In a nutshell, Jim was in for \u2018child abuse images\u2019 \u2013 what is normally called child porn. There\u2019s a lot of it about \u2013 much more than you might think; a click of a button these days and there it is. He didn\u2019t create the images, thank God, he collected them, a lot of them, on his computer at work. It\u2019s surprising how often this is the case. Do such people want to get caught?<\/p>\n
He wanted to write a novel about his time in the Balkans \u2013 Jim had run help convoys to Europe. But he really needed to write about his own life, following on from the self-revelations he\u2019s experienced in the treatment programme he had recently been through. He\u2019d done very well on the programme, broken down, begun to put himself together again. I remember his confusion: How did this all happen? How did his life fall apart? He had only wanted to do some good in the world. He gestured towards the ceiling of the cell-block, three floors up, the metal railings, the rows of cell-doors, ornamented by the resonance of clanging metal, shouts and laughter; cell-blocks are noisy places in the middle of the day. He directed me towards some Christ he imagined hanging there. \u201cI\u2019ve begun to rediscover my religion.\u201d I remembered as a teenager walking into a Catholic church for the first time \u2013 watery light from an unstained window and a pallid giant Christ hanging in the gloom. I got the hell out of there. \u201cThe trouble with Christ \u2013 to me \u2013 is that we let him take on all the good in the world and leave ourselves with all the shit.\u201d Jim looked down at the table.<\/p>\n
Startling things began to be revealed in both our conversations and his writing. Brought up in Catholic Dublin, Jim\u2019s mother was alcoholic, his father useless (he didn\u2019t really figure in his stories). Jim was abused by a priest, on many occasions (no surprise there) and when he came to the house, which he did regularly, being the apple of his mother\u2019s eye, he\u2019d sip sherry and looking at little Jim, his genuflecting fingertip would stray to his lips in a subtle gesture of keeping shtum. I can imagine the little smile on his lips.<\/p>\n
Another story of fingers came through. Jim was left-handed. We all know that the left hand is the hand with which the devil writes so Jim was forced to use his right. He was \u2018beaten every day\u2019. The right hand writes the Word of God. You bless yourself with the right. Which hand, I wondered, did the priests use when they whacked him with their tawse, their strap, their ruler, their bamboo?<\/p>\n
When he came to jail, having survived a couple of suicide attempts, a pleasure he discovered was writing with his natural hand – the letter G, and other letters, over and over, swirls of ink across the page.\u00a0He loved to write to his wife in ballpoint, something he\u2019d avoided for years, preferring computer keyboards, unavailable to him now.<\/p>\n
He started on his novel, a war thriller based on his time running aid to the war zone. Forty visits he\u2019s made. It had all become unbearable in the end, he was doing good in desperation. \u201cI tried to get rid of it all with a massive dose of sex.\u201d Had affairs, got into pornography, and slid down a slippery slope to his hell.<\/p>\n
But one day I got a message, could I go and see Jim? We got a quiet room. \u201cI want to write about something I\u2019ve never written about: my brother Charlie\u2019s death when I was little.\u201d Jim, it appeared, had always been blamed for his little brother\u2019s death from measles. They shared a room and Jim had got over the disease before his brother caught it. Jim was terrified of that room. There was a dark cupboard. His brother had died in that room, and Jim would be locked in it. His mother beat him of course, but worse than that was the shame.<\/p>\n
Jim gave me a list of titles for his piece. \u201cWhich one would you choose?\u201d \u201cThe Guardian Angel\u201d I replied. It seemed so dramatic a turn-about: his little brother Charlie, who had haunted him all his life, was to be personified as his guardian, and an angel. Jim smiled. \u201cI\u2019m glad you said that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next time I saw him, Jim was elated. \u201cYou know the most incredible thing has happened. In the middle of writing this piece it came to me \u2013 maybe Charlie didn\u2019t even die of flu! That\u2019s just what I was always told. Maybe he died of cot-death \u2013 or whatever \u2013 cot-death. It could have been. Maybe it had nothing to do with me!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not Jim.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s to say? It\u2019s incredible. All my life I\u2019ve suffered from this guilt. And only know, being here, can I see how it all was, writing this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn free-hand, Jim!\u201d<\/p>\n
Graham Hartill 2011<\/span><\/p>\n (quotations used with permission)<\/span><\/p>\n Poet, workshop facilitator, lecturer. Born in 1952 in the English Midlands, Graham has lived in Wales most of his life since 1971. He studied at the Universities of Wales and Massachusetts, and has since given countless workshops and classes in the UK, USA and China. Co\u2013founder of LAPIDUS, the UK\u2013wide association for the promotion of creative writing in therapeutic context, Graham was also a Scottish Arts Council Writing Fellow 1990-92 and an Arts Council of Wales Writer\u2019s Bursary recipient 1993, 1999 and 2006. Selected Publications: Ruan Ji\u2019s Island<\/em> and (Tu Fu) in the Cities<\/em> (The Wellsweep Press, 1992); The Lives of the Saints<\/em> (RWC Press); Cennau\u2019s Bell<\/em> (The Collective Press, 2005); A Winged Head<\/em> (Parthian, 2007)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a nutshell, Jim was in for \u2018child abuse images\u2019 \u2013 what is normally called child porn. There\u2019s a lot of it about \u2013 much more than you might think; a click of a button these days and there it is. He didn\u2019t create the images, thank God, he collected them, a lot of them, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[29,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/issue-2-logo4.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-lR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2257,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions\/2257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}