Page #15 & 16 of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary

“Oh yea I heard of you, e. There was some kind of feud between your wife and her family e! Anyway, I’ll go now. I’ll tell Golly I saw you, maybe we go for a drink or a smoke after the game.”
The P.S.M was afraid. His mind meandered back through the past and speeded forward to an uncertain future. His stable, safe life was threatened from all sides by the past and the present and the shape of things to come, which were no longer geometric, nor measured by such as quarter-acre or 5.15 train. He wanted to run back to a past which had already passed. His thoughts were swimming in a sea of uncertainty, like some Spinozarian nightmare. The fish-bowl of reality he had lived in had smashed open and the big fish he was now became a small fish thrown into a large, unknown and frightening ocean, where nothing was familiar or certain – if only he’d gone to work! Going to the pub, the allusion to smoking dope, the mention of family fights, the magnetic pull of his heroes out there on the pitch – The Malone felt like he was being sucked into the vortex of emptiness, away from his Maureen, away from Colleen and Sean and Tahana the twins, and the baby Rua, away from New Lynn and the fenced-in section, away from it all – he was being sucked out of it, out of this world, out of T.V. and Radio, out of the weekly paycheck, out of it he was moving out of his woman’s mind and heart, out of his woman’s body, he was losing contact, he was heading skywards, he was taking off from the point of contact between Rangi and Papa – the two elements. When he was inside his woman he was secure, he belonged to earth, when he was inside his office or his living room, or his train or his supermarket he belonged to society, when he was – he was! But he began to feel he wasn’t, his bohemian daze was returning. He was the wild wolf on the outskirts of town, he was Rubesahl, the dark ghost of the mist and mountain, he was the renegade, the degenerate, the uncentred point of the turning world and spinning fast and off-centre, he was Rangi, porangi, haurangi, sky father, sky fool, he was blue and endless, grey and formless, black and eternal – he was heading out, towards nothing, away from everything. The Malone was alone. Almost man alone, he struggled. He tried to focus – “what about the time!” But he was out of it. There was no more time, no more place, no more –
“All this – what? Am I going back or am I staying. Am I at cricket match or am I going.”


"What a catch, and that’s the end of Hendrix!”
“Yes Dennis, a great take at second slip by the skipper Jeremy Coney and he’ll be a happy man. I feel that after a firey start Hendrix just slipped back a little, a few overs without scoring, being pinned down by Chatfield. And then finally getting down to what may be termed the “action end”, where Hadlee is bowling. He hit one four after not really adjusting to the change of pace, and the very next ball caught the edge, the ball went flying at a cracking pace, but Coney’s got a good pair of hands and there we are – Hendrix walks slowly to the pavilion.”
“Well, John, it’s a funny old game. I thought Jimi was looking great when he came out to bat. He, as you say, played a couple of delightful scoring shots and, well I can only really re-iterate my absolute admiration for Ewen Chatfield. I know Richard Hadlee took the wicket, I know Richard Hadlee had the penetration but, and I can’t stress this too often, it was Chatfield who tied Hendrix down, got him frustrated – Hendrix is a player who likes to get on with the game – and Chatfield primed him for Hadlee.”
“Well, we could go on talking about who primed who for the rest of our lives, Dennis. The fact is he two Out of It openers are out. So the score after only seven very eventful overs here at Eden Park is two wickets for sixty-six runs, although I’m sure my colleague would correct me and say sixty-six for two!”
“Ha Ha! That’s an old argument perhaps we can revive at lunch John. But at the moment I can see the fourth Out of It batsman coming to the crease. And it looks like we have a change of batting order. Yes, it’s Jim Morrison coming out and he’s using twelfth man James K Baxter as his runner. Well, what do you make of this turn of events John?”

As the two commentators prattled on the Malone was thinking…..
“I must stop all this thinkin’ To have a rebellious heart at any age is a mortal sin – to have one at my stage in life is just stupid. I’ll just sit here for what I cam for to watch the cricket and I’ll send the bad thoughts –“
But it was no good. Even thinking in terms of bad thoughts was a childish thought, a throwback to his first confession when, after a terrible struggle, he had triumphantly gone