Out of the Woods

ISBN: 978-1-84991-689-9
Published: 2011
Pages: 121
Key Themes: Mental Health, Psychosis, Spirituality, Novel

Description

It is probably the inner expectations we have for ourselves, and I suppose others, that create minds which generally only work properly in the real world. But what about if we do not reach our great expectations? What about if we drift in and out of psychosis? Do the romantic notions of growing up still come to fruition? For me it is when you creatively communicate something that imagination becomes anything other than madness, if you know what I mean.

This book is a real investigation of our psychoses- although it is great moment to know that imagination can become real, can it become too real? Reliving it certainly brought out a Christian perspective in my third novel; Out of the Woods. This is a departure from my usual style heavily influenced and abetted by my wife. Written in first person is basically our experience: the story of two figures searching for a protagonist in their past to retain their sanity. The protagonist takes the form of a fighter pilot, long since dead but not easily forgotten.

About the Author

Born in Chigwell Row in 1970 Matthew left Chigwell School in 1988 with three A-levels in arts subjects and worked in Reading for a year, travelling Europe and the West Country that summer. He always kept in touch with pupils from the school and even met them at the University of Swansea. He prematurely returned home and after a series of jobs in London ended up snowed in at the Essex coast and was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. Things went a little slower after he had returned to give something back to Epping Forest and he spent the next few years restoring planes at North Weald airfield and studying electronics, basically taking it easy and travelling the West Country in a camper van when possible, before achieving a degree in Aerospace systems at the University of Hertfordshire in the late 90’s. He then worked for Batemans as a repair technician and finally began his own business as a watch repairer in 2009. He met his wife Lorraine, a musician in 2002 (who was also from Chigwell Row). With their daughter arriving in 2005, family became the main influence in novel writing. He was finally given the opportunity to give something back to the locality when he was published by Chipmunka in 2005, 2007 and 2011 and writing is now a mainstay of working life.

Book Extract

True Truant of Memory

Fantasy is a part of imagination. Imagination is always encouraged. Fantasy is made up of perspective and is in turn made up of memory context. Fantasy is a shell tossed in the sea of imagination without the grounding of reality:

A handful of shells
Took fright to the sea
They tossed, they turned
They betwixt, they betweened
Then a huge wave burst
Upon their beings
So high they were caste
Soon landing on deck
In a flurry, they rested
The vessel at anchor

Fantasy overrules reality when brought into play to control anxiety. It takes control when there is a fear of losing what you are or what makes up your world generated by the past existing within the present. Normally the process of memory generation is selective: the ego managing what is selected to introduce well-being into each given scenario, giving a reliable sense of oneself. However bad memories and imagination, remaining in the subconscious, stimulated by anxiety often leads to misinterpretation of perspective. The devil written backwards – lived. Someone who did live but does not anymore. That was how life had become, where layer upon layer of negativity spewed to reveal the side of life that was not what people wanted to hear on a Sunday afternoon. But of value? Yes, I suppose. For those desperate to relate their own anguish in some way is useful for others at a similar point and for those who desired the study of thought. It comes back to conformity. Some may say what is uncomfortable. Some may wear Goth cloth; others abuse alcohol in a trendy bar in the city. We observed and did pretty much all we could to join the interceders. Until one day, anti success. A few too many pills and I met him on a hospital bed in A and E. Choking on Charcoal preparation and not quite able to get perspective on the room I was in, a man wheeling a hospital trolley wearing an overall came up to me. He offered me a cup of tea and looked kindly. What are you doing here? He continued to tell ways that I would be more successful in doing what I had wanted to do. He continued on his way. Psychosis is a negative term. Medics are only caused to use such a term in negative circumstance. Medic’s only deal with ill health, an intrigue of negative webbing of assumption when out of control may trip into the bizarre. Fear sets in when control is lost. I was psychotic about a cat owner once and the next day, I found a mask of a cat next to my outside bin. The unexplainable causes us to panic. The unexplainable running away with itself may be an example of the devil in his best party dress.