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.