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eBook Category: General Nonfiction/Self Improvement
eBook Description: Robin Marchesi's brilliant autobiographical book is at once a fine work of literature, and an uplifting if grim inspirational work to encourage those grappling with drug addiction. In any case, it is fascinating reading for the poetically minded in general. Mr. Marchesi's journal intermingles equally powerful threads of pure poetry and stream of consciousness prose. In Part I (Rosales), Mr. Marchesi vividly and richly captures the true story of his travels across Europe in 1979 and the epiphany of his incarceration in the Spanish Foreign Legion prison at Ceuta. In Part 2 (Mission) he recounts his journey to San Francisco around 1999 to rescue a young protege who was badly hooked on junk. Mr. Marchesi echoes something of the dark intensity of the earlier Beat Generation (a touch of Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, and City Lights) as well as his own 1960s generation. More importantly, he convincingly and artistically captures the timelessness of what happens when human beings and dangerous substances mix in bad ways. Despite moments of despair, he never loses sight of his optimism.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Clocktower Books, 2000
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2005

2 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [902 KB], eReader (PDB) [126 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [118 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [108 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [122 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [179 KB], hiebook (KML) [335 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [189 KB], iSilo (PDB) [96 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [120 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [150 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [162 KB]
Words: 32897
Reading time: 93-131 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The first, composed 1979 and entitled Los Rosales, charts a six week period when I had the opportunity to explore my life and addictions, under unique circumstances. It began in Amsterdam, a haven of druggies and hippies in the 70's, and it follows my journey to Ceuta, where I got some space in hell, to take a good look at where I was and what I'd become. I made no allowance for an audience. I wrote to save my sanity, to try and make some sense of the depths to which I'd plunged. When I returned to London my manuscript like myself was not taken very seriously. I buried my journal in an old suitcase but never lost faith in its content. I like to think it has matured like a good wine, or grown strong roots in the dark of the earth. It lives and breathes in the year 2000 touching themes at the heart of the world today, as much as the world in which it was created.

And philosophic themes, as well as themes that relate to all personal families, friends and lovers. The journals are multi layered and I've retained much of their original form, moving between prose and poetry to illustrate the way a mind, swiftly and silently dances along to its internal movie.

I was given no commission for these undertakings nor were there any preconceptions in their composition. They fit together through an accident of time and space rather than any intentional force. It is they, not I, who direct this narrative In 1999 I wrote Mission. The circumstances were very different from those portrayed in Los Rosales. I was not lurching and stumbling through my days. I went to Northern California, older and no longer a junkie. I was concerned with another person's heroin addiction, on another continent. I was the victim rather than the perpetrator and there was a poetic justice in my position. On reflection, Mission paid a karmic debt I incurred while writing Los Rosales and only when I returned to England and began working on the journal, did I see the connection and continuity they gave each other.

The stories speak with their own voice, loud and clear. The pivotal theme of heroin addiction is a starting point for a much larger canvas that explores many timeless social

We think that we manipulate events, but are we not manipulated by events?

We think we go to meet that which we experience, but that which we experience may come to meet us.

It is perhaps an illusion that we 'live':

We are 'lived'."

Wei Wu Wei: Finger Pointing at the Moon, 1958.

The further out the point the easier to write.

Tired, hungry, full of apprehensions, nervous tensions.

This city has always been good to me. It treats me as a guest and puts me in warm American Hotels. I feel privileged here always have done.

A writer writing words,

Presented with the necessary environment to write.

Thank you.

Very obliged for the opportunity.

I feel filled with madness; yet within runs some strangely hypnotic logic that enhances an already believable magic,

Making life

Appear tragic.

I am what I am.

I do what I do.

Boo Hoo to you too..

For being in misery woe.

"Cos minds not comfortable

Not knowing

Directions.

Awful backache

Living a nostalgia

No time to contemplate,

"Cept now,

In this city--Good to me.

Every time I arrive, this city gives all its got and I end up a rich man.

Rich with madness and misfortune.

Re/veiled with starlight, aching for the answers within life, presented with the tools of my trade in a city cushioned with flowers, canals, heroin, hotels that play T.V./Radio and serve late meals.

I write in between the balcony and dawn, aching, poor yet rich in mystery.

Surrounded by domes, diamonds, drugs, dreams and noise.

City so good to me.

A turning point place.

Sky bleeds grey boats, wisps of gaseous air.

Evening shed a storm.

I sneeze in recollection.

Rain bowed splash of night light.

Aching back, from the heroin come down. How after eighteen months rehabilitation did I allowed myself to slip back into 'smack' again? Now I'm in no mans land. Not knowing which way to go. Caught between a pretence of being cured, or picking up the pieces of what went before. Or maybe just leaving it all behind, Oxford, London, England. Let the writing write me.

At the back of the Station here in Amsterdam, past several tram lines and two canals, they have a street like Gerrard Street in London. In seedy neon lit windows, curvaceous girls display their sexual innuendoes while their pimps sell smack, to those not interested in female knickers. Last time I was here I got ripped off in an alley way, nearby this street (or rather a strasse). I returned to a similar room to this one, and looked dolefully at the package of cat litter. On this street they rip you off. I resist temptation. Sun fades and bows to cloud shadow. The sound of trams.

I reflect on my flat mate in Oxford. Francis, the young earnest art student who believes so sincerely in the 'Rehab' philosophy.

How he hated it when I compared him to Van Gogh.

Perhaps he thought his Art wasn't worth an ear.

Tick Tock

Ticking clock.

Turning point place

Space to find a direction.

Will I hang on or will I crack up further and risk a rip off on the street?

Score...

Maybe I should go to New York.

I could go to Ibiza, London, Oxford, Rome,

Or stay here

In the rich city. Good to me.

A turning point place

Laced with diamonds.