REMOTE CONTROL (by Kerry Lawlor-Robb, a local!)

Inured to the avoidance of the people who saw me coming- saw and did not look if you catch my meaning- I walked unsteadily to the Square. The Square, or actually a rectangle with a curvy bit at one end if we want to be pedantic, was the biggest open space in the city and lay in the western quarter. Its many tall and different trees, cool, dense shrubberies, slatted benches shaped like enfolding waves and a children’s playground all made the park as comfortable and constant abode as gentlemen of our bent could expect. It was usually safe at night and no official ever told us to move along- “Go, Move, Shift!” as an Irish song says it.

It was a cold, cold morning. Not crisp and invigorating but a clammy, penetrating cold driven by the breeze and countenanced by leaden skies through which the pale disk of the sun glowed weakly. The cold found its way through the many fissures in my variegated wear which I’ll itemise for you to get a mental grip on what I’m talking about although I can only tell you (in hindsight as I for sure did not know it at the time) that the items had a strong, sour smell. Three vests, two shirts and pullovers, a denim jacket, a tweed coat, a pair of corduroy trousers held up by an orange nylon cord and a pair of sole-worn Wellingtons. These last were dear to my heart as they were worn down from new. Not one item had known soap since my ownership- “Why leach their essence?”, I would have thought. My vests were nearly black and had a gratifying and growing stiffness to them which betokened to my mind a comradeship and developing acculturation.

No, I had not had my usual imbibement you might say of Parkers Sweet Cream the night before. I had slept brokenly and was now anxious and already a bit desperate about the prospect of getting drink for the night. With no sufficient money, I passed through the large gateway of the park with a pessimism only slightly relieved by spotting a figure in the distance who might prove to be good for a loan. It was Ronnie Allen, a vague and malleable type, sorting through a rubbish bin and I started in his direction.

I was then and now Davey, David Lewis Greenwood. An alcoholic who a

dozen years before had commenced that gradual wasting of his health and advantages of wealth which had led to his present condition on the road. Picture me… overweight, skin blemished and coloured, scarred, slightly swollen feet, not a steady hand and at the age of forty-three, while actually huge in build and possessed with a huge, bass voice which had been summoned on occasion to intimidate, not of convincing health. On the other hand, it must be stated that my damages were not yet crippling. I could still remember my yesterdays and even quite a lot of my education.

And I still had a heart. I was not just about to stand over poor Ronnie whom I considered poor because I knew and I was right that he really had lost it forever whereas I felt I had at least some chance. No, I ‘d just ask Ronnie and he had coughed up in the past and been repaid and had himself touched me on occasion and I’d been repaid and if he couldn’t now, well, fuck it, I wasn’t about to rob someone, I’d just have to be miserable for one night.

Pre-occupied with these ideas and shambling past a laurel bush my eye suddenly caught that glimpse which excites even a millionaire. It was a rectangular piece of paper of dull dark colours, patterned, with a face, stirring in the breeze and caught in the shoots of a Chinese Elm. “What the?. Play money for sure”, I said to myself in my self-talking language which knew no bounds as to actual crudity but was never spoken out loud to another person. (You might say it was my planning lingo). “Fuckanshit… it’s a fuckin’ tenner”. I grabbed it with a quick scan for claimants. None and, hidden in my fist for a while as I marched from the scene, it went then to a safe pocket and I could feel free to plan the evening. A quiet satisfaction replaced the jerk of elation. “Mucho Parkers tonight, say three, five bottles to buy, excess can be cached in the soft earth under ‘Monument shrubbery’ and certainly a pack of faggeroos”. I took out the note and screened it carefully. Definitely, definitively real. To the bottom right, I noticed a strange word written with an extravagant and artistic flourish in black biro which I wonderingly spelt out loud…”Eleutheria”. “Well, ok”, I said indulgently and replaced the note in its safe place.

In fact, as often happens, the evening didn’t turn out quite as ecstatic as I had expected. Perhaps the pleasure was robbed by the anticipation. I had downed all my three bottles, deep draughts each time, had shared a bit with friends and was by midnight alone still thirsty for fun. I returned to my cache and after a short, muttered struggle with my rainy-day conscience dug it up and polished it off entirely, the remaining two bottles. I had from their purchase smoked my way determinedly through two packs of rough cigarettes leaving just one quarter-smoked stick in my top pocket. And so you might say I was merry and smoked out for sure and ready at two a.m. to recollect that I’d had a good day and had lived it to the full and was now cleaned out and above all ready to get to my bed across the park. Shortly after, on the way, the queasiness started and I became very sick. The violent retching which I knew and expected was followed immediately in that paid-up period by a new and alarming sensation, a deep-seated trembling which seemed to start in my solar plexus and radiated out to my limbs in great, rhythmic waves. I didn’t feel cold or any pain. I soon started to worry that I might be having some sort of unique heart-attack or stroke but then my ineradicable can-do approach to things asserted itself and I told myself to “can it”, “live in the present”, “get on with life” (“or death” said lugubriously) as there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. I sort of bobbed and weaved my way to my hidden bed for the night which had been prepared beforehand with newspapers and a bottle of water. Concealed by Grevilleas and a flowering Butilon, it was sheltered from wind and the passers-by and looked down a small hill through the stalks at a grassy level sward enclosed by shrubs and conifers and crossed by a gravel path with a bench.

The trembling had almost ceased by the time I had fallen into a deep sleep exhausted by the novel events of the day and very lulled by my restful surroundings especially that lovely view out through the dark sticks to a little pool of grey lawn lit by the moon. I awoke after what seemed an eternity. The wind had stopped, traffic noises had disappeared and it was absolutely and blessedly still. I gazed for a long time without a thought at the bench with its elongated shadows. Then I raised myself reluctantly from my warm bed to relieve myself behind an appointed bush. Settling myself in again with much rustling, tearing and re-arrangement of my black and white blankets, I turned again to peer at that little pool of lawn which had become like so many other places in the park on so many other nights an oasis of meditative calm. I froze in alarm. A figure was seated on the bench with a pale face turned directly towards my lair. It took a mere second to realise that it really looked like the head had turned one hundred and eighty degrees on the shoulders. And that realisation turned my alarm to a sheer paralysing terror. I was fixated by that pale face which had no features save a smudged gash which I took to be a mouth. It was deadly still. My earlier trembles started again with a greater and more pulsating intensity. They didn’t force any cry from me which would have given away my position and they were even vaguely releasing but I thought my last moments on this earth had come and even had time to reflect wryly that I could have chosen a worse place. My trembles were fast and furious but my terror hardly increased when without any surprise at all I saw the figure whom I knew was looking straight into my soul with that eyeless face command me over with a casual beckon. I got up immediately and went through the bushes and with no further shivering passed down the grassy slope to the bench.

Now, I’ll have to check the flow a bit and inform you that when I say “went through the bushes… down” I really meant a sort of awkward gliding rather as if I were making way through a cloud with no firm base from which to propel myself. This weightless slithering gave me the impression of being the slow way to make the journey and that faster ways existed such as the mere thought of being at one’s destination. This was just a fleeting idea which I didn’t have time to look into then. When I arrived I saw at once the nature of that blank face which I had allowed to drill right into my very being. It was just a white cotton mask attached to the crown of the head and falling back down the neck. No eyes, just two pursed and fulsome lips, slightly parted which were a brilliant black in the moonlight but quite probably a crimson red by day.

“Sit by me, Davey”, the figure gestured and intimated rather than spoke. I received the message internally. It was neutral as to accent, intonation and even gender though I guessed the figure was male. I obeyed automatically. There was no problem with this- the figure emanated an unmistakable lordly kindness and an offer of opportunity.

Sitting to its right, the figure now revealed itself as an older bearded man and the moonlight showed every feature, line and character of his face. My fear subsided and I could start to look with some detached curiosity into a calm face, eyes with rather large pupils giving out a neutral friendliness, and a restrained smile playing about his lips.

“I have met you many times here and in other places in the park, although you may have no memory of this. Tonight, it’s time for you to become aware and you will finally, and it may take years, recall every detail of this meeting. It will become imperative, if all goes well, for you to come to an ever-strengthening recollection of what we are just about to do. We will see soon how good you are and what spirit is buried in you.”. His speech again was as if directly to my mind in a subtle way that seemed not to depend on a sound wave. He spoke some more words and then a silence ensued. He turned his head from me and looked in a steady bowed way across the lawn to the enclosing trees. My mind felt drawn back ready to shoot forward with many effortless questions but I didn’t speak. Perhaps it did not just then seem important who he was and what we were doing.

“You may not realise”, he said with a chuckle just breaking the surface, “that your corporeal, drunk, dirty, unwell and grossly self-indulgent self is lying over there”. He lifted his head an inch back in the direction I had come. I didn’t have to look back to know suddenly with a shock and a surging elation that he was right. He then rose quickly and deftly and indicated that we both go and look at this sleeping form. No sooner had we formed this intention than we were on the other side of the clump of Grevilleas and it was a short glide to where I lay half-turned, the plastic bottle gleaming by my bushy head. Drawn back mentally like a potentiated arrow stretched on a bow, I framed a question to which my clear mind had no answer and spoke for the first time, “How?”. “I will show you again soon, Davey”, came the laconic reply. “Meantime, look carefully at yourself and take stock”. I did as he told and, without disturbing the clothes and limbs of the sleeping man, made a careful inventory of all its features; its reddened countenance with many scars, the ginger beard run wild, a sore lump on the left side of the throat which I had been ignoring, puffy ankles, dirty, tangled hair which I noticed with some satisfaction was as luxuriant as ever. I even smelled the breath issuing noisily from this sleeping giant which was unpleasantly true to its recent influences but innocent of any scent of rotten teeth. I caught the mustiness of the garments, saw the large, slack, pale belly, a crescent of which had spilled out through the vests, saw the hands with black nails atop still strong fingers. I was hovering over my body rather like a questing bee. The stranger watched with arms folded leaning against a copper beech. Then he said I should place a token of my separation in some proving place like the high fork of a tree. “Get that tenner you found this morning”, he said mischievously. I remembered the half-smoked cigarette which I would certainly want for breakfast and I plucked it out of the pocket. In the most natural way, by the simple exercise of intention, I drifted up with the cigarette and two stones to a high branch in a tree not far from where I lay. There, I placed on a small, level fork the larger stone below, ramming it a bit to secure it, and the smaller on top sandwiching the flattened butt and then I drifted down again. I was amused at my ingenuity and the joke I was playing on this prone figure whom I pretended to imagine would wake up and know where his fag was but would have no idea how it could have got there.

“Davey”, the figure, let’s call him my Guide from now on, said more seriously, “the more you separate, the more you will take stock and will ultimately and inevitably wish to effect a restitution of your worldly position. It will be a sort of ‘remote control’”. With his habit of saying something once without a repetition and amplification, he fell silent but I knew exactly what he meant. And I knew also that for me, by nature both destroyer and restorer, and not yet beyond the feeling that I could “kick some ass” in the real world, that process of restitution could be a fascinating challenge- a gradual rebuild of the broken, derelict frame and fortune of that bulky body lying there in the moonlight, with one foot already in the grave. Borrowing my friend’s economy of expression, I simply asked how.

There followed three hours of more intensive, unremitting instruction than I had known in years. It was broken, delayed, punctuated by many frustrating and disheartening failures. To my Guide, I suppose, I may have been some sort of existential duty, one of many maybe. He seemed to be a man in a hurry with no time for pleasantries. Imminent dawn did not leave much time, I suppose. He had a deeply patient and kindly approach to the inattention and mistakes of a student long unused to detailed instructions and yet behind the velvet one could sense the steel, the implacable determination to pass on that part at least of his knowledge before it was too late. “Merging back”, from the start, had been no problem- the laying of one’s non-physical self over the physical, little shakes and settlements, an approximate copying of the physical and then suddenly an instant cessation of separateness, awareness terminated abruptly like that of a patient overcome by a general anaesthetic. It was the “Separation” process that was problematical. Perhaps if the physical Davey, who otherwise colluded with absolute obedience but with a clumsy lack of focus, had not been so weakened by the bottles of sherry, the education may have gone more quickly. But in the end I learnt the technique and learnt it thoroughly because the teacher was not to be satisfied by one of ten successful sorties but must run through it fifty times straight, faultless, and then again many times again after that with short intervals. Patient, exacting, critical, it was beginning to get light and the birds were starting, and a couple of early unseeing walkers had already passed, when he said he was satisfied. “I may meet you again. Don’t ask ‘Why all this?’. You will eventually recollect and when you do I think, with the education I have given you and the freedoms hinted at, you will start working quickly”. I appreciated once again the laconic and complex structure of his sentences and said nothing but a simple “Thank you” for his generous and precious gift just as he was slipping away. This he did very expeditiously, ghosting back through the bushes to the bench and wriggling just like I had done into the corporeal. The unmoving bowed figure was not now quite so riveting with the moon gone and being faintly visible in the breaking dawn. It sprang then to life and rose. Without turning he and it raised an arm of farewell and walked quickly in crunching steps down the gravel path. As he vanished around the corner of a brick outhouse, I knew as he had really known that this was a goodbye for all eternity.

I felt immediately an aching sense of loss for I had grown in that short space of time to revere the man with his gentle handling and to trust him totally. I wondered what he had done when he had rounded the outhouse and disappeared from my view. Had he just vanished? With my sense of the possible in this deceptively ordinary world we live in quite stretched by my recent experience, I did not think this unlikely. Or had he joined the city throngs again as that familiar and perhaps ordinary person of a known and defining antecedent? I turned to my form on the ground with all its bedding scattered by the training. It was no doubt cold but it was lost to the world and snoring softly. I had the sudden fear I would not be able again to merge. In the event, it was all easy and I easily became the old Davey again, the more because when I awoke hours later, cold, nauseous and with a severe growling headache, I had not a single clear idea of what had happened beyond an awareness that in some way I had been interfered with. Shortly after, earnestly desiring a few drags on the remembered butt of my cigarette and looking up in my search and seeing that intricate stone arrangement with the white butt sticking out in an unreachable and mocking sort of way, my puzzlement and frustration were hedged by a faint memory of some design in this. It was somehow connected to the interference.

The next few days were a blur. I wandered around the city in a semi-distracted state. I was not drinking as much as usual and did not know why and was bemused as to why the threadbare fabric of my life seemed to be splitting at the seams, why the normally devil-may-care Davey, always ready to tilt his lance at the gods, should now be so morose, dissatisfied, unmotivated by the allure of the fermented grape. I grew to like the ambience of that leafy bedroom with a view in my favourite park where the stones still balanced mysteriously. The fag-end had vanished probably plucked out by an undiscerning magpie. I’d seek out the spot during the day, glower at any incumbents and intimidate them into moving. And I would soon then have the place again to myself and I would stop there at night, now moonless nights, and would wonder why I was so drawn.

One day a couple of things happened which made things clearer. I was walking down Mortimer Street, a narrow road issuing at right angles from one of the main streets enclosing the square, and I started to walk past a clothes shop. The noise of hammering and power tools told of a refurbishment and chrome-plated racks of clothes had been wheeled out on to the pavement blocking the way. Amongst them was a large mahogany tilt-mirror and my image filled it as I passed. I stopped and there was no-one hard at my heels so I could take my time and gaze and assess. Looking at my great red beard, squinting slightly, and my perennial outfit, a sudden stab of memory, of having looked recently, from afar at my same image, made me freeze. And it was I was sure not the vague memory of a dream. I then had the queer and half-joyful conviction that the real me was in that mirror and that I, outside, was the spiritual puppeteer capable by the mere exercise of intention of making old Davey do anything at all, controlling, guiding, shaping, moulding. Playing along humorously, I told him to clap both hands on top of his head and of course he obligingly and instantly complied. When I told him to lift his layers of pullovers and expose his belly to the breeze, the revealed crescent of white flesh again stirred the pot of mixed memories. I decided then and there that I had to sit down in a quiet place, hold my head in my hands, shut out all distractions of scenery and people, collect my scattered thoughts and finally recover what did in fact happen to me on that strange night of the binge and the two stones.

Thus, dismissing my other self from the mirror, I headed back in the direction of the park meaning to hole myself up in that favourite part until I knew finally what the hell was going on. Thought needed food so I made a detour via the bakery of Theo Markopolous. Theo was a very generous proprietor. I hadn’t dropped in for days for “yesterday’s leftovers”. Theo wasn’t in but Sandra, his assistant, knew me well enough to tease me with a breezy disdain paying in good bread measure and even a couple of sausage rolls for her torrent of affectionate abuse. I was a large and comfortable man and my patent good nature, deep laugh wrinkles and quite often acutely witty mind, seemed to draw the bonhomie out of people. Sandra and Theo were no exception and took an obvious pleasure in helping sustain a man along his chosen path however dubious the direction. Today, I was not in the mood for a chat or counter-teasing about her boyfriend so I just murmured my thanks, gave her a fat wink and departed.

Thought needed smoke. Thus all I needed, being already the owner of papers and a lighter, was a couple of dozen butts which were not hard to find on the street and, appearing in the door-frame of Kelly’s, soon got my barman friend, Sid Hannigan, out also with the garnerings from ash-trays over the last day. Amazing, I reflected as I walked along, how I’m supported by kindly people around to whom I am an interesting corner in their day, a corner which I do not crowd out by being inconvenient, importunate or threatening. A form of passive support in a way shyly extended. But now I was aware dimly of an active, equally kindly, interference and I was aware that it somehow depended on me now to make the next move.

I walked briskly and purposefully to the “Pond bench” donated by one Ernest McLachlan and facing out over a broad expanse of water. I had changed my mind about that favourite part preferring instead to gaze unseeing over the stretch of water and see if the blurred movements of the birds and people far away on an opposite path could tease out some vestiges of memory which might be enough to start a general retrieval. Rolling up and lighting a cigarette with my meal to be left for later, I started my meditation. That formidable combination of physical size and physical filth had never had me worried about any attack so I had not paid more than cursory attention to a couple of youths who seemed to be flinging darts at the thin trunk of an alder and I hadn’t even thought they would interrupt my concentration. But a short forewarning of trouble came with the skidding noise in the gravel of a small red object striking the path beside me. I awaited what might happen. Seconds later a violent shove had me sprawled out on the path. Winded, gasping for breath, pushed up against a wrought-iron lawn guard, I was then hauled across the grass. My “food for thought” was hurled away into the water and I began to be subjected to a kicking-style of bashing. Pain and alarm gave way instantly to a fury. My blood was up. Consequences didn’t matter a whit. Any feelings of timidity and intimidation were thrown out the window and I started to fight back with the tenacity and lack of inhibition of a cornered wild animal. After many telling kicks, some to my face, I managed to struggle to my feet. Perhaps because of my dirty appearance, the toughs were fastidious about employing the dog-pack approach of crowding, clinging on and dragging down, preferring the long-range, quarantined method of aiming heavy-booted kicks at vulnerable parts of generally supine victims. Someone who got on their feet and fought back was a worry and when I did get up the balance of the match shifted. I started to land some of my own blows. My fury yielded to a sort of cold elation as I saw that I was starting to deal out some punishment and getting the upper hand. That was a pure and heady feeling! All the frustrations and confusion of the previous days were exorcised in my cold anger as I started to pay the bastards out. One of them drew out a knife which I got from him and it joined my lunch in the lake. The decider came then after some more minutes when with my back to a tree I succeeded in side-stepping a head-butt and with a combination of tripping and pushing with the flow rammed the attacker head-first very hard against the trunk. He slumped immediately unconscious. The other, the one whose knife I had confiscated, swore at me and started to walk away. Battle-fever surging in my veins, I gave chase at full speed and drew out a panicky flight from his leisurely retirement. Picking up one of the fallen darts, I hurled this with all my might at the fleeing back, lending all my excited powers of visualisation to a successful bullseye. It missed. He fled yelping with fear right out of sight and I had to let him go as I was only good for a short run. I retrieved the dart and the one also on the path claiming them in a pleased way as honourable battle trophies.

I was completely out of breath and lay down in some physical distress close to the slumped figure of the remaining youth. I was fighting for breath. I sat up and rubbed my chest all over to try to soothe the frenzied jumping of my heart which I feared might any minute break down. And then it was, just at that point when I decided I would probably live for the time being, that those “trembles” began. I was surprised but I then unerring remembered in some bemusement how to manipulate and focus the wave-like pulsations to achieve the separation. This happened smoothly as it had happened a hundred times with my guide that night past. My guide… whom I now totally recalled in my separated and clear state.

I remained in a separated state for about one hour.

At the outset, I saw at once that while I now had a perfect recall of the guide and the technique of separation I would lose it all again when I settled back into my sleeping body. (Note that I had taken pains in the short time available before separation to compose this body in a clear cat-nap pose, hands tucked behind the head, so that any concerned passer-by would see a snoozing tramp and not a dead one.) I needed to write things down. Finding not a biro but a box of matches on the person of the youth, who was breathing stertorously, I lit a dozen or so and used the blackened ends as a stylus. I then found a bit of greasy paper in a bin and managed to scrawl out the preliminary instructions to commence a separation, a “bootstrap” to pull me into a proper recall of the full technique. I took care to spell everything out in full although my writing materials were impelling me to a sharp abbreviation. I seemed to have no trouble manipulating material objects with shadowy fingers and it would perhaps have been a strange sight for any passer-by, and there were none, to have seen a box of matches hovering in the air and every now and then one taken out by some mysterious force and struck. When I finally finished the tedious transcription, headed “Instructions for Out-of-Body experience”, I stuffed the notes in my pocket and decided to explore the world of separation. Some time later, feeling rootless like a child without its mother and worried about the on-going health of that laid-out and knocked-about body of D. L. Greenwood, stiff, cold and hungry, I merged again back into the world of forgetfulness.

During that hour away, I learned much about the new mode. I could not see myself clearly other than as a shadowy figure. This presence with its vague outline could merge into physical objects and pass through them. In wonderment, I passed my hand, or rather idea of hand, through a lamp post and then myself through a tree. Note… I didn’t pick up anything especial about the essence of objects I went through. I could be merged completely in the thick bole of the tree but know nothing more about its essential nature than I would have as my corporeal self just imagining such a merger. I had all my senses but seemed to see in a different way. All living things, especially the people, birds and dogs I saw, and in a muted way dead objects too seemed to have a radiating larger presence than that given ordinarily by their vitality or existence. I was particularly struck by the way the people I saw, and I saw crowds because I had shimmered across the park to a busy intersection, seemed to be locked into themselves, totally enveloped in their clouds of dreams or listening intently to an inner dialogue. Dogs were more open and one of indeterminate breed, gambolling around its owner, saw me, I’m positive, stopped and watched my going past for several seconds. And some people seemed more open, attuned at least partially to the second by second actuality of what was going on around them in all its amazing complexity. But they showed no sign of noticing my presence unlike that dog. That was food for thought. I could see other vague spirit forms but for some reason had no inclination to make contact. To my surprise, I saw the form of the youth I had knocked against the tree walking rapidly, head down in the direction of the conservatory.

When the force of intention was mustered, I found I could move and manipulate physical objects. Of course, I knew this already from my slender experience with the two stones and my carbon stylus but I still found it a delight that a vaporous intelligence merging into objects could still and all summon the powers to move things around. I found that innocence seemed to be the key. To my amazement I could do nothing with certain types of intention. In an impish and opportunistic mood, growing ever more confident about my powers, I decided to shake the certainties of a severe-looking old lady on a bench by removing her hat and placing it next her on the seat. The intention was mischievous and teasing and it seemed like an omnipresent Monitor intervened even as the intention was forming and made my clutching fingers pass clean through the felt of the rim. And it seemed that the permissions granted, perhaps computed continuously by that Monitor, were a continuum from effortless movement of objects to a sheer transparency. A child had left a tap running strongly and it took me five minutes of mental labour to summon enough kinetic power to close it off. And I had got nowhere in five minutes with that lighter physical task, the lifting of that hat. Perhaps it was with that tap that my altruistic intervention was considered to be only a partly warranted interference in the scheme of natural consequences.

That hour changed my life. To see that I was not just a body wracked and imprisoned by an addiction. To know I had been granted a most extraordinary perspective.

After a brief review of my notes, my smudged impressions on how to launch a re-separation, and hoping to remember some of this, I settled back into the prone and staring body of old Davey. I awoke then with unclear memories of my hour away. I had known ahead of time that this was going to have been a problem. But I had the clearest memories of the fight prior to my going away and now realised a need for instant and urgent physical action. The youth I had rammed against the tree was dead. I didn’t have to check his pulse. His grey face, stiff posture and the dried stream of blood from an ear told the story. It was no surprise. I felt dimly I had seen his ghost for want of a better word leaving the scene. Rubbish was lying everywhere. My half-empty bottle of Parkers Cream, fallen from my pocket, was lying on the grass in plain view to anyone passing and I suppose the impression would have been that two hobos were sleeping off a friendly binge. So the manslaughter had not been found out yet and I knew I had to leave the scene at once. Very quickly and with utmost concentration, I collected all my identifying belongings and walked quickly to the Exeter Street exit. Passing a small pond to my right, I added pond water to the elixir inside and sank the bottle. This was not without a qualm, let me tell you. And no parting swig! I was in a great hurry and had hardly time to attend to this particular detail and was not sure why I did it. Perhaps I felt that a new identity in a new city which this death was forcing on me should be leaving some old habits behind. Perhaps, rather, something inside me had been awakened by the experience of separation and, like the Monitor, was beginning to resist the execution of questionable actions. That drowning of the bottle was really a very bold statement from a steeped alcoholic like myself and as I sped down Exeter Street towards the bus station I kept shaking my head at the wonder of it.

A flushed and unkempt tramp, breathing heavily, and on the nose for sure had some trouble convincing the bus driver to take him anywhere but the materialisation of the “readies” borrowed from the dead youth and the enunciation of an unbrookable intention in crystal-clear diction won over the reluctant man. I was soon on my way to ___________ton, a town some forty miles away.

During the following weeks I managed to recover most of the memories of my last separation. With much browbeating, agonising over the significance of a scrawl which I knew had been composed to speak volumes, I managed to understand and transcribe with explicit amplification most of the “Instructions for Out-of-Body experience” into an exercise book. A full understanding and a “practical” would come later I decided after I had got my life into some order.

I was staying in a hostel, a plain building of grimy russet bricks. It was an old converted school with a large tarmacadamed playground. The place was run with firmness and generosity. Conditions were excellent in the points of food, cleanliness and entertainment. There were quiet rooms to which one could retreat without permission or the negotiation of locked doors. And I made extensive use of one of these to which I had taken an unaccountable shine for many weeks. It overlooked gardens at the back and I grew to know the layout of these gardens very well. Their dull appearance belied their fascination when looked at with the lively eye of imagination or even as a visual break from other-directed thought. And it was in this room which had a day-bed on which I laid out my supposedly-sleeping body that I achieved my first voluntary separation. With much trepidation, I can tell you! Now that I was you might say coming together again I didn’t want to lose myself forever.

I slipped down the stairs, three flights, and ghosted out through the hall and the front door to the portico and thence around the back to my little grimy patch of garden. I then realised of course that I could probably have drifted down gently from my “laboratory” through the window or passed through walls. I didn’t spend long out I was so nervous. And at the end I’d had no need to be nervous. Everything happened smoothly. I did it again straight after following the style of my guide- if you think you know something do it a hundred times to prove it. I did it many times then and in the days after and did not merely float down from my eyrie on the third floor but started being able to imagine myself in a known place and then being there suddenly through the mere exercise of intention. There was always present in the background that Monitor whose evaluative judgements on the permissible action were sometimes puzzling and always binding.

There came a time when I grew beyond those kindly russet walls. I had shaved my unruly head of hair and that great bushy beard down to nothing but a style of crew-cut and a clean face growing pinker with the days. I hadn’t looked at a drop since the sinking at the pond and had lost sixty pounds in weight. Long walks at a fairly forced pace encouraged me in the most satisfying belief that I was getting fit. If this was an illusion, what did it really matter, I thought. There was still forward progress. On one of these forced marches I passed a small police station and saw an artist’s rendition of a large bearded head with mean, screwed-up eyes wanted in connection with a killing some months ago going by the name of Davey. Even the weak sunlight which might have glanced across this photocopy had aged it to a forlorn paleness, a mute comment on its present relevance. I came back in one of my separations by my newly-learnt technique of instant transfer to study it more carefully and any other news about the crime but it had been taken down. It was gone and it was time for me too I thought.

I went and saw Herbert, ‘Erb, the next morning in his rather spare office. This small dapper man had the most innerly reflective eyes I’ve seen in anyone for a long while which always made me think he knew far more about every soul under his roof than he let on. Come to think of it, you know, I haven’t really thought about it until now. What was this organisation I found myself with, or rather were landed with me, that day past when I turned up, following some street lead after a couple of nights out? Anyway, whoever they were, ‘Erb was a great guy. He asked if I was ready to go it alone. He said he could get me a starting job and a cheap room in another town some miles away. I took up his offer. The way he looked at me when we shook hands goodbye made me sure he knew I was a man with a history, in a spot of trouble not of his own making.

I went there to that town and I worked hard at that lowly job. I can now just say that through the agency of my new self-control, or “remote control” as you might call it, and my restored health, that ebullience of character came to the fore and I really swept all before me in promotion after promotion. You are now listening to the Principal of Greenwood Estate Agencies spin you this yarn which is a true tale I might add and true also that I am the founder of this enterprise which is on its way to spanning the nation. I think you know my secret. Let me add also that such a phenomenal perspective on oneself gives one a great view into the agenda of that individual sitting opposite across the leather-top desk asking for that job. I chose right and this well-chosen team have made Greenwood’s great just as much as its founder.

One day I found myself for the first time since in that city that I really loved deep down, which I had left so suddenly. I had an afternoon spare. I wandered through the park. I caught sight of Ronnie Allen who had aged considerably. I slapped him hard on the shoulders and spoke in a booming voice, “Hi Ronnie”, and slipped him a tenner for I had brought some to hand out to my old friends, incognito. That was a laugh. You should have seen that poor guy light up with joy and amazement and a curiosity sharpened by a dim memory of having known someone remarkably like this benefactor sometime in the past. With a light heart, I wandered into Theo’s café and ordered a coffee. Sandra was not there and Theo served me with no recognition. I gave him twenty pounds and turned to stone when the tenner with the change had a strange word written on it. That tenner had come back. “Theo”, I said tensely, “what does that mean?” pointing to the word. Theo was surprised at the use of his name from a stranger who had nonetheless a sort of subliminal familiarity. His alarm weakened as he saw he could answer the question and said lightly, “Oh, that’s just a Greek word for freedom”.

I left the town shortly after. What has happened since is really of no significance or interest. I’ve kept that charmed tenner. Things will really liven up when I use it and my powers of separation to give someone else, carefully selected, the gift of remote control.