Catharisis - being the first blog in Sans, now restored

That day will, no doubt, stay somewhere in my memory - forever. If I could will it away through mindfulness, I no doubt would. The reality is that, what happened there - in those mining-pool filled lands needs to be dealt with. It needs to be confronted and stripped of its negative energy. There are techniques, taught by learned and practised individuals that might eventuate in the shedding of the harmfulness of that memory. For now I have chosen to write, in the hope that this writing might be a catharsis, the beginning of the healing of that deeply etched trauma.

The normally fierce equatorial sun was a little relaxed that day, not as bright as usual. I travelled north out of the city, along the North/South Highway, away from the future I was constructing for myself and back towards a past I knew to be poisonous - spiritually and creatively.

The bungalow house that I had built, laboured over in the planning and spent my last dollar bringing to fruition was the anchor that held me fast to what went before. I was returning in settlement. I needed to collect my belongings – books of poetry, books by local authors grateful for me promoting them at the reading venue I had created. I needed to collect my CDs of Indian and fusion music, classic films on DVD, paintings given to me by artists who had been pleased with my writing for them, my sequential art research material and some odd items of clothing which would be expensive to re-buy. It was intended to be a clean break, full of understanding, mature, a parting as friends for two souls who had once been lovers. That was, unfortunately, not to be.

“Are you sure she wouldn’t do anything silly’
“Of course not, I know that woman. She would never do anything vindictive or nasty,
it’s just not in her nature”

I remembered that conversation as I travelled north.

“Can you really trust her? There is no telling what a spurned woman might do”
“Of course I can. She’s just not like that. You don’t know her.”
“I know women.”
“Ok, but I have no reason not to trust her. We talked. We’ve both moved on. That’t why i told her I was going there – to pick up my things”
“You told her. You actually told her that you were going there? Was that wise?”
“Like I said - I trust her. I know that she wouldn’t do anything silly.”

I shrugged. I had been right. I knew that I was right. I knew that woman. Good grief I had lived with her for over six years, and despite some initial difficulties that had shaken my trust in her, at the time, that was all water under the bridge and I had forgiven her those moments of poor judgement. We were coming to an amicable ending. Everything was going to be fine. Only it wasn’t going to be fine, and it turned out not to be amicable.

I was admittedly weary after the two hour drive. I had stopped once to stretch my legs, crick my neck a few times and generally get the road out of my body, and then driven the last remaining miles off the highway and along the old roads. Jungle clad hills reached up on one side of that pot-holed road, telling tales of wild bee nectar, moisture-dripping pitcher plants and slightly cooler climes. I resisted the temptation to turn off at the waterfalls, drip my aching body in the cool mountain water and dream of happier days. I was on a recovery mission. I needed to clear my belongings so we both could move on to our new lives.

I drove past miles of mining-pools – stretches of water left after the mining of tin was abandoned, and through a number of towns existing of just one rotting street, full of decaying houses and lifestyles. Modernity was catching up with the rural hinterland. Materialism and consumerism were replacing old world values. Brashness was replacing manners and lust for money blinded those of all races and religions.

It was not an easy journey to make – back to a past I was trying very hard to forget. I had all manner of emotions running through my mind as I traversed those roads. There was a certain amount of guilt, but I balanced that with the oppressive nature of the relationship that we had. It was a relationship edged with one-sided respect and an incompatibility which grew as did the years of our marriage. I’ll not go into detail about our religious differences, for those are of a private nature to her as well as to myself. But since our marriage I had felt trapped within her religion - its stern rules and immoveable regulations. I did not belong amongst those god-fearing people. I did not believe as they did, but questioned and found no answers that would console me. The freedom that I had been used to tugged me backwards, out and away from the strictures of her religion, away from what I considered to be the pointless self denials and the empty mouthing of a tongue better suited to other lands than to the humid, green country I had grown to love.

I calmed myself as I neared the turn-off. There was a petrol station on the right. I turned left. There was an avenue of trees. They had once teemed with monkeys. Thos trees formed a brief canopy practically all the way up to the land which contained the house I had built. The monkeys were gone and just back from the avenue, plots of land had been cleared of trees, ready for small blocks of houses. One antique wooden house had been left to rot - its once proud wood had greyed, home only to lizards and snakes. Other houses would follow as younger people drifted away to the city for a living. The rural idyll was decaying, its soul ripped out just as tin-mining had ripped the countryside decades before.

I turned the CD player off. Somehow the energy of Led Zepplin’s Robert Plant seemed at odds with the stillness of the countryside and the increasing solemness of my mood. The sun’s lack of energy had been gradually giving way to dark rain clouds. It had yet to rain, but torrents of monsoon rain were not too far away as I drove ‘home’. Was my mood clouding the day, or was the darkness of the clouds affecting me. I didn’t know. I was becoming agitated, my mind an uproar of emotions, none of which were overly positive. I turned off the main road and onto the much smaller road that skirted a mining-pool. My house stood before. I pulled up outside and noticed the gate to be locked. I reached into my pocket and was glad that I had remembered to bring my keys with me. I don’t know why, but I expected my ‘ex’ to be home. It was Sunday. I had notified her of my visit. But the gate was locked. I reached over as I had done perhaps a thousand times before and fit the key to the padlock. The key would not fit. I tried again. It was the same result. I twisted the padlock to get a better look. It was a new padlock!

Innocently, I suspected that the old padlock had finally given way as it has threatened to for many months. She had replaced it. I walked round to the back gate. The original lock was still on that gate and, sighing with relief, I walked across the grass that I used to mow - grass that those black and white rabbits once nibbled. The rabbits had long since gone – all but one killed by snakes. The last remaining rabbit was given away to a friend. I walked around the house to see if she was in. There were new padlocks on every door - stainless steel, neigh impenetrable padlocks all around my house. I think that my anger came from the fact that I had trusted her. Trusted her not to do such a thing, but she had. Congreve’s words rang loudly in my ears - Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

In a daze I went around that house – my house, once again, trying each lock in turn. I had been right the first time. Each lock had been replaced with a new padlock. Frustration grew in me. I shouted to the air, cursed the mango trees, the coconut trees, pandan bushes and finally – her. I stabbed her phone number into my mobile phone. She didn’t answer. I tried once more, she still did not answer. I called her relatives who also did not answer. Finally I left a short but pointed message on her telephone.

“Come and unlock my house. I want to collect my things.”

There was, of course, no reply. I sent similar words in an SMS message - also no reply.
Some minutes elapsed. I sat on the step to my ‘studio’. My studio was the place where I had done most of my writing, the place where my books were now imprisoned, the place that I had told her that our relationship was not working out, and that I felt suffocated by her religion. It was the place that I told her that I was moving out. Now the studio and house were locked, waiting like Dickens’ Miss Haversham for a wedding which will never come.

In my desperation I drove into the adjacent town. Eventually I found a car mechanic with the right tools to enable me to break into my own house. He lit his small blow-torch and had succeeded in burning through the arm of one lock when my ex-brother-in-law turned up shouting. He said something in his own language to the mechanic, who fled. He then started on me. I rushed into my house, not wanting to engage in angry debates. Instead, I wanted to collect what I could of my belongings and just get the hell out of there. It was not to be. The rain that had been threatening developed into a storm. Just as I had gathered a meagre amount of books into a bag not designed for the purpose of transporting books, lightning struck somewhere, some miles off. The electricity trip-switch, not brave at the best of times, tripped, leaving the house in darkness.

I stumbled around to where I remembered there were candles. Night-light candles, enough to give barely a glow. Nevertheless, I lit as many as I could and threw shadows around my darkening studio. The day’s light had faded just sufficiently for candles to be needed, but they were barely adequate. I gave up stuffing the books that I had had for 40 years, into that flimsy, inept bag and made for the door. The bag was too heavy, unlike the village mob which had gathered outside of my property.

And there they were - my ex-brothers-in-law. There was the ex-prisoner and ex-junkie, the current junkie and the two philanderers – one her brother and one her brother-in-law and there was my ex-wife – leading such a mob that would have done any Hammer Frankenstein film proud. True there was an absence of lit torches and waving farm instruments, but in all other respects that mob and the film mob were identical, and they were baying for blood – my blood. It dawned upon me that I would not be able to bring anything out of that house – except for myself, and even that maybe not all in one piece.

My senses raced between abject fear and the anger of injustice. The woman who I had trusted not to do anything untoward had firstly locked up my property, and then led a motley mob of villagers to my back gate – separating me from my vehicle. Some were, indeed, carrying some implements – I was too afraid to see exactly what, but I knew they were not delivering pizza.

There was a very loud and extremely heated discussion, or should I say shouting match between we ex-partners. It wasn’t pretty, and does not need to be written verbatim here. Suffice to say that both parties were wrong in the raising of voices and the use of fouler than foul language. While she gave vent to her anger at me, and told all and sundry what a dastardly villain I was, I, in turn, enlightened her village folk as to her behaviour prior to our marriage and during the first few weeks of our marriage – and that behaviour was not in keeping with her espoused religious views.

As if the raising of voices and the calling of names was not enough, things then began to get ugly. I had engineered myself outside of my land and tried to get to the car – minus belongings. My passage was blocked by my ‘ex’. She picked up a rather large, and very threatening, branch. I took a step back which was lucky, because I would have caught the full force of that first blow. As it was, I escaped. The branch she crashed down at me, missed by millimetres. She tried again, and again missed. She edged forward, dropped the branch and hit me with a fairly good right-handed punch – on my left arm. It wasn’t painful as such. That is to say the punch was not painful, but the thought of who delivered it - was. It was a moment of no return.

I ran and swerved quite a miraculous rugby swerve, then dodged behind the wheel of my car. The car and village mob, which they thought had nicely blocked me in, had left just enough room – on the left, for me to drive under a tree and exit onto the small road. As I did so – she (my ex-wife) launched herself at my car. She thumped at the windscreen with heaven knows what. It was frightening. I imagined that any moment a brick, or some such heavy object, would smash through the windscreen and I would be hauled out – and maybe even killed. The Frankenstein villagers followed their leader. It was singularly the most frightening time of my life as a host of people began to rock the car, bang upon it and successfully scare the living daylights out of me.

I edged the car forward – careful not to hurt anyone. The banging and thumping on the car continued. Later I found dents and scratches all over the car’s body. I escaped the mob. I drove onto the main road for a mile or so, then pulled over and just shook. Adrenalin still coursed through my body. My hands and arms shook, uncontrollably. I was glad to be alive, but still reeling from those events.

Thirteen months on from those harrowing events and I still have no access to my house, my land, my books, my paintings, my research materials or my clothing. All that I had in the world was taken by someone I had trusted. I had trusted her enough to put my other car and the house/land in her name. She returned that trust by taking everything, except for the few belongings I carried away with me as I left. The pain has lessened now, but the injustice still rankles as she has since disappeared to another country with another man.