The Window

The Window

By Laura Collins

The mountains shivered around me as I climbed higher. The clouds came closer. I looked behind me and gasped at the view. It never ceased to amaze me. The moment was coming closer now, I could feel it. My thoughts changed each time I came here but my actions remained the same. I sat down and reached towards my bad to get the sandwich I would never taste. The shadow fell on the bag and as I inevitably turned, I woke.

The humming of the building startled me as I came to my senses. The restraints felt tighter than normal. I cleared my throat to begin my customary scream but the door opened first. I must have slept longer than normal. He came in, undid the restraints, left a tray of food on the floor and disappeared. I was one of the lucky ones who had a window. Of course the view of the field surrounding the building was destroyed by the thick iron bars. I gritted my teeth and began my morning walk. The walk was twenty lengths of the room.

The room was dingy. One bed, one window, five iron bars on the window, fifty-seven tiles on the ceiling, one door – with seventy-nine scratches and laminated floors. Breakfast was porridge with a “Freaky Friday” twist – a dot of honey that was sinking like the Titanic. I ate meticulously – as always. Dip the spoon in, fill it, let half slide off and fill it again. Eating breakfast took forty-five minutes. In this place, you try to take as much time as possible doing every single little thing so you don’t have to think. Thinking could kill you here.

I don’t belong here. I would never attempt suicide..... I was happy with my life..... I would never attempt suicide..... Life has been Hell since they found me. I had been enjoying my hike up some mountain and hit a slippy patch. The wet grass carried me over the side and apparently it looked like I had attempted to take my own life. The worst thing is though, I keep dreaming about that day.

I can still remember the clouds that, if you squinted, looked like ducks. The soft breeze making my anorak billow around me. The slight weight on my shoulders, that was the rucksack containing my ham sandwich and bottle of water. The scene is always repeating itself in my head. It’s torture, which is why thinking will be the death of me here. Death. It’s a funny thing isn’t it? When you’re living your life, you fear it. When you’re stuck in a room with one window you wish for it.

The doctors came in at the same time, wearing the same blue and white clothes every single day. They say the same words, in the same monotone voices, wearing the same bored expressions. Each day that passed I scratched the door. I’ve been saving counting the springs in the mattress for my birthday because it doesn’t seem like I’ll be getting out of here anytime soon judging by the continuous identical days.

A room with one bed, one window, five iron bars, laminated floors, eighty scratches on the door and a memory that will haunt me until I’m free – from here or from life. Plain porridge on a Saturday and the same clothes, words and expressions from the doctors.

Help me, I’m trapped.

Invisible Lives

Invisible Lives.

As I backed up against the door with the tiny window, through which I had seen a gathering of well-dressed, well-spoken slightly pompous looking individuals, I had a flitter of nervousness. That morning I had gone to the tailors and purchased a very expensive, but very well-made suit that if I do say so myself, made me look quite dashing. I was quite apprehensive about buying it, but well, this was my first proper profession and I wanted to dazzle the people. I really would like to carry on from here, but to understand it fully; you should know what series of events brought me to be in this particular place, in this particular attire, backing up against a door with a tiny window.

First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is John Ryan. I’m quite tall, 5”10’. I am quite a sporty person so I’m pretty toned and I like to think of myself as handsome. I don’t have a car and I rent an apartment above a shop in Grafton Street. I don’t have a job though so my parents pay rent for me. Don’t think of me as some spoilt rich kid though, they’re paying for my rent so I don’t go back and live at home. I was a bit of a handful I guess so they agreed whole heartedly when I announced I wanted to go to university in Dublin. They offered to pay food and board so I have it pretty good up here. They even offered to pay for rent if I graduated. I bet they didn’t think I actually would graduate, but they had given me an incentive and I couldn’t pass up the offer to tell them that I would be renting an apartment in Grafton Street. The look on their faces was priceless.

I had just graduated from university and was feeling quite pleased with myself for passing all of my exams. I had always been a bit of a party maniac but for the week of exams I had crammed all day and all night, relying on my old friend caffeine to keep me awake and refreshed. Needless to say, it granted me a very near fail, but I had come out the other side on a pass. So I was young, fresh out of university and “raring” to go. I had a notion in my mind, that as soon as I graduated a profession would fall into my lap and I would receive a nice fat wage and a pension. This obviously was quite a ludicrous idea but that is what I thought. I had done a very stupid thing at the end of my Leaving Certificate year. I had decided to do an arts degree, thinking that by the end of it, I would have some idea what I wanted to do with my life. But, as I said before, I was a party maniac and never got around to finding out what I wanted to do.

It’s crazy really, once I start thinking about it, how things suddenly began to fall into place without much activity on my part. I was walking down Grafton Street on a sunny day. Now when I say sunny, I mean the Irish version of sunny, which is, its cloudy, the sun is kind of visible but it’s not raining. I can’t quite remember why I decided to go out that day. I had been planning on having a lazy day in front of the T.V. but I think I needed to buy bread or milk or something like that, so I was out on Grafton Street, half window shopping, half wondering if I should get a job when someone bumped into me. It was a tall, well dressed, man who looked somewhat familiar. It turned out he was a friend of my dad’s in the restaurant business. I remembered that because he had taken me on a tour of one of them, through the kitchens and into the walk in freezers when I was young. He recognised me too, which isn’t a compliment as I hadn’t seen him since I was ten and was twenty one now.

We began chatting and he soon discovered that I had no job and he was looking for an apprentice. It really is crazy how it worked out for me. He told me to come to a certain address, with a tuxedo and a smile at six o clock. After I thanked him and went on my way I rang my Dad and told him about this business offer. He offered to buy the tux for me and loads of stuff he thought I might need. He needn’t have really, but I guess it was a chance for him to stop having to pay my rent and whatnot. He even got the train up to Dublin that same day. We spent the day chatting and hanging out like a father and son do. He stayed over at my place that night and that brings me to the next day when I got my tuxedo. It really was quite fancy. Perhaps a bit over the top but my Dad said nothing but the best for me. How could I argue when he was paying?

I started to get pretty nervous when it neared six. I didn’t even know what I would be asked to do but I was sure it would be pretty great. As I walked to the restaurant I began thinking what I would do and say. It would probably be some small job but why would he ask me wear a tuxedo? It didn’t really make sense because I had no experience doing anything.

I opened the door to the restaurant and stepped in. I don’t really know what I expected but what I’m pretty sure it wasn’t what I got. Tom (my dad’s friend) stood in the middle of the room giving orders to people. Men dressed in cheap tuxedos with bow-ties were scurrying around the place like mice. They didn’t even seem to be doing much, just scurrying as if they had some important place to be. I walked over to Tom and he began ordering me to do stuff. He didn’t recognise me in the tuxedo. He started speaking quite quickly. Something about being nice to everyone, and blend into the background. I had no idea what he was talking about until he said that I would be carrying the cocktails. It dawned on me that the “apprentice” job he had offered me was a waiting job. I was speechless. I knew I didn’t have any experience but the way he said he needed an apprentice had made me star struck and this was a blow to my ego.

I tried to think the best of this job, it would pay, I would have some experience to put on my C.V. and maybe I will find the thing that I was meant to do here. Even though I had these good ideas in my mind, it didn’t block out the fact that the amazing job I thought I had gotten, was a lousy waiting job. I began thinking that I might still dazzle the people that I would be waiting on in my fancy tuxedo. Wild notions began in my mind once more. I began fantasizing that one of the individuals would see me and immediately tell me to put that tray down and join them. Perhaps hand me a check for a considerable sum of money. Obviously these were crazy fantasy’s that had no chance of coming true but being who I am I couldn’t help it. I began receiving orders to do tasks which seemed ridiculous but I obeyed in the hope of this being a dream.

I was handed a tray filled with cocktails with a little umbrella in each glass. Some had a cherry in them, some were plain. I felt like I was wondering through a dream where I was just a pair of hands and a tuxedo and the rest of me was invisible. As I backed up against the door with the tiny window I felt pretty awkward. Outside were the fancy people who I thought I would be enjoying the evening with. Yet here I was, carrying a tray of cocktails, about to become their invisible servant. I walked through crowds of people and could not see much but hands grabbing the glasses which were laid out in front of me. No one could see me; I was just the thing that carried their drunken evening. Soon, the tray was empty and I had to return to the kitchen. As I backed up against the door with the tiny window once more, I began to think about what brought me to being in this particular place, in this particular attire feeling this outrageous and distraught.

By Laura Collins

Faces

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a face can tell a thousand emotions.

If you joined these together, you would have one hell of an image. And yet we come across these images in our life, and we don’t think too much about them. They seem ordinary, not too interesting. But to me, its amazing, every time I see a photograph of a persons face, I have to take a second look, to appreciate the photo, to take it all in. A simple digital camera will do this job so easily, so simply, and it’s the most amazing thing on earth.

I love taking photos. It’s what I do. I first became interested in it back when I was just fifteen years of age. When a new teacher came to the school who was a media studies teacher, I quickly fell in love with the subject. Unfortunately we only had two classes a week with him, but I embraced these classes. I threw myself into the homework we were given, which was take one photo. Just one. I took a photo of my Mom, smiling. The next class he asked me why I took a photo of her, while everyone else had taken a photo of a sunset, or a family pet. I said “This tells more of a story than a sunset or pet, this is a photo of a life.”

So after that I couldn’t stop taking pictures of people, people smiling, people laughing, studying, and writing. The look of determination on some peoples face while they write is incredible, so focused on what they’re doing they don’t even notice my camera.

I began thinking, faces aren’t just on people, there’s the face of the earth, face of the moon, face of the sun and even faces of animals. So I was still taking photo’s of faces, just not human ones. I went in search of the perfect face. I’ve always been interested in nature and landscape. Ireland is so beautiful and to not appreciate what’s on my doorstep would be terrible! The Emerald Isle was calling. So I hiked around Ireland, seeing new mountains, new scenery and new people. Everyone I met I had to take a photo of them.

These faces weren’t as incredible as human faces. Human faces have an unbelievable amount of expression in them. Its nearly impossible to describe a face. Sure, it has a nose, a mouth, two eyes, a chin etc. but really describe it. Each emotion which passes through our faces each and every day is amazing. Sometimes we don’t even know we have an expression on our face until someone says something!

But faces aren’t always filled with joy and laughter. There are dark emotions that can spread across people’s faces. Faces can hide things, hide secrets. They can be used as a mask to hide from people, to hide who you really are. To deceive people and to create a new image. These are hard to capture with a camera.

I have people come into my studio and ask for a family portrait. I see parents bickering and fighting like animals with their kids trying to force them to wear formal clothes. A young boy of seven or eight should not be wearing a suit. Its not who he is and this is what I mean by being deceiving. The little girl, typically would wear a frilly dress and kneel with her hands by her sides. Her face, after all the screaming, a bit red, but nothing a bit of concealer won’t cover up.

This is not real, this is not what I had in mind, but this is what people want. So that is what I must do. Sometimes it drives me crazy, so that’s when I hike and get back to photographing what’s real and what wont change, no matter how much concealer is put on it. Mountains wont change, the weather might make it look different and I guess that’s like nature’s make-up, but behind it the mountain is still the same beautiful piece of land that it always was.

Have you ever walked into town and looked at the people who you walk past? I mean really look at. I’ve looked at people and wondered, “Where are you going?” or “What’s life like for you today?” and unless I go up and actually ask, I’ll never know. It’s weird that you pass so many people that you don’t know a thing about. They can fool everyone by plastering a smile on their face while they know themselves that that’s not what they feel like. People are so deceiving, even if they don’t mean to be.

Photo’s aren’t just a hobby, they become memory’s. When my mind becomes foggy and forgetful, I’ll always have the pictures of the many faces I’ve photographed, of the earth, of the moon and sun and of people.

her World

As the lights dim around her she squints,
the scratching of pen against paper becomes a dream,
the ticking of a Clock, ricochets at the back of her mind,
the Lights disappear.

And still the figure sits,
invisible words visible to her,
as she waits,
the clock ticks.

And Ticks and Ticks -

the sounds begin to disappear,

the scratching of pen against imaginary walls,

and away in the distance -

lies - nothing.