Shhhtum...

Shhhtum...

I find myself dazed and alone on the quiet country road that I hope
will lead to the hospital, the incessant rhythmical thrum of the
wildlife ushering me on with alarming regularity. I tread with purpose,
foot after tiresome foot, my eyes always down and my hands rocking
pendulously by my sides.

Earlier in the day I had picked out a single sound, a single animals
contribution to the overwhelming cacophony of the jungle. At first I
enjoyed it. As it grew in familiarity I visualised it as a shard of
broken light that crossed through my hair, my cranium and on through
hard bone and soft brain where it petered out to a point and there
remained. It became a focus upon which I could transfer my attentions
and avoid the obsessively watch-full eye that I kept on my illness. A
rash that started life with the appearance of an innocent bite on the
upper thigh but spread with the rapacity of a greedy empire until it
consumed my entire body. The itching and scratching was like some sick
game I had conjured for myself to play in. A Catch 22; when your whole
body is a writhing putrid red scratch, where do you itch? You merely
wander from peak to peak vainly lacerating with no discernible hope of
completion, permanently trapped in a momentary respite, a fleeting
comfort that ultimately increases your pain. Every accidental foray
into new territory yields a fresh pasture on which to chew, and the
promise of more cuds to come. And yet the individual moments when you
focus upon one searing channel of pain, when you tear into your skin
with vicious nails, are so fine, so perfect. In a state of constant
monotonous dull scraping discomfort, the relief that a sharp and
discrete sense of agony can bring is astounding; anything to escape the
water-torture regularity whine of my itching limbs.

The shard. I sensed its betrayal early but was powerless to resist the
escape hatch it promised to become. Soon it became a mirror image
replica of the itch, exacting the same level of discomfort in the same
regular way. Shhhtum, shhhtum, shhhtum, shhhtum. The place it came to
rest became a red-hot coal, the tip of a white-hot poker, the battered
enamel beneath the dentist's drill. Shhhtum, shhhtum, across my head,
back and forth. I feel it again now, as I lie in my tent by the Pai
River. Its 2am and I've been smoking. My senses are alert. To escape I
go back to self-analysis - which bit itches? In this meditative mood I
notice a new symptom and it's a scary prospect - my throat. It's
closing. I try to say something and it's muffled. I try to sing?.'Empty
Pool Room, 3 men at a table?'. It chafes and sounds like some kind of
deranged Star-Wars character with an alien breed of tonsillitis. I take
a few precious moments to myself in which I panic uncontrollably in my
tiny mind, and then I start moving - machine-like and automotive.
Trousers, t-shirt, shoes, wallet, fags (habit), padlock, open tent,
exit, close tent, lock with padlock, stand??.Now I'm ready, but for
what exactly I have no idea.

I move away from the Pai River and trudge up the hill to the deserted
Riverside Guesthouse, my head beginning to pound. There are no
immediate answers, just the recognisable symptoms of scratch, shhhtum
and pound in an empty and quite circle of bamboo huts. 'I need the
hospital. Christ where is the hospital?' The light is so dim that I
must use the river to orientate myself. I slowly turn, heave in a
breath of bug-infested air, let it drift slowly through my inflamed
sarcophagus of a throat, and then walk. I focus purely on the
subsequent footsteps and the itching subsides for a while. My throat is
of paramount importance to me and I regularly check it with a deep
breath and a few more lines?.'A drunken midget's singing songs for
Amy?'. It gets worse with each test, and I'm slowly ushered into a
serious state of concern as my feet hit the main road.

It's always been unknowns that have bothered me the most, the out of
sight, the off the road - the peripheral. As a child I feared the dark
as much as I feared to be alone. As a man a dark alleyway is a more
intimidating prospect than a gang of thugs who can be reasoned with,
flatly ignored or fled from. As a society it is the untouchables, the
underclass, the interesting fiction to the overclass that pose the
intangible threat (generally through ignorance, often through need). In
this case the nature of the hidden threat had become too complex to
fully realise?..I had a body-wide rash that in some places looked more
like my skin than it did a rash, for it was so congealed and prevalent
over my normal hue?.I had diarrhea, the most ridiculously spelt symptom
available?.my throat was closing so rapidly that I struggled
desperately to breathe?.I was delirious, my head a devil's spinning-top
run amok. What it was that all of these symptoms were indicative of I
had no idea. That blackness, that dark alleyway, that parasitic lowest
common denominator could be nothing more than chance accumulating. Or
it could be the cruel twist of fate that would end me once and for all.
The jungle is renowned for throwing up a veritable smorgasbord of
faunal and floral delights, but equally it is quite capable of throwing
up one mans personal biological Armageddon. It wouldn't even blink its
omniscient eye.

'Down the main road and then left?' The streets are deserted. I've
walked into a ghost town occupied by waif-like spirits who dance before
me and speak to me as a falang in a tongue that I cannot decipher. Head
down again. For the first time I am seeing this strange place in a
totally different aspect. It has changed from the hippy-traveler
Babylon of 'chilled times and everything's fine' into a spectre realm
of street-dogs and alley cats. I see it all laid out before me. Each
mongrel takes a patch, a street corner (a crossroads if the level of
respect is due), where he sits and takes his place in the complex
animal hierarchy. As I stumble along I am invisible to them. By day
they cower and bark and growl from a safe distance, fully aware of the
law of boot and club and the Kafkaesque justice they meter out. By day
there is no hierarchy except for the simple distinction of man and dog,
and it is strictly policed by the former. But by night, men are
invariably the minor-species and I am thus exempt from their
attentions, permitted by grace to go my own way.

As I approach the beginning of this tale, I pass an out-of-town patch;
a dismal coming together of two trails of dirt and guarded by an equal
number of mangy yet zealous 'old-hats'. For such a pathetic post to be
held by two such miserable creatures is pitiful and embarrassing. Until
the spirit is truly broken and hope finally discarded for the elusive
shadow that it represents, an old overturned war-horse is the most
humiliating sight to behold. Having never come to terms with their fate
or perhaps never having failed to fully grasp the implications, they
fight on and become the whipping boy of the angry pack. They take any
intruder, me included, for a foe and an opportunity to prove that their
old form has never left them and that they still have a right to the
highest positions in the gang.

As I approach, the broken screams wail out in a half-swallowed growl
that chills me at first. I am however fully focused on my recovery and
deliriously ignorant of what a beaten dog can achieve in its pathetic
will to prove itself. I keep walking. I hold up my hands, palms out in
a double-stopping gesture and demand with a surprisingly lucid and firm
'NO!'. One of the mongrels runs towards me, teeth gnashing and lungs
howling while his mate shuffles feebly on the spot in the middle of the
road. 'NO!'. I'm so sure of myself as I stare straight through his eyes
that I seem to convince him. He circles around me and finds solace in a
bush by the side of the road, his voice still in full cry but his
spirit waning. I get the feeling this isn't uncommon for him. I see his
mate roll stoically to the ground; his head has dropped in obvious
shame. I make my statement once more for good measure and then continue
on my way, head down and arms swaying in-sync with each tremulous
footfall.

In the background I hear my adversary become quiet as his attentions
are drawn to a clash of classes further down the road. A back alley pup
is contesting a main street corner unsuccessfully. The reverie of all
surrounding animals is momentarily disturbed as they study the form and
weigh their chances. Both dogs will soon be tired, but their patches
will remain to be fought over again and again. In many ways I will the
next day to arrive so that they can come together under the universal
cosh of the common foe, the ones who created these holy grail patches
and set up the battlefields in which their squabbles and brawls are
played out. But the prospect is worse. I put my head back down and
trudge onwards, thankful that I am not a dog and focused once more on
my mission?.'Blind eyes, pull up a chair?.'. I hope I'm nearly
there.