Zed was Born to a poor fishing couple on the shores of a place so small it has no name, in a place open to sea and backed by mountains, a place he called home. Though formally uneducated, his love for learning and observing small things gave him his own vocabulary and the need to write things down.  A small town as it was did indeed have everything one needed including learned men and crafty women.  He did not understand the lure of the sea. Fishing he wasn’t so good at but his love was to sail out to sea drop sail and let the current take him while his mind flowed and was free to write and write his strange words and thoughts and sometimes his deeds.  These he would cover up with a thing he called po- etry…so that no one would find sense in these things for he was scared for the world to know his heart and mind.  The year 1756 was a strange time for a so called lazy dreamer… He preferred the term “Romantic”

It was one such fated journey through the currents that zed was inexplicably drawn into words of love and loss.  Thoughts of past and future were spinning in his mind.  As the fervour of his mind reached a pitch so he noticed had the sea.  He gazed in awed silence, feet abreast and the water he thought as rain was just flotsam spewing from the vortex…. It was in fact the largest whirlpool he had ever seen. He estimated “15 broad runners end to end all around her with room to clap.” He saw 100 ft. above him the top of the wall and the flat of his sea and realised that below him was the same blackness that rose in his heart. the world got darker and colder and Zed accepted this fate with outstretched arms and each page from his life’s book tore and flew in the torrent of wind and  water and things he dare not look at, one by one…his language, his words, his po etry, his own youth and hope for a life was swallowed by the darkest of noises and the coldest of feelings… he saw and felt naught…but black.

He awoke on a shore, alone damp and very scratchy from sand seaweed and some small aquatic life. Strange to see, though he did not notice, was his hat still perched atop his crown and a grin he had, for just right there were the lights of a small and warm looking town.  He remembered at first to quench his thirst for knowledge by looking straight to the stars. And as he gazed and he wondered for things had changed just enough to tell him he hadn’t gone that far. But  some stars were the same though lower than usual and in between them some stars were gone and different ones  were there and he thought to himself…”sidera mens eadim mutato” though the stars may change the mind remains the same” and he corrected himself as best he could and walked straight past the homes and into the wood.
“ I’d better get some sleep and take a load off my feet and I’m pretty sure I don’t smell so sweet and I’d like to look my best when I enter as a guest.” And he wrote all the day down in a book he had found nestled between his hands and a pen he found just in the round and upright bit of his hat.  He slept oh so soundly curled in a ball at the foot of a great tree 200 feet tall. And all the while he had a big grin and couldn’t believe his luck for what today, his way did bring. 

“Heave Ho away we go another day lost out to sea, away we float in a little old boat just my friends and me….” Is the first thing Zed heard booming from back down the beach. It woke his fancy as well as his eyes to quite an amazing surprise.  He saw a crowd well split in two with hundreds of faces he thought that he knew. He saw a big hut with a symbol on top and a blind man offering hope. And across the way stood a big doorway with parapets, guns a man with a monkey and billowing smoke. And the man with monkey he kind of spoke…”you all need to be safe eh? So why anchor yourself to this blind man’s faith?  I have cannons and I have guns we can acquire security and funds”

“But” the blind man cried.  “You do not care if its children out there and you only pick on the families with nothing to spare”

And both sides of this town erupted into a heated babble and then all at once broke out into song…

“Heave Ho away we go another day lost out to sea…”

The crowd dispersed all out of verse and the days grumble was out of the way and Zed came across to the blind man’s spot and thought it was better if seen he was not.

“Ah a stranger I sea” said the blind man… you must be the one starting with Zee?”

“Pleased to meet you my name is Zed” and only now did he here what the blind man had said.

Twas then he noticed the pet on his left it looked like a parrot but was all kind of…bent?  Such a weird kind of place like somewhere from a dream with its own time and pace, the roofs were thatched that was clearly seen but the rest looked like cakes and wonderful creams and the men and women all seemed the same but  everyone different like from a child hood game or something  only a dream could explain.

“I sea you can see that you’re in your mind and all these folks are from somewhere behind all your thoughts and imaginations as it were and this is a place where with all of you can confer.”

“How is it you see what it is I see you are blind and do not know me?”

Cos I am inside you that simple part of me that once was blind but now can begin to see” “so now Heave Ho and away you go speak with yourself and then go back out to sea. There you will think deeply of me and move on through to where you need to be” and with a wave of his hand dismissed poor confounded Zed who had to pinch himself quite hard to make sure he weren’t dead. And the last thing he heard which sounded absurd was the parrot squawk which squawked some quick words…“stars may change mind the same…squawk!”

Zed reached down into his sodden leg and quite naturally appeared some bread and realised he as he ate it all down that this is just bread for the mind that he had found  but happy he was at this thought and continue to chew  and continued to walk.

“Halt, who goes there?” came a cry from above and a big nose with some armoured gloves a moustache and spear was all he could see … “my you look quite funny from down here to me”

And quick as a flash a monkey did gash the side of his sodden leg and a gun shot was heard “I guess that’s the word” and a pain went through to his head.

And a week or two he lay up in bed with dreams of his mother swirling his head…”you need to stand on your own wooden leg” over and over and over again…

… And in whispers  away and forth he would sway

 And in and out of darkness he lay,

No future possible but a sirens call away

 And your spirit by this current is taken to lay

And your heart a home it  may never find

 But your heart will be true and i will give you a mind

That can see enough to never say goodbye

……… Zed slept for a very long time!

One day he woke and found himself very happy to still be inside his own mind.

He spent that day wandering the woods and the visiting the glens.  He sat by an apple tree and dipped his leg in the cool sparkle of water. He wrote and he sang for things appeared in his hands and songs were now in his heart and with his new eyes he could easily spy the flowing ebbs and rippling tides of words flying freely around like birds. And every now and then one would land and a song it would lend and zed would flow away the days dreaming of naught and at nothing would stare…or seemingly so.

Then through the night he felt it alright to sit on the beach, sit with his friends and together they’d sing of romance and dreams and broken themes and put them together anew and he noticed, though from afar how tiny under the stars we all really are and he realised that night that his innocence was like the very old light from a way distant star, “it looks so bright, but is really just a memory of somewhere far” he thought and wrote just before the bed tolls stroke.  And he slept long and calm in his imaginations arms and he dreamed of his shinning young face and the places it took him through the roots of his land all while holding dear his mother’s hand.  And he thought..

”when I’m very old and forget what it’s like to be told and I’m stubborn and sharp as a mule, I’ll dream of holding my mother’s hand and remember the freckled face kid that I still really am”

Once again in the morning awoken with all the heave ho’ing, Zed got up and did think of going, to where and what? he did not know but he took with him some parts of his ego.  Dear faithful Betsy and the clown known as Mimo.  They silently backed him with themes from his dreams and carried his load with a gentler commode. Sometimes they play or just simply sit and other times they do the “cheek in tongue” bit. But as always they remain just that a part of his imaginings a part kept at his back they’re always there to even the score between what’s real and what’s really sore.

And together they popped into their boat called hope and set sail out across the oceans and seas of humanity to always strive to always try as they now know they can never say goodbye. Sometimes we all get a little lost out to sea and sometimes it can be a good thing.