Peter - Chapter 3:

Peter - Chapter 3:
Leaping over bracken and fallen trees Peter ran towards his swinging freind whose face was already blueing as his feet involuntarily kicked out. Grabbing him round the pelvis Peter took Liptons weight steering his feet back to the log stump from which he had recently stepped from towards his intended end. Personal hygiene had clearly gone out of the window for Lipton as the smell of sweat and stale urine met Peters face. Once stood on the log Peter was able to pull his opinel pen knife from his pocket and cut through the noose allowing air to flood back into Liptons hungry lungs.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Peter angrily questioned his suicidal mate.
Unable to summon a reply Lipton stepped, half fell from the log and lay on the ground, panting as life and the realisation his suicide attempt had failed re entered him. Gradually as his blue face travelled through a bruised rainbow from blue, through reds, to grey and finally white Peters angry tirade and birdsong were the only sound.
"How the fuck did you come to this? Where's Archer? How long did you think your dogs would have had to wait unfed, unwatered till someone let them out? They could have died. And who did you expect to have the joy of finding your swinging corpse, strange fruit for some kids, they'd be scarred for life, or some old lady, eh? Ticker just waiting for a final shock like that to tip her off into eternal darkness. Why didn't you call me? Eh? Nothing can be that bad. I mean we walked like gods, we slayed a demon, we danced with Jesse, we climbed buildings where others feared to tread, walked for miles beneath the earth, met archangels, drank wine with JC. We saved mankind for fucks sake and here I find you, about to leap in to endless night! I'm disappointed, let down, pissed off."
"Just shut the fuck up, alright?" Lipton had recovered enough to staunch the ear bashing.
They sat in silence, both lost in their own thoughts, dew soaking their jeans.
After some fifteen minutes Peter kicked Liptons leg, "I've got some beers in the van, some gear if you fancy a toot. I mean if you're going to kill yourself a last bit of smack isn't going to make sod all difference, eh?"
Grudgingly, silently, head still bowed, Lipton nodded. "How the fuck did you find me? My choice, you know. Took all night to gather me courage then you turn up like fucking batman."
"Just passing through, come on."

Sat in the back of Peters van from the storage shelves clustered where van side met roof, Peter produced two cans of skol super strength lager. As both pulled back ring pulls, the release of carbon dioxide pressure mirrored their feelings.
"So, mate. What led up to that?"
Lipton looked lost in thought to Peter, Lipton felt numb, dead, as though his actions had been successful. Reluctant to open up and having no words, tears began to fall. Peter moved towards his shaman friends and hugged him as tight as his arms could. Running his fingers through liptons damp and greasy hair, his fingers rubbed scalp as both fell into tears.
"I've had no money for months now. I got a letter for an Atos appointment, I missed the first one but was told my benefits would be stopped. Second appointment came on a bright sunny morning. I felt good that day. My mind was more stable than it had been for months. By their judgement I wasn't mad enough. I've been seeing psychiatrists all my life, sectioned on seven different occasions over the years. And just as luck would have it, the planets in my head came in to alignment and for one day only I felt sane as any man. I've been trying to get an appeal together but my doctor, the one I usually see is on a years sabbatical. This young Latvian woman who's replaced him just looked at my drug history and refuses to write a letter to confirm I am unfit for work."
Having known Lipton years, Peter had seen Lipton in many states of mind. Both were extreme manic depressives. Lipton was schizotypal. He heard voices. Once under their spell he believed himself a mathematical genius. His manic States could last days, weeks at times. During these episodes he would work on sheets of A1, plotting out formulas, drawing out geometrical parabolaoid lines representing the orbits of the solar system planets. These mathematical geometric sheets would run in to their hundreds as Liptons mind flashed with inspiration after inspiration. His mind felt on fire, his body needed no sleep. Often they began making some sort of sense, but as his manic condition grew over the sleepless days and nights, logic would recede leaving a chaotic jumble. Ultimately, either in exhaustion or through the intervention of a visitor, lipton would recognise the drift in to psychosis. Usually it was here that self medication began. Most manic depressives developed substance issues. Drug or alcohol problems. He would try numb his brain, shut down the pounding river of ceaseless thought. Often its power would take a dangerous amount of self medication to resolve. He'd then fall into deep sleeps. For days he'd be gone. These stretched out into dark lakes of depression. Realisation his genius was flawed invariably disrupted his sense of self, his sense of reality. From here followed the addictions. The daily grind of heroin or alcohol. Anything to keep his mind in check.
Peters bipolar condition worked in shorter, sharper runs. One day could see him balanced, steady, readily functional in society. But like the weather he could wake to days where all was a storm. Chaotic thought patterns of random vicious certainties. Delusions. Sometimes of grandeur, sometimes of uselessness. When on his manic he produced great work. His writing could follow intriguing loops, subjects deconstructed, viewed from unique angles. Complex philosophies on any topic be it political or art theory. His talent as a designer would develope further his system of objects. Rather than address issues of comfort or material innovation, Peters work came from a more art like theory. Narratives of losing ones sense of scale whilst retaining a sense of proportion. Just as other art forms could tackle the full spectrum of the human condition, so too peters work addressed poverty, class, the super natural. Whilst the bulk of furniture was designed looking for fresh kinds of beauty, functionality or comfort, peter often made work to look as ugly as the realities of a disturbed mind. Where others produced domesticated animals, groomed and bred for beauty, peter created domestic monsters, uncastrated beasts of the living room. Sometimes violent intruders to the living room, masked rapists bursting in wielding knives, raping, looting and trashing the interior.
His work met with little broad success. Art theorists and other artists could see these weren't failed attempts at a new beauty. Often the opposite. Architectural pieces not to decorate stately homes but reflecting the cars burnt out, the graffitied flyovers, the derelict factories, the abandoned trash of modern day life. The horror and animal nature of man. These were his clients. A small body who grasped this.
Critics and makers usually had a myopic view of what furniture could be. Attempts to create beauty, successful functionalism, innovation in stretching materials to new limits, but ultimately comfort, reassurance, smug domesticity. Peters wild monsters when measured by the conformist makers of contemporary furniture missed the point. So steeped in their drive for homogeneous, self congratulatory, success. A winners furniture. Peters desire to use furniture to describe the under belly of the beast in man was outside their understanding.
His photography was an ongoing project. Drinking in the streets underfoot with his eyes Peter would photograph the random beauty. The chance patterns of dropped debris of modern life. Never a landscape, seldom a human graced his work. But a spread of the flat psychosis, the beauty only the schizotypal is party to.
Though both were diagnosed as bipolar, peter and Lipton shared few symptoms. Both could drift in to delusional states, conditions where their belief created new realities that clashed with the consensus. Lipton heard voices. Peter saw conspiracy. Lipton had further, visual hallucinations. Peter dealt with demons, creatures from parallel dimensions that burst through into our universe. Together their fantasies occasionally joined up, both succumbing to a similar delusion. If simultaneously on a manic their combined madness could lead to adventures of vast proportion. Both, too, were prone to self medication. Combatting the daily onslaught of demonic paranoia was made tolerable by softening reality. Both had been seen under the mental health umbrella. Their drug use recognised as self medication, a reaction to their fluctuating mental health. Sadly for Peter, having sought medical help for his addictions, his mental health was now viewed through drug services lens, considered a result of his drug use. Despite going long periods of abstinence, two, three years at a time, Peters mental health would initially improve once any withdrawals was completed but then deteriorate rapidly into periods of psychosis as his mind was no longer restrained. He had no faith in the doctors drugs. Ssris were not fully understood and seldom worked on the clinically depressed. Lithium so fraught with side effects both Peter and Lipton opted to live as God made them. Manic depressives with delusional periods. Bipolar, as a word, failed to capture the essence of the condition.
Sadly, the reverse was if a depressive mood caught them both simultaneously, it was really much better that the keep away from each other. The darkness compounded, multiplied as both stepped in to a nihilistic world view. They could become destructive, moody, dangerous to others and highly dangerous to themselves. A cynicism to life would grow, every bit as powerful as the linked mania their more obsessive periods enjoyed.

Peter was aware they sat atop a razors edge. Either liptons despair would affect Peter or Peters mood would lift Lipton. He also knew liptons tale was bullshit. Well, true but not the reason for his trying to take his life. He'd known Lipton disappear off for months in to the wilderness, feeding off game and fish, building his own shelters, gone for months out there. He'd known Lipton deal drugs; from heroin, to ketamine, from hash to MDMA. Hed known him scrap cars and metal, seeing brass where others saw junk. Lipton didn't need the state to get by. This Atos business was a terrible government crime and the reason many had killed themselves, yet, somehow, it didn't ring true for Lipton. He'd allow him the excuse for a while though, till he was ready to come clean. In the meanwhile they needed a plan.
Three hill forts in Shropshire form a line stretching from above Aston on Clun down to Bury Ditches, the most touristy of the three. Peter had planned to return to them one day having been up them all though never in succession. The line they formed pointed down towards Clun, once the home of British Witch craft. Being no more than 90 minutes drive away, Peter suggested he show Lipton the three forts. He kept the final curiosity from Lipton. In his fragile state it may well be too much. Over a six month period a suicide epedemic had sprung up. First two teenage goth lovers had hanged themselves a week apart, both choosing woodland outside of Clun. Since then during the next six months a further twelve youths, mostly from the same school had also took their lives. Peter had no plan. Only to climb the three hill forts over three days, then head for Clun. Perhaps the reasons for liptons actions could be found here. Or perhaps they would step into something much deeper. Having lived in the area peter knew many still living in this quiet part of the country. It seemed as good a plan as any.


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