Unlocked

Sometimes, just sometimes, an unlocking happens. The cautious creaking doors lumber open and a chink of sun spreads to a glorious bathing of light.

When it happens, no matter what you’re doing or where you are, the trick is to drop everything and lie down in the unexpected warmth. Stop battling frantically to order the world. Recover that feeling. Connect through the years to those other brief moments of uncensored joy. Like the time in the Glastonbury field, with the fluffy clouds and the music, and the improbable wicker soundsystem. When you lay back on the impossibly vibrant grass with a drifting ribbon-woman dancing about your head, and absorbed. Sights, sounds and smells supporting you in an unexpected gift of a moment.

Sometimes people tell you to close your eyes and imagine a time when you were happy. It's the meadow you think of, and it never works. You know the sky was blue, the grass was green, the sun was warm. You know you felt euphoria. But all you can see is CLICHÉ CLICHÉ CLICHÉ and all you can think is that even if you were lying in a topaz-skied emerald-carpeted field right NOW you would probably be complaining about an itchy back, a lack of sunglasses or just a general fidgetiness. And anyway, you’re not. You’re in some boring old room and you feel like shit.

But just occasionally, there is the click of metal against metal, and you are let out. Just for a bit. You never know when it’ll come, or why. You don’t own the key. You don’t even know who your gaolers are, and if you’re honest you rather like it in here.

The walls were built with carefully-laid slabs of control and stability, by you. You’re proud of them. That one over there is particularly colourful. See the long green brick in the middle? That’s the time you lost your mind and got it back. The big pile of golden ones? That’s a college degree. The purple ones are new jobs, skilfully wrought from carefully-conducted job interviews, where you were just the right blend of intelligent, courteous and only slightly mad. Each one bought you a little more time, bolting strength over the lines of a previous cracked occupation.

There is a shimmering purple layer at the top over there - can you see it? That is a loft conversion. That was hard. It is high up and made you sweat. You nearly fell out a few times. But look, it is solid. It is keeping you in.

And then there are the pink ones. They are dotted about all over the place. They are time management, and they are porous. Sometimes the light shines through their tiny little holes. They are the weak spots. They are timetables, scheduling impossible activities into every available hour. If you put your ear against them, you can hear the laughter which lives in the gaps and filters the light. There is a giggle for every time you sat down and read a book when you were supposed to be writing. A chuckle for each stolen hour with the internet and a box of chocolates. And a guffaw for evenings spent watching Big Brother instead of sorting assorted nuts, screws and bolts into tiny compartments in saved-for-the-purpose chocolate boxes.

You need these walls.

Sometimes the mayhem leaks in and makes you ill. You have to run around with home-made gaffer tape of promises, plans and soup.

But then...

You might be on a dance floor, finding habitual stiffness replaced - through a brief inexplicable window - with a fantastic fluidity of limb. Or maybe you hear a ridiculous joke, suspend all cynicism and laugh like a drain. Perhaps you read someone else's words and find yourself spilling reciprocal verbiage onto a page, faster than your fingers can type.

Whatever. The key is turned, the door opens and the chaos outside envelops you, welcomes you, swallows you up.

You quite like it when that happens.