Nathan

Father Owen was a gentle old man with a lump like an egg emerging from his forehead. He shook your hand took your hand in both of his, holding it with neither but softly with both so your whole body became a bird whose head has been covered. That is, you could not fly. As in: you might have flown you might fly. I wish I remembered the First Holy Communion, but I can only see the eggs we broke – he used to take kids in at all hours to teach them from his special books – and the boiled eggs he used to place before us when we got there. I never even once wondered why he fed us eggs until much later. He let us smash their heads in, while he carved his off neatly, with a precision boardering on faith. On Saturdays, me and my friend Rich would stay up all night talking about the alternatives to God – dinosaurs and golden eagles among them – and eating cheap Tescosown crisps so we were too tired to stay awake during his ceremonies. I remember thinking God was going to creep up on me while my eyes lolled up and down in their holes.I’m right now trying to think about where it all went wrong between me and God, and I’m unable to fathom a single reason to think either way about him. I am ambivalent. My mind rolls in circles, so to speak. But I liked the way he held my hand between both of his palms as if I might fly away.Is God?As in: the words, Just Is, that fathers and mothers are so fond of using in the supermarkets these days? As in: It Just Is.Has your mum ever lifted you off of the ground by the arm and slapped you on the bum with her spare hand? It Just Is! As if you can fly. The loss of control at that moment I think stays with you forever. It is at that moment you commence to stop screaming. Your face hurts from screaming and the back of your thighs sting hot and you have just been taken off the earth and spanked and put back before you can even notice. You look around with eyes like lakes. Again, your hand becomes like a bird’s head here, and your little wrist is a goose’s neck. You hang like a game-bird for a second, your eyes closed and the smell of meat from the market-stalls opens your legs. You cling violently to your mum’s leg the moment you hit the ground, as if you might fly away.When we are much older, we take our own hand in the other. We are sitting on park-benches with a hard-boiled egg in our fist. Our fist is buried in our lap, and the open palm placed over it. The palm and fingers have become so brittle it is a webbed foot. The blue coat which stretches down over your knees flaps and clacks as if you would fly away, but the palm is completely still, and the fist under it has no need for its own weight. The fist is light and still as a fish-head, and the wind clacks on at the wooden bench as if it could tear it from the daisies. You have the image of the ostrich-head buried in the soil, and the image of the ducks feet working crazily under the reflection of water while it’s body glides away. Now you have the image of an ostrich-egg taking ten hours to boil. One image is as good as the other.When I’m dead, I would like to be buried with one hand poking up above the ground. But for one hand and part of the lower arm, buried completely, or burned. Something for the ivy to grow on, and birds to weave nests through. Sit a big egg in it. Someone can sit sunglasses on the big egg stood in my palm at the funeral.Almost every day I try to shake the hand that isn’t there of my housemate, who only has one hand.Outside it looks like all the birds have descended into the belly of the clock-tower.No matter how long I sit here thinking about the other ways one’s hands are held as we jink through life’s passages, there is always the potential for flying. As in: walking in the air. One image is as good as another, I suppose. In this case, we can have the image of the snowman. The image of the pirate-chef. The image of the hand plunged into boiling water. The image of The Scream by Munch. As in: his face is melting.In the story of the golden egg, as told by Jack from Jack and The Beanstalk, as instigated by the sale of one cow, as aggravated by the giant, we have the goose who lays the golden egg. Now the goose cannot fly will not fly does not fly, or otherwise is not at any point in the story about to fly or flying or recovering from the fly. So how does she die?Is she a chicken?Where do hands come in?you've been gone too long Gone too long Winter's passed, spring and fall You never wrote me, you never called Nathan Jones you've been gone too long Gone too long