Only the dead have seen the end of war

What I can say is that the light was improving when I left. The gods were playing with the dials and turning it up just a notch. The mountains in the background had a frankness about them and sat well among the helicopters and multi-armed agents of peace and state preparing like me to get the hell out of there. But I was thinking about the depressed faces I saw by the side of the road as we were driving there. I wasn't just thinking about myself. People who have known only war, I mean. The tormented. The angry. The fragmented. It was easy enough for me. I was at the end of my first phase and about to return home. But for those whose country I was leaving, it was misery as usual, just as it's ever been - life as a lingering, blistered lack. That said, I also found myself discussing the artist to a man with incredible eyes and elite skills also waiting to board the plane, the tail-fin of which was reflected in the large round window set like a clock among the cracking white paint of the small airport terminal building. Towards my right, a man sat alone in a ramshackle garden with a satellite-pointed laptop on his knee. Young soldiers squeezed their chins with fingers and thumbs and one old man tried to light an old heater but gave up in the end. Battle-hardened vehicles sat like warriors a few meters away, but I wouldn't be needing them for another while. It was cold - where I was standing was exposed to the winds from the mountains - and I was thinking about childhood. On the bus to the plane we were asked to disembark in groups of five and were rigorously searched. 'New threat,' said the fixer. I watched as the man I had been speaking to got through and safely boarded. Soon we were flying like a kite across snow-set mountains. Next we were skimming clouds through which mountains like lizards could be seen dominating the sand. When we reached the oil terminals it was like looking down on blotches of power. I changed planes. I was restless to get home. This I did hours later. Yes, I was back. The artist and the children were away. But I was back in the flat with the large red sofa. Later, as my amazement settled, I checked the artist's unopened emails - she had asked me to do this when I phoned from the airport. Remarkably, she had one from the gallery who had come to see her work. They were desperate to get in touch.

Peaking

I climb a mountain before lunch today. I saw it yesterday and decide to climb it today. It is impossible not to feel philosophical when climbing a mountain. The small thought is squashed by the large one, like my boots squelching through the bog, drowning the smallest of weeds. Slowly, I size up the mountain, my eyes following the contour like pencil on paper, before deciding on the approach. The first thing to enter my mind is physical perspective. (That old chestnut.) Forget the large and small thought, there is me, in the physical dimension, so small and short-lived, and there is the mountain, so vast and ancient. The second thing to strike me is the light wind sweeping across the valley, like air from the lungs of one of those painted cherubs in Italian paintings. (A fly, I can hear a fly. Sheep. A frog? My shirt is sticking to my back.) The third thing is the ease of imagination when no one is around. I see some magic mushrooms for example and some I notice have been nibbled at. I imagine a council of sheep having eaten them and during their sheepish high imagine they are fanatical religious leaders, consumed by bad trips and in the end eating each other to death. I move on. I can hear the mgnui call of a buzzard in the sky and the gurgle of an underground stream. Years ago I had to climb mountains and always the man in front, ordered to ensure I never stepped on a mine, showed these bare calves. They were like polished teak. Come to think of it, it is impossible not to measure one's fitness now to one's fitness then. The body is not the same but the mind, amazingly enough, is more in tune. (The fearlessness of youth is not dissimilar to an absence of sense.) I think about the artist, how well she is. She is away in a nearby town with her mother and our children, buying a winter coat for our son. From the summit I can see where they are, ten or so miles away. I pass two very small caves, like shrunken versions of the caves I knew in the war zone, and feel proud of my family. I stand perfectly still and stare at the view. Alone. But not alone. The only thing I can hear is the very distant hum, miles away, of cars travelling along the dual-carriageway. ('I should be working,' whispers the artist later.) It is bliss.