Beaten, Broken, Blessed

A True Story

Before I Travel Light

The Man Who Walked Out of the World

Revised

By A. Greenman

Copyright© A. Greenman 2012

This book is not based on a true story, it is a true story.

Any resemblance to real people or events is probably intentional.

TITLES BY THE AUTHOR

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Prologue

How does life start? The nomad asks himself, as he sits writing about the years before he travelled. He had already written a book about his nomadic decade, called:

‘I Travel Light

The Man Who Walked out of the World’

Now he thought about his next book.

I have travelled far and wide, seen many things, but I am still not sure that life begins as we grow within our mother’s wombs. Could it be that we are sparks, fragments of life or even spirits, before we are born? Sometimes I feel as if I am recollecting another time, feel like I have been in a situation before - when a strong sense of déjà vu comes upon me. Let us imagine for a moment that it could be true, that there is life before life, the writer ponders.

Besides this, what led me to try and walk out of the world, leave all that was familiar to me? To try and jump off the grid and out of the rat-race? Perhaps, in order to answer these questions, I must go back to the beginning, the very beginning, the time before I was born? The author considers, as he begins writing about the many years before his wandering decade.

In places his story seemed almost too good to be true, and so the adventurer decided to write his tale in 3rd person, in the style of a novel.

...Let us begin, but hold on tightly, for we shall barely pause for breath, as I take you in between the worlds of a wanderer.

Beaten, Broken, Blessed

Before I Travel Light

The Man Who Walked Out of the World (Revised)

The new spirit looks out over the universe, through the timelessness of his soul, the blue planet catches his eye again. Soon he will have to decide where he will be born, even now he is tempted to choose one of the other planets, perhaps one of the deep green ones again, far away in another space. He will not be human there or know the perils of having a body, yet there would be different lessons for the spirit to learn. However, souls are queuing up to go to earth at this time, the beginning of the 1970s.  It is a tough course to follow, but the rewards are high. He will have to choose within the next few thoughts, a gap is appearing for him. The fresh spirit has been waiting for the right parents, in order to play out the lessons he must learn on earth.

Gap, he thinks.

He is thinking about the recent human habit of taking time out, a gap year and knows that in order to fulfil all his tasks on earth this time, he would have to engineer some sort of extension to the concept of gap years. Sometimes a gap year was just not enough, he would need many, a gap life perhaps. Consecutive gap years, in order to walk the difficult path he has chosen.

He watches the parents who will have this baby, it would be a second boy to follow the one who had already been born. He looks at the setting, a farm in the south of England. They are young strong parents, high spirited and adventurous. The free spirit empties his mind, clears any trace of intentions from his thoughts and glows like a small star, like the millions of others waiting to be born, unseen by most humans. He can go anywhere that his imagination allows him to - where the thought goes, the energy flows, but it is not a time to travel the many other parts of the Universe that he so enjoys. His mind must be empty now, just a spark in the ether. He has two thoughts left to use.

Firstly. Shall I go to the green planet or the blue planet?

Secondly. This could be my last incarnation. Earth will not be a smooth path for me, yet it is where I will truly know the nature of the ‘free spirit’ and complete my lessons.

He is pulled to the blue and must trust the attraction that he feels. There is a moment’s hesitation as his spirit prepares for the change, once he has made the move, the young human will not consciously remember anything about the time before he was born for another decade. He would feel a missing, yes, a longing feeling to be back somewhere, but the young one would not know what or where that place was. Now he must decide.

It must be earth, I must go there.

Chapter 1

He arrives at the moment his mother conceives, his spirit now rehomed on earth. A timeless space will be the keeper of his days for the next nine months, a place closest to that which he has come from. Aside from the months which follow being a stage of growing inside his mother’s body, he will also acclimatize somewhat to the physical world he would soon find himself in, adjusting to the sounds and rhythm of human lives.

The growing baby floats comfortably in his mother’s womb, cushioned by the water of the amniotic fluid, sensing the noises coming from the alien world outside, the movement of her limbs and the quiet time when she would sleep. Sometimes he would sleep too, but other times he would move around in the little world he found himself in. It was a safe and comfortable place that he would make the most of, for soon he would be in a far harsher environment, at the will of all things physical and the mercy of the elements. The shock will make him cry until he finds his feet, but those around him will love him dearly and do all within their power to shield him from the dangers of their world.

When he is born, he is naked and small, just like the beginning of us all. Welcomed by the sound of nature, as a storm beats about the farmhouse where his mother gives birth to him. Lightening strikes the tree that towers the cottage and a branch falls onto the roof. Tiles are broken and before the baby has taken his first full breath, he knows the element of pure water, as the rain drips through into the bedroom, tip tapping on the floorboards. Within two hours of being born, his mother takes him down to the peace of her garden, which sits on the edge of the farm. A cow has also given birth close by and the baby hears the calf crying.

His father works as a pig farmer and the family get a house with each job that he has. They are people of the land, a family that will grow to six in time. For now his folk must make ends meet, as the need for food and shelter calls all people, especially when there is a new baby to support - Adam. His family will go where they can find farm work, moving like nomads in a tribe, from home to home, Adam and his older brother Burt, his father Arthur and his mother Elizabeth. Like water flowing on from place to place, filling a space on earth and then disappearing from it, they will move ever onwards, following the primitive calling to keep their basic human needs in check and answering the call for workers where they hear the sound.

In his first five years, the young boy will have known as many homes and met an addition to the family, another brother to be called Charlie, it is their third child. Adam has his own needs to keep in check, his first is to learn to work with wood. On his fifth birthday, his father takes him to a big boy’s toy store, where he chooses his first carpentry set. It has a real saw and hammer, plus a tape measure and a ruler, albeit, smaller than grown ups tools. The willing woodworker sits upon the garden path, of the first house that his parents have actually owned, a small but secure little home. He examines the set, in awe of the potential it holds, all he needs are a few materials and he can begin to make his own toys. His father helps him start and gives him a couple of pieces of wood. Two sticks of wood have many possibilities, but Adam chooses to make the image that he sees in his mind, an aeroplane, laying one piece over the next in a simple cross pattern. He is helped with his first nail, but finishes banging in the second. It is a strong form of expression for him, the result of which signifies freedom, a vehicle that can take to the skies and carry him with it. He sits looking at his plane, crossed legged and peaceful on the garden path. It is real to him, his imagination can make it so.

“Let me see it!” squirms a girl who comes into the back garden, unannounced.

She lurches forward to try and take it from him, but Adam does not like the way she snatches and shrieks in his face. It is his plane, his creation and represents his freedom.

“No, you must be nice, I will not show it to you if you try to take it from me,” he tells her quietly, he cannot stand people invading his space.

“Give it to me!” she says, as she grabs his hair.

“GET OFF!” he shouts at her, thrashing around, cursing and swearing at the girl as she runs into his house, screaming. Adam is not aggressive by nature, far from it, but the young one has heard that this is what people do when they are cross, to be rid of people. His mother comes out and tells him to go upstairs and wash his mouth out with soap, which he does and learns at a young age that it is wrong to respond in such a way to those who push him.

There will be many who push him in the future, for they want to see what it is that makes him so peaceful. There will also be many garden paths, for his parents will continue to move from the homes that they dwell within, but the young nomad will need a root, something stable to identify with and he finds it in wood. On all his paths he will work with the material that once grew as a tree, tied in firmly to the ground. His family will continue to grow and move, until they can buy a farm of their own, though it will never be home for long. They wish to make more money and buy bigger houses, Adam’s most stable space will be that of the removal tea chests which become the iconic symbol of change for him.

When his years have rolled to nine, Adam’s parents buy their own small farm and the young boy will see his seventh home. For a time they will all be happy on the land again, on the farm which lies just a stones throw from the sea, a place where Adam will often be. Few boys know such joys as coming home from school to play on acres of their own. There is not a house on the land, but there is shelter. A mobile home, a long static caravan. In Adam’s dreams, it is a ship that will sail away to foreign lands, over many seas, bound for great adventures. He loves the place, for the world is simple there, quiet in nature. He is not overloaded with information, as he is at school, words and sentences which he finds difficult to absorb, on the farm there is peace.

On Adam’s tenth birthday his father leaves the farm with him for an afternoon, to take him deeper into the countryside on a fishing trip. They stand together under an old bridge and cast their lines into the river, as Adam’s father teaches him how to fish. For a moment, the birthday boy is aware of the place in which he stands, but soon he has a strange sensation that he is floating out of his body, drifting off to a far away place. He looks down at himself and his father fishing, as he feels like he is placing one foot into another world, the other remaining by the water’s edge. In this other world, he feels as if he is seeing the outline of other planets and stretches his hands out to feel their density, sensing their place in space. Adam looks around and sees others within reach, as he moves about this strange new world, which he finds himself in. It is an incredible feeling, his spirit in one place, his body in another, or so he perceives. It also feels as if the gravity of his situation has literally changed somewhat too. He moves past each planet before him and physically senses their overwhelming weight. Above all, he sees that the speed of his life has changed, everything moves so very slowly and seems so wonderfully simple. There is something very familiar about the scene to Adam, as if it stirs a memory of the time before he was born, and perhaps it does. The young boy is attracted to the natural pace of his experience, as opposed to the rush and daunting change of life which he is more readily exposed to.

Remarkably, as he hovers in this altered state, he can also still see through his own eyes, as he watches his father, happy to be bringing in the line with a fish on its hook. Emanating from his father is an intense blue light, which hovers around his head and shoulders in an arc. The duality is too much to bear for the ten year old, who is now not only awestruck, but also now feeling anxious. It is like being in space, only in the distance he can hear his father instructing him on how to fish. Throughout his life, Adam will try to make sense of the sensations he feels, a bizarre sense of spatial awareness...it will return many times. At school, he will also often feel very unfocussed and not entirely present. Much later in life, he will begin to understand the experience he has had, but for now, his mind will quickly be brought back to other things. Adam refocuses and pulls his attention back to the fishing excursion, standing by the riverside once again, watching the ripples of water and listening to its gentle trickle as it passes between the reeds. It is a different pace of life than that of the gentle world he has just seen, the one he is in now has far more tension. Cars shoot over the bridge, a plane goes by overhead and the dying fish on the hook flaps helplessly as its mouth is torn apart.

Adam will not know how to speak of his sensations fully for thirty years, but in the mean time he will always have a sense of detachment with him. The elements will have a special place in his life and he will remain acutely aware of the simplicity of their nature. Earth, air, fire and water, but also those of wood, metal and stone. In time, he will also come to feel a strong connection with all that lives and the wonder of life itself. There is a good reason for this, they are all consistent elements of his life, things which will always be there to focus on and this will help him much, as he wades through the years that are to follow. Everything else seems so impermanent, homes, people and places. Yet most of all, the actual world he sees in his daily life, also seems impermanent, he cannot focus easily on information, causing a sense of disorientation and other worldliness.

When they arrive back at the farm, his feelings are distracted by the sight of a puppy running toward him. It is a birthday present and he soon forgets about his astral travel. The following day, the memory returns and Adam tries to explain the bizarre sensation to his parents. He does not have the words to do so and they can do little to reassure him. The feelings of disorientation will never leave him for too long, he will feel muddled, but for now, his bright young smiling face will cover a multitude of confusion. Besides, life has other distractions in store for Adam, the first comes when the farm is sold, for reasons little boys do not understand. He will leave the safety of nature and move with his parents again, to an urban setting and his father will become a carpet cleaner, full-time.

Yet fickle are the young ones, and a visit from Adam’s uncle, who lives in America, will soon take his mind off of his day. The uncle is full of tales of thrills and excitement about the land that he will soon return to, the U.S.A.

“Take me with you uncle,” Adam pleads.

“Well how will you afford it boy, for I cannot?” his uncle enquires.

“I will sell everything I own, my toys, my bike and I have saved £40 too,” Adam explains, putting forward a convincing and heart wrenchingly touching argument.

He will not see America, at least not yet. The excitement he feels for such an adventure will be stored away, invested wisely as all good dreams are, slowly accruing interest until the seed has grown to be a dream that bears the fruit of reality. Unaware that many years later he will in fact sell everything he owns to travel the world. Yet he has much to learn before then, it will only happen when the time is right.

A fourth child comes into the fold and to Elizabeth’s delight, it is a girl, she will be called Sophie. Adam will adore her and as soon as he can afford to, he will begin buying her presents, dolls and toys. Until such times, he will find and make new friends, one is a boy who lives next door to their latest house. It is an urban area and one that although his parents will continue to move around in, will become his home town.

The giant of a child who lives next door is a thief and when Adam is found with a new shiny pocket torch, his mother asks him where he got it from. He says that David gave it to him and he is telling the truth. The boy next door is also asked of its origin and says that they stole the torch together, which is not actually true. Although Adam was with him at the time, he had no idea what the thief was up to. The oaf of a boy stole the torch from a local shop, but it makes no difference now, Adam’s parents are disappointed and do not believe their son’s version of the tale. He is shamed and humiliated, a feeling that will turn to anger when his older brother repeatedly tries to agitate him by calling him a thief.

The neighbour soon falls out with Adam and the farmer’s son seeks other activities to occupy his time with. It is not long before he finds one, rebuilding bicycles in his father’s garage. Unfortunately, he is not skilled at the task yet, discovering this only when a pedal falls off, as he is riding his bike as fast as it will go. He wakes by the curb side covered in blood, surrounded by people comforting him, until an ambulance comes. Adam does not remember anything about coming off, one minute he is riding, the next he is unconscious as his head strikes the road hard. He is rushed to hospital, but there are no fractures, though because he is concussed, he will be kept in overnight for observation and remain off school for the rest of the week as he regains a little equilibrium.

From there on in, he experiences ghastly headaches which will never leave him for long. Particularly as the naughty boy next door will hold a grudge against him and three years later he will beat Adam to a pulp. David is helped by his gang of bullies, all smaller than Adam, who at thirteen years old is nearly six feet tall. The larger aggressive monster of a neighbour waits on the side lines while his gofers jump their victim and begin to knock him about. Struggling to get clean punches to the face, they beat him to the side of the head, until he can no longer see clearly. He senses that they have moved aside for the six foot two heavyweight, David, who throws one devastating punch to the forehead, knocking Adam straight to the ground, unconscious, for the second time in three years. There is no bleeding to the head and once the bullied boy can walk straight again, he returns home and somehow manages to conceal the ordeal that he has been through from his parents. Perhaps because they have just moved again, to a bigger and more valuable house, and are still busy unpacking boxes.

Chapter 2

Once tarred with a thick brush, identity is made and at school it becomes known that Adam can be bullied. He is terrified of where the next blow will come from and although he feels an enormous rage building inside, he is already too frightened to be hurt again, as his head pounds regularly. He tells his mother about his pain and she takes him along to the doctor, who says that the young teenager is probably under stress and perhaps to try an eye test. How right he is, he certainly has stress, but how little he knows, as Adam becomes dumbstruck about the injuries he has received and keeps his beatings secret.

Throughout his life, he will very often feel ‘punch drunk’ and desperately frustrated that no one will take the very difficult sensations which he experiences, seriously. It will become very difficult for him to perform even the simplest tasks in his life, but because he is clever and an exceptionally happy fellow, who looks well in himself, few people will be able to accept this when he tells them. These dismissive responses will lead Adam to create incredibly complex strategies, in order to conceal and deal with the challenges he faces. He is a pleasant young boy and makes new friends easily, of a much better temperament than his old neighbour. Keeping out of the way of the school urchins and through considered escapes, he manages to avoid being struck again, for a while.

By now, Adam has mastered the art of restoring bicycles and is buying, rebuilding and selling a great deal of them every month. On a test ride for one of them, it is not the machine that fails this time, it is he. He rides well, bicycles have become very much a part of him, but his sense of balance and perspective is not all that it could be. He pulls the front wheel up too high, rising up a curb and comes straight off the back and strikes his head again. It is almost in the same place where he hit it the first time he came off and the wound immediately begins to pour with blood, covering his white t-shirt.

Although he is not unconscious this time, another trip to the hospital is still needed, but once the back of his head is stitched up, he is discharged. Not surprisingly, his headaches become worse and leaning over the bikes as he works on them increases pressure and pain, yet by now, he has adopted the same interest as his father, to make lots of money and all Adam wants to do is be a millionaire, so he tries to ignore the pain in his head. He also dismisses the problems he has at school, trying to read and can only find his next class by following his mates, to actually understand the very simple timetable that he has in his pocket is impossible. Even until he is in his thirties, he will have nightmares about being at school or college and not knowing which room he should go to next. He will be nearly forty years of age before he can look back over the whole sequence of events that may have led to these symptoms.

When he is next pushed around by local boys, he is fourteen and has had enough. He retaliates, pushing the bully back and walking off. Though as he does so, he hears the thug come up behind him and Adam receives a hard blow to the face. He goes straight down again and hits his head. This time he tells his parents what has happened and his father insists that he must fight back. It would have worked a few years before, but now Adam is terrified of being hurt and cannot bring himself to do so. He is now experiencing frequent severe head pain, what he does not know is that he will have it for at least the next twenty five years and when it comes, it will stay for days on end, often weeks, affecting everything he does. The repeated injuries he is receiving will have an extremely strong effect on the already unidentified problem that Adam has with taking in information. Throughout his life, most people he knows will say that he is under stress and that is why he has them, very few people will acknowledge that he is susceptible to severe headaches now and this will do little to support him. Consequently, he does not tell them about the feelings he has of disorientation, dizziness and inability to read, write, speak or hear words clearly. Only because of his remaining intelligence, does he manage to conceal his difficulties, which he finds confusing and embarrassing.

It is no wonder that at school, Adam struggles with his work. He is intelligent enough to pass all of his exams, running on only half his capacity, for this is all he can give. His ability to read or think is masked by a blurred vision when he looks at the written page. The words become one solid block or appear to be moving around on the page, the letters and numbers are often all over the place and the beaten child is filled with anxiety whenever asked to read aloud. As years go on, he will find it harder and harder to concentrate, sometimes slurring his words or unable to hear other people’s properly, particularly after concentrating for more than ten minutes or so. The world becomes a frightening place when information does not make sense. He will even report this to different doctors that he has as an adult, several times, but they cannot identify a cause. As there is diabetes in the family, Adam will think that he may have it and that this is the reason for his difficulties, but tests prove negative and the suggestion again is that he is under stress. It will be more than twenty years before Adam takes matters very seriously into his own hands and obtains a scan to try and get to the root of the issue and begin to untangle the threads of his history, until it starts to make sense to him. Know thyself, will be a phrase which becomes not only important, but also useful for Adam. In years to come, he will develop a coping mechanism, a way to form a lifestyle where he is under little stress, one which will also reduce the excruciating pain in his head which he frequently experiences. This is his path in life, this is the challenge that he faces, to find an alternative way of life that suits him, how he does it will be quite extraordinary. For now he must walk the road he is on, until it meets with another.

Adam misses the simplicity of living in nature. His family make regular trips to the countryside, but it is not the same as waking and sleeping with the sound of wind in the trees or hearing animals at dawn and dusk. He throws himself into that which he can do well, building bicycles and selling them, making plenty of money in doing so. It does not replace his lack of contact with the elements, but this is why he has come into the world. It is his purpose to become obsessed with money until it is over ridden by his true calling, to find wealth within and be close to a natural environment. However, the time has not yet come, he must first go through many experiences before he returns to that which stirs him most deeply, now he lives on concrete and wakes to noise. Life is fast and he falls in step with the desire for much money, for more than his basic human needs require, it is a test which he must go through, before he finds his own truths.

Meeting girls brings some distraction, as Adam spends hours walking and canoodling with them, but he needs others activities to occupy himself with. Though he cannot live in nature, he can be close to a material which comes from it, that of wood. Cycling to the peace of a smaller suburb nearby, he looks in the window of an old furniture shop and sees a sign which says they are looking for a Saturday Boy. He applies and gets the job. In time he will learn how to restore antique furniture and his contact with wood will sustain his hunger to be near natural elements for a while. Although he continues to struggle academically, the young man excels in projects which are hands-on based, like woodwork lessons at school or buying, rebuilding and selling bicycles.

In time he will do the same with antique furniture, trading his innate calling as a boy, to have fun, with that of working and making money. He avoids social groups for fear of being beaten up and his need to play is replaced with an obsessive desire to be rich. Yet life has a habit of finding its way through decent folk, steering and pulling good souls back onto the path, the right path. When young Adam has played out all of his avoidance techniques, he will of course have to face his demons and fears. He is a bright young man and so there is no indication at school that he suffers with difficulties in learning, there are many pupils to attend to, all have their needs and individual problems. How well each covers them is perhaps the mark of the modern man, or so he thinks. Later he will learn that how well one faces problems and overcomes them may be the true test. Yet now he is still young, there is time to learn.

Adam’s father also often thinks of the land, having left farming for modern work and more money, he too would like to feel the freedom of space again. Once more, the family move and step up the property ladder to increase their wealth. It is the tenth home Adam has known, but one he is thrilled to see.  In the space of their new huge wild garden he is happy again and celebrates by building a tree house for his young sister. For a while, the young man is content, he is fifteen and will know the pleasure of being punch free for another few years.

Adam must face another challenge and meet with a Careers Advisor at school.

“What would you like to do when you leave school Adam?”

“Have a Gap Year please sir,” the young man suggests, quite seriously, he is eager to get away from the things that he finds difficult, language, information and the complexities of life.

“Well you can’t have a gap year unless you have been to college!” The advisor falsely tells him, held by the constraints and limitations of his mind.

“Okay, I’ll go to college then.” It is the first time Adam has thought about this next stage of his life. He will attend a two year diploma course in the subject of Business and Finance when he leaves school, but he will not find it terribly interesting. Yet he will find channels in which to direct the passionate energy he has for life.

His love of restoration, both with bicycles and antique furniture, has earned the young man a steady income and also the hunger for a larger project. With his money, he buys a battered old classic car, one that he has had his mind set on for some time. It is a Triumph Herald Convertible and is in about as good a condition as his beaten skull. Step by step, he restores it, his father showing him what to do at every stage and not long after his seventeenth birthday, he passes his driving test and puts the lovely 1960s car on the road. As with most things he touches, he will become lucky with them and before too many years pass, he will buy two more of the Triumph convertibles, restore them, enjoy them and sell them on. Despite the fact that the young man has had his fair share of rough times, in many ways he feels blessed to lead such a privileged life. Mature for his age, even at seventeen, he knows how fortunate he is and appreciates life and its wonder. Often Adam goes out with much older girls, he prefers their emotional maturity and more grown up views on life.

In time his father plans to fill the big open space of a garden they have with houses to make more money, but the will of the Gods of Shelter will not allow it. For as the plans near completion, the government places a Compulsory Purchase Order on the house to make way for a new road, a road that has been coming for forty years, but will never be made. Forced to leave the house, the family prepares to move to their eleventh home. Of course, they are not long term homes, there will never be a family home, they are just properties.  Yet Adam, his brothers and sister love the nomadic lifestyle, that in some ways they are blessed with. Although it is utterly disruptive, it is also an incredible education, one that will enable the up and coming nomad to adapt to almost any circumstance.

Adam turns eighteen years old and goes out with his friends to dance away his tension. A small group of them go to the city of Brighton for the night, have a few drinks and then go onto a nightclub. As the young man stands talking to his friends, a clenched fist smashes into the back of his head and knocks him to the ground. The group he is with are flabbergasted, it is a completely unprovoked attack and so they go about asking the drunken brute, who has struck him, why he has done so.

“Yer, I am sorry mate, I thought you were someone else,” the lout explains. Adam is too dazed to understand what is going on, it has been years since he has endured such a blow, but the attack brings everything back in five seconds.

He stays at his friend’s house for the night and in the morning, Adam carries his headache home. It will go within a day or so and as with other such incidents, he does not tell a soul. To his surprise, the pain in his head returns a few days later and this time stays with him for a week. It will be the pattern of his life, severe head pain coming and going, the only thing that sometimes clears it is wandering in the countryside. He will have prolonged periods where he has no pain, but ultimately, it will always return in excruciating clusters.

So it is to be that Adam, his two brothers, sister and parents move house again, just a few miles down the road. Somehow he has got through college and despite the fact that he has experienced huge problems trying to take in information, he passes his Business Diploma with Merit. He may have gained a distinction, but as Adam preferred to be doing up his cars, finding them much easier to deal with than words and numbers, he intentionally only went to college for the minimum amount of time students were required to, in order to get through. Needing to attend at least sixty six percent of all lectures and so he met that requirement and no more. Yet he is still not consciously aware of the problems he is encountering, in some ways, this will help him to go on, in others, he will very much be striding forward blindly.

When he is nineteen, Adam experiences a brief moment of madness and gets a job in retail, only he does not realise how poorly he will be treated.

“Okay, no lunch breaks today, we are too busy,” the high street store manager says to his staff.

“What?” Adam asks, he is tired and hungry.

He works in a low class jewellery shop and has not quite come to terms with the realities of grown up life yet, or learnt that he should not question the boss.

“Be fair, I started at 7.30 this morning!” he complains, at 2pm.

“Look Adam. You will get five minutes break at 3 o’clock and it is going to be the same tomorrow, so you better get used to it!”

The autumn sun rushes through the window onto the counter display. Adam does not want to be trapped behind this glass, he wants to be free, to explore the world outside. He is also having very serious problems concentrating on his job, particularly dealing with the purchases customers make. He can breeze through these, ordinarily, but without regular breaks, he can barely see the numbers on the till. The reluctant shop assistant is unaware that his colleagues do not have the same problem as he does.

“NO, I don’t think so, I have had enough of being treated like this!” Adam tells him.

“What did you say to me Adam?”

“I said FORGET THE JOB, I’M LEAVING!” and with that, he gets his coat and walks out, knowing full well that it is payday.

As he makes his way to a cash point machine, a wide smile appears upon his face and it will not leave him for several days. His body feels light and his mind has cleared, so too he notices, has his wages, as Adam checks his bank balance displayed on the small screen in front of him.

With a little more time on his hands, he attends a health MOT at the doctor’s surgery closest to his parent’s most recent house. Whilst he is there, he speaks about hobbies, wood and bicycles and it transpires that the GP is also interested in these things. Adam has started tinkering with bikes again and when the doctor asks if he would be interested in restoring a 1911 Hercules bicycle which he owns, Adam happily accepts, it is his first commission as an adult. The doctor is so pleased with the job Adam has does, that when he finds out the young man has a little experience in restoring old Triumph’s, he tells Adam he has one too, that needs a little tender loving care. The two get on well, they both have a dry sense of humour and a wet appetite for life.

The Jack off all Trades takes some time to consider his next move in life and comes up with the idea of having a bicycle shop, it is his GP who buys the first two bicycles for his children, when Adam opens the place. By the time Adam’s second decade comes to an end, he has a thriving business and jumps between the thrills of having plenty of money and an unidentifiable feeling of loss which haunts him, for he knows not yet what it is. The conflict is that he has neglected his primal need to be amongst nature, his soul demands quiet and steady times and his head also, instead, he is money hungry...almost starving. Not that he is short of it, but his continuing need to be rich takes over his life. He is still young and foolish and cannot yet see that he is having trouble dealing with the growing business, or managing simple day to day tasks that involve reading or writing. Or made the connection between the problems he has in functioning, with striking his head five times, or even that he had bizarre sensory experiences before he had ever been struck, feeling like he was drifting off and leaving his body when he was only ten years old.

His shop continues to do remarkably well, but Adam does not, he struggles to keep up with the bikes which come in for repair, the ones he buys to restore and sell and also the new mountain bikes that have become all the rage at this time, 1993. Periodically, the young businessman sits back in his chair, at the desk where he processes his paperwork from, sips his tea and soaks in the wonderful feeling of accomplishment that he has earned, but it is never long before he must attend to something else or to one of his members of staff. The distractions are always too soon, for he cannot take in the information on the invoices that he tries to read or the receipts that he writes out for his customers.

Periodically he looks back at the strange feeling that he had on his tenth birthday, the sense of leaving his body and being wrapped in an immense feeling of deep stillness and bizarre that it is, the memory calms him. He also feels another kind of peace from time to time. A sense of distance from life, a deep inner contentment. It is with him most when he meets people who are not well, those who come into the shop and do not seem too cheerful. He can sense depression in people, grief, loss or pain. If they are bad people, he senses nothing. If they are good he feels an intense heat in his hands, but it is more than that, it is energy, like electricity flowing from him. He does not know it yet, but like his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Adam is a natural healer. Occasionally, people he knows will comment upon it, others will hear that he gives healing and ask him for it. It is a world apart from that of business and turning profits and is something he has carried with him for an eternity. He also notices that he has an acutely accurate sense of intuition, which appears to go beyond that of simply having a ‘gut feeling’ from time to time.

The mysterious intuitions and calming hands confuse him at first and he is overwhelmed by this bizarre sense, but having talked to his grandmother about it, he begins to feel more at home with the gifts. By nature, he has an extremely uplifting personality and the people that he meets who are feeling down, naturally warm to him and his bright energy, and in ways that he does not yet understand, some of his brightness rubs off on them. What he will not know for some years to come, is that sometimes, people will intentionally drain him of his vitality or if they cannot do this, they will seek to undermine it, physically or verbally. Most people rejoice in good company, but there will always be some who are deeply threatened by it and are masters at manifesting negativity. The young man has much to learn, but for now he must find ways of coping with the pressure he feels.

When he can, Adam leaves the harsh realities of modern life and heads for far away wildernesses which soothe his troubled soul. He thrives on the success of his business, but struggles immensely to concentrate on the work at hand. One afternoon at work, Adam is so stressed that when he goes out to the bank to pay some money in, he does not come back straight after, as planned, but instead goes into a travel agency and buys a flight to Turkey, leaving the following day. He asks his staff to hold the fort until his return. Taking his bike, he heads off for the mountains and peace for a few days of simplicity.

As he rides, he comes across a family that live in a dusty roadside shack with miles of space around it. They offer him some tea and Adam sits on a rock with them whilst they make flatbreads on an open fire. The family welcome Adam into their wild and remote dwelling, as if he were an old friend. He is deeply moved by the basic way in which they live and yearns for more of this himself. The faces of those he sits with seem immensely calm to him, the elder’s is dry and lined, like a person several hundred years old, but she has bright sparkling eyes like that of a youngster. As he watches her, he sees a glow of light coming from her head, encircling it from several feet away. Adam thinks that it must be due to his tiredness and does not give it much more thought, he is more focused on a question which he has been asking himself:

How is it that people who have so little, smile so much?

He does not know, but he means to find out, perhaps even by experiencing having nothing himself.

When he returns to his shop, he sees the same sort of coloured light around a customer who comes in, only this time it is more like a rainbow. Again he tries to dismiss it, but he cannot remove all the traces of his doubt, for with it comes a feeling of deep calm and sense of inner peace.

The years will change Adam’s life much, but his ability to see auras will not. In time he recognises that it is just another vibration of energy that he is seeing, which extends beyond people, usually kind and wise souls. It is no more miraculous than a mobile phone signal or a voice that arrives on the phone. He reads many books about the subject and discovers that as instruments can measure radio-waves, radioactivity or levels of electricity, so too can instruments measure this frequency of light and colour from a person, it is just one that we are not so used to seeing. Later he will find that after dozens of observations around individuals, one may discover much about a person. Something that most people do subconsciously, something that perhaps once upon a time, every good human being could do, until the world became too fast for us to notice. For now, the book of lessons must be closed to Adam, for he is learning quick and fast. There is only so much a sponge can absorb before it must be wrung out, removing that which it no longer wants. Even later in his life, when he begins to consider the possibility that he has been damaged during the strikes to his head, perhaps not helping a natural tendency to have difficulties with words, Adam will not dismiss the theory of energy emanating from a person, in the form of light. He is a deeply gifted soul and only when he lets go of most of his worldly fears, will he encounter the many other esoteric gifts which he has been born with.

Though he is only in Turkey for a week, the short trip has a deeply profound effect upon him, the stark simplicity of what he has seen sows seeds deep within his being. For a time, he is relaxed and enjoys the success of his business. He sits at his desk and goes through the week’s orders and as he does so, Adam begins to feel light headed. He then has a strange experience, as if he is watching himself from the ceiling of the shop. He can see himself sitting at his desk, yet also observing his life from a vast distance. The feeling is familiar to him and he relates it to that which he had on his tenth birthday, only this time, he is a little closer to earth.

The young retailer uses the experience that he is having to assess his life and again sees his huge desire for money, lots of it. It drives him, even at the cost of his health, as he works long hours and does not stop to eat properly. He has been brought up amidst frantic rushing and it is only natural that he should take on the learned behaviour and thought. Yet it is not natural, it is far from the true essence of his being, but this is his lesson. Sometimes we have to find out what we do not like before we can discover what we do.

Adam dares to leave his body further, completely disconnect from where he is now. He feels peaceful, right to his core and his mind wanders back to Turkey, as he watches people sitting on an empty mountain road, under the shelter of a tired and old metal roof. He sees the fire and the bread being made on its stones. A wrinkled lady smiles at him as quietness and a deep peace washes over him. It is a peculiar experience, a rare gift and altered state that he will touch upon many times throughout his life. It matters not that his experience may be aided by a light headedness, induced by not eating enough, somehow, Adam is able to make use of all that he feels.

He becomes whole again, returning to the sense of being in his body, to a normal reality, as we might know it. He looks at his paperwork, there is much to do and for just a few moments he can see the words on the invoices quite clearly, understanding what they mean. Adam marvels at the unusual sensation he has just experienced and is keen to delve deeper into esoteric matters. Periodically in the future, he will be talking to people and watch himself doing so, as if from the corner of the room. It can not be blamed on drinking alcohol, for he barely drinks and Adam has never touched drugs in his life. That will change, but not yet. Might it be the problems he has had from being hit in the head?  No, for when he first put one foot into another world at ten years old, he had never had an accident or even been to hospital. So perhaps he was born with a problem that causes one to feel out of focus, not present? We shall see how these sensations lead him and in time, what he perceives of them.

The days of the young retailer are about to change, life has a very different path for Adam and it will conspire to do all that it can to lead him onto it. His relaxed glow does not last long, in a short time he is filled with stress again. In his rush to build and repair the many bicycles that go through his shop, he is putting himself under immense strain. He has two helpers, but it is still not enough. The number will increase to seven, yet so too will the demand for his services increase. Soon he will open a larger shop a few doors down.

Adam sells more bicycles than any other shop in the area, largely due to his bright smiling face and love of meeting new people. Customers warm to him and nearly all that come into ‘Life Cycle’ buy a bike. Yet in order to keep up, he starts work at 6am and finishes at about 8pm and the hours will soon take their toll. He cannot sustain the physical and mental demands he faces.

As soon as he realises that he will never catch up with his work, he can move on, change his path in life, until then, he must struggle. He is beginning to notice that life will help a man on his way when he is positive, happy and straight forward, what he does not know yet is that life can also conspire to stop a man who is on the wrong path. These two forces will oppose each other and dissolve any sense of clarity which he tries to develop. Although Adam is overwhelmingly excited about the success of his business, a deep longing still overshadows him from time to time - to be a free spirit again and like an old blueprint, etched upon his memory, it scratches at his soul.

Chapter 3

It is a fine sunny morning, when Adam stands in the doorway of his shop, sipping his coffee. For a few minutes, he enjoys the sight of his display of mountain bikes on the forecourt and the commuter traffic looking at them as they go by. He has just completed a stock count and found that he has forty seven second hand bikes and seventy new ones, he is pleased with what he has accomplished. Then he remembers that there are six bicycles which need to be ready for collection that morning, he feels tight across his chest and for a moment cannot think clearly. These are not just side effects from his head injuries, this is also anxiety. The young man is worried because he knows that he cannot cope with writing a receipt or even count money easily and fear fuels his predicament, as he does not know yet why he struggles so. He places his hand across his forehead, trying to wipe away the troubles that weigh upon him, for he is struggling to hold everything together. His neighbour is putting out his own goods onto the forecourt, antiques, but with them come a smell which is new to Adam, Cannabis.

“Looks like you could do with a bit of this,” he says to Adam, who does not know what it is. The shop keeper tells him that it will relax him, take his mind off things. Take his mind it will, it will also completely change the direction of his life.

The first customers wander onto the forecourt, a couple who will both want bicycles, helmets, locks and lights. The phone rings, but Adam does not want his cycle mechanic to answer it, he builds bikes well, but his gruff and monotone phone manner does not encourage custom. Adam gives his customers a moment to look at the shiny new machines whilst he deals with the phone. It is a manufacturer who is ready for his weekly order of bikes, this week it will be sixty five. He will have to call back. Adam returns to the couple and finds the right size bikes for them, within ten minutes they are eager to buy them. Once the transaction is finished, Adam deals with the next customer who has come to collect his repaired bike. The phone rings again, but this time he has to ignore it as another customer is bringing old bikes into the shop, for repair or perhaps to sell. The assistant hears the kafuffle and comes out to help. Just then, the third member of staff turns up, who is just in time to help unload a delivery of new bikes which has just arrived and is already spilling out onto the pavement from the lorry which has pulled up.

This is how it goes on, but Adam does not have the experience to manage the business and all its demands properly, he is an excellent and natural communicator, but his difficulties with the written word hinder him. The fact that he cannot always make sense of the words he hears in conversations may also have become a problem, if it were not for his finely tuned intuitive ability, bordering on extra sensory perception. As a person without sight may develop an acute sense of hearing, so too does the often word-crossed entrepreneur read other signals from people. In time, his sensitivity will develop beyond belief, but for such a young man, Adam is already overwhelmed with the apparently somewhat spiritual experiences that are in his life. He has reached the fine age of twenty three, some will later say that it was a shame that he had not started his business when he was a little older, he started young at thirteen years old, but he has a lot to cram in, for it is not his destiny to be in retail for too long.

When the early morning flurry has finished, he catches a breath outside. He needs more staff and in time he will have them, four more and his new shop a few doors away, a much bigger place that will cater for the growing business.

“Don’t forget, come and have a smoke with me if you want to feel calmer,” the antique dealer next door says. It is in some ways about the worst possible thing that he could do on earth at this time, in other ways, it will bring on changes which one day he will not regret.

Adam does not really know what the shop keeper means and returns to his desk to place the bike order with the distributor, if it does not go through within thirty minutes, he in turn will not receive the bikes the following week. Whilst on the phone, a woman comes in to look at bikes. The greasy assistant comes out and grunts at her, his people skills resemble his phone manner and do little to attract trade. Adam smiles at her, it is all he can muster, but it is enough for her to return the next day for another look.

When he does finally have a moment to think, his feet are moving toward the shop next door. Ten minutes later Adam is feeling a deep calm, but it is underlined with a more sinister sense, a loss of grip on reality. Any clarity he may have tried to nurture will soon fall away.  The following day he also takes up the offer of a little bit more cannabis. His days will change and from here on in they will be masked with a haze of confusion. They will never return to the way they were, but this is the subconscious result that Adam longs for, a way out of his over packed days of stress. Little does he know what lengths and pain he will drag himself and others through, as he falls deeper and deeper into the effects of drugs, it will be a long and rough road ahead. Yet still, life will guide and aid those whose hearts are true, eventually he will find his way back to some sense of equilibrium. Until then, the restless soul will begin to ask himself some serious questions.

As he drives home that night in his 1960s Triumph Vitesse convertible, a breeze comes though the gap where the hood of the car does not quite make a perfect seal. The clean fresh air that comes through it is good and Adam pulls over, parks up and gets out of his car. He walks over to the beach that lay just a moment away, just walking, breathing, looking. A small boat catches his eye as seagulls flock over it, hoping for a scrap of fish. The tired shopkeeper looks on, trying to imagine what it would be like to be on that boat. Was it any different from running a busy shop, are the fisherman also exhausted, stressed and frayed at the edges? He thinks about his own situation and it prompts him to ask himself some questions.

Why have money when you are too stressed to even take a breath? Is that the price of wealth, ill health? If I am building for the future, what is the price on my health until I reach it? If I only aim for the future, where has the now gone? Is there any way out of this feeling of constant anxiety? How can I manage, can someone please help me?

He sits down on the cold stones that fringe the shore. It is February and although the night air is desperately fresh, it is strangely soothing. Adam’s mind begins to clear and for just a moment it is free, but before he realises that there are no thoughts in it, another pops in, it is a question:

What is it that you really want?

He cannot answer it, or indeed any of the questions, but it does not matter, Adam has voiced them, he has spoken them and is beginning to become aware. He just knows that being on the seashore, being near such simplicity feels good and wishes he could spend more time like this.

It is dark when he drives to work, early the next morning. Adam notices that his breath is slower, he feels confident that he can maintain some sort of calm throughout the day. It is a new feeling, fuelled by an idea that came to him in the middle of the night. He had woken up remembering something he had talked about with one of his regular customers, she had told him that she was on her way to a Yoga class. Adam does not really know what Yoga is, but the busy young man is keen to take some time out on a regular basis and later that day he phones up the teacher who holds the classes and arranges to go along the next evening. The thought of a possible gap in his week when he can try to take his mind off of work soothes Adam and helps him get through the next two days.

Immediately the gentle exercises have a calming effect upon him, his breathing becomes slower and deeper and his mind feels peaceful. There are not many people in the class, but a beautiful young lady catches his eye. To Adam’s delight, one week later she comes into his shop to buy a bicycle and he cannot believe his luck. She is as surprised to see him as he is her, and although she is with another man, he does not think that it is her partner, later he will find out that it is her boss. The young woman buys a bicycle and Adam looks forward to seeing her at the Yoga class the following week. Yet a few days before the class, he is walking past a local book shop when he sees her dressing the window and cannot help imagining her undressing in the window. Even when he returns to his shop his heart is still racing. When a friend comes in to visit Adam, it is the first thing he tells her about.

“She’s probably been going out with someone for seven years and won’t be interested in me at all!” Adam speculates.

Nevertheless, he goes back down to the book shop and asks her out for a drink.

“Well, I am not sure – I do not really want to get involved in anything,” she tells him.

“Look, I am not asking you to marry me, just inviting you for a drink!” the eager boy replies. Little does he know yet, how careful one must be in what you ask for. Time will tell the importance of what he has just said.

When he does finally go out with the pretty girl, she tells him that she has just broken up with someone and that is why she did not want to get involved with anyone else right now.  She explains that she was with him for seven years.

For a while, Adam will think that his insights are purely coincidental. It will be some years until he realises that they are pure insights and that somehow he sometimes knows these things.

The word is out that Adam wants some new staff for his bike shop. It is a cool place to be and there is no shortage of takers. Takers, yes, for in some ways they help to take him off his path, showing him all the different drugs they used. Speed, Ecstasy and L.S.D. Speed is for extra energy, in time he too would take the ghastly white powder in the morning. Trace amounts of a similar substance could be found in slimming tablets, prescribed mostly to women by their doctors. It led them to run about a lot with their new found energy and that would in turn cause them to lose weight.  On a few occasions, he would take the other drugs at parties, some for feeling ecstatically happy, others to induce altered states of consciousness. In his desperate attempt to distract himself from the stresses that he has placed himself under in his business, Adam is unaware that he has now placed himself under new stresses, depleting his body of goodness and his mind of reason.  He does not need to feel happier, he has a natural disposition of joy. He does not need ‘pick me up’ drugs for energy, he is full of life. Or chemicals that would take him to altered states of consciousness, he has felt these for many years. He was clutching at straws, all he really needed at the moment was time out, days off, but what he really did not need was to feel anymore ‘out of it’ than he already did.

The yoga was helping, but not enough, he needed to work less hours. He had created everything he had dreamt of, but he now stood before the uncontrollable monster his business had become and the lost soul that he is fast becoming. Slowly, he would mimic it, a symbiosis occurring.  It is too late, he cannot stop now, even if he wants to. Layers of artificially induced states are building up, compressing and compelling his problems, something would have to give.

Adam understands little about the nature of stress, blocked energy, tension. That some is good and drives us, protecting us when fear comes into play. It can connect us to a primordial state of fight or flight, yet even primitive man did not live in this state permanently. He grasps little at the moment, that in the speed of the modern world, we have created a near permanent state of such being, living on the edge of our nerves, ever trying to catch up.  He has an inkling that too much stress is not good and will take a toll on his health. Although he had thought about it a little, it had not really sunk in for Adam. It echoed a memory too, one that was too close to home to ignore. Many of his male relatives had died young, at thirty, forty and fifty years old. A fast lifestyle, worry and undue stress may stimulate all manner of terminal illness; to a person, body or some of its parts. Major stress, fuelled by another volatile stimulus may lead to danger levels, tension has to be expressed somewhere. Pressure will find its way out, somehow, like water, gas or heat, often resulting in an explosion. In the body, an organ may cease to work with ease. It may become diseased. His mind is yet another matter. He cannot begin to understand the infinite intricacies that are hidden there. Adam could not find a way out, wherever he went, there he was. Yet he must unwind, or one day he may be a rich man, but not have a breath left in him to stand.

Subconsciously, he has chosen to take one of the most complex solutions to mind overload, that of self-destruction. A risky business because it is difficult to stop the process precisely at the right point. If he goes on too long, he may cause a permanent disfigurement to the mind, body, soul or spirit, becoming irrevocably damaged, if he goes even further, he may even die. Drugs are curious monsters, which may tear him up, rip him apart and spit him out in so many pieces that it will never be possible to retrieve them. They could also offer glimpses of his deepest desires.

Adam is lucky, extremely so, for the course of action he is about to take will lead him so far away from the realms of reality, that it would take him totally out of the world he inhabited, but he would return. His own gifts of perception have already been too much for him to absorb, before he spun them out of control with recreational drugs. It will take him months before he can return to normality, if he had ever known it at all. However, he will come back and ultimately, be much more resilient and relaxed. For now, it will be a very bumpy ride, not only for him, but for all of his family and friends.

Chapter 4

Drug induced psychosis prompt Adam to make decisions which will eventually lead him to be free of the rat race, but will almost destroy the nerves of the people closest to him. His behaviour is becoming more and more erratic. If a young person came into the shop and longed to have a bicycle, he would give it to them. Sometimes a parent would come in and say something like:

“Now tell him Sammy, tell him you took this bike from his shop,” the Mum would say.

“I have told you mum, he gave it to me – isn’t that right mister?” the kid would reply.

Adam remembered the shame of being accused of being a thief and as he was not, neither was this child.

“That is right, I gave it to you. The more you give, the more you get back, is that not so?” he philosophically imparted, perhaps inappropriately so.

Adam stops paying his bills, instead he gives his money to homeless people, housing and feeding them. Man often moves away from that which frightens him and bizarre though it may seem, Adam cannot not handle having lots of money, it just means more sums, invoices and receipts to deal with and he finds that nearly impossible. Many people find it hard to keep up with them, but with Adam’s difficulties in reading and writing, it is a disaster. His concept of reality is breaking down and disappearing with every puff of cannabis he has. In its place he orders things how he would like to see them in his life and knowing that he is losing a grip on reality, he enjoys every minute of it, for the time being.

My greedy landlord can go to hell and so can the bank, he thinks to himself.

It is madness, of course, to deal with his problems in such an extreme manner, but the young man has not consciously become aware of the root of his confusion yet, not the drugs, for they are merely an attempt of escaping them, an aftermath of a solution. No, the real issue is the one which Adam has yet to face, that of dealing with words, numbers and information. He has never spoken about the problem with anyone, not even his parents, friends or school teachers, the last thing a youngster wants, is to think that they are not clever and worse, that they in fact have a real issue with the ordinary things in life, ones that others deal with easily. His intelligence had masked the problem well, even from himself. On meeting Adam, one may never know that he experienced such ‘information blurredness’, unable to absorb much of it. One thing was absolutely certain, the shopkeeper was going through a total transformation. The bicycles themselves had ceased to represent freedom for the wannabe wanderer, they were now a tie that bound him tightly, suffocatingly so, to give them away, was in his mind, to give away his problems. The act was also fuelled by a sense of natural philanthropy, a drug induced altruistic state, one which would soon turn his world upside down. It would only be years later that the young man will fall into deep and worthwhile voluntary work, real unconditional giving. Though for now, there were other realities to deal with, Adam must find a way of getting through his problems. Through the slithers of reality that he preserved and perceived, an idea was forming.

I think I shall retire from conventional life, he thinks to himself.

Although the thought has fibre, it would not quite take root yet and would only do so at the right time. However, what life required of him, was that he take just one step in the right direction, one step alone would be enough, for even the longest journey started with the first step. If the young lost soul could bring himself to find out what it was, and then take it, no matter how long it took, Adam would find himself on the way, for his life must change considerably. It is not only the drugs that are wrong for him, it is his whole way of thinking, not so much his new paradigm, but much of what he has learnt about life and the massive emphasis which he has placed on wealth.

From somewhere deep within him he yells desperately, screaming for a release from all of the pressures that he feels are crushing him. His path to self-destruction is nearing its end, but can he catch it just in time? For even though his dabbling with drugs has sent him through the roof, his feet walk to a different rhythm. They can hear a simple answer to all of the problems he faces right now. So mind blowingly simple, that its execution would not only be too good to be true, but will also prove to save his life. He knows it, he feels it and even in his state of euphoric esoteric exhaustion, he is certain that he only has to do one thing...take one simple step. He knows not yet what it will be, yet strangely, the light of its realisation is gradually lifting an enormous weight from his shoulders. Although he talks to and helps many other people who are troubled, gave them healing or simply uplifted them with his naturally cheerful disposition, he cannot soothe his own troubled soul at this time - or can he? He does not know how to give himself healing, at least not yet, he would find another way out.

It seems that life has offered him a gift when not one of his staff can take it upon themselves to go and buy milk for the morning coffee, Adam is gasping for a cup and does not really want to leave the shop to go and get it, surely there are enough staff in the place who could perform such a menial task?

“We haven’t got any change,” one says, as if it were even a feasible excuse.

“Yer, I will get some later,” another says.

It is already late in the morning and Adam has been at work since 5am, preparing the days tasks. He has not been eating properly for months and is desperate for some sustenance. There are two customers waiting to see him, behind the one that he is currently attending to. The idea of having a bigger shop and more staff has not worked, it just means that he sells more bikes now. This should be good news, but in reality means that there is now even more to do, tasks which he is ill placed to manage with. In some ways, the young entrepreneur has become a casualty of his own success.

After skipping breakfast, all he wants now is a cup of coffee to dip some biscuits in to, and he makes a final plea to one of the other spaced out hippies who are working in the shop.

“Look, just take a twenty pound note out of the till, if that is all there is in there and please go and buy some milk and some chocolate biscuits,” he asks him.

“Oh no, you can’t do that, you can’t give em a twenty, just for milk and biscuits,” they reply.

“Fine, I’ll do it, meanwhile, get your coat, you’re fired!” Adam says, exasperated.

Another of his staff responded to Adam’s signal and comes to explain to the customer how to use the gears on his new bike, he would have to manage with the next customers until Adam gets back, but right now, Adam could not manage himself.  He needs the air, space and time and approaches the till to take £20, but instead decides to take the pile of coppers that lay in the side draw, there are a couple of pounds there and he wonders why nobody else could fathom the deep mystery. The fired hippy slowly approaches the shop’s door, coat in hand and tail between his legs. Adam takes his coat, puts it on and goes for biscuits and milk.

As he walks around to the convenience store, he feels free, uplifted and begins to calm a little, but permanent damage has been done, inside he has snapped. He nears the mini supermarket around the corner and a young woman approaches him.

“Got any spare change Mister?” she asks.

“Yes, here you go,” and he gives a handful to her, she looks at him, a little disgruntled, as if he has given her a bag of old nails.

Adam buys his milk and biscuits and is left with three pence. He comes out of the convenience store and pauses for just a moment, the thought of going back to his bike shop alarms him terribly.

How do I get more of this? Where do you get time? What will become of me if I continue my life in the fast lane?

Though he is under the influence of cannabis, he still has the ability to think. The questions themselves are very sensible and healthy, but the course of action he takes in answering them would change his life.  He knows that if he turns left and goes back to the shop, he will struggle to manage again. Yet if he goes right, he would soon arrive at the railway station.

I do not want to go back, he thinks to himself. What if I don’t, what if I just take a train somewhere and never return? Where can I go with three pence?

He knows that he cannot walk out of the world, as such, but he can walk out of the world as he knows it. It would not be an entirely successful departure, at first, yet in the years that follow, there will be others, each not only more extreme, but also more efficient and successful, as Adam perpetually walks out of the world he knows, and into others, in far away lands....staying for months and even years. For now, there is a giant leap to make. Adam’s business is becoming seriously bad for his health and he cannot see another way out. ‘Life Cycle’ had become a viscous circle.

Perhaps I need to change mine, my life cycle, alter the direction in which it is going, completely, NOW! He tells himself.

It is a defining moment in his life, the thought is a seed that he must nurture, Adam has asked the right questions. He begins to open the milk he has bought for coffee, guzzling at its coolness. As he does so, he makes a decision and his head begins to clear.

I’m not going back!

It is the right solution, there are others, but this is the one he chooses. He turns right and heads toward the train station, casually walks passed the ticket collector and hops on the train that is pulling into the station, where it is going to, he has no idea and he really does not care, or for the fact that he has no ticket. It will be the last day that Adam would ever see his shop again, the next time he goes past, it would be gone – closed down.

Chapter 5

The wanderer walks the streets of the far away town that he arrives in, having no idea where he is. He is not in the slightest bit interested in what may be happening in his shop, Adam has no intention of ever seeing it again. When the heavens open, he stands in the downpour, utterly refreshed by the simple shower and a smile comes upon his face. He wanders along the streets until he sees a bar and not even considering that he has no money, he goes in and sits upon the a stool until the tender comes along. The barman looks at him, his customer seems familiar, as does the barman to Adam. In some ways, he feels more at home since walking into a place forty miles away and seeing somebody who was a year above him in his school, thankfully, not one who had bullied him. Adam would remember him anywhere, he has a kind face that rests upon a disfigured body. The wanderer has tears in his eyes and says to the man,

“I am lost and need to get home,”

“You will be okay,” the old school fellow says, sympathetically.

The wanderer looks in his jacket pocket, but his wallet is not there, so he does not even have a cash point card to be able to get money with. Adam cries a little, nods his head and leaves the bar.

He takes the next train, but by a twist of fate, or simply by being out of his mind, he has taken the wrong one. Instead of going east, back home, he is going west. When he gets off at the next station, he is now about fifty miles from home. His trainers are soaked through and the puddles that he splashes in are filling them with rain water. He does not know what to do, he feels upset, exhausted and hungry.  Ahead of him, a few people are sitting in a bus shelter and he approaches them.

“Hi man, how are you doing?” they ask.

He does not notice that they are homeless folk, how can he, he has just made himself homeless.

“Pretty bad actually,” and he tells them what he has just done.

“I like your jacket,” he says to one, who sports a cosy looking sweatshirt top. The reason Adam likes it is because it is dry.

“I like yours too,” the man says, referring to the antique leather biker’s jacket that Adam is wearing, dripping wet, stuck to his body.

“Lets swap them,” Adam suggests, offering the young man the jacket and they make the exchange.

“God, I’m hungry!” Adam says.

“Yer, me too, I haven’t eaten for two days,” one of the other replies.

“Hey, I’ll buy you all dinner then, lets go to that burger joint I passed down the road,” Adam suggests, totally forgetting that he has just three pence, he is accustomed to having access to thousands of pounds at his finger tips.

They all make there way to the restaurant, but as they go up to the counter to order their food, Adam realises that he has no money.

“Ah, I’m real sorry folks, I guess I left my wallet in my shop, I think we’re gonna have to pass on this meal.”

“No worries friend, thanks for the offer though.”

Piles of money will go through his bike shops till this day, but none which Adam can lay his hands on. Some of it will be tapped off by the vagrants in his home town, who Adam has been supporting in his wild weeks at Life Cycle. Yet this is the life cycle, those you help will not always treat you kindly, some will steal from him this day and it will be assumed by the staff that Adam has left the shop with several hundred pounds, but none of this matters, he has other problems to deal with. Right now, they will seem unbearable, as the wet wanderer is starting to begin a long journey, not abroad, but internally, as he is taking the first steps into a nervous breakdown. For a while, his emotions will run between euphoria and delusional states, as he breaks the habit of taking drugs, but the hardest bit is done, he has walked away from the very life that was killing him. He will be found tomorrow and given help. People will say that unless they had found him, he probably would have died, jumped off a bridge and tried to fly or something, but there is a simple truth to be had, Adam has saved his own life, it is he and he alone who somehow gets himself home this night. Not the home of his parents, but the one he has been renting recently, a World War II boat over fifty miles away along the coast, back toward Brighton.

He bids the small group that he has attached himself too farewell, they will not eat tonight or in the morning and not until a passer by gives them £10 the following afternoon. Adam walks back through the rain and considers his next move.

I must find shelter, he thinks to himself.

He wanders down an alley way behind some shops and sees a pile of cardboard stacked up, they look like the flattened boxes which new bicycles come in. The wanderer is not worried that he may have to sleep under them, the thought that he does not have to return to his own shop brings him a sense of peace. A little further, there is a rubbish skip, enclosed on all sides, including the top, but to one end there is an opening where lots more clean cardboard boxes have been thrown into.

Ah, this will do nicely for the night, he thinks.

That is, if no better options present themselves.

As he considers the bed for the night, his hands fall into the front pocket of the sweatshirt he has acquired and is now wearing, and to his astonishment, he finds a coin inside. It is twenty pence. He looks at it long and hard.

What can this buy me? Can it help me?

He twists it in his fingers, as if it is the greatest thing he has ever seen.

Mmm, with my three, that makes 23p, he calculates.

Perhaps enough for a small bar of chocolate, he thinks.

No, there must be more that I can do with this?

It takes all of his brain power to work out what he can use it for, he is struggling, he can hardly think. He is shaking with hunger and so wet that he is cold.

It is enough to make one phone call! He realises.

Adam works out that if he can ring someone to help him, someone who could come and get him, he would be safe. He does not really want to involve his closest friends or family at the moment, he knows that he is in a dreadful state. Then it comes to him, he remembers a taxi driver who often runs him about when he is out late in his home town. They have become quite well acquainted over the recent months of Adam’s escapades, and the potentially homeless wanderer decides to use his last twenty pence to phone the taxi office.

A controller answers and Adam gives his location, many miles away and insists to the woman who arranges the pick ups that it is urgent, knowing full well that his friend will respond to the call, he is the only driver who would come so far to pick him up.

“Okay, I will put the call through to him and mark the job down, bye bye,” the woman says.

Adam is uncomfortable in his wet shoes, he takes them off and throws them away. Somehow, despite the psychosis he is experiencing, he has managed to give the correct location to the taxi driver and makes his way to the train station where he will be picked up from. He sits against a wall inside, barefooted, now he really looks like a homeless fellow. He is so worn out that no sooner has he put his head against the cold tiles behind him, he dozes off. Adam dreams about a bike shop, but unlike his, it is a calm place without the massive tension that his establishment has. He sees the sign above it, it is called: ‘Where There’s a Wheel there’s a Way.’

He awakes with a start and takes heed to the sign that he remembers above the shop.

I must have the will to go on, I will be okay, he says to himself.

For a while, he just watches the people in the station walking past, some look at him, giving a smile of pity, some look the other way, but the wanderer is not bothered by what people may think of him, he knows that he has just saved his life and the relief that he has in being away from his shop and the absence of any thought of ever being there again is total. For the first time in months, he can breathe properly. Although he is completely exhausted and in a very sorry state, things can only get better now. He will not only pick himself up, but he will completely reinvent himself and before too long, walk straight into a new life, as if by design.

He must take another step toward his new life now, and with great effort he pulls himself up against the wall, for a second, steadying his shaking body. The changing man has a sense that the taxi will soon arrive, how he knows, he cannot explain.  He makes his way to the entrance of the train station and before he has even let go of the glass door, he sees dazzling headlights coming toward him in the distance and without a doubt he knows that out of all the cars that buzz around him, this one is his ride. He can hardly see straight, for the rain driving into his face and the massive disruption that he has caused to his body through not eating or sleeping properly for months. Yet without even looking at the car or driver, he opens the passenger door, gets in and says to the man in the car:

“Thank you for coming. Of course, I knew it would be you, I sensed your arrival.”

It is indeed his friend the taxi driver, who is naturally worried by not only the sight of Adam, but by his strange comments. In his dazed state, his passenger does not realise that there is anything unusual in what he has said. He did sense the man’s arrival and has been able to foresee events before they happen, well before he ever even knew what a drug was, although in time, he will learn that it is best not to tell most people about his sixth sense. His friend will take him all the way home, just before midnight on a wet Saturday February night in 1995. The man will go into Adam’s shop the following week, to collect the £75 fare, but Adam will not be there. He will get paid, when the wanderer’s parents straighten out the mountain of problems he has left, and take over the running of the place. It is a task that will almost destroy them, as they watch their son falling apart in every conceivable way.

The taxi driver will just assume that Adam is completely out of his mind, it will be a good cover until he is able to deal with the unusual gifts that he has been born with. It will be many years before he comes to terms with his abilities, but for now, it will suit him well for all his claims to be put down to the drugs, food and deprivation.

“I am so hungry, can you feed me please?” he pleads with his friend, who pulls over to a motorway service station and comes out with an armful of goodies. After the wanderer has feasted, he feels somewhat better, but his mind is massively disrupted by the drugs he has taken, the habit has not suited him at all and is one that he is pleased will go out of his life as quickly as it came in. No one will really know what happened to Adam this night, unfounded stories of him being found naked will circulate his town, the shame of which will be part of the price he pays for the extreme action he has taken. Yet for now, he still has to deal with the mania and simultaneous depression that he is experiencing from the terrifying ordeal that he is going through. He tries to get out of the window of the taxi as it speeds along the motorway and the driver has to talk him back in.

When he finally reaches the old boat that he lives in, he looks forward to keeping warm by the fire place, but to his dismay the entrance has been barred up with wood by the landlady. It is still pouring with rain, he has no place to go and has bid the taxi driver farewell, unable to pay him. When he comes next week for the money, he will not be entirely surprised that Adam is not there. Within a month, his shop will be closed down, it was his own wish, deep within. Adam has no idea how he will get through the months that follow, but once he does, he will begin to realise dreams that have been tucked so far away that he would have to haul them up through the dark recesses of his being.

It is the middle of the night and Adam has gone far beyond a state of exhaustion now, as he stands shivering at the blocked entrance to his home. Months later he will find out that he had been stopped from entering the boat that he rents because he was suspected of trying to burn it down. It is strange how easily a person may draw conclusions about you, especially when they are at fault. In this case, the landlady had not maintained the metal chimney on the boat, where the night before, hot embers had come out of through rusted holes in it and the next morning would be found to have burnt a panel on the wooden boat. A small fire had smouldered away through the night, causing a worried owner to draw these false conclusions. Such is life, but Adam would get used to being accused of doing things that he was not guilty of, for he has been completely irresponsible in his behaviour, especially in the manner in which he left his shop. He had no idea who to turn to and how to get out of the dire circumstances that he had put himself in and so did what he could in response to his own urgent call to save himself from an early drug related death.

Adam needs shelter. He lifts off the planks which have been placed in front of the door and goes in, away from the cold and rain. The electricity has been turned off, it is a dark and damp place, but a slight improvement on not having any shelter. He knows that he must get warm, but his bedding has also been removed from the boat. In a cupboard there is an old strip of carpet, he pulls it out and lies underneath it on the floor. Looking up through the skylight directly above him, he sees the stars resting in the night sky, blissfully motionless. He yearns to be still himself and sleep for days and days, but rest will not come easily to him, the months that have passed have taken a huge toll upon him, Adam was always a tall slim fellow, but now he looks like death itself, having lost about twenty pounds in weight. His mind is racing and his body hurts in every place. He looks up at the sky and pleads with its stillness to bring some to him. The young man is not religious, but he is desperate and this is often the time when a real prayer will find its way through even a non-believers lips.

Please take me! He calls.

Not for his life to be taken, but to end it as he knows it, to help change it to something which is a little more manageable. His mind, body and soul can take no more of the stresses he has put on it. He puts his landline telephone beside him and checks to see if it is still connected. To his astonishment, it is and the tone sounds like a life line for the weary soul laying in the cold boat. Adam knows three things and no more. Firstly, he has done it, he has taken one big step toward a new life. Secondly, he will sleep now and sleep all night and thirdly, the phone will wake him. It does not take a mystic to know such things, there is still an ounce of intelligence left in him yet. When it rings, he knows who it will be, without a doubt, for news has gone to his parents that he is missing.

“Hello mum,” he says, before the person speaks.

Adam’s parents come and get him and bring with them a steaming hot flask of coffee and biscuits. It has been a long time coming, nearly twenty four hours since he went out to buy milk.  He continues to talk about healing, telepathy and the eternal nature of the spirit – wildly, with incoherent excitement. Years later, he will still believe the same things and also find that many other people do too. Although a large difference would have taken place, he will not tell all the people he meets about his beliefs and will mostly be able to discern when to speak about them and when not to. For now, these things are totally unimportant, his parents are good people and do the very thing that he needs, take him to their house, feed him and call a doctor.

Chapter 6

The pale deathly appearance Adam has about him, coupled with his manic ramblings, makes it a little disconcerting to all who meet him. When his doctor asks him if he would go into hospital to get well, he does not hesitate to accept and is admitted as a voluntary patient. His girlfriend, parents and doctor will accompany him to a psychiatric hospital for analysis and he will stay there until some results are given. It is an unbelievably hard thing for those who know him to see happen, for Adam, it is simply a relief to begin a routine of eating, resting and bathing, whilst he begins to heal.

The specialist quickly establishes that he is not schizophrenic, and that he is suffering from Hyper-manic Recreational Drug Induced Psychosis. What a mouthful, and it certainly has been for the last few months, a concoction of substances that he has put inside himself. The miracle of modern medicine soon brings about hints of stability in his being, but he is so thrown off track by prolonged food and sleep deprivation that it will take much longer for Adam to really recover. There is no chance of him returning to work in the near future. He could see no other way out of the life that he had so diligently created over the last ten years, in an effort to become rich. Yet with the very real spiritual awareness that he has encountered in recent years, came another question:

Are there other riches to be honoured in life, aside from that of money?

He spoke of inner riches, such as peace and contentment, sought by many, but brushed aside by most. It would be a while before wealth of this kind would appear in his life, for now, there were other things to deal with.

In his madness, Adam had kept his contact lenses in for days. Just before he entered the hospital he had taken them out, but now he could not see very well. He remembered that he had made an appointment at an opticians and that it would be on the following Wednesday. He may have blown nearly every fuse and shorted every wire in his head, but he knew he had the appointment. When Monday came, he told the nurses and they said that they would arrange for someone to take him there. Yet when Wednesday came, he was not permitted to go. Nobody listens to a madman, why should they, they are mad? Though even that state was passing, Adam was now experiencing what would be the beginning of a long and traumatic nervous breakdown, and not being able to see made things even more terrifying in a hospital. He spoke to the nurse again and reminded her that he had an appointment and she told him that they would go along later, but later never came. It is difficult for a sane person to imagine that a patient could be telling the truth. Adam knew that he had come into the place voluntarily and if necessary he would leave for an hour to arrange a pair of glasses. He proceeded to walk out of the front door, but a male nurse seized his arm and called for help.

“I won’t be long, don’t worry,” Adam explained to them.

Still dazed by the effects of coming off of drugs, he could not understand why the staff would not allow him to go out.

“I came here of my own free will, I have an opticians appointment. If I cannot attend, can you arrange for me to do so please or perhaps phone them to arrange for another appointment?” he asks.

“You do not have an appointment Adam.”

Why would the nurse be wrong, he was not the one who had taken drugs and walked out of his business? By now they were gripping his arms tightly and hurting him, he struggled and tried to become free. Wrong move, doctors came and asked for tranquilisers to be administered immediately. Adam was well liked in the hospital, he had a kind trusting face, despite the fact that there was not much left of it. When he told the staff that he would go and sit down quietly, they gave him the opportunity to do so and he did. No bird should be caged so, especially not those with such a free spirit.

The following day in the hospital, Adam was feeling even more disorientated on the calming medication that the doctors had been giving him. The side effects of which were that his muscles were seizing up, and he struggled to walk - to their relief. Unable to see where he was going, he also bumped into things and was further embarrassed.

All of his family and friends came to visit him. Naturally it was tremendously difficult for them. If Adam had known of another way to change his life, he would have taken it, but he did not. Business, success and money. They were the things he had been brought up with, engraved upon his mind, influenced by everything he had seen. Yet the ethos of such a life cut deeply into his soul. Of course one needed this money stuff to live, but not at this cost. It was his path to experience such an extreme desire for wealth, if only to see that it grated upon him if exclusively sought.

Adam sat down in a soft chair in the hospital. Although he did not like being there, somehow the process of essentially de-toxing off of the recreational drugs was a comforting one. The pain and the shaking that he felt would soon go and with it would come the first glimpses of stillness within. Then he would be re-toxed on various medication, until he was considered to be normal enough to go home, where that was, he did not know yet. He had never known a peaceful household and had recently become desperate to stop everything he was doing and begin the astronomical journey of trying to find out how one could live, without rushing every second of the day. As he sat, he began to consciously question these things.

This cannot be right? He thinks to himself.

Running about all day, so anxious that I cannot even take a full breath, his thoughts went on to other subjects.

I cannot remember ever sitting down as a family to eat without there being massive tension and arguments. Is that the price of wealth, is that how I will end up, too stressed to stop, too churned up inside to eat? There must be more to life and I am going to make it my business to find out.

His friendly doctor comes to visit him and Adam is over the moon to know such a wonderful man. He takes the patient outside and they both sit down on a wall talking, informally. There are very few people in the world that Adam feels really comfortable being with, but this was one of them. He does not quote from medical case studies or exude an intimidating or patronising authoritative manner or superiority. Despite his genius, the doctor is a very simple man, steeped in perception and unhindered love, who did not appear to have learnt to be so, it was just his way. When Adam does recover and move a few miles out of the area, the kindly doctor would no longer be his GP, however, they would become friends in the years which followed.

Adam is still young, barely an adult at twenty three years old. He can rebuild himself, reinvent his life. Little does he know now, but it would not take him too long to do so. He will not sustain any long term ill effects from these unfortunate events, although some people would think so, as he would find it hard to cope with things in life in the future. What they did not know was that he had always found it difficult to manage, partly due to head injuries he had sustained, partly because of the altered states of consciousness that he had always experienced, but also because of a tendency to not be able to interpret information.

Before he really begins to recover, he must see again, but his pleas for permission to get glasses are not being heard. When he tries to ask about it again, he is told to go to his room, like a bothersome child and there he waited. He lay down to rest and when he awoke he saw his father standing in the doorway with a doctor.

“What’s up Adam?” his father asks him and Adam tells him about his anxiety and how he feels so awful because he cannot see and how it frightens him so. A nurse comes to the doorway and then another doctor. Adam felt shut in, fear and then terror built up within him.

“Please take me to the opticians,” Adam pleads.

It is terribly hard for his father, for he is reluctant to take his son out of the hospital without the doctor’s consent.

“We will deal with it later for you”, a doctor said.

It is always later. Adam snaps, he gets up from the bed and tries to run out of the room that they blocked him into. He is not trying to hurt the staff that stand there, only trying to get past them. His father holds up his arms and Adam runs straight into them, breaking his father’s little finger with the force. The staff move into action and one goes off to get a sedative.

“No need,” his father says to the remaining staff, putting his arms around Adam, embracing him and gently picking him up like a child to hold him. He is right, there is no need for sedatives, for Adam is soon lying on his bed, exhausted and falling asleep.

Adam is sectioned, which means that he may now be detained for a further twenty eight days. Now classed as a potential violent patient, he may be a danger to society. The following week a nurse takes him to the opticians and Adam apologizes for missing his recent appointment.

“Hello sir, yes we wondered why you did not attend last Wednesday. No problem, glad you could come today,” the receptionist at the opticians says. The nurse looks at Adam with surprise, realising that he had been right all along.

The outing is successful and not surprisingly, Adam does not attack anybody. He has enough focus to go to his bank and draw some money out for his glasses. He has no ID with him, but the bankers know him, his business turnover was £3000 a week and they do not mind parting with another £150. They know nothing of the fact that Adam has left his shop and will never return and he does not see fit to tell them.

Being able to see changes the patient entirely. He is happy again and apologizes to some of the more sympathetic members of staff at the hospital for his outburst. The doctors see no reason to keep Adam in and allow him to go out on excursions with friends who come to pick him up and vow to return him later. He is eating and sleeping well and soon begins to look more reasonable.

Adam’s family work hard to keep his business together, but inevitably the shop must close and he must declare himself bankrupt. There is a part to the bankruptcy form that accommodates people who are not of sound mind. It is of no relevance that he is making a good recovery, only that at the time of the demise of his business, he was experiencing a temporary loss of his mental faculties. The bailiffs do not confiscate his car, it is a beaten up old thing with little value. The young man is very pleased that he has not lost his beloved Triumph Vitesse convertible. It is the third of his 1960s cars, the other two he sold some years back. He is lucky to still have this one, as he parked it with the hood down and keys in it whilst he wandered away from his shop, such a trusting fellow and in this case, rightly so, for it was still where he left it several days later when his parents went off to find it. When they did so, it was as he had left it, just a little damper inside from the rain that had fallen. They retrieved the car and brought it back to their house, storing it in the garage until Adam would be fit enough to drive it again.

The patient is healing well and begins to stay at his parent’s house for days at a time and also with his girlfriend at her flat. Though his section paper legally binds him to the authority of the hospital, he is not required to be there for the last two weeks of his stay, as the doctors can find nothing wrong with him, besides his previous recreational drug induced episode. As he no longer takes drugs, his manner thankfully returns to that of a more familiar Adam, but not for long, depression will soon arrive in its place. A deeper recovery will continue over the next fifteen years, whilst Adam slowly chips away at the rock which conceals one of his real problems, that he cannot concentrate on words or numbers, in speech or in writing and that he often feels extremely disorientated and has done for as long as he can remember. Yet the young man is far from being ready to see these things, only when one stops, may internal and external peripheral vision come into operation and Adam is far from being still yet. His next move will be back to his parent’s house for a brief spell and Adam calls back to the hospital for a final all clear. The nurses tell his parents that he is the politest, nicest patient they have ever had the pleasure of knowing. One apologizes to Adam for judging him incorrectly with regard to his optician’s appointment and he is happy that they have seen sense.

“Sorry for my temporary lapse in reason,” the nurse says.

“That’s okay, it can happen to the best of us.” Adam replies.

The young man returns to his parent’s house, his entire psyche in shock. He has completely changed his life and it will take him a couple of months to get through the terrible feelings of apparently bottomless depression and sadness that he feels. He will have to reach the halfway point of the nervous breakdown he is experiencing, before he begins to come out the other side of it. He still has trouble walking, as his muscles are gripped by stiffness and seizure in reaction to the anti-psychotic medication he is prescribed.

His mother takes him to see an old man that she knows, who is a healer. It is a wonderful thing and Adam feels better every time he goes, feeling a deep sense of peace. The healer does something that nearly all doctors would loathe them for, which is to tell Adam to throw the medication down the toilet.

“You don’t need them tablets boy, you will get stuck on them and it will take your life away! We’d all be better on calming medicine. Life can be hard. Get off them! You will be fine,” the healer says with confidence. Adam listens and takes heed to what he says, deciding to wean himself off of the tablets gradually. Within a month or so, they are gone.

Daily, he has panic attacks as memories of the things he had done plague him, but deep within, he knows that he has made the right choice. Although, for awhile, he will really struggle to manage even simple tasks, like making a cup of tea or walking to the shop for a newspaper, but at least now he is walking in the right direction. He feels as if he is a child, of perhaps three or four years old, but the beauty of this, is that he has his whole life ahead of him again.

Chapter 7

It will take years to recover from the ordeal that he has put himself through, but only a short time before Adam decides to get on with his life. Within three months of being out of hospital, he has taken a job as a driver for some puppeteers, neither of whom can drive themselves. He will help them set up the wonderful puppet shows, which they put on, and keep the many children who watch from jumping onto the stage.  Being a puppeteer’s roadie is a far and distant work to that which he is used to. For a time, they will pull the strings and Adam worries little about the running of a business.  He had broken down yes, physically, mentally and spiritually, but now he has broken through, into a new way of being and taken another step toward a simpler life. He remains somewhat withdrawn for a few more months, overwhelmed by the task ahead of him, to re-establish his life, the weight of which sometimes depresses him.

Early in the next year, 1996, he is strong enough to take a new job, a full time position as a carer for others who have fallen sick of mind or body. Adam works at a day centre for adults, the youngest are eighteen years old and the oldest ninety nine. Besides attending to some of their simplest needs, like feeding people or taking them to the toilet, he also runs groups for the more able; discussion groups, woodwork or games. The man who walked away has found a new lease of life, and delights in driving parties of people out into the countryside for English teas, or to the local swimming pool or to a sports centre, to use their gym. Life has changed much for Adam, who once hurried so to make another pound, he now discovers other riches within, which cannot be priced; peace, calm and contentment. He is bright and cheerful again and is popular in the centre where he works. The year and a half that he spends there will give him a rare insight into people and also time for him to heal from his own traumas. With the money he saves from his job, he is able to restore his old car to a roadworthy state and is thrilled to be able to cruise through the rolling green hills of Sussex, with the breeze against his face, something he has rarely done in recent years.

His interest in life and the minds of men becomes deeper. At only twenty four years old, he has much ahead of him and is blessed to have the company of such a wise and earthy girlfriend, she who had the seven year itch. Adam moves in to her seafront flat, a gorgeous old period building, with a balcony that is so near to the sea that it sometimes catches a spray, caught up in the wind. The fresh young man will spend many an hour in his spare time, sitting in the fine old place or on the airy balcony, reading quietly and beginning to notice that it is a very hard thing to do. His love works in an antiquarian bookshop and reads a considerable amount herself. She inspires Adam to read, but at first he finds it difficult to see past his unidentified childhood condition, where words blur into one another, but slowly finds his way. Yet from time to time, there are other symptoms that plague him, slurred speech, difficulty in seeing and hearing properly. It is not only since he experimented with recreational drugs that such things have come about, but also from when his head felt the hard and ghastly shock of fists and concrete, or maybe even before. He sees his doctor about the problems, but again they are put down to stress.

The determined young man gains confidence as he learns new things from books, gradually discovering his own pace. Adam begins to look in to many subjects that interest him, particularly those of healing, alternative medicine, philosophy and psychic phenomena. To balance these far out subjects, he reads about the land, nature and travel. Once he gets into the swing of learning, Adam’s mind becomes like a sponge, absorbing knowledge that he feels he has missed, whilst he has run about for the last ten years, restoring bikes, furniture and giving little time to relaxing. He reads very slowly, in order to make sense of the chunks of words that appear before him, and now that he is drug and punch free, he tries to overcome his inability to take in information, as the muscles of his mind become sharper and highly alert. It will be along and sometimes painful journey, but one he must come out the other side of. He will be decades behind in learning about computers, having avoided them at college, for now he must manage with words on paper and not on screens.

Adam is creating some stability in his life, in time it will begin to take root, whilst others around him still continue to uproot.  His parents sell their house and move six doors up the road, to one that in theory should provide them with some disposable income. It is the eleventh house and twelfth move that he has seen them make, but this time he is not with them. He is glad, for under the slightest bit of pressure, he will still struggle, which will make life quite a challenge, as it is made up of pushing and pulling, demanding much from humans. It is the nature of existence for all men, who all have their individual trials of the mind, body or heart to overcome. The young man still experiences painful cluster headaches and of course wishes to avoid things which may aggravate them.

At the day centre where he works, he sometimes signs the people in that come to the place, marking their names on the register as he sits at the reception desk, smiling at all who enter. It is a simple task, the only addition required is that he puts a cross against the meal column too, to indicate whether or not they are eating at the centre’s restaurant or have brought their own packed lunch. Yet sometimes, even this is too complicated for Adam, the lines and rows on the paper appear to be just a block of letters and numbers, as they also did at school. It is a nerve racking situation, for the more the lines blur, the more anxious he becomes. He looks at the information, but it will simply not go in, it is not a task that he can take his time with, as with his own reading, for now queues form as people get off the Social Services buses that bring them in. Somehow, he bumbles his way through, usually with the help of the person who has just been dropped off, and are able to find their own names on the register.

Again, he sees his doctor, but does not argue with the GP’s opinion, which is that the symptoms are triggered by stress. Of course it is true, but what is the cause? Is there something physiologically wrong? In some ways, Adam does not want to identify the root of the problem, as he is already scarred with the stigma attached to being in hospital once and has no interest in further embarrassing himself. He will find a way through the problems he incurs in functioning in everyday life, or life itself will assist in steering him along another path. The care worker has his eyes checked again, but the optician does not reveal any problems.

When he stops for lunch himself, Adam often cycles home to eat. On one such journey, he will receive a shock that will yet again have a huge effect upon his life. He is cycling proficiently, down the outside of a row of parked cars, when just a moment before he passes one, the driver opens her door, causing the rider to strike its corner, head on. He goes over his handle bars and lands on his back, determined to keep his head high. For once, there is not a single scratch to his skull, but Adam’s back is twisted as the impact catapults him over the car. He is off work for a week but is fortunately okay and he begins to undergo some treatment to try and realign his rotated vertebrae. The specialist advises him that although he will recover, he may experience back pain later on in his life and that he should seek compensation for the accident. In time, Adam receives some money which will cover all future treatments and inconveniences. It is enough for him to decide that he will take his girlfriend away on holiday, they will drive to France in his old car, where they will stay in a small and peaceful village, far from the madding crowd.

As they are having a late supper one night, in the remote romantic French cottage, Adam experiences a tremendous feeling of foreboding. He feels dreadfully sad and tells his partner that he thinks someone he knows has just died or that something terrible is about to happen. He can only imagine one person that it could be, a friend who has been very unwell, a man who also has a sixth sense. Although it is late at night, he walks through the small French village until he finds a phone box and telephones his friend in England.

“Thank you for phoning Adam, I am okay though,” his friend says, after Adam had explained his intense feeling, he is certain that he has not been mistaken by his sense.

It would not be until the following morning that he would find out what the terrible news is. Someone has died that night and it had been in France, somebody very special. Princess Diana of England is killed in a car crash in Paris. Adam does not quite believe in his abilities yet, since his bizarre and confusing experiences in the last few years and in his caution to try not to disturb his friends or family again, he does not talk about issues of an esoteric nature very much. Instead, he focuses on quiet and simple things in his life again, until he finds his feet.

As he drives back through France, feeling the loss of one life prompts him to think about his own for a while. Adam asks himself what it is that he really wants. He does not know exactly, but to have more time off to contemplate his future is an idea that pops into his mind. He realises that if he restores and sells his car, and adds the money to that which he is left with from his compensation, he will not have to work again for quite some time.

Perhaps with the money I could go back to college, maybe even university? He thinks.

He has bills to pay and food to buy, but as they are shared with his girlfriend, they are low. He uses some of his money to buy another couple of cars to do up and sell, the proceeds of which will really keep him going. Adam realises for the first time that he has honoured the wish he made from his bike shop, when he said:

I want to retire from this way of life.

He thinks how much his life has changed and how his interests have turned from business to health, particularly the subjects of Complementary Medicine and Alternative Therapies. The changing man wishes to learn much more about these things and perhaps even be a professional practitioner himself one day. He looks into courses available, which would give him the necessary qualifications, and finds that there are many. One in particular at a London university offers a well respected degree syllabus, which includes subjects of homeopathy, herbalism and nutrition, amongst others, specialising in one of the choices in the final year, with the option to go on studying further still. It is of great interest to Adam and he begins the application process, first he would have to go back to college for a year to do a science access course, which will allow him entry to the degree course.

Adam is lucky with his timing and a couple of months later he starts at his local college. However, immediately he notices that he feels confused and disorientated in the classroom and cannot take in the information which is being taught. He tells the girl who sits next to him that he has a problem and that he is not sure what it is, and she partners him where possible, for the laboratory experiments. Adam cannot follow the simple instructions and lessons taught, words, processing them and understanding basic sequences is a real problem. Yet the young student is far from having any idea that he may well have a condition which can be helped, such as Dyslexia, he has not yet made any connection between his ‘out of focus’ type sensations and the information which he is trying to learn. The feeling of being partially submerged in water means life is a very tricky business and brings back memories of being at school and experiencing similar disorientating sensations, but he feels that his inability to learn is perhaps a physical one, totally unconnected to a learning difficulty. He is a long way off from seeing that the stimuli and effect of information itself is a key factor in his brains response, as it strains to comprehend words, numbers and ordering of basic, but new facts, in an alien environment.  Much later in his life, he would realise that because his spelling was acceptable, and he thought that people who had Dyslexia exhibited problems with spelling solely, that he had not entertained the idea he may himself have a learning difficulty, unaware that there are many other aspects of the disability to consider, many he experienced himself.

Consequently, Adam does not approach the college tutors or advisors for help, he simply thinks that he cannot do the course at all, totally confused, embarrassed and overwhelmed by his inability to function properly. He is terrified at the prospect of spending more time in a classroom, a place where the back log of information which he does not understand is getting higher and higher. So instead, he does the only thing he knows how to do, he leaves in the first week, removing himself from the trigger which overwhelms him so, trying to walk out of the world in which he has put himself in. The step will change the direction of his life entirely, one that he will not altogether regret.

Adam cannot tell his friends or family why he cannot stay at college, because he does not understand the reasons himself. He does not go to see his doctor again about the disturbing feelings, the young man is swiftly losing confidence in such a visits worth, having already lost faith as a result of previous unsuccessful visits. The reality is that a GP cannot easily identify a cause, based on the symptoms Adam is providing: confusion, disorientation, inability to easily understand and process simple information, difficulties in thinking, saying words and having severe and prolonged headaches. To date, the approaches he has made to his doctor had been complaining about these symptoms in everyday life, going shopping or at work. As Adam had also been hospitalised for consuming recreational drugs some years before, these symptoms may also be considered to be brought on with anxiety, stress or panic attacks, associated with reintegrating into ‘normal life’ again. Yet the fact is, the young man had first felt totally disorientated at the age of ten years old, but there is no account of this or previous record of Adam having had difficulties at school, he has concealed these very well.

Only much later in life, could he look back over the map of events that had played themselves out and altered his destiny entirely. Adam would not be a professional health practitioner now, but the change in his direction will take him to new and imaginably exciting places and bring him feelings of complete relaxation. His path to total peace would be so profound, so indelible, that in itself, it would provide prolonged periods of time with absolutely no symptoms at all. Days and weeks with clear thinking, focus and ability to manage his life and understand the information he faces on a daily basis.

For the first time since he left the farms of his childhood, Adam is able to reacquaint himself with matters of the earth, land and sea, as he spends time walking in amidst the calming countryside nearby, or on the beach that sits so closely to where he lives. As he wanders along the shoreline, he spots beautiful lengths of driftwood. Over a period of months, he collects them up and stores them. He does not really know why he does so, but it feels like a deeply relaxing and intensely healing thing to do. He is beginning to trust his intuition and it will pay off. The young man also feels that it is not too late to learn about complementary medicine, alternative therapies and practices. Adam is still keen to go in search of new learning, but he senses that he can do so in his own time, at his own pace. So in his spare time, he continues to study such areas, whilst contemplating a physical work again. As the first pieces of driftwood dry, Adam looks at them, touching them and running his hands along their length, enjoying their beauty.

What could I make with these? He asks himself.

Once long pieces of sea defences, but now potential parts of a new project and before long, Adam makes a table with one. He finishes it finely, using the skills he acquired as a young boy. When his brother sees the table, he asks if Adam will make him one and the eager artist in him says yes. There is no stopping him now, the word spreads and soon he has commissions for cupboards, shelves and larger tables and the wanderer drifts along the shore, collecting up all the driftwood he can find. He works from the balcony of the flat where he lives, but he needs to find a workshop, for he soon has enough commissions to create furniture full time. Months pass and the wood begins to dry.

He visualises the sort of place he would like to work from, perhaps a big old farm building, spacious and quiet. He paints a picture in his mind of all his tools, a workbench and the piles of old wooden sea defences that he has collected, the image is so real, he can almost touch it.

Where is it? He asks himself.

He closes his eyes and his mind scans over the countryside that sits just a few miles away from the seaside flat, mentally dowsing for a place with a space for him. Adam feels charged, driven and drawn to a particular area. He hops on his bicycle and rides out into the hills, into the vision he has seen, and knocks at the door of a farmhouse.

With the first try, he is a few hundred metres out, the farmer directs him to an estate just up the road. Again he knocks, this time an elderly lady answers the door. He explains that he is looking for a large workshop to make furniture from but does not have a fortune to pay in rent. The lady is sure of herself and confident when listening and responding to Adam.

“I think I have just the thing for you, if you come here on Saturday at ten o’clock I can show you.” she says.

Adam accepts the invitation and bids the dear soul farewell, as she closes the big wooden door of the farmhouse. He can hardly contain his excitement over the next few days and when Saturday comes, he is at the house a quarter of an hour early. They both travel over the downlands in her Land Rover and arrive at a large barn. It is a beautiful old place, once a granary and has flint ends and wooden sides.

“It needs some work I am afraid, some of the windows are missing, we just store straw at one end at the moment. The rest is empty, you can use that if you like? We can run electricity in as well if you wish,” the kind old lady explains, as they make their way into the place.

It is a huge space and Adam is completely overwhelmed at the prospect of working from it. His main concern is the price and so he tells her so.

“How would £10 a week suit you?” she asks.

Adam happily accepts the offer and pays for four weeks.

Things are really coming together, not only is his time his own, but he also gets to spend much of it in nature, collecting driftwood from the seashore and even working in the beautiful countryside. Adam’s wish to have another kind of life has come true. The end of the year is coming, 1997 and with it is a decision that the timber artist has made, to exhibit his work at craft fairs for the Christmas trade. He is now not only using driftwood, but also any reclaimed timber that he can find, old floorboards, doors and even stairs. His sales are steady and provide a reasonable income for him, but he must invest in more tools and a van in which to carry his stock, until now, he has borrowed or hired vehicles. Soon he is the owner of a big old Ford, which he will frequently fill with salvaged timber.

As Adam becomes confident with his work, he takes on more commissions. He is overjoyed when one of his customers says that she would like to interview him on the radio station that she works for and by chance, it is a local BBC channel. His luck will extend as this will in time lead him to twice appear on television, talking about the pieces which he makes from driftwood and other interesting timber. It is a curious phenomenon, for he is now a trained joiner, cabinet maker or even carpenter. It seems that much of his inspiration just comes through him, as if guided by an unknown source...it is one that he will pay more attention to in the coming years, as the artist’s intuition will become very finely tuned.

The new space has been transformed and Adam begins to make more elaborate sculptural work. He speaks to his local council and discovers where there is a wood heaven, a place where all of the old sea defences and groins are taken to rest, when they are removed and replaced. They give him permission to collect as much as he likes from the driftwood graveyard and he hauls great lengths of the aged and beautifully water thrashed sculptured pieces into his van.

This could be brilliant, he thinks. Perhaps I will turn this place into a timber yard and sell beautiful old wood alongside my furniture?

He does not know, but he is a few years too early for such dreams and is not ready to build another big business again, the time he has now is for healing and soothing the vast amounts of damage his mind, body, soul and spirit endured, during his dramatic escape from the rat race. However, he will catch his vision in time on this occasion and steer it toward the right direction. For a few years, he will have a bright future with this work, until life will gently take him on another path again, one which will lead him tens of thousands of miles.

Chapter 8

Adam maintains a deep interest in all matters esoteric, but speaks only to his girlfriend or other healers about this. He feels it would best to take some short and simple courses in these matters, although he is a natural healer, it will add some credence to his work and enable the people closest to him to feel safer about the ideas he speaks of. He studies Reiki Healing and is thrilled to be in the company of other people who are interested in the mysteries of unseen energy.  Soon he begins to give treatments again, he is not a miracle worker, he does not give the blind sight or make the crippled walk, but he has a gift to bring immense calm to a person  during a treatment. He had given dozens, before he became unhinged with the effects of drugs, but now that his mind and life are clear, he can continue.

The healer feels a burning sensation in his hands again and most of those who receive treatments do too, even without physical contact. The idea of giving healing a name and charging for sessions does not sit entirely comfortably with Adam at first, however, Reiki had made the art more universally acceptable. It suits him well at this time and so too does the idea that the treatments are not regarded to be religious or faith orientated. Many people he knows have healing from him, some for stiff knees, some for tight shoulders and some to simply feel good. He questions the origins of such energy, but cannot really answer the enquiry, it seems that his trust and results alone satisfy him. Mostly, he does not accept any payment, of course a natural exchange occurs with friends and family, but in time, people he does not really know will ask him for help and they would give him a shekel or two for his work.

The end of the millennium approaches, it is a time of much acceptance for ideas of mainstream spiritual concepts. To many, healing is no longer thought of as weird, and as Adam gradually begins to move on from the painful memories of his manic ramblings, so some of his own spiritual gifts return too. He begins to see people’s auras again, light and colour emerging from them. It shows him what emotions they may be feeling and very often he can intuit things about their past and sometimes even see how things will work out for them in the future.

The young mystic appreciates that it is perhaps a bizarre and possibly imaginary notion, to those with a more conventional or scientific mind. However, even at these early stages of Adam’s awareness of his own difficulties in learning, he has no reason to associate these with the extra sensory perception which he experiences. It is a subject which has been explored and researched since the beginning of time, in this way, it is as old as medicine itself. Gradually, as he becomes more confident with these gifts, he is able to speak to those who ask him and offer guidance, supported by the accuracy of his intuitions that have proven to be correct, time and time again. It is not a party piece or something that he would do on demand for people, however, such positive wisdom has a right time and place to be talked about and this is with the increasing numbers of people that he gives treatments to. In the future, he will not always do the work, there would be other things for him to study and practice, but for some years to come it will very much be a part of his life, in ways he cannot imagine.

He attends Spiritualist meetings and is astounded when a medium accurately tells him about his past, events, times, places. About his relatives, living and deceased. Yet all tell him the same thing, you also have the ability to see these things...and he does. Of course, he knows that he is not the healer and that somehow he is able to focus refreshing, positive energy directly into a person’s own state of being. Where that energy comes from and how one may harness it becomes of great interest to him. Adam goes on more and more courses, and very slowly, looks at more and more books. It is almost as if he can absorb much of the information in them, just by scanning through them and getting a feel for the facts. He becomes interested in not only mystical matters, but also in subjects of Homeopathy and Herbalism. Studying Crystals, Dowsing, Kinesiology, Past Life Regression and many other natural healing therapies, but the subject he is most drawn to is T’ai Chi Chuan, an ancient Chinese moving meditation, originally a martial art. He discovers that similar movements known as Chi Kung, also embrace the idea of one-to-one healing and it is no surprise to Adam that some understand the phrase to mean ‘subtle energy work’. It seems that many cultures have known about such possibilities for thousands of years.

The searcher’s interest in matters of the mind, body and spirit have a positive effect on his work with wood. Ideas flow, productivity is high and before he knows it, Adam has a thriving business again. A small one at that and he works alone, but nevertheless, he enjoys going up to the old barn that he rents in the countryside, to make his furniture and sculptures from. Yet there is a change on the horizon. When life sees that we are coming into balance, it may test us with another lesson, one which may pull the rug from beneath us. On the other hand, it may only be when we have achieved the strength of character to sustain its blow, that a timely strike may come. For Adam, it is time, unexpectedly, his girlfriend of nearly five years leaves him.

“Why?” he asks her, astounded by her surprising decision.

“I want to be on my own and do not want the things that you would like, such as marriage and children,” she puts it simply.

That is all she says. In years to come, Adam would see the merits of being alone for a while, though at this time, he cannot make sense of her leaving at all, but his lack of insight makes no difference, it is still a reality. It is one thing that he has not foreseen, and it leaves him in a deep state of shock. He is devastated and will remain so for what would seem like an eternity. Yet the universe has other plans for him, his dear girlfriend had come into his life at precisely the right time and for the exact length that he needed, loving him and helping him to get back on his feet. In years to come, Adam will look back at this point and see how it was one of the greatest opportunities in his life, one that would lead him to make wonderful choices about his next decade, but still, he has a few more things to do before such massive change is upon him.

At first he puts the energy of pain into sculptures and creates pieces that represent his feelings. There is a man sitting on a bench alone, with a space for someone else to sit next to him. It is a full size piece and it sells for a small fortune. Another is a man standing, holding a tray, his hair is formed by a plant recessed in the head of the piece. It is commissioned by the founder of the retail outlet, the Body Shop – Anita Roddick, who hears about Adam’s work and asks him to make a number of pieces. His furniture and sculptures appear in galleries, on television and in magazines, as he sells the finely shaped pieces to the rich and famous. Adam invests in more tools, equipment and a website, and has commissions booked in for months at a time.

Then inexplicably, his work dries up. He has invested most of the money he has made in new tools and equipment for his workshop. The craftsman has also borrowed money to expand his business and now has very little left.

What to do? This is the question Adam asks himself and a solution must be found. He remembers what a TV presenter had said about him when they reported his work:

“Alchemists have tried to turn base metals into gold for centuries. This man is a modern alchemist, whilst his raw materials are free, his work sells for small fortunes.”

....but the question is, can he transform this situation? Can he reshape this dilemma?

The artist cannot settle, sleep does not come easily to him, as he worries about his predicament. The year 2000 has come and by mid-summer, Adam is at a complete loss as to what to do. Yet strangely, one night, as he lies in bed in the small hours, he feels excited about the surprise card that life has played him. It has been a while since he has been commissioned to create anything, and a strange reality is upon him - he is free, in some ways, Adam has a blank canvass in life, in which to create upon. Instead of battling with his sleep, he gets out of bed in the middle of the night and sits, quietly, thinking. It is time, time to work things out. He is still, just breathing, waiting and emptying his mind...a few last thoughts come to him:

If I am completely calm, the answer will come, I know you life and I know you will help me. I am ready, I am here, I am waiting. Please guide me and show me the way.

It is a prayer, to whom, he does not know, but he believes that it will help and perhaps even be heard. Words come to him, ideas and he resonates with the potential that lie in them:

Alchemy. Chemistry’s predecessor.

Elements interacting, transforming.

I can find a way through this, he thinks.

He had always been enormously positive, but now he must call upon every ounce of the power in his mind. It is a serious situation, soon he would not have enough money for food or to pay for the rent on his workshop that has increased considerably, or for that matter, on the studio apartment that he now rents.

Adam senses that he is on the edge of an enormous breakthrough, he does not know what form it will take, but he is certain that it will soon manifest.

This is not a problem, it is an opportunity, he tells himself.

The question is, how will he react to it? More thoughts come to him:

Reactions to energy, that’s all this is. Everything is energy, matter. Even my circumstances are charged with a hard factual reality. These facts too are energy. They have manifested in time due to the interactions of a complex scenario. It is life. It is my life. They are ingredients, that is all. If they are not giving the right result, then change them – use them. Step back from this, look at it.

At will, he removes himself entirely from the situation and a spark of inspiration shorts across the wonder of this moment. He feels expansive, everything is possible and he remembers other times in his life when he has felt this deeply intuitive perception, relaxed and thoroughly optimistic. So much so, that he even feels slightly ‘out of this world’. Usually this level of inspiration led to the creation of a sculpture, but his pieces are not selling, there is little point in making more. He owes money now and has no work, this is a bad situation. He remembers a healer that he knows, who refers to his work as Shamanic.

“What is a Shaman?” Adam had once asked him.

“It is someone who takes something that is bad and turns it into something that is good. We are not dissimilar in this respect Adam.”

He remembers the ancient exercise which he often practices, T’ai Chi, and how one could sometimes feel a tremendous energy during the gentle moving meditation. Adam sees energy as being malleable, pliable. Recently, he has been in a stage of stagnation. In Chinese philosophy, this is seen as a state of negative Chi.

Expectation dances about the room, his eyes are still closed. He tries to relax even more and pictures the quiet night sky outside. A scene of planets comes to him, playing before his eyes, small balls of mass. They remind him of atoms, molecules, energy. He is curious to see where all of this is going, yet cannot deny the feeling of hope which now dwells within him, a hope that these ideas will lead onto a solution to his deep rooted restlessness.

What if I could shift my situation, turn it around, move or remove the facts of my predicament, like balls of energy. Is it possible? He wonders.

He is doing all of the right things, driven by a subconscious and primitive knowing. A certainty that he is here on earth for a reason and he will discover what that is and live it. It is 3am, Adam quietens his mind again, open to the realisations that will follow.

Payments, money, he thinks.

What if I had no payments to make, no direct debits, no debt? Would n’t that be good!

....but how would I live, what would I do?

They are good questions and beg serious answers. He will not let them go, Adam is driven and always has been. He recalls a phrase his maths teacher had once used:

“What if....?” It was designed to open the mind, provoke one to think differently. The potency of the memory is enough to bring on another expansive thought:

What if I were to do something entirely different in my life?

Adam dares to ask himself the question:

WHAT IS IT THAT YOU REALLY WANT IN YOUR LIFE? And he knows it instantly, timing is everything and this is exactly the right time to ask the question...and know the answer.

Time. I want time. I do not have time because it always has me. What is the main thing that consumes your time? Work.  To earn money. To pay for shelter, food and things that keep me healthy. Water to drink, to clean myself with, clothes to keep me warm. Fuel, to cook with, to warm my home and to run my van. Money to rent this studio apartment and for my workshop.

What if somehow you could provide all of these things for yourself, cut out all of your bills and monthly outgoings? It would not be easy in England. Perhaps in a warmer climate it would be? I would like to find out, it may take time, but I would like to see if I can do it. A Gap Year will not be enough though. I will need to take many years, perhaps even a decade - a Gap Life!

Adam’s realisation has been born. He knows it consciously now, he had always known it subconsciously, but now he has become fully aware of it. In time, he will see that this is a major part of his purpose on earth and the thought that there is indeed a reason for him living, other than to procreate, is a comforting one. So the solution nears, to simplify life, reduce anxieties. To do this, he will need to travel abroad. Travel, that is the indirect answer to the question he has asked himself:

What do you really want in your life?

Time. Then what will you do with that time? Travel.

Yes, I have a vision to travel...see the world and perhaps live in the wild.

It is a curious solution, but one, although complicated at first, will finally yield results which Adam will never regret. However, there are obstacles to cross first, a lack of money, it is where he had started from, two hours before, the problem has not gone away. No, but alongside it is now a dream, one that props up his problem, in order for him to skirt round and examine it. The spark he felt within has now become a flame of a dream, one that he knows he can make into a reality.

I can see it, the vision, but how can I make it into a reality? He asks himself.

Simply because I believes in it enough. Everything is energy, money is energy, he reminds himself.

What do I have that I can change into money?

Everything!  He thinks.

I can sell everything I own. My van, my tools, my possessions and even the goodwill of my workshop and the tonnes of driftwood there. I do not want things, I would like experiences! I can take the skills I have to create with me, for they lay in my heart, my soul and come out through my hands. I want to be free of these obligations I have, to raise so much money each week to live...it is too much. I will sell all that I own and make travel my home!

There is no stopping him now. He will do it and do it quickly, there will not be a moment to change his mind. The visionary spurs himself along:

Hesitate and you will give fear a chance to play its hand in the game of life and the vision of dreams, and I do not have room for that, he thinks.

The potential nomad goes to bed and when he awakes a few hours later, he feels utterly refreshed, free and inspired. The world seems like a different place when he pulls back the curtains that morning...a world full of opportunities. What he lacks in academic achievement, he makes up for with a creative resourcefulness, which will take him to places in life, both geographically and internally, beyond belief. Yet one day, he will believe it, as he would look back on the incredible journey which he will soon begin, a quest that will equate to as much acquisition of knowledge, as a Masters Degree may demand.  His second step to freedom is in motion, as Adam’s quest to travel the world as a journeyman, trading with his skills, light the coming weeks. The walker with joy moves at lightening speed to further fuel a catapulting start to his raw and hardcore adventures.

Chapter 9

Within two months, he has sold everything he owns, except for a few small boxes of personal items. Adam has not yet decided where he will go, Australia, Africa or South America, it does not really matter, he is sure he can find his way practically anywhere. He is not only extremely resourceful, but also a practical optimist, who has achieved this goal to recreate yet another lifestyle by one thing alone, the right thought, followed by the right thought and so on. The young traveller looks over the dates in his diary, to see how soon he can leave, and scribbles a note in the back:

Like attracts like. The most useful asset a person can have is the good thought. Have enough of them and you will be living a good life. It may take many lifetimes to build up enough credit in your karmic account, remove all traces of serious wrong doing, but when you do, the perpetual positive thoughts will accrue a staggering amount of interest.

Adam has invested wisely with his energy and intention in recent years and now his dividends will be paid. He has learnt that good things happen to good people, but so too do bad, or at least that is how they may first appear. It is just another type of circumstance, happening or energy. Energy that can be transformed into something good, the art is knowing how to do it. Adam does not really know, he just follows his feeling and somehow it seems to be enough. This is what he will continue to do on his quest, his journey to return to nature and indeed a more natural rhythm in life. In time he will discover how to self-sustainably provide for nearly all of his basic human needs. He has experienced an upbringing conducive to this way of life, his nomadic family have primed him well for the adventures that lay ahead and he has much to thank them for. Everything in his life has led to this point, it is a fact. He is free to investigate all of the things he is interested in, all of the things he wants to learn about and he will thoroughly apply himself in the pursuit.

When he walks into his local travel agents, Adam has still not decided where he will go. A colourful picture on the wall catches his eye, it is of a carnival in Brazil and the adventurer can imagine himself dancing there. Christmas approaches and flights may be scarce, but Adam leaves the travel agents with a six month return ticket to Salvador, Brazil. Anything could happen on his journey ahead and given the chance, it probably will. Adam opens his journal and begins to write.

To dream is to set the spirit free,

When we dare to dream, against all of the odds,

We give our soul a chance to dance,

To dance through the ups and downs,

For dreams can soon turn to nightmares.

Yet we can look back later and see that we chose,

Chose to take a chance and ask ourselves the   question:

What do you really want in your life?

Then we may just find the answer,

It is then that sometimes a dream may become a reality.

Adam is a dreamer, however, he is also a dream realiser. He is beginning to unplug himself from the life he knows, prepare for an almighty leap off the grid and out of the system. Yet even dreams may be laced with nightmares when one looks deeply enough into the fabric of life. What he has not realised is that the further he goes from all that is familiar to him, the further he will have to come back to that point. The path he has chosen will be an extraordinary journey and he must play out all of the scenarios that present themselves, if he is to fulfil his destiny or utmost potential in life. First, there are just a few more practical issues to attend to.

“I would like to cancel all of my direct debits please,” Adam particularly likes asking the bank clerk to do this. He is one step nearer to being off the grid and out of the rat race. Having sold his small driftwood business and the barn’s contents as a going concern, Adam hands in his notice on the flat he lives in. He pays off every penny he owes and will be leaving England with just £700, no credit cards or overdraft facility as a backup. In fact, he will not even look at his bank account for six months, life will be simple.

As the rush of Christmas calls in England, Adam sets off for Brazil. When his head goes back on the seat of the Salvador plane, he soaks up the thrill of being of ‘no fixed abode’ – a nomad. Naturally, those close to him have asked how long he will be gone for and he answers:

“One month, one year or maybe ten!”

Adam is open to the possibilities that may await him and like all good gapsters, he laps up the anticipation of the potential opportunities that may be born out of his courage to head off. Courage it takes, for he has laid himself down on the road that most extreme travellers do, to the chance happenings that may occur and the luck that he may surf the waves of trouble that are an equal aspect to one’s journey. Immediately, he begins to make notes about the path he treads, assuming that they will, as many travellers do, be of paramount importance one day.

The free and clear life has much space within it to fill with all that you choose. Be careful what you attract, for the gaps in the vast void that you have worked so diligently to create, may easily soon become an overcrowded space. Only by trying time out, pushing and stretching it, can you find out how best you may enjoy it.

He has never known such a luxury in his life to have seemingly unlimited amounts of time at his disposal. Of course, Adam has leisurely wandered some of the shores of England, looking for driftwood to build furniture from, but even that had quickly turned into work. Certainly at some point, he will need to do some too, the amount of money he is taking with him will be hard to survive on for six months, yet this is of no concern to him, he feels strongly that all he needs will present itself on the way.

“But what will happen if you run out of money?” some asked.

“I will earn some, perhaps I will teach English,” Adam said, not knowing quite how accurate his prediction would become. Though for now, his mind gently rolls over other things, he simply looks forward to the freshness of new horizons, for he knows that the sun sets on all of them.

Adam has booked a stay at a Healing Centre called Lothlorien, it sits in remote dusty sunlit mountains of Bahia. He will help out with some of the simple day to day tasks involved with the running of the place, in exchange he will receive accommodation and food, at a much reduced rate. The centre bases itself on Naturopathic values and it is surrounded by fruit and vegetable gardens, inspired by a large community in Scotland, called Findhorn.

The traveller helps in the gardens, the kitchen and with the housekeeping, it is a simple centre, the buildings are very much of a rustic construction. Some are of a quite primitive nature, which Adam feels very much at home with. Visitors there may have a sense of perhaps being in The Garden of Eden and in some parts of it, one may take an outside shower and then dry off in the warmth of the sun, lying naked in the garden. Waterfalls pour within walking distance from this pure paradise, places that the adventurer will often visit.

It is an ideal place to make the transition to his new life, this will not just be a few months of travelling, Adam’s journeys will take him to many lands. At first he feels lost at the centre, despite its paradisiacal nature. For a day or two, the new wanderer thinks he may have made a terrible mistake in giving up his workshop and his life in the South of England. He feels like a ship out at sea, being tossed about in unpredictable waters, unanchored, with nothing to tether to. To comfort himself, he jots a note in his journal:

To jump into the void is like free falling from a plane, you are pretty sure that your chute will open, yet you cannot be certain until it does so.

It will not take him long to realise that he has embarked on the greatest adventure of his life and that his chute will always open, just in time. Adam will become so good at travelling, so adept at moving from country to country with less and less that he will eventually discover that he is totally comfortable in the life that he has created for himself. His mother will be asked on occasions:

“What do your children do?” and she will answer:

“My first son is a Precision Engineer, my third son is an Estate Agent. My daughter, who is my fourth child is a Hairdresser. My second son is a Free Spirit.”

Of course, he will not only travel, he has many strings to his bow, and Adam will call upon them frequently. Having practiced T’ai Chi five times a week for three years, he is also now able to teach the art and hopes to do so on his journey. The years themselves are very little time at all, it could take a lifetime to become adept at the ancient form, if at all. However, Adam has taken to the graceful form fluidly, and is well capable of passing on the essence of the movements. Then of course there are the skills that he has learnt as a woodworker, and indeed too a natural gift he has as a healer. All in all, he will always find his way and in time Adam will also add new strings to his bow.

For now, the traveller must find a way to free his spirit, to aid the period of transition that he is in. Outside the little cob house where he stays, sits an upturned root of a tree, its trunk has been cut off and the remainder conjures up all sorts of ideas for Adam. He asks the people in the community if he may work on the bit of wood and they happily agree. After a few days, he has cleaned off all of the earth from it, removed the stringy parts and revealed eight short tentacle-like roots. He picks out a couple of knots in the wood and these become eyes on the piece that is slowly, like him, coming to life. When he has finished the sculpture, it sits proudly displaying its smooth surfaces, guarding the driveway to the healing centre, like a giant spider. The process is a therapy for Adam and by the time it is completed, he has worked out the hiccups of doubt from his mind that he had about jumping off the grid. Finally his mind, body and soul are beginning to catch up and recover from the arduous speed in which he has reinvented his identity. His spirit will have to find its own way and will come to him when it is good and ready…incapable of keeping up with the vast distance he has come from England.

On Christmas Day, 2000, Adam sits by one of the many cool waterfall pools, emptying his mind into the liquid that fills the dark abyss. He looks into its peace and thinks about the freedom it represents to him; its ability to be unhampered by most obstacles, flowing on unperturbed. Its sounds too, washing away busy thoughts from the mind.

It is the life to have while I can, exploring the wild, he thinks to himself.

Crystals lay freely on the many paths that Adam enjoys walking, leading through the once diamond mined mountains. He often goes with friends he has made at the community.  Many live there and others visit, taking part in courses that are run in this enchanting place. On afternoons off, he also walks the higher peaks of the mountains that cradle the little villages below. It is hot and he goes barefoot with only swimming trunks, a t-shirt, water and some of his new friends. One of them made money in computers and left his home in Germany to travel in Brazil, ten years from now, he will still be there. Raphael has met a girl and they have a baby together, but this day he is free, roaming the magnificent mountains. They are days of wonder that Adam will never forget, free of the concerns of business.

The air is tight as he makes his way back down the slopes at sunset, the sky cracks and the first drops of rain fall, refreshing the walker’s dusty bodies. Then there is more and Adam stands, arms stretched up and t-shirt off, in nature’s shower. The rain too feels warm, he is far from the types of shower that he knows at home, this one has no sides to it and runs in red muddy streams around his feet.

After a few weeks of being at the healing centre, one of the visitors approaches Adam and tells him how much she would like him to work at her school. She offers him a job in another part of Brazil, to teach Conversational English in a private school, a couple of hours away from Sao Paulo. He is assured that the school is in a quiet town and although he is a little taken back by the offer at first, Adam accepts the job, it will pay well. Two weeks later he makes his way by coach to his new post, it is a thirty three hour journey...

Continued in...

I Travel Light: The Man Who Walked Out of the World

Epilogue

After I Travel Light

More than a decade later, Adam had lived, worked or travelled in Brazil, France, Spain, India, England, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Greece and Italy...amongst other places. He was in the process of writing a book about his journey and had been doing so full-time for the best part of a year. It was called:

I Travel Light

The Man Who Walked Out of the World

The writer is struggling to put his words in order. Finally he says to a friend:

“Do you know, I wonder if perhaps I am Dyslexic?”

“Maybe you are, could you get tested?” his friend asks.

“Well I think I could, perhaps I can do some research into it, I’ve got to do something now, I am so tired of not knowing, an assessment might help me find ways to deal with the confusion I feel. I think I will begin by having a look on the internet.”

Adam’s initial research is startling, within one hour of looking, he has unearthed some basic truths about Dyslexia. As the weeks unfold, the wondering writer would learn that there is far more to the disability than he had first thought and that the term ‘Dyslexia’ is actually a very general one. Its origin was from the Greek, lexis, meaning ‘speech’. Very slow reading, muddled speech, confusion, disorientation and reduced motor functions are also all aspects of Dyslexia. Such as, problems with coordination, processing the sound of words and numbers and identifying and carrying out very simple sequences, for example, moving an object from one place to an other.

With his eyes open wide and on the edge of his seat, Adam takes some simple screening-tests, available free online, from non-profit making organisations and charities. The results shows that he has Dyslexic tendencies. The information explorer also learns that many people have the disability and reassuringly discovers that these include:

Richard Branson, Jamie Oliver, Ruby Wax, Johnny Depp, Steven Spielberg

...and amongst people who are no longer with us:

Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, John Lennon, Beethoven, Benjamin Franklin, Hans Christian Anderson, W. B. Yeats

...and the list went on.

The screening he has taken would not be enough, Adam realises that he may well have been over zealous in his attempts to get diagnosed, he would need to have a full assessment, by a reputable body, no one would accept his provisional online exam to be credible. So it came to pass, that just weeks before his fortieth birthday, Adam phones the groups and organisations who carry out the full tests. Just by speaking to them on the phone, he soon learns that there is a very good chance that he is in fact Dyslexic.

Next comes the discovery that an assessment will cost five hundred pounds, and that had Adam been assessed as a child, it would have been free. The examination would have then been carried out by an education authority. However, in the 1970s, observation of such matters was not as keenly pursued as it began to be toward the end of the 1980s and it seems as if Adam had missed the boat. It mattered not, he had been on other journeys which may not have resulted under different circumstances.

Adam considers his next step and decides that it should be to go and visit his current GP, as it happens, he is on holiday and so Adam goes along to see the locum who is covering for him. She has a kind face, one that may have seen more than seventy years on earth. Adam explains his concerns and asks if it is possible to be screened, tested or diagnosed for Dyslexia by an NHS professional.

“I have worked in paediatrics most of my life and I can tell you that if you have Dyslexia, it would have been picked up at school,” at least that is what he thought she had said, he could not quite understand what she was saying, for she mumbled, so Adam asked if she would explain what she meant.

“I have helped many children in schools with Dyslexia and that is where it would have been noticed if you had it.”

Fortunately the wanderer is prepared for this sort of dismissive response, Adam knows for a fact that many people are not actually diagnosed until they are adults or perhaps not even at all. In particular, he has recently come across a writer who had not been diagnosed until he was thirty eight years old, Adam is thirty nine and shares this information with her. These are the very reasons that he had never wanted the truth to rise to a conscious position in his life, knowing full well that if he tells someone about it and they do not believe him, he would find it difficult. Deep down he has been bracing himself for this and has somehow built enough inner strength and calm to acknowledge the reply.

“Did you know that Agatha Christie was Dyslexic?” he asks her.

“No, I didn’t, what did she say about it?”

“I am not sure yet, I could not read the essay she had written on the subject, I perhaps have the reading speed age of a ten year old, it would take me hours. I am very keen to, but I have come here instead to try and get tested.”

The doctor can now see that she will not get rid of Adam so easily and that she would have to take the issue seriously.

“Ok, I will write a letter for you to a clinical psychologist and see what he suggests,” as she spoke, she began jotting it down.

“You will go on the waiting list, it could take six to twelve months to hear from them.”

That is understandable, Adam thinks, the NHS are under unspeakable pressures, there are sure to be more important cases to attend to. However, he still feels that his own issues with information are important too and that he needs help with them. Years ago, when he had his bicycle shops, he did not know who to turn to - it is the same now. At that moment, he makes a promise to himself:

If I make enough money to get private health care, I shall buy some. These issues effect me detrimentally everyday, in routine activities, if that is not a health issue, then what is?

A few months later he would receive a letter from his GP, informing Adam that there are no provisions made for problems with literacy at this time. He would not waste time responding, explaining to his doctor that problems often extended way beyond the parameters of words and numbers, and into realms of living a healthy life, disrupted by severe disorientation and inability to hear words or sometimes even speak them. Besides, it is likely that Adam’s physical issues stretch far beyond Dyslexia anyway, and are rooted in the blows to his head he had. Yet by the time that letter came, the determined young man would already be on his way to dealing with some of the problems. Others he would perhaps need to address through private medicine at a later date.

That afternoon, Adam searches online for Dyslexia charities who may give a bursary for the assessment which he requires, there is no way he can afford all of the cost. He comes across the Dyslexia Foundation at Liverpool’s Albert Docks, they offer a bursary to those who make a successful application. He speaks to the assessor on the telephone and outlines the symptoms he has been experiencing for most of his life, and the friendly chap listening at the other end suggests that Adam completes a very simple bursary form and sends it straight back to them by email. Thankfully, it is a very simple form.

A week later, Adam receives a phone call from the foundation, informing him that his application has been successful, and they arrange a date for him to attend a meeting and full assessment. All Adam has to do now is organise his transport from Sussex, which on its own will require enormous effort and prove to be a very demanding experience. He is helped by the warm and friendly assessor, in the kind and empathic support he offers.

“Take your time sorting out your trains, I can work around you to a large extent, just let me know when you think you can come, and even then I can be flexible with the timing.” he says to Adam. It takes Adam seven hours to arrange the return journey, one that will require eight different trains and seven changes. He completes the planning over a period of five days, for this he can manage.

It is possible to stay in Liverpool overnight, to break up the journey, but this would not only be costly, but more disorientating for Adam. Over the years, he had learnt to travel spontaneously, but itineraries bother him, he finds them difficult to follow. It highlights the point that information often did not find its way to the part of his brain that it needs to. He could arrive, for example, in Delhi with no bag or agenda and intuitively find his way. For this trip, he is keen to sleep in a bed which he knows, and so as it is feasible to return the same day, he chooses to do so.

The morning of departure comes, it is an early start, but one Adam has planned for well, stacked up with homemade food and a good nights sleep, in anticipation of the long trip ahead. What he has not prepared for is the chap who has decided to end his life on this morning of September 8th, 2011, just a handful of miles up the track from where Adam would depart from.

The trains have ground to a halt, as hundreds of people stand about, phoning workplaces to tell them that they would not be in for some time. Adam takes a deep breath, the ten hour return journey and three hour meeting in Liverpool are about to be delayed considerably. The traveller is barely concerned about the unexpected change, it is inconvenient, yes, but far more so for the family and friends of the young man who has run in front of a train a few towns away, killing himself instantly. Adam had taken much longer journeys in Brazil on coaches and famously, a ninety nine hour return journey in India, he did not mind that this day may be stretched a little, or in reality, a lot.

The nomad arrives at the Albert Docks for his appointment just forty minutes late, having taken faster trains through a distressing London, something he had not wished to do. In the meeting room, there seem to be piles of papers to go through, as Adam sits with both anxiety and excitement about the assessment he is about to undergo, the first task is to put his name and address on a form. He knows what it is, but cannot think how to write it.

Probably made worse by my tiredness from the journey, he thinks to himself.

It transpires that few of the papers involve writing, there are some of course, paragraphs for him to copy, to see how well he deals with transcription, but many of the tests are of a nature which Adam is not expecting. Some involve coordination, pointing to things, others require listening skills. They are all very basic assessments, to read back numbers which are read to him, or to say letters of a word backwards, most of which Adam cannot come even close to completing successfully. Yet the real amazement comes when he is given a piece of paper with pictures on it, in rows across the paper. Simple images which remind him of being a primary school pupil. He has to name the little shapes that he sees, such as: ‘bus, train, tree, cat, dog...’ and so on, going across the rows and on to the next line. It takes him an intolerable amount of time to do so, sometimes pausing for four or five seconds to name them. Tears well up in his eyes, these are exactly the things he struggles with under pressure and how he feels when shopping, reading or writing. Somehow, something does not quite work as it could do.

Fortunately Adam is prepared for this, he would not have made the journey if he had not already felt that perhaps he was Dyslexic. People sometimes read a nearly finished product of his work, a page which he had corrected twenty or more so times and would often say, if he told them that he struggled to read and write, that they thought his writing was wonderful and that there was no way that Adam had a learning difficulty. The fact is, he does and always had done, yet he very rarely spoke of his confusion, disorientation and inability to understand what ‘£1.25’ meant, when a shop keeper waited for their money. He could produce it, but very slowly.

The tests go on and Adam is very comfortable with the warm and empathic nature of the man he has spoken to on the phone and arranged things with via email. Gradually he begins to open up and talk to him about his years of frustration, which he has successfully managed to hide. The conversations remind Adam of the times he had taken recreational drugs when he was much younger, and that he had done so as an escape from not being able to process his paperwork and read figures and words quickly enough to keep up with his business. Or be able to write a customer’s receipt or count the money they had paid him with.

“I walked out of my business in the end,” he told the assessor.

“Completely stoned, but totally aware that I had never been able to clearly process information, and that I had no chance of doing so until I got to the root of my problem! Of course, drugs did not help, short term, but eventually my journey has brought me to this point.” Adam explains.

“Eventually, I renounced every single possession I had, threw away and burned all of my paperwork and tried to walk out of the world, because I could not function or deal with everyday things. Of course, it was a good excuse to set off and travel again. I had no idea that Dyslexia not only meant problems with the written word, but also trouble understanding the spoken word, and what’s more, information,” the release is amazing, as Adam is speaking to someone trained and experienced in the subject, and is also Dyslexic himself, and able to shatter any of the common misconceptions about the disability.

There is no way Adam wants to play on the realisation which are now dawning on him, he wishes to learn about them and then move on with acceptance, knowing that the labelling of his symptoms help him very much to feel okay about them.  Yet now that the floodgates have been opened, there is no stopping the recollections which he has conveniently hidden, unable to previously deal with them. He tells the listener about the time before he started working with driftwood, and sculpting from the barn which he rented in the beautiful Sussex countryside.

“Look, I believe I was meant to do all of the things that I have done and that today’s timing is perfect! But I feel so upset. Do you know, I went back to college before I started sculpting? I wanted to do a degree in Complementary Medicine and was very interested in the subject, I believe I could have been a good practitioner....” Adam pauses.

“You still can if you want,” the assessor encourages.

“Sure, I realise that, I just feel so sad. I lasted two days at college. Sitting in the classroom felt like I was half submerged under water, I could not think clearly or understand hardly any of the simple information which was being taught. I could not read the board or write one sentence in less than one minute. I fell behind immediately and had no idea that I could have got help, instead, I left the course. Okay, I went on to travel for years, do many wonderful things and learn a wide range of new skills, yet I cannot believe that I am forty years old and am just discovering this now!” Adam pauses again, he knows that he is at another make or break moment in his life. He also sees a very firm reality. Firstly, he has had his five minutes of reflection, sadness, disappointment and does not want to dwell in this place much longer. Secondly, life is still there, not so much has changed, if he moves on now and chooses to start again, integrating everything he has ever done, he can still have an incredible life ahead, perhaps even more so, now that he has stared his darkest demons right in the face and decided to walk straight through them.

“Right, I am forty years old, it is time to get on again. I am still young enough!” He says with certainty.

“That’s the spirit!” Comes the encouraging response.

The assessment continues, as Adam reads short simple passages and astounds himself with the difficulty he has. He reads with a new found dignity, the power of his realisations will fuel him for the rest of his life.

At the end of the detailed assessment he asks for the result.

“Yes, you are Dyslexic,” the patient and deeply caring man says.

“We will send you a report as soon as possible, but don’t worry, we will make it easy to read. I will walk you back to your train if you like, I know you said you are worried about following the signs back to the station.” he offers.

Wow, Adam thinks.

This guy really does understand!

It is a new world that greets the nomadic writer, as he steps onto the express train to London, a world that moves at rapid speed around him, a world where buying milk or making tea would still be the greatest challenge, but one the wanderer knows that he has in some ways run away from. A slow and solid smile sets upon the face of the roamer, one which in truth, would never be far away. As if viewing all his great escapades at once, Adam now knows that there is no where else to be, or to go for the time being.

Now that he knows there are threads of his brain which seemingly want to do their own thing, he lets them get on with it. Perhaps one day, he could follow up and have detailed examinations to the contents of his skull itself, to try and identify exactly what it is which caused the malfunctions he experiences, it could even reveal a way of rectifying it, particularly if damage has occurred in at least one of the five times his head had been struck. Through his research, Adam has also learnt that Dyslexia itself can be brought on by trauma to the skull, and he has certainly had plenty of that.

Travelling has been a wonderful thing to do, Adam thinks to himself.

But who does not struggle with aspects of themselves or the world in some way, who does not feel overwhelmed with life from time to time? He finds the thought to be quite a comforting one really, triggering other ideas.

I am not alone in the race for survival, as humans come up against more and more ways of getting through or enjoying a day than there are hairs upon every head of every being that ever lived.

In the coming weeks, the wanderer feels fresh energy, force which he can take forward, transform and utilise, in any way he sees fit. This way will be to continue writing, re-writing and editing, until all of his tales are told.

Many of his true stories seem almost too good to be true, and coupled with his difficulties in expressing them, the up and coming writer finds a novel way to tell them. Quite literally, as a novel, written in 3rd person, literary non-fiction. In the year that follows, the Greenman works continuously to document his journeys, recalling images of them in his minds eye, as if a film is playing before him, he is able to record his many escapades.

When his work is done, he is also determined to write up the many notes he has made about the decades before he travelled light, forming:

Before I Travel Light

The Man Who Walked Out of the World

Gradually he has healed himself, prizing out splinters from his memory as he wrote, which until now, had still occasionally caught the surface of his soul.

END

*  *  *  *  *  *

Titles by A. Greenman on Kindle:

Also as paperbacks on Amazon

I Travel Light:

The Man Who Walked Out of the World

Before I Travel Light:

The Man Who Walked Out of the World

The Practical Guide to Wwoofing:

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms

A Greenman’s Short Stories

How to Take a Gap Life:

Sometimes a Gap Year is Just Not Enough!

The Wisdom of Travel

Words to Inspire

The Adventures of a Greenman:

Raw Travel Series:

(in chronological order)

Raw Travel Brazil

Raw Travel France

Raw Travel Spain

Raw Travel India

Raw Travel New Zealand

Raw Travel Wales

Raw Travel Eastern Europe

Raw Travel England

Raw Travel Crete

Raw Travel Italy

Raw Travel Europe (All European countries above)

Collectively, these parts form:

I Travel Light

The Man Who Walked Out of the World

A young adventurer asks himself: "What is it that you really want in your life?" The answer is ‘less stress, more time’. To have this he must do without many of the things that cost him so much money, work less and provide for his own basic human needs, self-sufficiently.

Realising that this will be easier to do in a warmer climate, he heads off on a Gap Year to Brazil, eventually building a tree house to live in. When his time is up, he sees that sometimes a gap year is just not enough, and that in order to complete his investigation, he must take a 'Gap Life'. The nomad winds himself through the weird and wonderful of the world. Living in a ruin in the mountains of Spain and becoming a fisherman in India, before getting caught up in a Tsunami. Eventually he renounces everything he owns, except for the clothes he stands in. He sets off on walkabout without even a bag or destination, wandering Eastern Europe. After a decade of living simply, he walks back into the world, to discover that he has gone so far, for so long, he know longer knows how to live in it.

A mammoth true story, bound to quench the eager thirsts of professional travellers and inspire up and coming 'gapsters' alike.

Praise for I Travel Light

(From someone who really knows what is good for you!)

“When I had something important to do,

I found myself reading this book instead - it is BRILLIANT!”

Dr. M. Longmore, author of the bestselling

‘Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine’

* * *

The Practical Guide to Wwoofing

Whilst Greenman made his way around the world, between 2000-10, he often volunteered with the organisation - W.W.O.O.F (World Wide Opportunities/ Willing Workers on Organic Farms) who offer a chance to learn about working with the earth and nature, whilst helping out in any one or more of the venues situated in 100 countries around the world, in exchange for food and accommodation and infinite possibilities to learn.

This is a simple A-Z type book about how to go about it, filled with anecdotes from the veteran wwoofer. When released in 2009, the guide was praised by the founder of Wwoof, Sue Coppard, who said it was a:

“A delightful and informative book, humanly and very accessibly written - it almost reads itself to you!”

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A Greenman’s Short Stories

Can Blind Girls Travel?

Kate cannot see yet she wants to travel the world and seeks a way of going on an epic adventure.

“I want to travel mum,” Kate calmly said, as her mother scraped burnt potatoes off the pan that she had forgotten was on the hob, whilst she was surfing the net. “Right dear, yes – everything is possible,” Kate’s mum Casey replied, trying to give the statement her full attention.

The Nature of London

Omar is tired of his daily commute and wants out of the fast life, to spend more days of peace and quiet, away from London.

Omar bought his 600 year old clay pot online, though it was actually coming from India. He had paid a handsome price for it because it had been authenticated by the local museum. It would have been used to grow a tomato plant in and this was exactly what he intended to do with it.

The Spell of the Word Brand

A short ironic tale about the iconic words that infiltrate our lives as 'word brands', a profound, funny and inspiring short story.

Brand Words come into our lives as quietly as the dawn creeps in. Some seem to remove the grace from our everyday communication, others bring just a little bit more. Words that have become iconic to those who use them. Also ironic because to the billions of people who do not know them, they make absolutely no difference at all.

Walking in the Clouds - a true story.

A weekend expedition to the 'Snowdonia National Park', Wales, comes close to disaster for adventurer, Adam.

The UK’s Met office has forecast heavy rain and fog, but on the morning that the group set off, it is dry and the thirteen men go on their adventure.

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How to Take a Gap Life:

Sometimes a Gap Year is Just Not Enough!

The forerunner and inspiration for:

I Travel Light-The Man Who Walked Out of the World

How to Take a Gap Life is a nomad's CV. Joseph took some time out, only sometimes a gap year is just not enough. 10 years later, he found he has actually taken a 'GAP LIFE'. He also finds that he is a perfectly qualified 'gapster' to fill a gap as a travel writer for a newspaper who is advertising. He is required to submit a CV about his extreme adventures around the globe and then further details about his wanderings in England, Wales, Scotland, France, Spain, Hungary, India, Brazil and New Zealand, amongst other places. A must read short story for all up and coming backpackers, nomads and gap year proposers.

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The Wisdom of Travel

Words to Inspire

Inspirational words and thoughts on travel. The Wisdom of Travel poetically explores the objections we may place on our own paths, instead of taking to the road at the right time. With reflection on what may happen to us internally, as we embark on gap years, gap lives and serious time out from the daily grind, escaping the rat-race.

Looking at the true nature of time and the nature of Travel itself. This is an enlightening little book, based on extreme journeyman, A. Greenman's epic adventures around the world over a period of ten years, as he wound his way through the wild and weird of England, Scotland, Wales, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary, Latvia, Ukraine, New Zealand, India and Brazil. Working as a healer, teacher, farm volunteer and woodworker. A contemplative short coffee break pocket book.

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About the Author

A. Greenman was born in Berkshire, England in 1971. He now lives in Sussex, where he continues to write, collect backpacks (empty) and future dreams (full).

In 2012, he attracted the attention of the BBC several times, when he was interviewed on UK radio. You can hear one of the broadcasts, in Brighton, (in two parts) by going to his Amazon Author Central page and playing the two videos which appear to the right.

OR WATCH ON YOU TUBE

at Greenmans Books

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BACK TO THE BEGINNING

Table of Contents

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Epilogue After I Travel Light

Titles by A. Greenman on Kindle:

About the Author