Market town Photograph

Stuart : Baptised in Darwins bathwater. There was a time I used to drink. Stuart was a regular in the pubs. Tied to the bar he struck me as a cross between Peter Ustinov and Quentin Crisp. Red wine non stop. Full of stories, desperate for a shoulder, an ear. I've no real recollection of when we first began to engage in our long sprawling conversations but we took to each others observations. For an hour or two a day the bar was no longer a lonley place. A few years past, my drinking stopped for good, Stuarts continued and we remained in touch. Life in a small Market town can be close quarters to those you want near if you so choose and a sea of annonymity if you keep your eyes down, phone of the hook and circle of friends small. I always loved to hear Stuarts memories, his travels, his lost loves, his brushes with both life and death. In a town where most everyone plays normal, plays the roles there for them to play out Stuart was touchstone of originality to me. For Stuart the very things that made him a social pariah, his eccentricities, his demeanour, his drinking and his choices made him confide in me, made us friends. Living alone in his late parents vast house on the outskirts of town sometimes drinking the pain, the boredom, the boredom of pain away during the day and retiring back to the house at night to dream of escape... always dreaming of escape. Through all our talks he's taught me one lesson above all : to love the small, precious moments with those close to you. It’s the one element of life that can never be regretted. For him, the warmth of remembering sustains the coldness of present days. Stuart has watched as so many loved ones have returned to the earth, he'd been there the long time his Mother was dying, we had that in common and yet he maintained an air of gentle understanding about the rhythm, pattern and tempo of mortality. “I was baptised in Darwin’s bathwater” he told me as we discussed the afterlife and his resolve about the natural cycle of life’s twists and turns. “Love is the eternal where we are not so in the physical.”

Photography:Black & White on Other

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:0.4 W x 0.4 H x 0.1 D in

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