.''

                                Nina just hoped some of her words would sink in and jolt him back into the here and now to her ... if not he will go deep inside himself like before and start looking into the bottom of a bottle and that's getting harder each time for Ned to recover from that stage. He saw his father doing it and he could handle it better but maybe did not live long enough for time to tell that story, but what his father did know was his already fragile marriage was on the slippy slope and only because he was always on assignment and never there for her or Ned but she could not understand why her husband wanted to do what he did for a living. Her world was centered around her church and keeping a home together while Ned's father was doing what he did best but he died at the age of thirty eight, before home and church played any real part in his life. He was the same age as Ned is now. Died, not from tipping the bottle to the head but from the bullet fired from a gun, designed manufactured and supplied by his own country. His red blood seeping into a foreign red earth that already had it's fair share of blood. He died slow enough for him to die in more guilt than pain, of not giving 'normal life' a chance or spending more of his short time with his young son than the sharp stinging pain of a bullet in his right lung, snatching and denying him another chance at the 'normal life' ... but he was doing what he was born to do and his time was now ... he had done what he had come to do and regret-piled-on-guilt had no place here now in this foreign land with it's seeped-in-blood red earth.
He did not see the 'bigger picture' .. 
He was just being human in his
dying.

                                  Ned could hear the birds singing to their mates in the grounds of the rehab just like Nina was to her soul-mate, but Ned was scared of commitments. He saw relationships for 'other normal people', not for the one who lived in his own world of roller-coaster rides in his mind. He loved Nina but the whole marriage thing scared him and he saw too much dying around him in the lens of his camera that it made him detached from the world and to make commitments like marriage in his own life was not 'real' for him. Nina thought by getting married Ned would come good, but it all back fired on her. Ned was the 'wild card', an 'ace' in the eyes of his lover, and so he was as Nina saw him, but she loved him and always will .. married or not ..
what's a 'piece of paper' between true feelings.
She tried to tell herself this in the hope that she and Ned
would spend sometime together
when he came out from
Rehab.

                                  Ned turned so that his back was to Nina to look at the trees, her hand slipped off his knee .. 
he was making pictures in his mind so that when he want back inside he could scroll through them just like a computer file and that was Ned's thing ... everything went on-file in his mind to scroll through at a later date at will, but the reality was, and there was no getting away from it, he wanted out of all the personal mess he created for himself and Nina and maybe for the first time was admitting to himself that he was wasting away his life in trying to be his father in more ways that he was prepared to admit to himself on any given normal day. 
The truth of it all was starting to kick-in,
like a steel-toed-boot
in his groin ...

     ''It's true what you say, I cannot keep walking away from what happened.'' 

His back was still turned to Nina, he didn't want to
brake-down and cry, even though it's what she would have hoped for and maybe for him to realise he was 'slow-drip' killing himself this way, reliving the the memory ... 

      ''I can do nothing about the past events and my own lies to myself are tripping me up, fooling my mind into believing I need all this shit I keep throwing into myself to be in my own world of make believe and maybe I am stopping my own 'flow' with it all but lets face it, you knew when I came back from my last assignment I was already addict to these pain killers and antidepressants after taking that bullet in the shoulder and leg, shit, I nearly lost the leg but for that Arab boy. If he had not had found me
I was a goner ... I owe him my life ... 
and this time Nina .. I did not try to do myself in .. 
you do believe me ...
don't you.? ''

                                Nina looked at Ned and knew he was telling the truth on that one but he was still holding out
 on her ... something else happened out there.

     ''Yes Ned, I believe you and you are now starting to come to terms with yourself ... listen to yourself ....  you are starting to talk about it but you are better than this 'person' you have become, walk away from it, I know you can do it and I will be here for you ... forget the past, forget about we ever got hitched, I know now it's not meant for you ... forget about that war and what ever happened to you out there, I know it will not be easy,
but I will still stand by you through all of this ..
you have no worries there, you know that ...
maybe I owe it to you from a past life,
Karma and all that B.S. ...
where would we be without B.S. ...
O.K. and no .... don't answer.''

                               Ned turned around ... like a ballerina dancer on a music box to face Nina, no longer with that dazed look in his eyes but with keen seriousness,
and said ...

     ''If only resurrection was that easy ... but Nina,
it's not that easy and what you said is only part of it but that Arab boy died in saving me, I am telling you it now. They, his own people shot him in the back because he was helping me to a safe place but when I saw his face looking down at me and trying to pull me to stand up, I swear it, he could have been my father Nina, I knew it was him ... it's going to haunt me till my dying day and I will never know why that Arab boy came out of nowhere and risked his life to help save mine. I was the foreigner in his country looking for that 'picture' using other peoples suffering to capture that 'picture', I had hopes in my life built on other peoples sufferings,
but I now feel my father's spirit was there in that boy,
to save me, and most likely ... 
save me from myself.''

                                 Nina could see with her eyes
but heard it in his words that there was a change already coming over Ned. A life moving change in that he was looking back into his past and maybe looking ahead but she was quite certain that he was looking deep 'inside' himself. The pieces of his 'jigsaw life'
were coming together now to show
the ugly truth as it was.

     ''Ned we can never tell what our life's journey is going to throw up in front of us, but in everyday we get through there is a lesson to be learned if only we open our eyes and heart to it and while I am on-the-fence here, it is more important to follow your 'dreams' through the so-called bad times. You are a good man Ned and I feel that is why you are given another day another chance to document the 'wrongs' of this world for that boy, and as for that 'picture' which is still out there waiting to be captured by you, maybe your father will be at your side. Every single day Ned great things are done by ordinary people ... as for you, you have a talent and you use it for the greater things that can be done for those people. You know it Ned, you know now where you are going in your life because you know where you have been and what you have gone through and you know exactly now how you came to be here ...
it is no one's destiny to fail in their life's journey Ned .. 
 I sound like a bloody 'guru' talking to you, 
shut me up ... quick.''

                               Ned for the first time in his life had his eyes-wide-open to the 'bigger picture' and peacefully being himself with himself .. he pulled Nina closer to him
in knowing that his father was not that far away from him
now ...
and maybe never was
at any one time in his
life.

The making of 'WISE'

                                                WISE

Carved from sandstone ' Mu Wen Sha Yan' .... ' Wooden Wave Stone'   

Yunnan Province in Southwest China

2006

4m High

       1m 10 Face 

     1m 40 Side

 Private Collection Ireland  

                  The making of WISE 

The carving of the sculpture 'WISE' came to me as a private commission. My client was quite sure as to what he wanted as a sculpture to be sited in his garden. My brief was to make a sculpture to represent something on the lines of the Easter Island heads that are carved in stone.  These are monolithic human figures and heads carved from stone on the Polynesian island known as Easter island, off the coast of Chile and were carved between the years 1250 and 1500. The tallest is almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 75 tonnes the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished stone, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons. These stones were carved by teams of craftsmen and were carved over long periods of time but for my own sculpture I was allowing myself three months to finish carving my stone working up to ten hours a day and for WISE to be sited in it's new home.         

After viewing my clients gardens a site was chosen for the finished sculpture and I set about making a model to scale. The choice of stone was left to me and I chose a Sandstone from Yunnan Province in Southwest China. This sandstone was suitable for outdoors due to it's hardness and the stone had a very distinctive grain in it that looked like wood-grain when wet which my client liked because of his passion for trees and therefore I ordered the stone in December 2005 in two blocks. My reason for this was due to transport on the roads and lifting into site by crane but makes for carving more difficult in controlling the 'line'.

The two blocks arrived into Ireland in March 2006 by sea ... and I began to work. Sandstone is very high in silica and when cutting causes a lot of fine dust that at times you feel you are working in a sandstorm which it is. The blocks were carved separate, that is standing apart but side by side to allow me to move from stone to stone while carving and then doweled on site and finished. I allowed myself three months to make and deliver to site, a little too tight a deadline working on my own but work-work-work and it can be done. It was delivered and sited on the appointed time to my client's satisfaction and mine too.  

My reason in naming the sculpture ''WISE'' was because of my client. I found him to be a wise and humble man and to this day he does not know the true reason as to why the sculpture is called 'WISE' but when I presented my working model to him and told him the title I said, when he asked why ''WISE'' for the title, my answer to him was because it looks 'WISE'. When an Artist finds a client who allows the Artist to 'listen to the stone' and be that Artist ...  he is ''WISE''

                                      

Me standing between the two blocks on the first day of carving

                  The top part in the process of being carved using a combination of hand tools and angle
                                                          grinder to remove the waste.

                                                          The bottom part being worked.

                                                      It is at times like this that you have to
                                                                   keep it all together ....

                                                                   to get to this stage.

                                                      The two parts of WISE in progress.

                                                 Stone waste from working the two blocks.

Concrete base for WISE, poured on site.



WISE being lifted in  by crane over the tree tops to it's new home...

it was placed into position by myself and the crane operator using walkie-talkie.

It took a great deal of skill on the part of the crane operator to line up the two stones without damage.

WISE in position on it's concrete base
You will notice the overhang of stone when the two stones are put into place this is to allow me to carve the two stones to mach up and finish.



Side view to WISE before I started work on matching up the two stones. 

You can see from the photograph that I made a platform around WISE to finish the carving. This was the only time in working the two stones that I had seen them placed together.

Wise

                                 Me looking up at WISE and very likely thinking how I got to                                   

this stage ....  but the self satisfaction cannot be described ....

                                 you have to try it for yourself.                             

The face looking down at you from inside the nose was an after thought on my part and came about when I was standing at the stone and looking up at it.  It was to act as a surprise element when you were looking up at the stone because it is not seen when approaching the stone or from any side. This is where my client gave me my 'artistic licence' to be the artist for it was not part of the original model.  



SIN and SIM

                     There will be no Remission

for the sins of their Commission

and for the sins of their Omission

                    for there is no Admission.

He knew he was hearing 'Them'. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference from 'Them' and from the reality of his day-to-day damned-existence, but he had an idea all the same as to where they might be coming from ... but it was just an idea in his head, hidden somewhere in that part of his brain that was still in contact with him ... just an idea, nothing more ... [or] ... it's maybe very possible that it could be a memory from the past ... it was something he also did not disregard but it was something that scared him more than the 'idea' theory. 
A memory took place, sometime in his past, it had an action which brought on results at the time then to be stored in that part of the brain department for 'memories' to become at a later date a recollection passing through his mind that brings up the emotions that have a reaction that can stay for long dark days with him  and even darker nights with no end to them ... and that's what really scared him ... an 'idea' he could cope with within his reason, but the 'memory', that was another thing altogether, that brought up the fear in him to the point of no-return and that very same 'memory' now taking over his whole being could turn on him, without any warning, rouge and savage, becoming a brutal force of it's own and one to be reckoned with that blows his-self-pitying-life wide open to Kingdom Come ... a terrifying potential of the 'going-over-the-edge' kind with the easily predictable outcome. 

''Do you see or hear 'Them' ?''....

     ''I don't know ... I am still trying to get my head around it all as to what kind of day it was, but it was like a day that didn't exist, or you would wish it didn't. It was a day of numbness, no smells and none of the senses working, but a lot of hurtful words were said, in-there-out-there-in-the-garden, words that were loaded with pain. 
I can almost tell the day by the smell of the air and the time by the light in the garden ... now it's hard to explain in words but it's something inside you that seems to rise in your body, like instinct, and without giving it thought. Without being aware of it you 'feel' it's a Monday or a 'someday' by that sense of smell and light ... but to go through a day that you feel you do not belong in, no part of it ... well that's something entirely different from normal ... it is like being 'punch-drunk', or on antidepressants ... you are just not there at all ... your umbilical line to your soul is the only life-line you have got on that day.'' 

''Do you hear 'Them' ?''

                           The jumble of words just came out of Adam's closed mouth in a mad rush like a wild dog let lose and to quick to make any sense of  if you were to overhear them. He wasn't asked, the words came out ... nobody asked him ... there was nobody around to ask him, that could be seen that is ... but that was O.K. with Adam ... for now. The most part of his time was spent on his own in the garden ... that way he felt he could handle 'life' better, at least to keep himself alive to hear some answers to the questions he was asking, that's if they were going to be answered and that's what he keeps telling himself over and over in his mind.
 ''Answers ... I want some answers ...we deserve that ... they deserve that ... I deserve that ... some answers as to 'why' ... why so much pain ... did I ask to be born into all of this ever-lasting-pain from one lifetime into the next ... 'You' created me ... 'You' answer me ... I do deserve that much ... but in time I will have to answer to 'You' ... 'You', that has all the answers ... 'why'.''  
But they were not coming from Him because Him is not answering him anymore and it's Him ... 'Him above' that Adam wants to talk too ... to try to explain how that day of all days in the garden was for them, the only two of their kind, naked like innocent children with no shame, that was to come later, the shame ... created for no other reason but for His own amusement ... because He can. 
And it came. The pitch black darkness that overcast the sky like a wet blanket putting out a blazing fire ... it's decaying chocking smell taking away the fresh sweetness of the garden in one clean sweep of it's crawling dense blackness and death-smell seeping into everything that was alive ... and how they fell to their knees clinging on to each other for protection like the frightened innocent little children they were, when, from somewhere in the tree it started to 'talk' and 'Evil' showed it's ugly face to them. They could not see Him for His comfort to reassure them that he was only 'testing' them for their 'Love for Him' ... they were not prepared for anything like this happening to them and now He was not there in the garden  for them at that time for their salvation within temptation. He had provided all for them in the garden ... all except the fruit from the tree ... the only fruit in the garden they were not to eat ... but children being children anything can and will happen even when they have all ... they want it all  regardless of the fall.

Adam found it hard to cope with the everyday responsibility of just living, downtrodden to despair, and he was afraid of it. It was a day-in-night-out-trap-situation.  He felt he was in a strangulation, swinging like a pendulum gathering up speed to do the full circle to be released like a sling shot and fly off to a place of no return. He hoped that it might just all go away and he will wake up back in the garden  under the tree as if it was all a very bad dream that got out of hand and turned into a nightmare that turned into a  bloody daylight living ordeal that was to become the normal kind. It did not have to be like this but he had no say in the matter, then or now, it was all up to Him but He was not answering ... not this day anyway ... but Adam stayed on in his pain, breathing stale air in and out because of his Sin of Admission. Life is and will always be, unforgiving ... it was how he believed it to be for no answers were coming. He was fully 'fledged-by-birth' for the submission but not prepared for the Commission.

     ''Maybe it was a blackout I had or maybe it was ..... but come to think of it I haven't had a blackout for some time now,  in fact not since that  time  in  the garden, so long ago that it feels like in another lifetime ... so did  'that day' happen ... maybe and maybe not, who's to tell and who's going to tell  ... besides Him ... I can't, I just have memories ... there's   nobody to tell me ... only Him ... it's only me now to answer to me, so if me can't tell me, that's it then ... me-no-can-tell ... only Him-can-tell.''

''Do you hear 'Them' ?''

                Adam was a good man by all accounts and He was pleased with His creation ... but faith did not deal him a good hand him being the First-Man  and  maybe because of the name. He was most unlucky that  day in the garden ... right place wrong time. He trusted her and he trusted Him, without question, and for trusting he ended up on the rocks like a broken shipwreck that he was to become for future generations to relive that day like puss oozing from a sore on a lepers leg. It was to mark him like a brand on his back that would burn into him just for the Hell-of-it ... shit ... it's what 'brands' do ... for the Admission of Sin ... his sins ... sins that kept in touch with him, reminding him for every bleeding-breathing second of the day ... for what reason he was never told about 'sin' even though he had tried over the long dark years to deny 'Them' any remission but they don't bother to return their admission ... for it's their commission too ... but he tried, and how he tried ... only He above knows how he tried.
Adam took all this very-very personal, and why not,  he alone was carrying all the guilt of his own sin for the future fathers will also carry that guilt and future mothers will help to give birth too for all to burden the loss of Eden.

''Do you hear 'Them' ?''

     ''This is something I think about ... you see it in films ... you know ... the bit where it comes he is going to take his own life and he is standing at the shore line or at the edge of the lake, his back to the camera, and him looking out at the horizon ... have you noticed, it's always a male in the situation, well ... nearly always ... with his clothes neatly stacked beside him, and the shoes ... ah the shoes, this is the bit I love ... the shoes always polished and placed side-by-side facing in the direction he is looking, symbolically telling you in which direction he went, that scene alone tells it all. The film could end there because you know how it all ends and you are not disappointed, in fact you are quite pleased with yourself because you think you came up with the ending before the director or writer did ... get a life man, [ah, nice touch there].  I often thought about that scene in films for it tells me one thing and one thing only, he did not want to take his own life ... why ... the neatly folded clothes and the shoes, that's why, nobody folds their clothes like that unless they are going into a suitcase and very few people might do it before going to bed each night and if they do ... it's because maybe they have the same feeling that it's possible that they won't wake up in the morning and they want things to at least look right when they are found in the bed ... dead, that is, dead ... but to do it all before doing away with yourself, I just find it hard to accept. It's like giving out the message to those who find the clothes that ....
 'I have taken my own life but I didn't really want to do it, look here, can't you see how neatly I have left my clothes, that alone should tell you I didn't want to do it and besides what is 'freewill' if I can't put it into practice.' ''

''I hear 'Them' now all the time.''

                              Adam is sitting, knees to his chest on the granite rock looking out at the blue-green sea like the child that he is. He has been there all the gray-day long and maybe even longer that the seagulls pay him no attention anymore ... they gave up on him long ago ... even before he came to this place. The sun is trying it's best to be warm on his back as if it's trying to comfort him that little extra on this day-of-all-days. Nature's little reassurances of what 'love' is like when all is well in your world, but all is not well in his world and all is not well in His world for there is not a soul in the sweet smelling garden He created. 

Adam's mobile rings ... he reaches inside his pocket for it. None of your silly jingles here. A straight-forward-no-nonsense-ring-tone ... burr, burr ... burr, burr ... burr, burr ... he flips and He flips ...

     ''How are you.''

''O.K.''

     ''Where are you now.''

''On the coast.''

     ''Are you O.K.''

''O.K.''

     ''Are you coming home ... we can sit out in the garden under the apple tree like old times ... you remember how it was before all this happened.''

''Soon, I just want to sit here for a while.''

     ''O.K., but .... please come home, we can talk ... I know very well you are hurt deep Adam.''

''Yea ... we can talk, but what good is that going to do now ... tell me ... do you see 'Them' now.?''

And he flips. 
His toleration had gone at times beyond the requirements of toleration and this was one of the many times  he had forgiven her.
And He flips.

                              Adam is tired. Tired of her mood swings and the control she has over him. Tired of the sick feeling he gets in his stomach when they row about that day and that feels like every day now to him. Tired of the whole living bit. Tired of having to auto-eat to puke it up each day to stop the hunger pain in his gurgling knotted stomach ... he does not look at food as food as a means to keep himself alive, but as the 'Sin of Glutton'. He is tired of the daily struggle to keep things together.  Tired of asking himself questions with no answers coming from outside, but from 'Them', and not ... Him. Tired of telling himself that tomorrow will be a better day but tomorrow is already here and it's no different from any other bloody-day. Tired of the 'talks' and tired of talking to himself ... and to 'Them', and not ...  Him.  Tired of waiting. Tired of trying. Tired of it all. Just tired. Only He knows how tried he is, and tired of 'Them', and waiting for Him to answer ... but no more ... for the stroke of the whip can cut deep marks into the flesh but the stroke of the tongue can shatter the soul for eternity and for the mind never to reflect again.

    

     ''Fuck this and fuck the neatly folded clothes bit ... I'm going for a walk ... to Him and not with 'Them' ... but to Him since He is not coming to me ... back to that garden with my Admission. A straight-forward-no-nonsense-walk into the deep blue with Him waiting for me in the sweet smelling garden.''

                         Eve was waiting too ... waited with the phone in her hand. It never left her right hand, day or night ... that phone ... her contact ... contact to Adam.  She's laughing that nervous laugh of hers and always when she was on her phone to Adam. She can hear the waves now all around herself. She can smell the salt from the sea. There is the taste of salt-water, water inside her mouth and somewhere else inside her body burning her up like acid ... you could hear the gurgling sound, almost like the waves she is hearing on the phone but with more softness in them and the pungent smell of decay in the air hanging like damp mist  but the voices inside that phone of hers continued to argue, like the 'Hitchcock-birds'. 

     ''That's it ... keep arguing ... keep it going, non-stop-shop-talk ... continuing the debate on the sins of their commission and the sins of their omission but there will be no remission because there is no admission to the non-stop-debate-till-death about that 'sin' in the garden ... like the demented little children you are.'' 

If only she could stop the talk, could stop 'Them' ... but she has long since forgotten how to turn it off and turn 'Them' off  and He knows it ... but He hears it all, her cries for forgiveness ... but no-answers are coming from Him ... and no more toleration from him ... not on this day anyway.

     ''You are not seeing 'Them'... it's not a question it's an answer. Do you know you were found out in the garden hugging that apple tree crying and speaking 'gibberish' and calling at the height of your voice for someone by the name of Adam ... look in my direction, are you or are you understanding me what I am saying to you.?''

     ''I'm getting used to it, I guess, doe's that answer your question, doe's it mean I can turn it off ... the phone, why are you  so hard on me.  I talk to Adam all the time about sin ... do you see 'Them' ... do you want to talk to 'Them' about the 'sin' ... we all have that 'sin', we can't run from it and He is not forgiving, not today anyway ... please find my Adam ... I want to say I am sorry but 'sorry' will not be good enough ... I know it ... not this time.''

     ''Has she been medicated ?''

''You bet .... like a rabid dog.''

     ''Family .... and what about this Adam she is talking about.?''

''Nothing we know off but talks all the time to him on that phone of hers as we have heard her, non stop talk,  best of times not making any sense in her words. We believe he lives by the coast, so she says ... we are trying to contact him as best as we can but so far no luck, he might be her son, husband, friend, lover, could be anybody but we won't know that till we contact him.''

     ''I see ... you can take the phone from her now, she has no need for it here.''

''I think we should leave it with her, if you don't mind my saying, she has some comfort with it and besides there is no Sim card in it ... I checked it when she was sleeping ... she sure likes to talk into it though to this guy Adam, the sooner we can contact him we might get some answers, we don't have a name for her and she's not telling ... she tells us that if she tells us we will think she's mad ... her words.''

     ''Well ... O.K. ... but I thought she said Sin and not Sim.''

''If you ask me I see no difference in 'Sin' or 'Sim' ... they both hold memories.''

''Do you hear 'Them' too, I see and hear 'Them' now all around me,  like ... like sparkling silver dots in front of my eyes ... I have 'memories' you know of that day in the garden and how we were put out by Him and how it hurt Adam deep, so deep ... he trusted and he trusted me ... I let him down ... but we are trying to find our way back to that beautiful garden ... but things will not be as before ... poor-poor-Adam. Do you want names and numbers, I have names and numbers too ... just ask, they are on the Sim card all keyed in ... names, numbers and memories ... everything is there ... it goes deep, and maybe, just maybe, but I doubt it very much, that you can contact Him ... but the hurt goes deep, it's not going to go away that easy ... it will always be there like a stain ... we are damaged souls to relive the pain for all time ... will Adam come back to me.?'' 

     ''O.Kkkkk ... full admittance till further notice from me and I want a daily report on her ... I have seen and heard enough but try to make contact with this guy Adam she is talking about. We will need to talk to him too and get some answers as to who she is and where this garden she is on about and let's hope it's all easily explained ... I hate the freaking paper work that goes with these cases.''

''I talk to Adam everyday on my phone ... everyday ... and everyday we talk about sin ... that 'sin' ... but I try to tell Adam that there will be no Remission for the sins of our Commission and for the sins of Omission because there is no Admission coming ... but my Adam lives in the hope we will all get back to the sweet smelling garden,   poor-poor-Adam.''

     ''Who's next ...''

''Him ...''

     ''GOD, what is it with phones today and why all the Sim cards.?''