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'Oliver' and some of the Stuart Mill 'Rice Man' stories
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©Argo Spier.

ISDN 90 5713 065 3 - 2003-09-06 and upon request
NUGI 301 and upon request
Cover design & typography: Joris Heinkens, Belgium.
Cover picture, courtesy of Adel Rootstein, London.

All rights are reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The document, when printed, contains 88 A4 pages.

Contents

[ short stories]

oliver - 3
muria the pavement muse - 23
the belly button isn't a belly button at all - 31
the non-official Catalan spirit - 32
legally a muse – 39
the Thomas Bissom 1998 report - 50
long weekend - 56
her pitch-black, thick, southern straight hair hanging - 61
circle of champions - 64
breakfast with francis bacon - 69
the days of chang!s lue – 71
soft knock on the door - 78

blurbs - 81

[Total number of pages = 88]

Oliver and the art of sharing

'It is a lady again', interrupted she, holding out a bud she had peeled.
'What?'
'I meant that there are always more ladies than lords when you come to peel them'.
'Never mind about the lords and the ladies. Would you like to take up any course of study - history for example?'
'Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about it than I know already'.
'Why not?'
'Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings will be like thousands and thousands'.
Thomas Hardy, Tess of D'Ubervilles.

Adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes,
Venite, venite, in Bethlehem!
Natum videte, Regem angelorum.
Venite adoremus! Venite adoremus!
Venite adoremus Dominium.

It happened Monday after my zazen meditation. Samsara equated Nirvana.
I was leaving the Chi-Gong building at the downtown Mall and crossing the street towards the Old City shopping area when it happened. Happiness came to me! It struck me as a bolt from heaven, just like that, and I realised for the first time in my life that I was really happy. And the happiest man alive to have discovered it!
The enlightenment that went with it was unbelievable. My outlook on life and all that surrounded me changed. There was a different quality to it. A sense of three-dimensionality came over me as if I had been warped into a New World in which everything was novel, unique, delighted and transparent. The streets, the little shops and the cafés and restaurants seemed metamorphosed into enchanting pockets of delight. And as I moved into the Old City shopping area it was as if kaleidoscopic patterns formed wherever I looked. With every step I took a different shade of colour flashed into view. There were indigo blues, Ajni, orange, instinct, Swadistana, deep greens, Tara's, Anahata, vermilion red, clairvoyance, Sahasrara, the ordinary plexus solaria and the lowest shaker, Muladhara. I was delighted!
'Happiness!' I called out '… this is happiness!'
My voice convinced me. It was crisp and clear in the cold polluted late December afternoon and I heard it echoing among the ancient buildings of the Old City street I was swooning in.
I looked at the people. They were moving like living creatures dancing the Dance of Shiva. And I heard music. Carols. Christmas Carols and Bing Crosby.
'I am happy!' I smiled at an on-coming shopper.
My cheer was contagious. He smiled back at me. It was a gift.
'Happiness is a gift!' I said to him as he passed.
An unbounded compassion washed over me. From then on every single motion I made in the Old City became a journey of joy into Wonderland. The Wheel of my karma had started to turn and I was caught up in its positive tolling. My soul was re-incarnated in a blissful being and we were both excited like children going on an errant with their mother at their side. My soul and I were so gladdened.
'Yes, Christmas is wonderful!' a woman waiting at a shop replied when I told her that. She was friendly and without reserve too. She conversed with me without hesitation. Our routes were merged I felt and when I left her I saw how she too smiling like an idiot.
And being thus, I was in perfect balance with the time continuum bubble that insulated me. I was protected from whatever disillusion. I was unsullied innocence. And I was expanding. I had become the very man of my own making. A happy man! The man I trained for a long eon.
When a cheerless man at a corner frowned at my smile and nodding I instinctively knew how far behind me he was on the Mahayana path. I couldn't help it but feeling sorry for him.
'He is so caught up in himself, poor soul… ' I told a café owner outside his bar on the next corner
The owner agreed with me whole heartedly. And his clientele coming from the bar slapped me on the shoulder and laughed too. Merriment was proof of the wonder that had occurred to me and it was contagious. It explained the festive season also. Only three days were left before Christmas. The transcended world that had materialised in and around me was in full spin. And there was expectation and delight in every shop window. Mirth in every bar and cosy restaurant. And the Father Christmases also were dressed up signs of expectancy. They handed out sweets and cards of shops. Jingle Bells, Drummer Boy, Perry Como and the frolic sounds of good-humoured shoppers mingled with the stir of people rushing from store to store. It was a carrousel and playground for all and everybody. Hundreds of sumptuous decorated trees were screaming their packed ware. Across the Crocker streets chaste streamers waved their goodwill. And there were thousands of small flickering lights. Symbolic commitment acclaimed flourished sharing. Oh it was deliverance was eminent and nativity. And inside the repository of my heart the secret knowledge of my happiness was fermenting. Samsara wore a dress and Nirvana was pacing up and down, waiting, calling, inviting around every corner.
Even when I met beggars I knew how fulfilled the time was.
'Awareness is the greatest possession' I told the drunk with the beaten dog. He wanted a hamburger.
To the mother with a child whom could cry on command I said 'Christmas brings us Joy'. She wanted money.
'The child … it could have been me' I told her when I handed her money.
Coyness was in the zephyr and it was so pleasing to be able to share. She asked for more money and I gave her more.
'… And you could have been my mother' I said to her.
'More' she answered.
'… And if you were my mother then the boy would have been I…!' I added and handed her my wallet.
And when I reached the end of the street and was in front of the hill road that leads to the top of it I realised that all I had to do was to start up it, get to the end of it, and I would be home where sweet Cynthia would be waiting for me.
While walking up the hill and musing, I thought how our conversation would go when she would open the door for me. My karma was automatic now. Like flowing water, flowing upstream without any effort.
'It is easier for humans to obtain enlightenment and share it with others than what it is for dogs to do so!' I will told her at the door.
'Clever, isn't it?' she would reply.
'Yes, dogs don't even know that they are dogs! We humans do know it!' I would answer.
'At least some of us know you mean…!' she would observed.
'… And from awareness comes compassion. And from compassion, sharing. And everything becomes very nice when everybody shares happiness!' I would explained to her and of course she would reciprocate by saying 'I know. Nobody can loose either way! Dogs neither!' in her positive way.
Cynthia was the woman I shared everything with. My life, our house, our Fuen Shui interior, our compass orientated garden, her art, my drafts for stories and our bastard dog Oliver. She was also a working woman and I not. I am a writer in becoming and do yoga and Tai Chi.

When I got home however I was quite disappointed. Only Oliver was there to greet me. He had been waiting patiently the whole day for somebody to come home. Proof of his patients was in the kitchen at the table legs, yellow pools of pee. But he was happy to see me. Another creature on the way to eventual enlightened Samadhi. His nose was wet and from his large misshapen mouth saliva drooled as he greeted me with shrieks of excitement. And like always when he sees either one of us he fetched his rug.
'Tug-of-war?' his eyes inquired full of expectation.
But my State of Being was on such a different plane that I couldn't comply. He however contented himself with cleaning his wet snout and drool on my expensive Kashmir coat. I stroke his head and put him outside into the backyard. He went to the Bar-B-Que, lifted his leg a pee on the fire place. I cleaned my coat and do a tour of the kitchen and the rest of the living space adjoining it. In the sitting corner I discovered a half-decorated Christmas tree! There were also presents and boxes of decorations lying around on the sofa.
'She has been home then! What a surprise…!' I realised and looked at the tree. It was out of proportion. 'Too big' I decided and '…its pronged northerly bearing didn't fit the corner she had put it in'.
Our meticulously balanced Fuen Shui design of the interior was disturbed.
'Its only for Christmas anyway…' I said out loud.
The presents and the decorations however I removed immediately from the vicinity of the tree because their cutting chi could draw negative energy to it and one never knows how that will effect happiness in general. Also because of the messy effect they had in the room. I hate messy interiors! I just couldn't let that happen in our house! I arranged them on a neat heap in the opposite corner, the Blue Corner. The decorations I worked neatly to a heap underneath the tree and pulling down a branch to hide them from sight. Doing this Baby Jesus fell out of a box half opened among them. I picked it up, hold it in my hand and looked at it for a moment, then without even thinking about it I took some streamers and made a bed for it. I put the little insulated capsule with Baby Jesus in it safely on the top of the bundle of streamers and pulled down the branch again.
It was just then that she returned.
I rushed to the door. But she was tired. She pushed pass me and plumped down in one of the Lean love leather armchairs upsetting the neatly array of cushions.
'I'm hell dog-tired!' she gasped.
At the mentioning of the word dog she thought of Oliver and wanted to know where he was. I looked in the wall mirror and saw him reflected in it as he sat patiently at the backdoor in the cold waiting for somebody to open it. I went and let him in. He rushed towards her, changed his mind, went to the kitchen, fetched his rug and only then hurried to her.
'Tug-of War?' his inquisitive eyes inquired.
'No, Oliver! Not now!' she reprimanded him and pushed him aside.
He settled for a wet nose and a drawling open mouth in her crotch just below the zip of her new jean. She pushed him away again.
'Everybody's on the bloody road today…' she pitied and looked at the neatly stapled presents in the Blue Corner.
'…There won't be time for more presents this year' she absentmindedly said.
My happiness and the lovely experience I had at the Mall was burbling in me like a brook. Yet it wasn't the time to share it with her I reasoned. She was too irritated and washed out from her lecturing. I just didn't dare to burden her with my happiness.
'I was just going to prepare supper' I said as if nothing had happened to me, waiting for an opening from her but she didn't bothered and I started to move to the kitchen.
'No! No supper…' she flared 'I am too hungry for that and besides I don't have time!'
And she got up with a last pull of strength, went for the fridge in the kitchen herself, took a piece of a leftover chicken, swallowed it whole. Then took a tin of Vienna sausages, opened it, gulp it down cold using fingers. And then she grabbed the opened and half drunk bottle of Chablis in the door of the fridge and

from an opened bottle and swig it down her throat in one throw.
'There…!' she said 'I feel better!'
She rammed down the bottle with a smack on the Carrara marble slate. It didn't break yet there was that bang. I looked at it. Her well formed hand with sausage smudges on her fingers still holds the bottle.
She burped and left.
I stood halfway between the kitchen and the living room as she closed the door. The smile I had on my face when I got home stretched itself into a thin line.
'Love … and sharing…' I thought and only after a long while I completed the sentence feeling hot and cold at the same time. 'Dining is like love making … its sharing' my guru had told me.
In the sitting room I saw the Christmas tree again. I judged its position in the room in relation to the Paqua Square of the room. My god! It was out of the allocated white marker strips that marked the square for 'extra' things on the floor! Unacceptable!
And while I was contemplating what to do about it Oliver came and casually put up his leg and pissed against the tree. A yellow pool of wee formed and flowed towards the streamers with Baby Jesus in his capsule.
'Bad dog!' I blamed him and put him outside and cleaned the wee from the floor and tree.
Some of the pine needles fell on the floor and I cleaned that too. I was all of a sudden uncertain about a lot of things. There were loose threads all over my existence I felt.
'I am happy yet … why this feeling of uneasiness now?'
I placed the cushions back in their normal pattern and went upstairs to my study. There I selected soft classical music, Sibelius and Bruchner and sat down behind my desk till the night was quite late in its advance. Then I went to bed all by my self.
That was Monday.

Tuesday came. I awoke not knowing when Cynthia had returned the night before. She was sleeping like a rock of innocent simplicity. I got up very quietly and carefully tiptoed downstairs with gown and Indian muffins in hand. When Oliver heard me coming he gave little shrieks, fetched his rug and challenged me.
'Tug-of-war?'
'Not now boy!' I quieted him.
He stuck his wet nose and drawling mouth into my crotch and wetted my silk pyjama pants. I let him out and cleaned his four yellow pools at the legs of the table. In the sitting room I discovered that the Christmas tree was ravished. The room was a mess, the presents where bitten open, the decorations from under the tree were all over the floor and Baby Jesus was from his capsule and laying in a pool of yellow wee on the floor! Oliver had been at work during the night.
'Oliver!' I called out louder than I intended but he was outside waiting at the backdoor.
'Quiet!' Cynthia shouted from upstairs thumping on the floor beside her bed.
'She'll have to finished the tree today and get done with it!' I thought and started to clean up.
I repacked the presents and put them neatly in the Blue Corner again, exactly to their square as before. I made Baby Jesus a new bed and I cleaned Oliver's pools. And when that was done I started laying the table for breakfast thinking of love and the art of compassionate sharing. Then I baked beacon and eggs for Cynthia.
'When was it last that I had bacon?' I pondered and realised it was more than 2 years ago!
Since I had become a zazen vegetarian I only eat fish and vegetables … and rice and couscous and bread. And oysters and lobsters and salmon and Japanese Seagram … and Qorum…
'Fish and vegetables only… No meat! Neither chicken! Just fish!' I murmured while I turned over the bacon. Cynthia usually eats heaps of bacon and double egg in the mornings. And left-over. And orange juice. And bread. And spekuloos. And dark chocolate. Cote d'or. And she drinks coffee. Zwarte Kat. Lots of coffee. I smiled at the thought of how she could eat.
'We could go for lunch at Flor's…' I suddenly lit up. 4I could tell her then about my happiness…'
They serve delicious fish menus at Flor. I decided then and there that that was what we were going to do for lunchtime! The wonder of my happiness was back and I arched straight into a good mood.
'Poor hard working Cynthia…' I thought.
Compassion swelled in me and goodwill started to pour like fat on Suzi black fish plates.
'I'll make her breakfast in bed!' I decided '…and give her the good news!'
I furnished her an extravagant looking tray chock-full of all the things she needs to find energy from for her full life and desires in the morning.
'We can leave at 12 and still get a table!' I said to myself as I carried the tray up on the staircase.
'20 to 12 … just to be certain!' I mumbled and picked up with my lips a slice of bacon from her place and munched it down.
She was still half-asleep and I calculated by the greyness of her conceal that it must have been very late when she had got in last night. Then she surfaced.
'Why didn't you let Oliver in last night? He was almost frozen to death when I got home!' was her first sentence and there was blame in her voice.
I forgot about Flor.
'… I forgot… ' was all I could think of to say and remember that he was still outside now.
I went downstairs but before I could get to the kitchen to let him in at the back door I saw the tree… Baby Jesus was still ok! And then there was banging from upstairs again.
'I spilled the coffee…! Bring me some more, please, and a cloth!' Cynthia hailed with a straight order.
I forgot about Oliver for the second time in the space of minutes and took her more coffee. I didn't tell her what time we were supposed to leave for Flor or that we were going to have lunch there. Now that the Fuggi bead spray was ruined with coffee smudge I didn't want to aggravate here further!
'A fish is caught only when it stops being scared for the hanging line…' my guru has warned me.
I gave her the coffee and clean what can be cleaned of the spilled coffee. Then I went downstairs again without a word. I met up with the tree now for the third time! All of a sudden it annoyed me fa-thom-less-ly. I immediately started shifting more to the right. Then to the left again. Then I tried to correct the north-south axis that was completely out of balance.
'She just has to finish it today! It screws up the Fuen Shui of the house!' I muttered while trying to bend the top. It broke off!

10 o'clock came and she was still loitering upstairs. Quarter past 10 came. She wasn't down. Then it was half past 10. The doorbell rang! It was she! I got a fright.
'We are not expecting anyone at this hour…' I said and went to the door.
I opened the door and frowned. It was Cynthia! She laughed merrily like a child and ouch her fresh face into my perplexed one. She was a different person.
'Sorry Mister Manicure!' she mimicked a toddlers tone 'I couldn't come earlier! My lover had brought me breakfast in bed and I had to eat it'. And she held out her unfinished nails and the fingers with smudges on them.
'Do my nails! Please…?' she touted.
I looked at her. Her eyes were open and far-fetched with innocence. She was still dressed in her night-gown and as she pushed past me the gown cleaved open like the curtain playing in a soft breeze. I saw her laced underwear and bra with the slightly pushed-up title underneath it. She had got up out of bed, sneaked down the stairs, slipped out of the front door and rang the bell … just to amuse me! I failed to see the joke. Towards 12 o'clock however I was still not finished.
'That does it!' I thought. 'No table…'
And as if she were clairvoyant she suggested that we could go to for a meal some day … another day.
'A pity its so late! We could have gone to Flor for lunch … ah, well, I had such a breakfast. We go to Flor sometime, ok?' she remarked with such remarkable sincerity.
Being placid, New Age Buddhist, a good manicurist, a ladies man … and a happy man … I didn't make a thing of it. I agreed politely.
'Indeed' I said '…that would be nice'.
'Meat!' she said 'Steak, French fries … and onion rings! That's what I want now! I am ravished … it wasn't such a big breakfast after all, was it?'
'Steak?' I protested 'What about marinated and salad garnished salmon?'
'If you can eat fish you can eat meat! Fish is also meat!' was her final answer and the dispute was settled with a logic that only artists of superior quality can follow. It displayed creativity.
I went to the kitchen and started preparing a Steak-a-Poivre with the French fries and her favourite onion rings. A vague awareness of brooding bad karma popped up in my consciousness. To fend it off and get a little of my way I insisted that we have the marinated salmon as well. I made an exquisite looking Hors-d'-oeuvre of it. The raw pieces of salmon were cut nicely and chilled dill added. I garnished it with Turkish feta and a knife's point imitation caviar. A meal in itself yet only a Hors-d'-oeuvre. And I grilled the steak and torched it with Napoleon Brandy. I put candles on the table and opened a bottle of Macon for her. I don't drink alcohol.
'Animal fat and alcohol! You can never reach higher sub-conscious nevi's when consuming alcohol with your meals!' I told her when I served her the wine.
And we started to talk about food.
'Steak's not so bad! And signoff filet doesn't contain fat!' she argued and tasted the wine with huge gulps.
'Hmmm… this is good Burgundy! Oh, your choice, Sir, is of excellent taste!' she responded jovially smiling her irresistible I-am-a-bitch-take-me smile and held up the glass to toast my health so that I can keep on cooking for her.
'No it isn't … it doesn't contain fat' I said and a pang of guilt shot through me as I tasted the first bite of the Signion baked signoff filet. I was lying. Lying was trespassing in the first Law of Speech of the dharma my zazen teacher had told me. Leave alone the piece of bacon on the stairs. And I felt sorry that I had said that! I was led into a trap and I had fallen into it! I was eating meat as well! My Wheel of Happiness could stop … start turn the other way round I thought but I kept silent about it.
Then…
'…Keeping silent on trespassing! That's a trespass too!'
But I let it go too.
'… Letting it go … A trespass!'
Instead I said to her I said 'I shouldn't eat meat, you know…?'
'Afraid of its teeth? God this steak is palatable! It bites!' she replied and munched away on the rare signoff.
I let it go again but thought 'Oh, it is the small things that ruins a man…!'
We ate our lunch. Towards the end it had turned out to really be old style carnivare. First there was the hors-d'-oeuvre then the filet and French-fries, onion rings and a-poivre cream. And she was at the wine all the time.
'I would never sink so low … meat, ok, but really, wine, that I won't do' I though, glad at the thought that good karma re this can still hold out.
'Alcohol is a preservative' I said to her watching the way she enjoyed it.
As she was so jovial the experience at the Mall was at the tip of my tongue to mention to her. But somehow I couldn't find the right moment for it or the right words to pronounced it in. Was this another trespass? Not being able to tell about enlightenment? I let it go…
'Trespass…!'
'… Food digest…' I continued but she had enough.
'Deal! I don't give a deal about your digestion!' she choked and bit on her tongue at the same time.
I could see how it hurt. Her face grimaced.
'… It screws up meals to jab on about shit!' she shouted and spit out meat and blood. 'Look at my fucking lip now!'
She put her frail neatly manicured fingers to it. Then she composed herself and ask me politely whether I don't overdo things a bit lately. And as if to prove the point she was trying to make she took the bottle of wine and emptied it in her still half-filled glass. 16-year old Macon top quality expensive Burgundy spilled over its brim and kept on spilling till the bottle was empty. She left the brim full glass standing on its own and looked at her watch.
'I got to go!' she said abruptly and stood up.
When she rose she accidentally knocked over the Chinese faked Ming saucepan. She just looked at it. It spilled its content into the wine stain. Then the smudge dripped to the floor.
'Oh my god, Oliver!' I thought 'He's still outside…'
We both had forgotten him outside.
She went to the front door red as a herring from anger and the little wine she had drunk. She was still dressed in her nightgown and underwear. She rammed the door shut behind her. Seconds later however she rang the bell again. When I opened the door for her she only said 'I frog ogled to dress!' and went upstairs to get dressed. Even her language was foreign now to me. I went back to the dining room and looked at the table. It was filled with used empty dishes and on the side where she had sat at was a huge wine and a-poivre stain. The two candles, symbols of hope and tenderness, were half-burnt away yet standing upright like yogi in Mountain asana. There was not a flicker left in them. Just a slow burn and a silly flame. And the distance between them looked exceptionally large. It was almost as if each of them were on a separate table.
I went to the sitting room. The Christmas tree without its top claimed my view. Across it and in the whole of the room there was a vague sense of a wrought smile. It was Samsara, the Woman of Illusion and Deadly Chaos. In all her majestic and beauty she was smiling at me. And her smile lingered in the house like the smell of incense. My own image in the mirror was that of a diasporas screwed up Jew, a lost wanderer … and reflected in the mirror behind me was the image of Oliver patiently waiting at the back door.
'Oh my god … Oliver!'
Our dessert was left untouched. Tuti chocolates and After Eights. I took a Tuti. Then I tasted an After Eight. Then I took 4 more After Eights and another Tuti. I set coffee and waited for it to percolate. I consumed 5 more After Eights and 6 more Tuti's. Each and every one of them melted in my mouth and greased down my throat with a sweet taste. I thought of small lovely baby animals, tiny eel babies. And I felt the babies slithering down to the bottom of the dark pit where they belonged.
'Come home to Mommy, my lovelies'.
Their passage home was a secret and forbidden journey. Only I shared it with them. And knowing this, it satisfied my deadly oral desires. Each and every baby touched down on a safe bed of drudging fungi and food that was already fermenting in my paunch.
'Why did I let her go? Why didn't I tell her of my happiness? Why didn't we go to Flor?'
But she came jumping down the stairs dressed like a lust. A pin-up. Her hands were well manicured and her nails nicely varnished. She carried them like lesbians carry theirs. I looked at her and I felt the android being in me. A man in the presence of humans who does not quite follow the logic of the images presented to him. And I again thought of how I had wanted to take her to Flor and how nice it would have been. How nice Christmases can be. How open. How everything can come together and hold. And sharing … how nice a deed it was…
When she was out of the door I returned to the tree. I watched its image in the mirror on the opposite almond green wall. I saw myself in the mirror too and then scrutinising my image I saw myself seeing myself. And then behind me I saw the reflected image of … Oliver!
'Oh my God! Oliver…!' I breathed 'Oliver's still outside!'
I rushed to the kitchen to let him in. He came in with a biting cold gush of air. His nose was wet and his mouth full of ice cold slobber. And he was shaking all over as if being traumatised from being alone out in the cold winter air for so long. Yet he gave little shrieks of happiness to see me.
'You must be freezing, poor Boy!' I begged with him feeling guilty like tarnished hell.
'Oh, I am so sorry…!' I pleaded with him thinking of how I could make it good.
But he seemed to have forgotten his ordeal already and was already occupied in hunting for his rug.
'Tug-of-war?' I asked 'Oh, Buddhist, you! Bearing no grudges!'
His unconditional placid acceptance of whatever ordeal I put him through makes him a Grand Master in Tao. A Guru and a Lama together incarnated in a dog!
'It's a pity you were reincarnated into a dog!' I rued with him 'If only you could learn how to wipe your nose and keep your mouth clean!'
He pulled a wide smile with his skew mouth and put up a flagged with his tail. Then he stuck his nose into my crotch and bargained 'Tug-of-war?' I stroke his head and went to the fridge. I forked out a huge piece of filet for him. He gulped it down as if it were a small piece of filet.
'Christ, you can eat, man!' I reprimanded him but he just begged for more trying his luck. I couldn't help smiling. I flopped him another piece. Then I gave him Cynthia's entire week's filet. We were friends again. He stole another quick nose-in-the-crotch try. I took more After Eights and several looks at the Christmas tree.
'She will fix it tonight!' I told Oliver and at the spur of the moment I fetch from the boxes of decorations the Christmas tree lighting and arranged it in the tree.
And lit it.
'There…' I said 'It's for you! A happy Christmas!'
He smiled with his out of proportion large teeth, mouth drooling and put up his tail flag and waved it. Complete truce! I stroke his head several times. We exchanged a couple more noses-in-the-crotch and a quick tug-of-war. Then I even fetched his basket from the kitchen and arranged it for him in front of the tree.
'You leave Baby Jesus alone, hear!' I warned him.
He acted contented like a child being tugged in by a parent. Almost as if he knew what happiness was … sharing happiness.

I went into the hallway wondering whether I felt like working. The staircase stood ahead of me and it suddenly looked a long way up. A turn in my stomach told me why. I looked at my tummy. It looked swollen up. My belly was hanging there in front of me like a bag of dead meat. It was filled with half-digested and half-rotten cadaver. A vague uneasiness about my good intentions crept over me. Nirvana?
'I had eaten meat! Its bad karma!' I brooded and thought of the predestined way of bad luck and the seriousness of its mistakes.
But once in my study I felt better. I put on half Sibelius and half Bruchner again. 2 Cd's. This time I pressed the loop button so that their music can repeat itself for the whole of the desert afternoon that awaited me.
'They can loop forever…'
But what I had forgotten was that Sibelius and Bruchner always makes me sad and from hearing the first tones of the CD Weltsmertz came over me.
'We could have had such a nice meal! It could have lasted forever! Flor is such a nice place…' I pitied myself.
I became indecisively pre-occupied yet I tried to force myself out of it. There was a lot of half-read books open and turned upside down on my desk. I picked up one. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native.
'His work is so sad!' I said to myself and I heard my own voice.
I looked at the last page and counted. 133 pages still to go! I installed myself on the sofa with my belly well out of the way and entered sad Eustacia and sad Wildeve's lives in Egdon Place. Both of them were married to separate spouses and both of them longed for happiness. They were however caught up in their own sad circumstances and karma. Unanswered licit love and answered illicit love. The inevitable theme.
Downstairs the Christmas tree was lit and the room had adopted cosiness. Guru Oliver had settled himself in his basket and Baby Jesus was in its cubicle. Outside it got colder and colder. Little snowflakes started to dwindle down and everyone knew that a white Christmas was preparing itself for the happiest time of the year.
'It won't be long now before she comes home…' I thought.
I completed the sad Native and felt enormously sad because of sad Eustacia and sad Wildeve's ordeal. They both had drowned while sad Sibelius and sad Bruchner were looping their 7th loop.
'Karma always comes true! Oh, it's such a sad story!' I murmured when I put down the book and went downstairs to let Oliver out.

She came home just before seven and was rushed as she always was. She had to attend another meeting and she was starving I could see.
'Where's Oliver?' she asked.
I ignored the issue but his reflection in the mirror told me where he was, outside in the freezing cold. I went to let him in. I was still sad because of sad Hardy and wanted to tell her about it but she was too full of her own life. I went into the kitchen in order not to have to talk to her. She called after me asking what's for supper. My stomach turned at hearing her mention food.
'I shouldn't have eaten meat!' I weakly protested but she was luckily out of hearing range.
Food again! My stomach turned once more. Salami, cheese, leftover salmon and feta with balsamic, olive oil, bread pasta, mayonnaise, After Eights, Tutti's and coffee. I noticed that I was sweating.
I laid the table in the kitchen because the dining room table with the wine and sauce scandal still had to be cleared off. I thought about Cynthia's character. Like Oliver she never bore grudges. There was no admission about anything from her side as well, ever. Only refusal and when that didn't work she just filled what was to be filled in. And yes, we stood there to each other as two strangers in an orchestrated acquaintance. Each trying hard not to mind the other. But I also knew about Cynthia … she has to talk!
And when I came back with Oliver she opted to refuse it all and started chit-chatting, telling me a ridiculous story about an SMS from Poland which was send to her from a bus station. The depth of the sharing ability between us was lucid as lead. It sunk to the bottom and I closed my eyes.
'… A bus station in Krakow?' she said.

Her mouth was by now full of salami and cheese.
'A colleague…?'
I imitated her by talking with salami and cheese in my mouth too
'The one you went to this afternoon? Or the one of last night?'
Spite and hurt was foreign to zazen meditation and I didn't know why I exhibited it.
'No, it wasn't him. He'll be back at Christmas. Then I will see him … again' and she sliced and droned on happily, eating heartily while talking.
'… Vienna … exhibition… The Albertina Collection…' and 'No, not him! The other one…' and finally she said 'Oh, we fit together, don't we, my darling!'
And she reached out her lovely manicured hand and stroke me over the head like one does with a guru you are in love with. She meant it.
'Look how lovely you've laid this table for us!' she complimented but my suspicion wasn't sold for so little.
'She was skipping an issue' I brooded 'What else did he say apart from being in Vienna? Your colleague … that is?' I asked as if I wasn't aware of her hand on my head.
'It wasn't him! He's in Krakow, Silly!'
She took out her GSM and called up Voice PRN and showed me.
'Side stepping!' I thought but read it.
'Zdrowych i radosnych Swiqt Bozego Narodzenia!' it said.
'What's does that mean?' I asked.
'Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year, signed Krakow, Poland'.
'Where's the bus station come into it?'
'What bus station? Oh…! The bus station! I just thought he was on a bus station when he send the mail. It isn't that difficult you know! … I suppose he took the bus. Wouldn't he take a bus? You would take a bus, no?'
'Why a bus? None of your colleague's ever take busses. You are hiding something from me!' I stitched her and became aware of the fact he - this colleague of hers - had forgotten to mention his name in the SMS.
But I let it go…
'Buddhists are never jealous' my guru once proclaimed.
I wanted to tell her the tragic history of Eustacia and sad Wildeve's lives but I let that go too.
'Double trespass' I thought.
I watched her mouth. It only suited. It was aesthetic. And when she stuck more salami and cheese into it I noticed her well-formed artistic and manicured fingers again and feared how she would post a love letter to Poland. The fingers touching the salami and cheese were sensuous like 10 waving phalli's.
'I am a good manicurist' I congratulated myself.
Supper and food and neat nails! But then again. It was just a quick kill with a rushed ritual we were having. 10 minutes! Our meal was a hasty foreplay, a swift re-enacted trial match. It matched not in quantity but in quality the intensity of the annual Christmas dinner. Only this time the sacrament of the Christian killing of Turkey didn't preceded it and there weren't any Dutch Grandbabies sided with it.
'I'm glad I became a Buddhist!' I said slowly blooming again 'One can make mistakes and then better them later…'.
But she was not listening. She was already preparing her meeting. Her mind was elsewhere. She stood up with a last piece of salami in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other. And when she passed the fridge I felt a cold thrill running down my spine. It contrasted my warm forehead. I also thought that there was still more food in the fridge than what could be consumed by a threesome for the rest of the week.
She left as she came, in a hurry and with a running mind. Immediately I went for the Tuti's and the After Eights. I finished the whole of the box of After Eights and left only 3 Tuti's on the side plate. To consume later. And again I went upstairs. And again the stairs looked a long way up. Even longer this time. And mounting them I felt my belly wobbling like a wag. And the pang of insecurity about the road I was on … being a zazen vegetarian was heavy on my mind.
'I think I am going to be sick!' I heard myself saying.
And my voice echoed in the hallway. It was calling from far into the solitary prison the evening seemed to have become. Back in my study I saw the next opened and up-turned half-read book, also from Hardy. Tess of D'Urbervilles. I checked the number of pages still to be read. 350! That would make 483 pages in one day I calculated. My stomach moved. I wondered if being pregnant was like what I felt at that moment. A brick tied to your navel. I turned Tess upside down and put her back on top of all the other half read books of Hardy, Far from the Maddening Crowd, The Trumpet-Mayor, Jude the Obscure, Complete Poetry, The Mayor of Casterbridge.
'Hardy's so sad…!' I mused and all of a sudden I had enough of the walls that were encroaching on me. I shut looping sad half Sibilius and Bruchner. They died. Silence! And in the roaring silence I became aware of more digestive processes in my stomach. There were audible noises coming from it. Soar broke in my mouth. And I burped like a pig without being able to contain it. I didn't feel well at all. I was disinterest and lethargic. Also bored. I logged in on the Internet and checked for mail. There were three mails! Two which were exactly the same from a guy called Joe I had never heard of and one was a Spam advertising a honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean. This Joe must have used the Send Button twice in his drive to reach me … or the person whom he thought he was sending it to. My address was freely available on Geocities and he probably had it from there. The contents of his efforts were about his wife who was expecting a baby. At any time now the opening sentence read. The urgency and almost panic in which they were written overtook me. Somehow I understood the situation. It was a far cry of something that was bound to happen. There was the crossing of eclipses in it. I was happy for him. The birth of a child is always a wonder. And the way he was trying to share the event with me … or anybody else in Cyberspace for that matter… And his spreading of news of a child that was going to be born round about Christmas time made me quite weak at heart.
'Hello A!' the message said 'Thank you. I must add you to my newsletter list, yes? So you can keep up on the news of the Joe and Mary household. As you might imagine, I am a few days behind on my e-mail answering and everything else now that my wife…'
And then followed the news and their expectations and worries about the event.
'I'll definitely answer him when I feel better' I decided and let it go.
Pain, disinterest and boredom always lead to results. So does trespassing. It's the law of the Wheel of karma. It doesn't matter if one does a thing or leaves it … your deed gets you in the end!
I decided to check into a chat room. The Babe's Chat Club in Soho Talk. Everybody seemed to be talking to him or herself in there when I was allowed in after password checks. Over and over again the same sentences came up, scrolled over the screen and dropped into the oblivity and then washed into the huge waste ocean of rejected naught and ones. There were many offers asking me to join into a private conversation. Warning! Paedophilia and porn!
'Hey Man alone u wanna chat?' many times and then the pictures.
I ignored all of these secret quick direct mails. Two guys however caught my eye. They seemed to have found one another, Fuckmintheeye and Horneybin.
'Life sucks' Fuckmintheeye said.
'Yeah sucks X2' Horneybin answered.
'Shit Xmas' Fuckmintheeye responded and tried 'Arabs?'
A neatly placed trap from Fuckmintheeye I thought but Horneybin didn't get caught. He just repeated the circular canon and typed the opening words Fuckmintheeye had started with. Life sucks. All Fuckmintheeye could do was to follow with Yeah sucks X2. And then they were off again. Same scene. It was clear that they were potentially political scarecrows spreading an attitude and that Fuckmintheeye was in the process accumulating bad karma with his question 'Arabs?' It was not my scene, however the two of them at least seemed were sharing a conversation!
I logged off.
Sitting in front of nothing and with nobody to talk to my solitary state took on weight. My mind drifted to the time when I was myself and popular on the net. When it didn't mind that much when I was alone at night. When I wasn't aware of dark half-lit rooms of obscurity. I went back to the starting days. And from there I came back again to today. The years had ended I noticed. There were only moments left to count and at that moment I was sitting in front of a blank screen on the pre-event of Christmas, corking up a fermenting happiness and a desire to deliver. And I thought of what else I could think of. I searched for a name. Someone I knew. Somebody to share my happiness with. Who? But no name came to me. My cyber memory banks were bankrupted. There was nobody left. Then slowly from distant layered and sediment remembrances a name materialised. Connie Sunday! I thought of Connie and how we have met. The VCL EMT/GMT cyber meeting one morning at 5 o'clock some 3 years ago … Paulan's Log. The RAVK and OAVK Art galleries. I remembered that we had exchanged two mails and one short chat. Three years ago it was! I wasn't even a vegetarian then! And thinking of the word vegetarian I became aware of my aching stomach again. It cramped.
'All this time!' I murmured 'And she has kept in the background faithfully as an ever-present spouse!'
I didn't let it go…
I started to wonder how she was and just for the fun of it I paged her. Small excitement grew. I forgot about my uneasiness and blown-up stomach. I found no trace of her. Let go? No! I tried several search engines. Alta Vista, Google, Hot Bot and Babe Search but all that came up was 'Unknown combination. Try new combination'. At last I ran a Vienna Strasse email check on her. I found her! Her URL was still hanging on. With thrilled expectancy I went there. The page opened up like a foyer of an expensive mansion.
'Quite professional! Upgraded!' I triumphed.
Feverishly I started to write her a Give-me-a-sign-of-life. I asked her to respond to it soonest. We could have a some do chat. I kept it short however and sweet, as I didn't want to be too pushy or exhibit panicky loneliness! One sentence. Connie hi remember me? + if u sends me a sign of life then we maybe cools somewhat short talk. I made a mistake with the word 'could' on purpose. I wrote 'couls. The 's' is next to the 'd' on Azurite keyboards. She hated spelling mistakes as I could recall from our short previous exchange of typeface. A mistake like that would certainly draw her from her cage even if she didn't remember me. And just to make sure she would not be able to resist my request I attached a poem from a 13th century Buddhist monk given me by my zazen teacher.

Lying, thinkingLast night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf not a stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone

And when this was done I sat with my hands folded across my tummy, waiting for her reply. Downstairs the guru was snoozing in front of the lit Christmas tree. The Cynthia was somewhere chatting up colleagues. I was in my study with silence surrounding me and in front of me was a blank computer screen. The cold winter's pre-Christmas night was closing in. More snowflakes came down. And the Wallpaper was scrolling from the sealing to the floor. I was on the road. It was nice. I even forgot my happiness. But after a while I realised it could take days if not weeks for her to answer me. She could be on holiday! A sour taste came to my mouth again. I waited on. Pain-stak-ing-ly. There's a compelling logic in names I thought. They pop up automatically most of the time. And in my mind's eye I saw myself in my mind's eye seeing and watching myself as I waited in front of the blank screen. C was for Connie! A for Art. And B? Who was B for? And I waited. C+A+B? A cab? Vienna Strasse? Oh, what amount of good karma would take me there again? And I kept on waiting for the Sign of Life. And after a long time of nothing I opened my eyes and thought 'Fuck me!' and then I waited some more! But my karma Wheel had stopped completely. I had sworn with a stomach full of meat and animal fat!
'Trespass…!'
And then there was mail! It popped onto the screen via Messenger like a fox from a hole!
'That's it! She's on!' I called out with excitement and I felt how my breath pulled back into my lungs like a waver folding double. I felt how air sliced it. No sense of eel-like little babies as earlier but now monstrous and snakelike like Boa Conspirators. It went deep down into my chest as if it was preparing me for the OM prana. I felt it reached the bottom part of my abdomen and pushing my diaphragm down over my stomach. And then there was another sensation coming alive inside me, something was rising up. It came from inside my stomach. Nirvana inside Samsara. It was a second snake's basaltic chocolate coloured eggs that were hatching. A spasm made me jumped up. As I grabbed my tummy and cramped forward I hit the computer screen with my brow. My glasses banged to the floor. Trying to contain the hatching I closed my mouth. But it had an averted effect. I farted and I felt something wet in my underpants. Then the push for my mouth was on. A half digested After Eight managed to slip through my sealed lips. It popped out of my mouth. Then another one came out. I felt the filet, raw salmon, feta cheese, olive oil balsamic acid, French fry's, After Eights, Tuti's, salami, cream, left-over salmon and feta with balsamic, olive oil, bread, pasta, mayonnaise, sweets and coffee racing behind it. I swallowed in an effort to hold the flood down. My gut convulsed. I knew I was going to vomit and wouldn't be able to stop it. I raked from the room and made for the transit. I heard how my glasses splintered underneath my foot as I treaded on them. I stumbled down the staircase, mistook a step, fell and banged my shoulder against the door of the living room. It busted open and Oliver flew up from his basket barking with fright. He started to chase me. I was an intruder and his natural instinct was to defend. I fled through the living room with Oliver behind me and when I was almost in toilet range I lost my heart. All the After Eights I had gulped down so sensuously spewed from my mouth and then the balsamic salmon with olive oil and feta cheese came. Drawl dripped down my chin and out of my nose. More marinated salmon came mixed with half-digested pieces of filet mixed with French fries and coffee. The toilet brim and floor was full of choke. Then the salami, cheese, leftover salmon and more feta and more balsamic, olive oil, bread, pasta, mayonnaise, sweets and more sour coffee came as a second wave. I crouched on my knees clamping my stomach and just kept on convulsing. Abhiseka. Initiation!
'My glasses are broken!' I blubbered in self-pity as my head hung into the toilet bowl.
My shoulder blade was broken too it felt.
I drooled like Oliver, moaned and grounded. Tears filled my eyes. And when I was finally done and spent like Oliver's rug I sensed the guru with his huge worried brown eyes behind me. He had stopped barking and was now licking me trying to sooth my pain.
'Oh, he knows…' I thought and I hugged him.
'My Grand Master Tao. It's not my fault!' I whispered in his ear.
I felt terrible. Nirvana = Samsara. Illusion = Disillusion. Emptiness = Everything. Outside it began snowing hard. And the snow stuck. I was alone with nobody no body to share my loneliness with. It was almost Christmas and yet I only felt the cold and the freeze. And as I thought about it I shivered and felt how my teeth clatter. My nose was wet and my lips drooling. There was a dead man crossing on my grave and no birth ever again seemed possible. No happiness. Happiness footsy. Had I then knew that the mail that had come in was not from Connie Sunday my world would have ended in an Apocalypse. It was from the Daemon-Mailer Returning Service. The Sign of life I had asked her for was undelivered at the address I had sent it to. It was re-routed back to my mailbox because hers wasn't operational anymore. Cyber Connie Sunday, my Woman of Communication and last straw, didn't exist anymore! Her upgraded page wasn't upgraded at all. It was of an upgrade two years ago and no amount of deliberate mistakes with 'esses' and 'dee's' could have drawn her from the infinite nothingness into which she had disappeared.

I was lying there on the toilet floor with my hands around Oliver's neck. Without my glasses the world was blurred. I felt sick at heart and useless in body. Sorrow of all my trespassing came to my being. I felt abandoned. Then I got to my hands and knees and crawled into the living room like a tortoise and ended up in front of the lighted Christmas tree. Oliver followed me faithfully as if he was watching me in my advance of sadhana. He even offered me his rug for a Tug-of-Help along the way.
The Christmas tree seemed brighter and its position and bearing in the room had all of a sudden no relevance to any objection. The warmth of a real home radiated from it. A home which was a home when you go there you know they got to take you in. The little lights shone and drew. And as I watched it the tree duplicated itself and a million of blurred little lights appeared all around it. Without my glasses and with the remnants of the tears still in my eyes the whole room took on a beautiful exquisiteness. Enlightenment! I padded with my hands underneath the tree to feel at the epicentre of the truth. Baby Jesus. Blue-green Arya Tara. Beautiful Yidam. But his bed was empty I discovered!
'Has he left me?' I beseeched.
I padded with my hands across the floor looking for him and found him in the Blue Corner among the ravished presents. His head was eaten off! Diamond Vajrasatta! I had forgotten to give the gurus with their rugs behind me their sacrificed 5 o'clock dinners! It was an unforgivable sin and realising the grave consequences of it and the inevitable down turning of my Wheel of karma I understood my life all of a sudden much better. Two days down the drain and here I was crawling for redemption on hands and knees.
But something else happened! A coincidence of such an unimaginable scope and bearing took place that I was to be kept busy with it long after its occurrence. A wonder! In my study at exactly that moment that I found Baby Jesus another mail had come in. It was from Joe again. His wife had given birth to their baby pre-maturely. It was a boy. The little bundle of joy was to be called Jose, short for redeemer, and was born to them at 12 p.m. on Dec. 23, 2001, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, in the Sierra Vista Regional Care Centre. He weighed seven pounds ten ounces at birth and was 19.75 inches long, with blue eyes and light brown hair the mail said.
A child at Christmas! Joe and Mary's child … prematurely. And the news by direct mail … was send to me!

***

I pushed back from my desk, took a deep breath and looked again at what I had written. A Christmas story! Oliver. A glow of satisfaction pinged through me and I felt relieved. It was past midnight and in the warm July night outside the moon was shining on the sleeping world around me.
Oliver and the Art of Sharing. Quite a title I thought, a mid-summer night's dream of a title. And with the whole of the story still very much in my mind I looked at the closing paragraphs again. They really took the zap out of me. And checking the opening paragraph also quickly I thought it was sufficient. OK, Pas encore passé, she wasn't home yet but the reader won't mind that I told myself that!
'Done!' I said, saved it and shut down the computer.
In the bedroom next door to my study my lovely wife of Verbena was waiting for me.
'… Coming to bed at last?' she asked half asleep.
I took off my shirt and shoes, hopping on one foot, first then on the other. Practicing.
'I've missed you so much the whole day! You haven't been down once!' she mumbled and stirred.
I took off my socks hopping and balancing again.
'My story's done!' I said to her 'Its about the issue of Christmas and the miracle of sharing!'
'Christmas? In this hot weather?' she pouted surprised and when I turned to face her I saw in the half lit room the outline of her body under the silken sheets. It had taken on the shape of a Vajarasarrva aberration. Soft lines and wrinkles accentuated it and her one thigh was exposed. I hadn't bargain on that. I tore off my jean. Infatuation ranked inside me.
'Awareness, sharing, empathy and compassion, oh, that's the basis of a good life' I mused but instead I teased her with 'Being Buddhist and vegetarian has its advantages! One doesn't care about summer or winter and one can pull a whole day's writing without losing a single bit of form!'
'Christmas? Vegetarian? Buddhist? Where have you been today?' she asked and hushed me with a 'Come to bed'.
'Just you wait till you've read the story! And you know what? I am going to buy us a dog…!' I whispered as I slip underneath the sheets feeling her warm radiating body.
'Don't be silly, Oliver! You are the last person in the world who could take care of a dog! Oh, I can see you with a dog!' and she chuckled. 'You'll forget him outside most of the time'.
I felt how her instinct took the leading role. I followed. Wherever she wanted to go was Ok by me. The night was drawing to its close and we both folded along with it. We took over its tender rhythm of sealing and experienced first its ritual haste and then its scooted rise as it aspired before its close. And the movement of its closure was like a well-written script. It reached its peak and once when that was petitioned … there was no desire to read on more.

muria, muse on the pavement

being a poet
(ora deconstructions and belle rencontre)
slipping on wet rocks of daybreak
she tumbles from the poet's embrace
shivers run down his chilling torso
as too freezing cold and naked
is the rising sun
'Ada, Ada, oh my love!'
her stark drop the washing of new light
their rendez-vous - it was the missing mantissa
and she - now temporarily submerged
and ever so recillient - lingers on under water
'Ada, Ada, oh my pretty Queen
my brilliant Muse!'
You have left her
and Hlodin, but of course you soonest Return
continuesly you return to her- always returning -
with the urge to see her tempo's
verses and coleur la langue
to see how she makes new form
and shapes mandy scopes of rhyme
pleasing pleasing with her pleasant rhythm
and 'See! See! Now she's keen!
now she's not unseen!'
she swims and dives
splashing and struggling with Holden's horses
the waves on her shore
she's the working Freja in full peril
she's Perchta with a stern wicked witches' wand
and a skew foot
and - look - she's leading the poet
away from cul-de-sac and dead
end
luring she's another unwed wench
with her beaches full of fish
she pulls them out one by one
and throw them
on the poet's bottomless plate

oh but when he dares to gloat
she becomes the seeks-and-hide
and her smile drops into the water
smudging the spot for him to unberth
- but she changes again -

and coyly tosses fern
and Spanish h'ada around his ankles
making his fall
Argo Spier

As Stuart was standing on his balcony looking over the Mediterranean Sea he noticed that the wind was picking up.
”A Tramuntana’s coming … “ he decided.
The sea looked bleak and it had a dirty green colour towards the horizon and at the harbour, where he dropped his gaze after scrutinising the wind surface of the sea from the Medes Islands to the rocks at Pals’ point, he noticed the flapping of the sails against the long poles of the yachts. He listened to the tinkling sound of it. Then he becomes aware of the damp cold air. On his balcony it was getting colder too. His feet felt cold. His red espadrilles weren’t made for ‘autumn-like summers’ but for beach loafing and relaxation, writing stories. He was uncertain what to do for the day, work or go out loafing. And pondering this and the book he was writing he remembered the story Marti Carbonelli told the previous evening at Arilla’s. Cathella and Arnau were there too. It was a true story Marti had suggested.
“It happened exactly the way I am going to tell it,” he had said.
The story was about a poet who went to a Poetry Festival in Kerala, the Southern part of India, and met the Muse Muria on a pavement right behind him, when he wanted to cross a road.
“It sounds real enough, alright,” Stuart thought and the poet Marti had it over became alive in his mind. He thought of how Marti had told about his trip to Kerala. There was a stopover at Doha where the first ‘caller’, as Marti had filled it in, came to him and talked to him. She was foreboding for the appearance of the real Muse, Muria, which would come later into the story. The first ‘caller’ one was disguised as an Italian ‘floozy’ with mauve toenails, bare feet and a tattoo on the bridge of the right foot, a real Bertha with a skew foot.
That particular piece of information was quite mind grabbing and good move of Marti to use in the introduction, Stuart agreed. But the way Marti had winked at Arnau when he mentioned the ‘floozy’ to Cathella and emphasised that much had come of it afterwards was a bit steep. Even if the story were true, the realistic touch and meticulous use of the causes and effects in it might have been a bit overdone.
“The complexity of the characters and their relationships with each other … it was homespun and yes, it has its function”
Muria was not only a Muse, but the little niece of the godhead associated with 1000 lotus flowers on the lake of Jodhpur as well.
“Rather complex … god, niece from mother’s side? Where did Marti get that from?”
Oh, she was just that teasing ‘young thing’ in the minds of men that inspires them to write poetry and try telling stories with it. It’s said that her roots run back into history till the Dark Ages of India’s pan mogul rule.
“Yes, Muria, the bringer of the downfalls of pompous poets.” Arnau had agreed with Marti.
Stuart thought how Doncia had vanished to Geneva for the CERN Accelerator for her new Particle Physics project and left Arnau quite lost behind.
Looking at the sky Stuart couldn’t decide what to do. It kept on turning darker, greyer, and the green colour of the sea looked dirtier by the minute. It now had crept up to the fishing boats just past Medes. He shrugged and a shiver ran down his spine.
“Muria the ‘young thing’ of Thruvananthapuram.”
She was very, very real when one thinks about it. There was that offbeat magic in the story.
“And the reality touch in it was very, very bony.”

When the poet stepped out onto the porch at his cheap lodgings in some of the back streets of Thruvananthapuram, the city in which the festival took place, it was raining. This however didn’t disturb him. On the contrary, he actually loved it. There was that lovely fresh smell of wet earth and a dash of mint mixed with Jasmine hanging in the morning air. And although huge puddles of water were all over, in the road, on the pavement and on the steps leading down to the muddy road in front of the lodgings, he showed no signs of bothering about it. All the while new puddles formed as the rain came down. On the zinc roof of the porch there was the clatter of the rain. It thrilled him. It was a new sound for him and experiencing it, rain on a zinc roof, made him excited. He loved it. He had never seen zinc roofs and he wasn’t really a ‘rain man’, and Marti had smiled when he had said this, apparently referring to Dustin Hoffman’s movie about an autistic character winning the lottery at a casino. He just felt that the way it rains in Kerala, in such abundance, in gushes, and with drops so huge, the noise, it was as if he was discovering rain for the first time. His childlike appreciation of the novelty lifted his spirit. It made him feel exhilirated and very joyfull.
“Rain … this rain, it gives a totally new dimension to the concept rain”, he thought as he fully went up in the experience of the downpour.
Being only used to the soft drizzle of European rain that goes on undisturbed for months this was indeed something new to him. In Kerala, on that day, the day of the opening of the Poetry Festival, the rain was very different to him. It was as if it was a kind of ‘active agent’ he felt, complimenting what he was about to do, give a speech to poets from across the world and read his poetry.
"This rain has character ... it fits to my speech." he mused as he watched the rain in wonder. “Oh, poetry in India … Bharat! Such a nice name for Old India!”
And he started to speak to himself living in a dreamlike haze.
“Spice from Udaipur. Monsoon. Salt and Pepper. Curry and rice. Sensuality. It all fits together.”
He remembered how he had enquired about the Monsoon and was afraid of it at first when he considered taking the trip to India. And even on the plane to Thruvananthapuram he was still unsure about it. He remembered sharing his worry with a lovely velvet-eyed lady from Punjab who sat next to him. She was the second ‘caller’ and hand beautiful hands. She told him that there was nothing to worry about and explained that there was a very natural aspect to the Monsoon. It was merely there because of the rice crops in India.
“The Southern part … Kerala and Tamil … the Monsoon comes every year.”
‘Yes.”
“You see, rice grows quick-quick and chop-chop … and so high" and she had shown him how high with her copper coloured hand that he found so lovely and had watched so keenly when he wasn’t drifting into the dark pools of her eyes.
“Oh, Freja!”
Real Muses only evince after two ‘callers’ have prepared their way. It has something to do with the ‘Tree faces of Eve’ Marti had explained.
"And when rice grows-grows quick-quick it needs water … much, much water. It is then when the Monsoon comes” she had assured him with a logic of its own.
“Yes, the assets of being alive and keep on being alive … that’s the important thing in growth processes.” he had agreed with her.
And now thinking about her hands and eyes again he abscentmindedly repeated the sentence he had said to her out aloud.
“Yes, the assets of being alive and keep on being alive … that’s the important thing in growth processes.” He was very proud of himself and the fact that he had made it to India. He was bracing the Monsoon.
The Porter hearing him mumbling and distinguishing the word ‘assets’ from his musing thought he was saying something about the quality of the rain in general and in return offered him a correction.
“Yes, sir. No Sir, its not ‘acid’ rain. It’s called Monsoon rain. The Monsoon’s ‘velly’ good for the ‘lice clops’. It’s because of the many, many ‘lice’ and the coconuts in Kerala that the Monsoon comes to here. Its god’s own country. That’s why the Monsoon comes” and he smiled invitingly.
The Porter was employing the exact same argumentation as the velvet-eyed lady. And the way he pronounced ‘rice’, saying ‘lice’ instead of ‘rice’ was extremely charming.
“Oh, that’s Its poetry … indigieous poetry” he said to the Porter.
“Yes, Sir, there’s much poetry in the Monsoon”.
“Oh, they will love it” he thought thinking about the enthusiasm and hunger for new expressions of poets on poetry festivals and immediately consider using it in his speech.
“That’s good … very nice.” He reciprocated ‘Lice for rice. That’s a winner” and he showed the Porter the bundle of papers under his arm.
“This … is poetry” he said “… and my speech!”
And he gloated of pride as he saw the Porters admiration. However, when he raised his arm holding the bundle of papers they almost got dislodged from his grip and nearly dropped to the floor. He was quick to grab and secure them, his umbrella between his legs, and reshuffling them into a neat bundle again.
“Oh, oh, nothing should happen to my papers … it was written with much love.“ he gasped.
”Yes Sir, love is ‘velly’ good,” the Porter offered smiling broadly at his stuntling humaneness.
“A little bit of rain won’t put me off. I got this!” and he indicated his umbrella to the Porter.
"No Sir, no ‘wally’ Monsoon. ‘Velly’ wet but ‘chapelli’ good."
They both shared a hearty laugh about it. He had come prepared for rain. He had brought with him, all the way on the two-night Middle East flight with its 12-hour transit waiting time in Doha, a special umbrella, a sufficiently large one. The umbrella was the biggest sold in the shops. The size of it was huge; to be exact, one meter 15 centimetres, and when it opened it looked like a medium-sized beach umbrella.
“It will protect me fully from rain and give me space in the crowds,” was his argument for buying it. Communal collectivism was something he loathed.
”It’s a solid one … strong material.” he explained said showed the Porter the Italian label, ‘Armani’.
”Yes Sir, ‘velly’ good ‘manufactuling’. English? Is ‘velly’ good for wet water,” the Porter replied with awe.
The tarry and hassle with the umbrella on the various aeroplanes he had to board were well worth it he thought, and unfolding the umbrella now with the exaggerated gesture of a winner, clutching his speech papers and poetry between his legs he took it in both hands and touched the special click-and-open mechanism. The umbrella shot opened with a whoosh and secured his one meter 15 centimetres of space. The Porter had to back up to allow him to swerve it over his head. Proudly he presented it. The Porter inspected it and gave his blessing.
“Now Monsoon will cry many tears of water for you.”
He just knew his ideas for the speech too would be successful. He was absolutely sure of it. And the role he was going to play at the festival would also be performed well. He would provoke and make the grade. His colleague poets would be impressed by his work and speech. They will appreciate it. . He has got it all written down very precisely. And as he waited on the porch with his huge umbrella open over his head and his valuable papers under his arm, he breathed deep, bracing himself to venture into the wet streets of Thruvananthapuram. Like a child enthusiastic on a first day to school after a long vacation he wanted to say more about his planned proceedings for the day but he refrained. Instead he asked the Porter whether he thought love was a childish thing.
”No Sir, no children, just wife.” the Porter replied and grinned happy like a boy too.
Clutching his papers tightly under his right arm and holding the over-sized umbrella high over his head with the left, he set out for the Festival’s opening session. The Porter now had to step off the porch and into the rain to let him past the stoop. It was early morning still and there weren’t many people on the street. He had the space he had calculated he needed for himself. He was gay, happy and an academic. And he was safely under his one meter 15 centimetres sized umbrella, a master in his own domain and the day. The next street he entered had a little bit more traffic. The daily commuters were starting to go to their work. The third block he passed led to a large artery in the city’s centre. Here many people were on the street and traffic was picking up even more. He held tightly onto his papers and the umbrella bobbed over his head as he avoided, sidestepped and jumped over water puddles. But he stayed dry. When he got to a corner where he had to cross the street, he saw that a lot of people were now crowding the streets. They all waited obediently at a dilapidated signpost to cross the busy road. He filed onto the back of the queue and waited his turn. To his horror, several youngsters shuffled under his umbrella to get out of the rain and wait with him, sticking their heads close to his. When it was his turn to cross the street he looked right, left and right again, ogling the on-coming traffic carefully. The umbrella flitted left and right too, along with his movements. He realised that the crossing of streets in India can only come about when one has a firm and quick approach to it. So he adopted the attitude and looked businesslike. He tried a couple of times but couldn’t make it. Luckily for him a couple of cows came from across the street and halted in the middle of the road, claiming the space undisturbed. He saw his chance and made a move to flit over. But his sequence of looking at the traffic was still a European one. In India they drive on the left-hand side of the road. One has to look left, right and then left again, in the opposite order of what he was used to. By this mistake, he didn’t see the scooter coming at him at a reckless pace. It swerved dangerously around the cows, missed a pothole and a puddle and was on him. The shrill honk of the emergency hoot in his face made him jump with fright. Just in time. To avoid being run over, he pulled himself and his umbrella back to the safe position next to the dilapidated crossing sign.
‘Oh my Sweet Jesus, that was a close one!” he gasped and was shaken to the bone.
After he finally recovered, he ventured to step off the curb again, now scrutinising every single car, scooter and bicycle with the utmost attention and looked in all directions innocuously. His eyes were on the traffic, not the road and when he stepped off the curb he didn’t see the floating splash of cow dung that was sliding slowly down the curb. He stepped on it and slipped. His right hand went up into the air and his papers flew from it, flapping in all directions and landing, face up and down, into the flowing water. His hand holding the umbrella shot backwards at the same time, taking the umbrella with it. The umbrella got hooked over a skew panel of the signpost and as he went down, he took the umbrella downwards with him. It ripped open and tore across the entire span of its diameter. Then it flapped shut with the click-and-open mechanism broken and springs tingling all over the pavement. He landed flat on his bum in his neatly pressed new India-designed pants he had bought for the purpose of ‘blending in’ at the Poetry festival. And then he just lay there, partly on the curb and partly off it. Monsoon water and mud gushed over his ankles, knees and up his thighs. He was stunned. Only after he came to his senses again did he hear the buoyantly rollicking, highly amused female laughter behind him. Turning his head, the first thing he saw was a pair of bare female feet in the water and mud. They looked very real and fleshy and had a bronze shine. He raised his head and saw the full torso in a bright red and green silk sari, wet and tightly wrapped over a sensual body. He saw her breasts through the wet silk and her beautiful mouth, her full white rows of teeth, the amber skin of her face, her charcoal coloured pools of eyes, the dreadlocks wet too, and hanging in dripping tussles, pitch black. In her hand she had a bundle of lotus flowers.
“Oh my god! It's the Muse!” he cried out as he recognised her, “Its Muria! She made my fall!”
He had read about her in mythological publications. How she plagues poets, plays with them to the extreme and then laugh pitilessly at them. The lotus flowers gave her away … indeed; she was the niece, on the mother’s side, of the god with the thousand lotuses in his pond as Marti had told Cathella.
“Don’t cross roads in India in Monsoon time. Muria the Pavement Muse of Thruvananthapuram will get you … with cow dung!’ Marti had warned. And he had emphatically called out ‘don’t touch her! Don’t touch her when she offers you a hand! It’s against the law in Kerala! … Touching!”
He was completely out of his role as he lay there in the water at the feet of Muria. Teasing Muria, the Pavement Muse. Oh, she had come to him. He was so thrilled and happy with her. He didn’t even care about his papers and poetry that was now wasting away in the dregs of the street and water.
Muria stopped laughing. She looked at him. Compassion washed from her darkening eyes that had taken on a dirty green colour. The pestering glint was gone from them. Only intimate care beamed from them now while her lushly lips broke into a lovely smile. Her pretty head with the wet dreadlocks bobbed from left to right, the Keralian gesture of understanding and encouragement. She said to him “Don’t worry about the rain. Its bad weather but its good for the rice crops. Come, let me give me you a hand and help you up.”
She had used the most perfect Oxford English he had ever heard spoken and automatically he stretched out his bleak white hand towards her soft open copper feminine palm. That did it.

Stuart felt the damp cold of the Mediterranean all over in his body now. The wind on his terrace was stronger, the clouds over the Mediterranean, thicker and the air colder. The day was dirty green. And abruptly he turned around and went back inside his apartment. He shut the glass door to keep it out. But a sudden sadness washed over him. Inside his apartment there was only his laptop on the table. He kicked off his espadrilles, shuffled into slippers and slouched to it and switched it on.
“Doncia … why did she run off like that to Geneva? Leaving all of them alone?”
And as he heard how the busy hard disk of his laptop loaded his stories, one by one he wanted to cry. The weather effects his mood.
“Doncia … will she come back?” he mourned.

the belly button isn't a belly button at all

May I share some insider info re
(The story of 'mas sobre estany')
'play/communication'
... flesh dissappear in cyber
even houses are different
pics are the 'houses of riceman' and the 'dry earth'
(it is personal)
the belly button isn't a belly button at all
its the 'hole' of the string
(ladder down)
to the mother's womb
I needed to travel 'home'
and you will take me home
when I am fully ready
Maybe I will try to write the story
someday

the non-official Catalan spirit

Readers’ comments: ‘You have the writer’s indispensable talent of being able to engage the reader very quickly and hold his attention. Brilliant interplay and exploration of consciousness – becoming, being a character, being, becoming the writer – and which comes first – the chicken or the egg. It all comes together so beautifully on pages 13 & 14. Again – bravo!’ - Joneve McCormick, New York.

[a dragon tale fragment and mantissa - rice in Baix Empordà

'Joseps Joans i ases n'hi ha a totes les cases'

Arnau Mas knew it would come to this. Yet it still was a terrible shock to him when the Judge slammed his wooden hammer on the hard oak bench in front of him. The slam was so hard and rang through the silence in the courtroom with such harsh finality that nobody dared to look at another. Everybody just gazed into thin air.
’Divorce granted … Doncia Eufràsia d'Almenara gets the house … separated!’
Staring at the digital clock behind the Judge, Arnau saw it was eight minutes passed eleven o’clock. Wednesday, June the 14th, 2006. His marriage to Doncia was over and all that remained now to him was his fier d’être Catalan. And he noticed the’ sang et or vestige of the union between Count Ramon Berenguer II of Barcelona and the Duke of Provence in 1112 AD’ hanging on the right wall of the room. At the entrance door to the side of it there was a policeman guarding it.
Court proceedings are strict, legislative affairs.
‘It’s a legend,’ he thought, ‘…all existence is legend.’
Count Guifré from Ria … North Catalunya, 12th Century AD… It was Charles Le Chauve who dipped his hand in Guifré’s wounds and drew the four red bars with his bloodied fingers across Guifré’s gold shield’.

Pondering 'the non-official Catalan spirit’ Stuart Mill gets up from behind his laptop at the kitchen table, slips on red espadrilles next to his chair and shuffles to the sun-filled balcony overlooking the bay of Estartit and the Medes Islands.
There’s a sentence he has discovered on the homepage of CatalunyaNord.com that lingers in his mind. He has tried to get rid of it and can’t. ‘The permanent and spontaneous values of a population guided largely by duality.’ This has been said about the indigenous people of Catalonia.
He thinks of the presentation of the homepage.
‘It has quite a title, The Land and the Men, and he agrees that it seems to be one of the better pages he has visited as he walks onto the balcony, smelling the fresh sea air flowing abundantly to him. He hears the wash of waves on the beach and a feeling of well-being overwhelms him. It’s good to be at the Costa Brava.
He is searching the Internet for ordinary names of people, first names, sur and middle names, to use in the story he is writing. He started writing it only a few weeks ago when he was staying over in El Azahar, Peniscola, after a visit to the Centre Julio González, Valencia’s Institute for Modern Art. He hadn’t seen the newer part of the museum, called the Sala de la Muralla, since it was opened in 1991, and since he is an art lover and there was an exhibition on of Juan Barjola and Christopher Wool, artists whose work he follows, he took the trip into middle-deep Spain. He was in Lyon when he heard about the exhibition and decided then and there to take the trip down to Valencia. Originally his travels would have taken him only as far as Lyon’s Musée d’Art Contemporain. But like everything in his life, the plot worked out differently.
Now, staying in L’Estartit on his way back home, he has decided, for reasons too complicated to explain, to situate the story in Baix Empordà, Catalonia and not in Costa del Azahar, Valencia, or the dry mountainous terrain of the Serrania de Cuenca as he originally thought of doing. This creates a disturbing dilemma in his mind, however. A story with a setting in Catalonia has to have Catalan names and references, he has realised, after changing his mind concerning the location and setting of the story. That’s why he is so feverously browsing every possible website on Catalonia in search of ‘information’. Characters have to be recognisable as Empordians when an author wants to dig out what ‘lives’ in the small mediaeval town communities of Baix Empordia, Alt Empordà + Baix Empordà. It doesn’t work otherwise. Spanish names are just not ‘in’ in Catalonia. That is what he thinks at least.
Because of his erratic and sudden changing of many things in his life, Stuart has gotten a reputation for being irrational and impulsive. But really, that’s debatable. Creativity often feeds on irrationality. And he doesn’t mean to be inconsequential or untrustworthy, a scatter brain, to those around him. But it happens that people feel uneasy when he enthusiastically tells them about a ‘new project’ and ‘firm’ decisions he has made about this or that. Things always ‘get changed‘ wherever he is arround.
‘What can do? I’ve got the money … time, I have nothing but time…’ he explains, but by then the damage has mostly been done. And he hasn’t got the money. His last book was such a terrible failure that he is still very much ashamed of admitting it. The book was printed on the wrong side of the paper-cut and displayed the peculiarity of not being able to be closed once opened. There was a court case about it, which he lost, and no single bookstore owner from here to whatever corner of the English-speaking world, wanted it. In the end he donated the books to Oxfam, for them to ‘get what they can get’, collecting money for the 2004 Tsunami victims in Indonesia. Even his publications before this last disaster, short stories and poetry, didn’t quite make the grade, and ‘Slender Strain’, a novel which was written at the time of the 11/3 bombings in Madrid, he advertised ‘free’ as a download in digital copies from his homepage.
‘Oh, those callous and cowardly god-believing trash blowing Atocha up with their sophisticated Proximus or Base accounts’
He has never had even a ‘thank you’ for books he has handed out for ‘free,’ nor has he seen much money for his literary work, ever.
‘I don’t write for money…’ he would be prepared to explain when he felt the question coming. And the story he is now writing, ‘Well, every writer dreams of that one final success, doesn’t he?’
‘Oh, this is my Grand Finale project, at last…’ he compliments himself where he stands on the balcony of his sea-view apartment at Estartit.
But the ‘dilemma’ is still very much real for him. The issue of Spanish versus Catalan names for his characters is of real importance to him. In storytelling and in real life in Catalonia, it is an issue of importance as well. He is acutely aware of that. The story will stand or fall by it. And there’s also that ‘patting-on-the-shoulder of the writers thing’ he thinks as he watches the magnificent view of the Mediterranean sea in front of him.
‘Am I writing the story for a pat? Have I changed the locale to suck up to the Catalans … to have the pretense of being ‘in’ with them?’ he broods.
Being in the beautiful Baix Empordà, the northern part of Catalonia, he so dearly wishes to be part of the country. It’s that sense of wanting to belong that takes a heavy toll from writers everywhere in the world. They need to get a grip on settings and plots of their stories as they live in them. Their stories are their breathing, the sources of their lives, and they need to feel at home in them. The indigenous minds of the people that pop up in them, the ‘non-official spirits’ are so important. Actually, he realises, he is screaming for Catalonia in the same way as songs like ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ scream for acceptance in the face of losing it.
‘Oh,’ he murmurs, ‘Argentina … Spanish’.
Driving the first day driving into Baix Empordà on the N-11, from Barcelona towards Girona, it was as if the place were pulling him in with a great force. He had never had that sensation so strongly before. Possibly his decision to change the locality and setting of the story had something to do with it.
‘Home at last…’ he had thought.
It was as if invisible cords were tying him to a new destiny.
‘A new project… The Story! What is the spirit ruling people in such a beautiful place?’
The harmony of the place was overwhelming. As he drove closer towards Torroella de Montgrí he watched the fertile, breathing land calling to him.
‘A Toscan of the South…’
There were so many strange agricultural incentives. And lusty wild growing trees formed resting places for his eyes among the cultivated land patches.
‘I can lie on my back and watch the wonderful clouds in the sky …’
The olive groves, the apple and pear orchards, the hidden mediaeval stone-built villages and the occasional fluttering bird in the corn and rice fields … all were signs, he decided.
‘Oh, I am absolutely sure of it… This is it. The story’s here…’, he says to himself and was glad he had changed the setting of the story.
‘This is a must!’ he smiles as if he were ‘there’ and where his thoughts were.
On the balcony the tranquillity of a sea view apartment at the Costa Brava seems to him a wonder that has fallen from the sky. In the distance, behind the harbour with its white boats and coloured flags, he can discern the rugged cliffs of the Marine Reserve of the Medes Islands.
‘I don’t want my characters to be foreigners … that’s for sure,’ he says out loud.
However, he hardly knows what characters he is seeking for personalities he has in mind for the story.
Although he has stopped over in Catalonia in the past, on route to other southern parts of Spain, he has never become involved in local Catalonian communities and culture. It has only recently occurred to him that Catalonia isn’t merely part of a bigger Spain, but a landscape and ‘a space’ with its own identity. It has a long history. He had never given it a thought, even though he’s familiar with the poetry of Miquel Martí i Pol, the songs of Lluis Llach and Josep Carreras, their Junts, and of course Montserrat Caballé, the great opera soprano.
‘What, oh what, is the ‘spirit of non-official Catalonians’? he asks into the immaculate sunny day surrounding him.
All of a sudden he is sad. He needs information, and insight into background intrigues. And he doesn’t know where to begin. He is sad, too, that he hasn’t used his previous stays in Catalonia to better purpose than lying in the sun like a quirir. This word he overheard in a conversation between two receptionists in an office in the apartment block below, and deduced that this is what Catalans call tourists. But then his sorrow quickly fades. A surname he has seen on the website pops into his mind and he is back with his dilemma and dearly wants to solve it. Thoughts start coming to him. The surname was that of ‘Mas’. In Flemish and other Dutch languages it means ‘corn’. He starts thinking of other words he likes in general and knows something about.
‘Pinpilinpauxah’.
But that means butterfly in eusquera, the Bask language. Yet the word is so foreign to him and sounds so exotic that he twists his lips to get the pronunciation right. And words such as dream, water, honey, moon, butterfly, come to him. He wonders what they would be in Catalan.
‘Papallona, Mariposa, Papillon, Butterfly, Pinpilinpauxah!’ he says, and then firmly decides ‘No, I want a name to fit a Catalan Rice Farmer … a name to fit and reflect the status of the historic Empordian..’
‘Mas’ intuitively rolls from his lips.
And he continues raking his mind trying to make connections to other Catalan words he knows.
‘Girona!’ he says, ‘that’s a ‘gir’ and an ‘ona’ … big wave.’
He feels pride wash over him and straightens his back while continueing his game of guessing words.
’Solsona’, he says, ‘that’s a sols and an ona, no?’ And ‘queries‘, tourists. Or is it a single sol which is the key? Loneliness?’
And he wonders where he first heard the word ‘solsona’.
‘Doesn’t one of the receptionists come from Solsona near Cardona?’
And then he remembers that he once stayed in the Parador on the hill over-looking Cardona. It was a Monastry and fort in Medieaval times.
‘Oh, hideous food they serve there and the dining room is noisy like a barracks’ he thinks and returns to the word ‘Mas’.
‘Mas ?’ and ‘Alfons Mas’ comes.
‘Who was he? Where do I get the name?’
Then he remembers. It was on the website. Alfons Mas, a Catalan hero of the late thirties, was the one who suggested the name ‘Catalunya del Nord’ at the founding of the Catalan group Nostra Terra.
‘That’s impressive… Mas, Mas’ he repeats the name and likes the sound of it and then seriously considers the name as a candidate for a character.
’Oh, these researches open the doors to such beautiful stuff, and to hidden oracles. The elusive spirit of the brave Catalonian…’ he grins.
‘I’ll get behind it, don’t you worry!’ he jubilates a bit louder.
Persistence is one of his good characteristics. And researching for a story is an intriguing business he has always enjoyed immensely. It’s the opening up of worlds that is a writer’s business.
‘The pollution of the unspoilt… Hidden worlds in Pandora boxes. Small, round, little white worlds in Opera Mint boxes sent by postal orders.’
‘Worlds such as ‘the Catalan movement in the years 1970 and 1980 and stories with subtle awareness messages such as ‘there is constantly a growth towards separation. Isn’t that grand?’
‘… But to what extent isn’t information on a website always passé?’ he wonders. ‘The name Catalogne du Nord, North Catalonia … Catalunya del Nord, does it really reflect a locality for a spirit? And if I am to put a name to this spirit? Use it for a character? The character has got to have a spirit, hasn’t it? But this North Catalunya … isn’t that the French Catalan speaking ‘side’ belonging to the government of France only? And what about the other comunities on the map of Catalonia, País Valencià, Illes Balears, Franja de Ponent i Catalunya del Nord?’
Then he thought of how precarious the ‘scratching of surface’ of issues on websites could set traps for natîve writers, leading them into a lot of trouble. No website can actually open up the Wonder World of the Catalonia Spirit, per se, that he knows.
‘You won’t find the ‘spirit’ there … and not the desire and taste for the authentic’.
And he keeps on musing out loud on the balcony. Seagulls scoop in and pass his view, looking him straight in the eye with each passing.
‘… But to what extent isn’t information on a website always passé?’ he wonders. ‘The name Catalogne du Nord, North Catalonia … Catalunya del Nord, does it really reflect a locality for a spirit? And if I am to put a name to this spirit? Use it for a character? The character has got to have a spirit, hasn’t it?’
He answers more and more of his questions.
‘Both in Perpignan, across the Spanish border, as well as in Barcelona, the heart of Catalonia, people use Catalan’.
And in some cases he disagrees with himself out loud.
’But the non-official Catalan spirit … what is that?’
And on it goes on, and on. He argues, nods his head, discusses, agrees and tells himself that phrases like ‘regained confidence’, ‘spontaneous consensus’, ‘the general reprisal of relations with Catalogne du Sud’ don’t really ‘cut ground’ with him.
It’s about the too pro-this and the too pro-that that is propagated on websites he decides, and dismisses the case, ‘and oh, the excuses they use every time … the multitude of defences they put up … and the dealing in bulk ‘reasons’ for things’. What seems important to him, though, that he has learned since he got to Baix Empordà, and makes perfect sense to him, is the closing statement text he has read on the homepage of CatalunyaNord.com.
‘The need of the Catalonians to discover a modern and representative name emanated from a desire for historic redefinition’.
‘That is the total truth! The permanent and spontaneous values of a population guided largely by duality throughout time. Yes, that is it! The historic definition!’ and he ah-ha’s in a gestalt-like ‘JA’.
He needs to know more about the history of this ‘silly’ town he is in, before he can find the ‘hidden spirit’ for the personality he is seeking he feels. To his neighbours on the balcony next to him, his loud mumbling and now his rejoicing at his last ‘find’ sound as if he has achieved an epiphany. The couple look at each other, heaving their eyebrows and suppressing laughter. His ‘introspective research’ into the ‘heart and spirit of the Catalonian’, as he now wants to call the issue, is the enormous difficulty in what he has set out to do. And he is aware of the scope of research needed.
‘And oh, the many Legends they have … How many? Which are applicable to the story and which not?’
These questions in particular frighten him. He wants to flee now, run and hide in his story. Be a third person in it, a character is his own world.
‘I the writer … am I to be a character too?’
He sees himself standing on the balcony in his red theatrical espadrilles. He sees the swimming pool underneath him and the people relaxing lazily on the deckchairs around it. Behind the pool there are the pine trees from which the apartment complex takes its name. And Valéry Young Prague’s terrible sentence comes to mind.
‘I see … seeing myself seeing myself ... seeing, feeling, how one is inoculated’.
The scenery waves in front of him like a banner. He sees that he can see through the trees and discern patches of beach and white sand. And further, beyond the beach, there is the blue aquamarine sea of the Mediterranean and the islands bathing in shallow water.
And he is shocked out of his dream.
‘This isn’t the story I want to write. Or is it?’
Doubt, uncertainty, overtake his thoughts … the feeling of being inadequate for the task.
‘It’s so huge … Catalonia’.
Abruptly he turns away and goes back to his laptop in the kitchen. He kicks his red espadrilles from his feet and sits down before the laptop. He needs a Catalan name for a Catalan character, and not a name for a locality.
’Localities create themselves. My god, how I waste my time! Pyrénées-Méditerranée, Pyrénées-Roussillon, Pyrénées-catalanes, Comtats, Roussillon, Catalogne, Catalogne française. Who will ever know which is which … and what, what? I want Mas!’
At this moment Martí Carbonell rings him up on his GSM and gives him an update on Arnau’s court case.
‘Doncia gets the house and Arnau gets the rice field’, Martí says matter-of-factly.
‘Mm thanks,’ he replies ‘Sticky paella, isn’t it?’ and spontaneously adds ‘We can go to Señora Arrila’s for a tallat later in the week, ok?’.
‘L’Arnau i la Dolça han tallat’ Stuart thought, ‘isn’t that a metaphor for splitting from one another.
And Marti was off his GSM.

Legally a muse

Heady perfume of fresh cut grass in springs first rain
on fertile soil while gentle fingers
stumble over
slender youthfu
lcurves and angles
geometric geographically
RaE Pater

'And at that moment she did something that she had never done before. She bent over and kissed me full on the lips. The teeny-wheezy little margin of what had become of the write and the wrong disappeared. And she kissed me again and more trustingly. This time she ventured deeper into the forbidden zone of makeshift communication. Plain adultery. Her heart pounded fresh and I was a writer. Some flesh. She stuck the tip of her tongue into the small slit between my lips. I felt lithe and ordered another round coffee…'.

'It was a nice movie' she said and prompted 'Marien Church? Coffee?'
'Yes' I nodded.
It was my kind of movie I thought.
And off we set for the Marien Church coffee shop, she talking and babbling, telling me one of the most entertaining stories I had ever heard. Her use of simple ingredients such as people's aspirations and motivations, the theme of love-and-war in triangle relationships and the perfect description of the small worlds people are forced to live in makes her a storyteller of format. The story she told me had that necessary sharp edge to it. And such an acid ring to it that it might even be a true story! It had originated at her work she told me, and had matured via the grape vine. But I am sure the originality check to it was hers. It paralleled all her stories she had told me. She insisted on buying something first and immediately she was full of delight. Buying things was the top of enjoyment for her. It also had become almost a ritual of our secret meetings. This time we bought slippers. A Hers and His matching pair. She took the His and I was stuck with the Hers. Sweet dangerous bribes.
'Coffeeeeeee!' she rang again when we were almost at the coffee shop at the foot of the Marien Church.
Her mouth lewd the way I like women's mouths. She was a sapling of a delicate kind. Almost fully-grown and yet still so much of a toy-girl. Her skirts were always too short but the shape of her legs made up for that. And she was not legally blond she just acted it. Golden peroxide Schwartzkopf. She could also play the extremely seductive I could be yours routine to perfection. Life with her always seems so happy and carefree. She was a bird always in flight and with a twig in her beak she always brings good news and stories. And when she laughs she tosses the twig high into the air and catches it again. She began telling me the story. Her eyes were gleaming and she had that knowing conspiratorial smile of hers on as a starter. I immediately knew it was going to be a long story. And that there was going to be some expensive dicey sauce poured over it. The story was about a certain Filing Lady who works at the local Municipal Revenue office. She called the woman the Mailing lists' Woman and persisted to use the term throughout the story. It sounded better she said. And as she filled me in with detail of the lady's background I got to know the woman's aspirations, her life, her past life, her ambition to complete her unfinished law studies. I learned about her evening classes, her work, her attitudes, her mistakes, how she got married, the story that went with the marriage, her unplanned pregnancy 20 years ago and especially how she had after all these years never given up her dreams to do some work in the legal profession. How she has to scram to be on time for the evening classes she still follows at the Technical College. I also learned about the last 6 months in her household since her only child, a daughter of very upper class manners, had left home. And I learnt about her husband, the Dane called Björg. He was still a literature student as the story goes. A writer in-becoming and too still nourishes a twenty year old dream to publish a book or story or something. He has never sold a single sheet of writing in all of his life and to earn his share of their keep he works at an industrial plant doing industrial cleaning.
Some small detail in her story however caught my attention and created a deja vu effect on me. The Filing Lady was mothering the Dane Björg she said. I related this to my own experiences at home. I too have this vague feeling that my wife has influence over me and uses it! And thinking about it I recall how in my own stories woman characters always do me. Indeed the parallel with the Dane Björg's situation was strikingly real.
As it happened, the Filing Lady got home one evening while her husband Björg was still doing overtime at the plant. She was quite tired from the days work but she summoned the effort to quickly clean up the house and Björg's study. In Björg's it was quite a mess with papers and drafts of his stories lying all over the place. There was also a stack of telephone bills among the drafts tucked away savagely underneath his trunk. She was in such a hurry to get the work done before she had to rush off again to her evening classes at the Technical College that she didn't give it another thought. It was only a few days later when she saw him busy at his trunk again that she thought of the bills again. But once again she was in a hurry. Her days were so full that much of ordinary chit-chat that occurs between spouses escaped her. Working full-time, doing chores at home, going to part-time evening law classes and studying the content of the lectures, all practically at the same time was no easy task. One lunchtime however, again several days later, the bills upgraded themselves into a more prominent part of her daily life and attention. It happened due to a small incident at the bank. She had wanted to draw money for lunch but was told that their account was overdrawn and that she couldn't get any money. She didn't make anything out of it and went without lunch. But what tilted the balance into some aggravated questioning was when she discovered after work that she hadn't even had enough money in her purse left for bus fare and had to walk the 5 mile distance home. It was on this long walk that she thought about the telephone bills again. And she stopped. It wasn't so much the bills that took her attention it was the fact that the bills weren't paid and that the account was still overdrawn! It puzzled her.
At home she searched out Björg and gave him the news of the overdrawn account. She told him what a hassle it was and how she had no money. And she raved about how she couldn't buy anything to eat for the whole day. And she got mad at him because she had to 'bloody' walk home again! And then she slopped down into an armchair right on top of all his drafts and stories.
She was pooped.
The connection between the bills and the overdrawn account would not have been established had it not been for Björg to open his mouth and said something very stupid.
'Oh, gosh, yes' he said 'I clean forgot to pay the bills … anyway we are a bit short of cash this month but don't worry I will pay the bills first thing next month. It's the 25th today, it will be Ok, won't it? And oh yes, you do know that the Hendersons asked us for Friday evening? Why don't you have your hair done tomorrow? You will look nice, then…!' and he handed her his pay for the day.
That did it! She was irritated.
'What have the Hendersons got to do with it?' she almost screamed at him but she was too tired for argument.
It just hit her that never in her whole life with him had she heard her husband botch out such a callous straightforward fabrication with such an immediate and automatic fluency! The Hendersons did not ask them! She was sure of that!
Friday evening however her hair was done and at the Hendersons she looked nice. But it was a horrible evening for her. She couldn't get away from the fact that she felt that the Hendersons didn't expect them and that Björg was hiding something from her.
And time crept on.
And she became aware of change in Björg's attitude. He was doing much more overtime lately and never seemed to have time for her anymore. She started to watch his moods and she noted his arrival and leaving times. The small seeds of obsession were in fertile loam. And there were the bills… They kept on coming back to her. She searched for them again and when she scrutinised them carefully this time she noticed an unknown number on it … and it was dialled almost at a daily basis the past 6 months!
And more time crept on.
One morning after a restless night she woke up with a headache. And while trying to dress in the bathroom she started to calculate Björg's overtime shifts the past 6 months and she worked out his approximated income. She also worked out her own income. She totalled the two amounts. Then she methodically checked their monthly expenditures. Point for point. The cost of water, electricity, gas and telephone … and there was the telephone number again!
'Who's number is it?' she asked the reflection of her face in mirror.
And then she knew it! Her blue irises pinned. The logic of her reasoning struck her. The much dialled number … there's a connection between it, Björg's changed work rhythm, his lies and the overdrawn account! She stared at her face in the mirror and she saw that the frown on her forehead pointed into a very specific direction. Now she wanted to know whom her husband was phoning the last six months! She didn't know whom the number belonged to. All of a sudden there was a shiver in her. It was as if something cold was slithering down her spine. She noticed how white her face had become in the mirror in front of her.
That day, from work, she boldly decided to phone the number. But she wasn't prepared for the shock. A sweet young female voice answered the phone.
'Solicitors Swindle and Swindle and company, speaking! What can we do for you?' the voice asked.
Confounded she stood there like a mute. She hadn't expected that! Her breast was heaving up and down and her hands were shaking. She felt faint and then she rammed the phone back on its hook without saying a word into it.
'Oh fuck, lawyers!' she uttered 'What has my husband got to do with lawyers? Is he in trouble?'
She was completely lost from her map.
It was only after some more long and unnerving days of brooding and worry that she dared address the issue again. And grinding her mind she saw what she thought was a ray of brilliancy. It came to her like a bolt. But also as another shock.
'Oh my god, its the secretary!' she realised 'It is the secretary of Swindle and Swindle and company and not the lawyers that my husband was phoning!'
And she went into a panic.
'Ooh, I have to think! I have to think!' she cried out and she didn't know what to do.
That whole afternoon she kept on repeating these two sentences. She was so occupied with thinking that she misfiled a couple of lists and got rebuked for it. It was the sweet young voice of the secretary that was taking all her attention. A terrible scenario was deploying itself in her mind's eye. It haunted her. She was frightened and hurt. She wanted to flee and just get away from it all. That night she didn't go to evening school and even dreamt about thinking. And in her dream she yelled out that she was thinking. When Björg remarked about this the next morning she just looked at him with a haggard and tired face. She was absent and drawn from distraught sleep and at the breakfast table she sat staring into a void. And when she kissed him goodbye at the door she closed her eyes and saw an image of a secretary of a law firm waving at her across his head. In her ears there was the ringing of the sweet young voice. She felt sick and wanted to vomit. She didn't want to see what she thought she envisioned. But it was in her mind that it happened, the worst place for any scenario dealing with reality to occur in.
She even missed the bus for work that morning and had to walk to work. That distressed her even more and towards mid-afternoon she could scarcely breathe anymore. It couldn't go on much longer she knew. She had to do something. And just before closing time she plucked up all the courage that she could muster and made up her mind.
'The bitch!' she exclaimed and grounded her teeth 'Now she'll get it!'
And with the determination of a cornered beast spotting an opening in the fence she grabbed the phone off its hook once more and phoned the solicitors Swindle and Swindle and company.
When the secretary answered she was miraculously calm. Her instinct told her to be contained and to mimic the innocence of her opponent. In an equally sweet voice she said that she had a case for the solicitors Swindle and Swindle and company. And she explained that it was rather a sensitive matter and grave consequences could follow from it. She explained that she thought it wise to discuss it with the secretary alone first, before informing the solicitors about it. And she asked whether the secretary could meet her in cognito over a quiet cup of coffee. She told the secretary that she knew a secluded coffee bar downtown … across the Marien Church. And she ended the conversation with '… And if you being a woman yourself and certainly will understand it … and could do this for me, I would appreciate it very much'.
All was fair in love and war. She didn't say who she was or mention her name. She only described how she looked and what she would wear when they met.

''Nooooon!' Don't do it!' she giggled as I tried to touch her cheek with a tender hand.
And she blushed even more when I persisted and succeeded. I was completely drawn into her design as she sat there across me in the coffee bar at the Marien Church. It was a well-tucked away private little hideout. The atmosphere in it was romantic and since 6 months it had become our secret love nest.
'Oh god, you're so nice!' she sighed 'My husband would never do that…!'
She wasn't married! It was all play-try. She had teased me with it ever since we met 6 months ago. We were just in a movie. And she couldn't help it. She took her script seriously and did at that moment something that she had never done before. She bent over and kissed me full on the lips. The teeny-wheezy little margin of what had become of the write and the wrong disappeared. And she kissed me again. And this time she ventured deeper into the forbidden zone of makeshift communication. Plain adulatory. Her heart pounded fresh and I was a writer. Some flesh. She stuck the tip of her tongue into the small slit between my lips. I felt lithe and ordered another round coffee.

We were all alone in the coffee bar but now two women looking very businesslike entered the coffee bar. The one was an elderly lady, drawn, serious and nicely dressed. The younger of the two was a cute poesy woozy. The poesy woozy was frolicsome and trying her utmost best to look professional and beautiful at the same time. One could see she was excited and there was an air of importance hanging around her. She showed the lady which chair to take. The lady took it solemnly. Watching them in the dim light I meant to see that the lady had blue irises and the poesy woozy's eyes' were the colour of nutmeg brown plastic buttons.
'An odd couple' I remarked '… couldn't be mother and daughter, could it?'
She looked at them and her smile disappeared like a false moustache ripped off an imitator. Their presence triggered something overt in her. Something vulgar. Mise-en-Traub.
'The bitch with the frown's a screw around. Forget her! Watch out for the poesy woozy, she's trouble!' she sussed.
My mouth fell open. I was shocked at the reaction. From sweet young thing she had turned herself into a terrible possessive Muse.
'Oh, gosh, yes' I responded like a puppet and said with the fluency of a previously written paragraph 'I clean forgot to pay the bills … anyway we are a bit short of cash this month, but don't worry I will pay the bills next month. It's the 25th today, it would be Ok, won't it? And say, you do know that the Hendersons asked us Friday evening? Why don't you have your hair done tomorrow? You will look nice, then…!'
But her threat was real. She was an animal and could bite. Her brown eyes bored straight into me again. It was serious business.
'I am so sorry! I didn't mean it' I begged at her trying to rectify my blunder. 'I … those two women. My wife… You now?' I stammered hoping the excuse would rake fruit.
'Oh, don't you worry' she said with blame and irony 'You haven't got a thing in the world to worry about with me! I know about writers. Always with their heads elsewhere'.
And she ended the incident with 'God, that poesy woozy looks like a cheap slut. I bet she's sleeping with that grandmother's husband'.
From then on the two women were non-existent for her and I had my warning.

The mailing lists' woman was sitting across the Poesy Woozy of Swindle and Swindle and company. She was eaten up from inside and weary from sleepless strain yet she portrayed calm and poise. And she was acutely aware of the fact that she was having an interview with a rival and that the rival was the secretary of the renowned solicitors Swindle and Swindle and company. But she had decided to win her case. She would use whatever self-taught skills she had gathered first at the University 20 years ago and of late at the Technical College with her evening law studies. She knew she had to fake sincerity as an opener and to come out unexpectedly from an angle as a follow up. And she knew that it would come to a bribe in the end.
She started positioning her case with great gravity. The illogic of love was moving in her like a programmed rotor. There was a Lacan-like indestructibility of its motion in her. It was driving her. She was going to win and win as quickly as possible. Whatever it took! The Poesy Woozy on the other hand sat there with her nervous giggle and was completely unaware of what was in store for her. Her style was to impress and to act as she had seen the lawyers of the firm Swindle and Swindle and company acted when screwing a customer into a case. Namely to fashion a dumb sympathetic air and treat the opponent as dung, smelling dung that equals money. She faked listening. That was her mistake.
'… It's a 6 months old story…' the mailings lists woman said as she took the stand and she meticulously accentuated every single word she said. She wanted to make absolutely sure that Poesy Woozy grasped every single one of them. Then she waited for her words to sink in and have their affect. Then she continued again.
'… But let me ask you first … what would you do when … say you were married … when your husband has an affair with a young secretary of some law firm … say a downtown solicitor's firm? A well renowned one such as Swindle and Swindle and company? And he phoned her so much during 6 months that it becomes impossible for him to pay the telephone bills and keep up his household. … And that he had to hide the bills under a trunk?'
Poesy Woozy wasn't that clever and neither was she quick of mind. And she hadn't listened to what the mailing lists' woman was saying. She also wasn't a studying law student but only worked for lawyers. She would never be a law student. She just didn't have what it takes. And she was also too young. She never had experienced cessation.
'Kill him' she said.
The mailing lists' woman hadn't expected such an answer and almost got thrown off her course. She groped for poise. Got it. And continued.
'… And what when you love him?' she asked regaining her drift and using a new stance.
'Kill him even more!' Poesy Woozy replied once again without thinking. Instinct had taken over in her. She acted a fierce woman's practicality but it went in the wrong direction.
'No' the mailing lists woman said '… you don't understand me! I mean when you love him! What would you do?'
And with that she shot her index finger right at Poesy Woozy's heart. She stuck her finger into Poesy Woozy's chest between her two tiny tits so hard that Poesy Woozy hiccupped.
Oh, it was easy! There wasn't even a fight. Poesy Woozy immediately lost her nerve and began to cry. The shock was too big for her. It came too suddenly. And the irony was that she still hadn't understood what it all was about.
'What did you do that … for? Hurt me?' Poesy Woozy asked dumbfounded and started to sob.
The gravity of the matter eluded her like most stories elude writers. She was busy with her hurt and had forgotten the issue. But the mailing lists' woman's blue irises were waiting, glowing with impatience.
'Let me put it to you in another way…' she continued having no compassion for Poesy Woozy and staying in control.
'Do you use a condom when you sleep with married men?'
'Nooooon!' Poesy Woozy choked without seeing the trap.
She was embarrassed at the suggestion. Also the relevance between illicit sex and condoms had never occurred to her.
'And when you get Sida or get pregnant? What would you do then? Give that Sida to those married men's wives and kids? Bring up their children?'
And then the blow.
'Have you used a condom when you slept with my husband?'
Poesy Woozy was there! She realised what she was suspected of.
She arrived like a horse chased from hell. But it was too late. She was already dead. Her brown eyes opened and all she could see was destruction. The earth had ended and there was no air to breathe. She was suffocating. Her mouth fell open, groping. First drool came out of it, then she choked. Facial paralysis. No voice.
'Oh, my god, no…' her lifeless lips formed.
Still no sound. She was deceased and expired. She had no control over anything. She wet her panty and the piss dripped down to the floor. The world had shut down for her.

'Hey! … Come back! Come back! Look at me! Stop looking at those two idiotic women!' she called out and grabbed my arm and shook it as if to reanimate me.
'Yooh-hooh, here I am! God, you writers … drifting into stories! You haven't even listened, have you? Don't tell me you haven't! Wait, I'll get us another coffee to wake you up' she said energetically and called over her shoulder like an owner.
'Waiter…!'
I was pooped. Dog tired all of a sudden. The mailing lists' woman was a cool callous lion. Brave, correct, the King of the Animals and she could kill but she wasn't a spiteful killer. She was kind too. And rubbing in her victory wasn't part of her scene. Now that she had obtained the winning hand over Poesy Woozy and had secured her domain that was enough for her. She looked at the bundle into which Poesy Woozy had crumbled. She knew she had to resuscitate her somehow. Give her a domain of her own. She took Poesy Woozy's hand. A mother nurturing the young. It was obvious to her that she would not kill her husband as Poesy Woozy had suggested. She loved her husband. Always had. And always will. Her husband the Dane Björg … the writer. And neither will she kill a fatally wounded inexperienced little girl that has lost the use of both of her legs. But she will end what she thought was an illicit relationship between Poesy Woozy and her husband … for good. She spoke to Poesy Woozy.
'I want you to go and have a Sida test and I want you to have a pregnancy test as well. And I want you to bring me the results. You bring it to me here or I will have to come by at your office…'
A knife and a warning … just in case.
Poesy Woozy heard every single word the mailing lists woman was saying and she watched every movement of her pinhole irises. She nodded fiercely with a 'Yessss' on every single syllable. Her brown eyes were wide open and swimming in tears. Mascara smut ran down her cheeks and her delicate girlish face looked terrible. She, a little daughter, listening, trusting every single promise of the mother. But when the mailing lists' woman mentioned her office, she violently shook her head and sighed out loud 'No! No! Not my office … not my office, please!'
And she started to weep heart brokenly again.
'Ok then' the mailing lists' woman said 'Not your office … you will bring the results to me here … or I will just have to phone your office, won't I?'
The knife again and the bribe. A little less harsh this time but still sharp.
Poesy Woozy understood her words crisp and clear and knew exactly what she had to do.
'Yes! Yes!' she nodded firmly and added 'I'll bring it here!'
Closing.
'… Oh, there's another thing' the mailing lists' woman said and made a final opening for complete withdrawal.
'We have discussed the case now but I don't think it would be a worthwhile case for Swindle and Swindle and company. What do you think? Do you think it would be of any interest to them?' she asked.
Affirmative Poesy Woozy nodded. It definitely wasn't a case for Swindle and Swindle and company!
'No, it wasn't' both of them agreed.
Slowly Poesy Woozy started to show signs of life again. A small ray of sunlight ran into the coffee bar at the Marien Church and fell on the table between them. The seed of cancer was cut away from Poesy Woozy's heart. She shook her head very firmly for many minutes and her tears stopped. She bit her lower lip. It hurt. Then she fashioned an idiotic smile like the teenager she really was still. The mailing lists' woman returned the smile. Woman to woman. Comradeship and sharing. Irises and spacious open brown nutmegs. Then the mailing lists' woman took a handkerchief from her handbag and wiped off the smut and tears from Poesy Woozy's face.
'There…' she said when it was done 'you are a beautiful girl and I am proud of you to have so much sense but now first go to the bathroom and refresh yourself. I'll clean up the floor'.
Poesy Woozy was happy and relieved. She laughed out, almost too loud, and stood up like a good girl and went to the bathroom. And the irony of it all was that she was innocent! She had never slept with the mailing lists' woman's husband, the Dane Björg. She had only met him 6 months ago.

'Drink your coffee!' she said 'The story isn't finished yet! Are you listening?'
The scrunching animal, hyena, was rejoicing. It was as base as its instinct and the story was appetising as a bleeding carcass.
'… You know what happened then?' she gloated and ignored my reluctance to hear more.
'The secretary of that law firm got the tests and when that shit of a husband of that bitch of a woman phoned the secretary again she told him that everything was over between them and that she didn't want to see him any more. She didn't say a thing about the rap she had from the bitch at Marien Church. She was too piss scared for more. And she asked him never to phone her again. Just like that! It was over. The poor bastard of a writer didn't understand a thing about what had happened! It all happened behind his back, see! The bitch arranged it for him. And he died afterwards of unhappiness because he couldn't grasp the story. But that served him write, don't you think? Ooh, I hate men! None of them are to be trusted!'
But I wasn't listening to her anymore. The day had turned blunt all of a sudden. Innocence had fled the face of misunderstanding and overkill. And Poesy Woozy was with me. I held her on my lap and I just wanted to keep on holding her. A helping hand. Also, the cosiness of the coffee bar at the Marien Church wasn't cosy anymore. It was really an ordinary low-class joint I noticed. The air in it was muff and it was far too dark in it to be romantic. And I noticed all of a sudden that I was alone at the table. There was nobody across me. She was gone. She just wasn't there! A mirage! I was tricked!
I checked the women at their table. They weren't there either. Their table was unoccupied. They were non-existent. I checked the floor. By god, there were two shopping bags with slippers in them at the legs of the chairs! I stood up, picked up both bags, paid the bill and left the bar. Outside I found a dustbin and dumped the bags into it. Beggars' His and Hers. Fatal evidence of a derisive wrong deception. And moving into the late afternoon busy street I saw how the chimneys of the industrial plant at the far side of the town merged into the skyline's fading dipping light. It was getting dark.
When I got home it was completely dark. I was exhausted because I had to walk home. Not enough money for bus fair. At home I couldn't get the key into the latch and my wife had to open the door for me. Her hair was neatly done and she was lightly dressed up and she had make-up on.
'Hi Honey!' she rang 'How was your day at the plant?'
Her blue irises lit up like Swiss goodwill bonfires but when she kissed me on the forehead I felt like an old man that had been on the run for too long. A writer who had been through too many drafts.
'Come on in! Diner's ready!' she invited.
Oh, you dressed-up incarnated Muse with your table full of fair flaxen I thought and a pang of strange guilt shot through me. The Hendersons were expecting us and I had forgotten to tell her! But she had already read my mind and the outcome was designed simplicity.
'You haven't got a thing in the world to worry about, Love!' she said with the exactitude of a sentence I had heard before. The Hendersons… I have postponed their invitation…'.
And hearing that I just stood there as if being undressed, naked like the only man in her life, a writer, her writer … the one who writes her stories for her. And when I sat down at the head of the table at last I couldn't help it. I noticed her natural command and superior touch as she dished up for me. Caring for me and serving me. Muse d'grandeur.

'Oh, that's a nice story…!' I thrilled and applauded her.
'Si, of course…' she smiled 'you wrote it! And I had said I learn you…'
She burst out in happy winning laughter when she saw the gasp in my gesture.
'Don't look so bloody serious … is little joke, no?'

the Thomas Bissom 1998 report

Arnau Mas takes the Thomas Bissom 1998 report, the ‘Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140-1200’, from under the heap of files on his desk.
‘That and the 1997 SEO/BirdLife and RiceFarming project too … check their Habitat Management papers as well, will you? And the stuff on the Special Protection Area of the Ebro Delta Commission … we need that for the comparison with Pals,’ his boss, Ermengallus, had ordered.
Ermengallus wants a summary of ‘the new models’ of rice production as was ordered from Barcelona by Friday. Today is Monday. Nearly every day over the past two months Ermengallus had asked for a report from him. And he had done nothing about it. Yet a lot of work had already been done by the Pals Office and he now had to incorporate the collected material into the assessment of the two volumes. That means that he has to work over several documents and Journals dealing, published recently. The conservation status of the wetlands and lagoons has to be featured, he has decided when Ermengallus gave him the assignment. Now he was thinking to incorpurate the briefings of Ebro delta data since 1995 as well.
‘…The marshes rapport of last year is important too.’ Ermengallus had said.
Arnau takes his thumb and point finger and strokes his moustache.
‘Whatever they got on rice fields, get it in,’ he remembered Emengallus said last week.
Today he realises how much work he has to put into the assesment. The dateline is coming up.
‘It’ll be rush and schim…’ he says.
Barcelona needs a breakdown urgently and their office is going to play a greater part in the data-collecting madness that’s now going on in the rice field production comparisons that’s taking place all over the country. From Barcelona the advice … basically everything, goes to Madrid.
‘Those Pissepieners in Barcelona won’t be on time … that’ll stir the dust’ he thinks.
‘What happened to those papers we forwarded last month? Got any reply?’ he calls to Ermengallus where he is working in his own office.
‘Nothing,’ Ermengallus shouts back.
He wanted to say something else to Ermengallus about the punctuality of the Barcelonians but Ermengallus was born there and he decides to hold his tongue..
‘This thing of sending papers from city to city is a waste of energy.’ His voice is not loud enough for Ermengallus to hear and he continues with his task. Then he says crisply, clear and loud ‘Valencia’s got more autonomy than we! Everybody knows that. Pals and Montgri’s rice agricultural projects should be our doings only! Why are we still dependent on Madrid?’
Ermengallus doesn’t react. He knows that too.
The Ebro delta is the second most important bird migration area in Spain and one of the most important wetlands in all of Europe, with 7 700 ha that’s currently protected as Natural Park by the SPA act. It is a designated a Ramsar site. Pals and Toroella di Montgri should get the same status is what both Arnau and Ermengallus agree upon. The marsh at Saint Giordi towards Estartit could be developed likewise. They should push the point that ‘rice cultivation plays an important role in the ecology and the economy of both deltas’, they have long decided and this is now what Arnau has to make the central point of evaluation in his assessment.. That’ll force Madrid to grant the ‘their’ marshes similar status as the Ebro delta.
Arnau thinks of the recent ornithological studies he has read, which have focused on rice fields and their relation to foraging birds. The rice fields within the delta of Ebro occupy 21 000 ha, and that’s just 65 percent of the surface area. The artificial wetlands up river weren’t even included in the survey.
‘Can we compete with Valencia? Can we not get the funds without all this comparing? We can make our marshes then the same.’
There is revolt in him. He goes to the stack of journals that lie on the table behind him with firm determination and starts thumbing through them energetically until he finds an article concerning the SPA’s primary habitat supporting biodiversity.
‘Here! Got it…’ he says with relief.
He has known about this specific article, since Marti Corbonell told him of its existence at Senora Arrila’s some time ago. He reads it, standing skew at the table. It consists of data concerning the species Purple Gallinule, the Purple Heron and the Fartet, endemic fish of the Western Mediterranean that are threatened with extinction. These could be rescued in the Pals-Torroella di Montgr project of the Saint Giordi mash and the ‘rise field’ in the delta will profit by it.
‘I’m sure we have the same species in substantial numbers’ Arnau says, although he isn’t sure.
He leafs through another Journal and finds something he didn’t know about.
‘A total of 330 species of birds have been observed in the delta, including 81 species that breed regularly within it and another 28 species which occasionally breed on site ... 50 species are aquatic birds with 40 000 breeding pairs and, in January of each year, a mean population of 180 000 birds may be found in the Ebro delta.’
He makes a note of it on the back cover of another Journal. He always writes on any paper within his reach.
‘Birds, fish and rice!’ he says audibly again and continues filtering through the stack of Journals.
He finds another paragraph he thinks he can use.
‘Environmental monitoring of deltas has raised a number of concerns over the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers on the environmental quality of the area … pesticide concentration in the water … high enough levels … harmful … flora and fauna etc. blah,’ he reads, and exclaims ‘That’s it! It all goes to project interventions.’
He takes the stack of journals to the Xerox machine and copies the material he is thinking of using in his arguments. Slowly the material for the draft assessment for Ermengallus gets compiled. He wishes to demonstrate that organic rice farming is technically and economically feasible in the marshes of Torroella di Montgri and Estartit. He now realizes he probably won’t be able to finish the assessment by Friday.
‘There’s still much too much work to be done.’ He calls to Ermengallus who doesn’t reply.
And he is a bit disappointed. Saturday he might not be able to go into the mountains as he has planned. Since he was a boy, whenever he has had the opportunity, he has set off for the mountains. Now he does mountain walking, rather than alpine climbing. When younger, he walked in the high Pyrenees. At 45, everything has become harder. He is no more the skinny, dark and handsome matador hopping from rock to rock; he walks nowadays. Lately he has even started to read his Sunday paper in the fore mountains. The TV series, Mountaineering Expeditions Trails, on the National Geographic channel, is one of his favourites. And sometimes when he watches the program, a far-off and vague glare covers his Catalan-black eyes that are usually sharply focused. Thinking about it he touches his moustache and for a few moments the vague glare covers his eyes again, as though the inner being is searching infinity. Then he looks again at the documentation he has collected for Ermengallus.
‘Where are the references?’ He realizes he has forgotten to copy the notes as well.
They are jotted down on many journals. Now he has to re-collect the Journals and note the relevant numbers and titles again. While doing this he thinks of the mountains again, and the climbs he has recently had with Marti Corbonell and Ermengallus. And Marti Corbonell, whom he had a tallat with yesterday, along with Ermengallus. Marti was in the Col de Marie de Deu de le Salades a couple of weeks ago. He had walked all the way from Olot to El Mallol. He smiles.
‘God, Bowtie Marti was tired, I can imagine.’
In Senora Arrila’s Coffe Bar yesterday Marti told him a strange story. He works at the City Council’s Bureau of Architectural Advice and always brings insider-gossip and stories about meetings that are going to take place along with all his fancy manners. This time it concerned ‘future developments’ for the two towns … and ‘the future’ of the rice marshes. For ten years it has been all about tourism and its development; now all of a sudden it is about the marshes and how plans grow to ‘develop’ the Saint Giordi area. But all the time they are taking more and more plots from the marshes to build holiday houses on. Marti said it was going to get better. Everybody is talking about it he said. Arnau has heard about it through the grapevine but up to now thought it was only talk. But he is also aware of the rising prices of houses and apartments, and how to buy a piece of land as an investment has become impossible. He had thought it was only a temporary thing arising from the madness of the Unification of Europe and Spain’s introduction into the Euro zone.
‘Marti … never!’
And his mind drifts to how he met Cathella and Emilia after Mart had left with Ermengallus and he went to the beach at Saint Giordi for awhile. And now he gloats and smiles inertly.
‘Their laughing spree ….’
He can still hear their screams of laughter when he told them what Marti had told him at Senora Arrlila’s, of the plans and ideas for change, and of the future development of the rice fields. They cajoled, rolling over in the sand when they heard it.
‘Pinpilinpauxah’s going to fly high,’ Emilia chortled, referring to Marti.
Pinpilinpauxah means butterfly in eusquera, the language of the Bascs. Her remark was a stitch towards his ever wearing a bowtie.
‘Where did she get that word from?’ Arnau wondered.
She hears something and then repeats and repeats it, flipping it into any sentence or situation without a care about the sematics of it. She loves sounds, with no concept of their meanings and doesn’t even care. Mostly it is shocking anarchy that draws her. And she speaks such lovely sounding rubbish all the time. That makes her such a dear companion at parties.
And she had added ‘… for the Rice Man! The Rice Man’s going to import Valencia rice when Marti Corbonell gets his way!’
She had screamed it out for every seagull and quirir to hear.
‘French Camargue rice, red grass seedless… Arnau gets the cup!’
‘Quiet you!,’ he had tried fending off her wit.
‘You’ll have to plant your rice on the marsh of the beach just to have food on the table in March,’ Cathella had continued, stressing ‘marsh’ and ‘march.’
That gave an even greater punch to Emilia’s remark. But it was all well-meant tease. Yet it put him to thinking. They knew of his household situation and the wobbly path it seemed to have taken lately.
‘When it comes down to it, she won’t take the field from you, will she?’ Emilia had soothed him out of the blue and the tone of their cajoling had changed to compassion.
‘She wouldn’t, would she? Nobody takes Rice Man’s rice field from him.’
But the case is more complicated than this. In Torroella di Montgri and the towns around it, there have always been ‘special arrangements’ concerning ‘workmanship of land.’ It has been exciting since the beginning of time. The relationship between working in rice fields and owning a piece of land is not all that transparent. If you work a piece of land and your father and grandfather worked that piece of land before you, then there’s a lot of positive argumentation that this land contains something of the ‘original ownership’, for which you are an acknowledged candidate. Legally speaking, however, these phrases - ‘workmanship of land’ and ‘original ownership’ - are subject to diverse interpretations. It comes down to the fact that Catalans look after Catalans and, as far as a rice field is concerned, your son can work the land you’ve worked. But there mustn’t be a strain of any kind in any one of the families of a marriage line for at least three generations.
‘Or this is the way it should be,’ goes through his mind.
It’s only in cases of divorce and family unrest that unsettling discussions of ‘workmanship’ come to the surface and tend to confuse issues of ‘ownership.’
‘The paella is sticky,’ is what the elderly would say in cases like this.
Cathella and Emilia have known Arnau well for many years. They have long been a trio. And they are very concerned about what is happening to him in his marriage at the moment.
‘There’s a sprinkle of hope, you know? Nobody says she’ll take the field away from you, no?’ Emilia had tried to sooth him, but he had had enough. He tried to grab her to tickle her full slender flanks but she had scrambled towards the water, kicking sand at him.
Thinking about the episode, Arnau touches his moustache and strokes it several times between his thumb and point finger. He likes both of them, Cathella and Emila, two Spaniards; but really they are Catalonians. They’ve been in Torroella since primary school. They speak Catalan perfectly and only use Spanish in ‘official’ situations, like all Catalans. They even have a Catalan accent. Nobody would even suspect they are Spanish were it not for their height. Both are tall. Cathella is lean and sexy. Their parents had moved from the Elbo delta to Torreoalla di Montgri at about the same time as Doncia’s parents and all three families had started working in the rice fields of Pals and in the delta marsh of Torroella. And he thought how lovely the open personalities were of these two dear friends … and how they are almost Catalan now.
’Oh, their use of Catalan is perfect…’ Ermengallus hears him exclaim from his adjoining office.
The use of Catalan is of crucial importance in Catalonia. The Catalan language was at its’ pinnacle there for two centuries before the edict of King Louis XIV, in 1700, which forbade it in North Catalonia. Later the Decree de Nova Planta, made by the Spanish monarchy in South Catalonia, did the same. And for a long time in the north the Catalan language sought refuge in intimate circles. Arnau is acutely aware of this.
Then he recalls a specific paragraph he has read in one of the Journals about importing French Camargue rice, those ‘red grass seeds’ as Cathella had called it. And immediately his mood changes. He jumps up from behind his desk and goes straight into Ermenggallus’s office without knocking and slams his hand flat on the table.
‘The French Camargue rice -- those red grass seeds can’t come in here! Never! If you boil the stuff, you need a blowtorch to get it cooked’.
He won’t stand for French competition in rice field development schemes.
‘It’s Pals rice we grow here … and the furthest I’ll go is to allow 10kg Elbo rice per farmer!’ he shouts to Ermenggallus.
And other debatable issues creep in.
‘They will read the basement in Barcelona like Joanot Martorell’s Tirant lo Blanc. If Madrid wants to read my assessment, it can use dictionaries.’
Ermenggallus, who laughs heartily at this, adds, ‘Make the assessment for next Monday, or even next Friday, then you can really work it out, ok? By the way, Marti Carbonell just phoned and said he cannot go to the mountains this weekend. I almost forgot to tell you. He’s got tickets for Manuel De Falla’s La Vida Breve. They’re doing it in Catalan in Girona and he wants to see it.’
‘The quirir… Carbonell, what does he know about Spanish opera?’ Arnau grinds his teeth and goes back to his office.

long weekend

The story of the writer who fell in love with the wife of a Director of a pharmaceutical company who sold Health Food in the Caribbean… this one. It starts with the Director who had to go to outposts in the far Caribbean, where Health Food was imported to the poor and underfed, so often, on lonely islands, 5-star hotels, long weekends, that he had started to neglect his beautiful full blossoming fragile wife.
She had grown scrawny by his absence, hard work and endeavour and had tried about everything to be a good wife in his regular and sometimes prolonged periods away from home. Supporting him in everything and his career and doing what she can, she did her share. She was 40 and very pretty. She mentioned this to him every time upon his return from the Caribbean so that he could understand the scale of her input. But every time he advised her to find even more ways to keep herself busy. And he urged her. And he explained that his business was for convivial living for both of them. He told her that she should accept the situation as it is as for now and he kept on doing urging her to do what she could to enhance the condition that bring them more money than ordinary export to northerly situated countries. He advised her to enrol in a course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, even yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt therapy, body and soul, anything, so that he can keep on working so hard for them.
And, she took his advice! She expressed her goodwill and enrolled in a course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt therapy, body and soul, anything and brought in that particular part of her portion of their matrimonial sharing and burden.
It was however at the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music that she met a staid, timid, older and wiser writer, 53, me, who had been doing the same on the advice of his/my wife, who also had business endeavours in the health sector in the Caribbean.
The writer/I did yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt therapy, body and soul, anything as well to further his/my and his/my wife's shared connubial interests and, at that, was an example to the Director's wife as to how far limits could be stretched in bringing in shares for convivial living.
The two, the wife of the Director who had to go to outposts in the far Caribbean, where Health Food was imported to the poor and underfed, so often, on lonely islands, 5-star hotels, long weekends, and the writer/I, after having met and having discovered their common interests, eagerly struck a niche and started to support one another in their inset for convivial living at their various homesteads. They gave each other feedback, advice and more support. And even started exploring more possible ways of becoming ever greater assets to their various connubial situations. They discovered anarchistic New Wave Tau dances! And in the whole process of development a very tender working partnership, based on their common interests, drive and intentions came into existence between them. So much so that their spouses started to feel the benefit.
And it went on and on and it became smoother and smoother, well organised. The Director of the pharmaceutical company's business started to bloom, more 5-star hotels were visited to form bases for more Health Food operations for the poor and on lonely islands. The wife of the writer's/my wife's entrepreneurial ventures in the same Caribbean as where the Director of the Health Food company was expanding also expanded. She too had to go more often to the far the Caribbean, on lonely islands, 5-star hotels and long weekends. Offers came in and everybody grew happier and more convivial. Her expansion example stimulated the Director's businesses and the two of them, the writer's wife/my wife and the Director drew much energy from one another.
But then, quite unexpectedly, the world economy plummeted into a recess. The Health Food sector was the first to be hit. And then the poor. They could not buy the expensive Health Food anymore and had to switch back to normal farm food again. Brut National Products declined. All of a sudden things were out of control and that had an effect down the ladder write down to the schedules of the writer/me and the Director's wife.
One day, when the Director selling the Health Food, 5-star hotels, lonely islands, got back home from the Caribbean, after a long weekend, he told his wife that, by reasons beyond his control, things had changed. He explained to her how he was under a lot of stress and that he was feeling a bit guilty about the input she was doing, and especially when that input was put against his efforts now that business was deteriorating in the Caribbean due to the recess in the world economy, etc. He told her that her efforts out matched his, by far, he said and it was also the distance to the Caribbean, so far away from home, every long weekend, 5-star hotels, lonely islands that was beginning to take a toll on him and burdened him down. He told her that he too was getting to the age of 53, the same age as the writer/me. And he suggested to her that she go for a weekend for a change, to relax and to see for herself what the situation was like on these lonely islands and in the 5-star hotels. And, on top of it, he gave her serious indications that he was losing his grip on reality and was slipping from its sill. He needed to do something else with his life, he told her. And he told a stupid joke about a cat that could have been a dog but had ended up as a sitting duck due to wrong decisions.
Similar stress signals and suggestions to change situations occurred at the writer's/my home. As a matter of fact, when the wife of the writer/mine got back home that very same weekend the Director got home, also from the Caribbean, from once again a tiring entrepreneurial venture and told exactly the same joke, he/I also understood her need for change. And when she suggested that he/the writer/I took a break from the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, Yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, anything, so that she could rest, he understood even more. He/I understood what it means being tired of making wrong decisions. He/I wasn't a writer for nothing, he/I told her.
'I could fill in for you at the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, Yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, anything, so that you could rest … too!' she had said to him.
This turn of events was a disturbing omen for both the writer/I and the wife of the Director selling Health food in the Caribbean as it meant adaptation and rearrangements of schedules of sharing and caring feedback in History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, Yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, god anything. Fragile steps were now to be taken in the story of Long weekend the writer/ I realised in order to hold the story together. The whole affair of the slacking world economy just had to be bend over to an angle of benefit to all, he/I told the Directors wife. There was his/my wife and there was the wife of the Director. He couldn't imagine both of them doing courses of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, Mondays, Fridays and the extra anarchistic New Wave Tau dances together. So the switch has had to be perfectly timed in both the convivial situations of both couples he told the Director's wife when she told him that the Director had suggested to stand in for her at her course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, Yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul.
'But as the writer/I was a thoroughly good writer and an excellent storyteller he/I sworn to himself/myself that he/I would see to it that both world economy and story would stay on track till the end. He incorporated contingency plans and called an emergency feedback session with the wife of the Director selling the Health Food in the Caribbean. He told her that with his/my support she should plucked up the courage to handle whatever was to be handled on her side and that he will do the same at his side of the connubial fence. She fully agreed to this as it was the most logical solution to a collapsing world economy. The write/I also pointed out to her that a Caribbean weekend on a lonely island and in a 5-Star hotel, as both her husband and his/my wife have suggested wasn't the worst that could happen in a collapsing World Economy. They should brave challenges and really too put in their share for the convivial living for everybody. To this too the wife of the Director agreed whole heartedly as she was of such goodwill.
The whole process of transition didn't always go smoothly. At one time, when the Director of the Health Food company suggested to his wife that he too wanted to become a writer the writer/I grew a bit worried, but the fad of Director's idiotic idea luckily passed quickly without causing to much harm to suspect ion levels. The rejuvenation of health and economy in general after that took its own course.
Both the Director's wife and the writer/I checked and adapt the writer's/my contingency plan with meticulous inset and precision. She was to play along with her husband's need for change. Her husband would do the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, bring in his portion that way, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, god anything. And the writer/I also was to play along with his/my wife's need for change. The same day that the Director would enter the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, bring in his portion that way, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, god anything his/my wife too would enter the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, bring in his portion that way, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, god anything. And this was to coincide with the day that the Director's and the writer/I would leave the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, bring in his portion that way, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, god anything. Both of the also decided not to suggest to their spouses the anarchistic New Wave Tau dances as that might be too strenuous for beginners, and in particular, as this discipline demands not only total engagement but a tight undisruptive schedule write from the start.
Now it happened thus that the day that the Director of the pharmaceutical company and the wife of the writer’s/mine started the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, doing his individual new portion of development, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, it was a Monday. It was the same day that the writer's wife/mine started to fill in for him/me, also at the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, doing her individual new portion of development, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, anything was a Monday. And the decision was that by Friday the new procedures and schedules were to be up and running so that both the Director's wife and the writer could leave for the long weekend to the Caribbean, lonely islands and 5 star hotels to bring in their share of sharing.
By Wednesday the writer/I phoned the pharmaceutical company's secretary early in the morning just to check on progress at the side of the wife of the Director. There was still the buying of tickets that had to be sorted out and upon a positive evaluation on the part of the Director's wife he/I would proceed and buy his ticket as to sit next to the Director's wife on the plane. Everything proved to be 100% in order. The transition of duties in the various homesteads were write on track. He/I was very satisfied with the development.

'Airport. Check in Gate 6. Caribbean. 5-star hotel. Flight 202 at 10.30 am!' the loudspeakers in the airport announced on Friday morning. The writer/I was waiting under the clock at the left side of the hallway as was stipulated to be the point of rendesvous. Then he saw the Director's wife rushing towards him.
'Good god' she said 'I never thought we would make it!' Her whisper in his/my ear was very sweet and when she hugged him/me he/I was very satisfied at the results of the transition of activities in the two households.
Precisely at that unit of time in this story the writer's lovely wife/mine, covering for him/me at the course of History of Mediaeval Polyphonic Music, yoga, Mandala drawing, psychology, gestalt theory, body and soul, anything, saw the Director of the pharmaceutical company who sold Health Food in the Caribbean also whispered in the ear of the Director of the Health Food company in the foyer of the school, ''Gosh, I never thought we would pull it off! He's meeting her on the airport!' She/the wife of the writer/mine too was very satisfied at the results of the transition of activities in the two households. But it was the Director of the Health Food company who deliver the punch to the story when he hugged her like a staid, timid, older and wiser writer, 53 and replied 'I told you we would, didn't I?'
That was ok, but when he added 'I am not an idiot writer, am I?' it was then that I/the writer, got so wronged and pissed off with the story of Long Weekend write that I/he ended it write here and now! I/he left his wife at the airport then and here and on my/his way home I dumped the tickets to the Caribbean into a dustbin.
'Nobody calls me an idiotic writer!'

her pitch-black, thick, southern straight hair hanging

With her pitch-black, thick, southern straight hair hanging to the bottom of her buttocks and flitting around her hips when she walks, oh… and her compassionate, velvety eyes, Doncia Eufràsia Palau is the most obvious Muse of Torroella di Montgri. She shines exuberantly on the mornings she goes to town, stepping up to and down from curbs, a model climbing steps on a catwalk. Her tall, slender athletic body has that naturally sensual sway that stirs every single male passing by. She could be called an apparition, a living, contrary response to what is promoted in fashion magazines, the so-called legally blond phenomena. When she mixes with crowds of tourists shopping for useless ‘have-ems’ in curio shops, she stands out even more. Then her dark golden Spanish-Catalan skin contrasts with the white of the Caucasian northern airier types.
But she isn’t only all beauty and hormones, she has a good education as well. After schooling in Baix Emporda, Torroella di Montgri, and Girona, she had moved to Barcelona, where she integrated her mother’s Spanish pride with her father’s Catalan persistence. Later she attended Universities abroad, where she discovered the importance of ‘solving’ her ingrained dualism and reaching out in global directions. She might fool those inexperienced enough to believe that simple beauty is innately dumb -- but not for long. Donica’s education has provided her with a comprehensive background in psychology, philosophy and astrophysics. And she can talk anyone under the table in these disciplines. She now is a doctor in thermodynamics and works as an on-line lecturer, teaching at various High Schools for Education throughout Catalonia, doing extra-mural guidance with last year students. She lectures sporadically at Barcelona University and is involved in international astrophysics projects. She has been a guest lecturer in Japan, Tokyo and also in the U.S., in Colorado for six months in 2002.
For the past two years she has also functioned as liaison staff member of CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, helping on-line too with the completion of the ATLAS muon chamber endcaps. Her speciality is moon tracking systems for the detection of incoming charged ionized particles in RPCs, Resistive Plate Chambers.
This fairy tale career growth is in sharp contrast to the silly coincidence of how she met Arnau Mas, her lover and husband.
It happened when she went to Estartit on an errand concerning the collection of seawater samples from the Oceanic Divers Club and passed Ermengallus Domènech’s beach apartment. Arnau Mas was one of his guests that day. Coincidence had it that when she passed below the balcony, his towel dropped from the safety rails and landed on her head.
Being considerate, she took it up to him.
And of course the usual thing happened. They started to talk. Not so usual, the two of them got married right away; without even falling in love ... he, the expert on Pals rice and Saint Giorgi marsh projects, and she, a lover of Paella … not the Catalonian paellas from Emporda, but the kind they make in Costa Alzahar, Paella a la Valenciana.
‘ … Of course there was great mutual understanding between them.’ Marti always explains it.
That, anyway, is how the story is told in Torroella di Montgri and Estartit.

Stuart looks at the paragraphs he has just written, not knowing what to think.
‘The part where Doncia is liaison officer and staff member for CERN … eh, ‘isn’t that a bit steep? I mean how perfect and busy can a woman be?’ he ponders.
All of a sudden he is sorry he has deleted from his document the earlier paragraph about Doncia.
‘Too steep sure…’ he nods ‘… OK, she is the Muse, isn’t she?’
He re-reads the paragraphs.
‘Why has Doncia to be a half-breed Spaniard and Catalan? How did she get into Torrorlla di Montgri anyway?’
He look at notes he has made in Peniscola.
‘…Her mother came with Cathella and Elmira’s parents from the Ebro rice fields about thirty years ago’.
‘And?’
‘…All those career achievements? How old must she be then?’ he asks himself.
He types on his laptop 35+ then delete it and settles for 38.
‘… That can figure’.
He is quite uneasy about the dual role of Doncia. A 38-year-old sexy thing walking up and down curbs, yet being a professor.
‘Valencia, Ok … but who’s Doncia’s father? Why did he marry a Spanish woman? How did it come about that he was interested in a rice field in the Saint Giordi marsh?’
He realises it won’t fall into place easily. And there is something else wrong with the logic of the plot too.
‘Arnau and Doncia should have known each other before now! She has been in Torroella di Montgri since primary school and Torroella is a very, very small place!’ and he thought about the history of the two other Spaniards in Torroella di Montgri, Cathella and Emilia.
‘Arnau knows them well. He has flirtation sessions on the beach with them.’
And he ponders and ponders.
And he worries about the transparency of all of the stories he has written in his life.
And he reconstructs in his mind again a sort of ‘bloodline’ for a set of characters that would lead him to the evasive ‘non-official Catalan Spirit.’
‘Doncia then was half-blood Catalan and Spanish and Cathella and Emilia full-blown Spaniards. Everybody I have met in Torroella seems to come from Spain!’
And he gives ages to everyone.
‘Cathella is the ripe age of 36. Emilia is younger. 32? And Doncia, 38.’
‘Their families must be a close-knit bunch when they all come from … well, they are all Spaniards, aren’t they?’.
Then he realises how little Catalonian setting there is in the pages he has written. Feasibility and logic also are missing. Cathella’s father had rice fields near Deltebre in Ebro. Emelia’s parents also had fields. But originally the parents, the two couples and their grandparents, are from Morella, that completely silly and exploited commercial town in the mountains of El Maestrat. This is how he has it in his notes.
‘That I know!’ he murmurs. ‘Cathella told me so…’ he tries to get some credubility that even he can get into.
He deduces more.
‘They have moved. I don’t know when exactly, 25 years ago or so, to the Ebro where they got into rice farming. But where, when and how does Doncia come into all this? How many Spaniards are living in Emporda anyway?’
Stuart is at a loss, staring at his laptop. His eyes drift from it to the floor and the red espadrilles he bought in Peniscola, about 200 kilometres from the Ebro.
‘That was a bargain!’ he says. ‘Two Euros fifty!’and he his mind makes a strange leap from the Ebro to Catalunya. ‘...Catalan words such as somni, aigua, mel, lluna and papallona. These …to pronounce the "ll" for the ‘guiris’ is difficult’ he remarks into the space between his eyes and the espadrilles. He has seen similar espadrilles in Estarit’s tourist shopping street. ‘5.50 Euros … god they are expensive here’. And gets up, shuffles the espadrilles on and goes to the balcony. There he takes one off, place his foot on the safety rail and looks at his toenails and feels good about them. They are neat and clean. He likes clean toenails. He breathes in deeply and slips the espadrille on again. The sodium filled sea air fills his lungs and he starts coughing.
‘I’ve got to stop smoking!’ he says rather loudly to himself and his neighbours on their balcony next to his look at one another and hush their conversation.
‘Why do all the Spaniards come to Empourdia? What is it about the place that draws them in …?’

Circle of champions

Damp day and pondering orange, I was walking on the easy track siding the park’s forest. The theory of the indestructibility of desire of Lacan suddenly came to my mind and without warning it happened. Frau Hölle, the early bird of prey, popped out from underneath a shrub coming from a dead end Holweg branching my route. She startled me like a Jack from box and her dog, it was all over me with its drooling saliva. In her all too expensive Armani bush outfit and with her henna coloured hair Frau Hölle cackled crudely into my face.
'Down Mercury, down!' she ticketed the dog while brandishing her rows of gold crowned teeth.
'My name is Helga De Qlrzck! Howdy!' she volunteered 'I've seen you walking here many times'
And she doubled her effort to stay in her script of the gay logically married woman walking her dog without any illicit intention.
'Sorry about the dog' she volunteered again and asked whether I would like to march with her on her expedition.
Little-Red-Riding-Hood are you riding again today? High road or low road? Which one’s the quickest to where the wolf is frolicking with Grandma?
'Oh… eh!' was about all I could provide, still being overrun with the unexpected encounter.
Oh my god, the dog's fawn coloured! Helga Hölle! She has come for me!
But she didn't heed my thoughts.
'I like to discover hidden flora? You want to see something special?' she challenged commanding with her words and body language that I should follow her. A negative response from my side wasn’t even considered as an option. She just set off into the thicket next to the Holweg leaving the brunches pushed aside for me to follow in her tracks. Her Mercury dog bashed over me setting the example for me what to do, to follow her like a slave freshly bought. I had no choice nor defence. I just had to tag her and her Mercury.
'He's a gentleman, Mercury, don't be afraid!' she assured the dog over her shoulder and I thought I saw the dog nodding in agreement.
She started to whistle a tune I did not know.

After the original thicket and almost impossible entry into the forest a rough but passable bush path I never suspected would be there opened up. She took it. She seemed to know the forest by hard. And she also popped into the role of a compagnon de sorts and started talking homespun about herself telling me of her husband's departure to Tuscany.
‘Tuscany, yes?’ I managed to say.
‘Yes, he’s a lawyer’.
And she told me of his career and how often he has to go into different countries.
‘All for cases…’
And she told me about her loneliness since his departure about a month ago and how terrible lonely it was in their big house.
'…at night … alone'.
' … The whole night' she said 'And now that he's gone…'.
And she stressed her loneliness. And she said how happy she was 'to have met me by quite such a chance'. And how 'It was such an coincidence…' and I noticed her heaving torso from behind. It fitted her tight yellow sweater to its full. And I imagined her breasts and her unruffled nipples pointing upwards like two elongated buttons underneath Raman khaki. Ring me! And I listened to all the sentences that cascaded from her as she broke the way for us deeper and deeper into the forest. There was that Omni sadness of life itself in her words. And she told me over and over again how big the house was. And how lonely it was to sleep in it … alone.
‘…at night’.
'Now with my husband gone’.
And she explained that he was away for a case of matrimonial infidelity.
’ … you know?'
She declared all the facts, had her pictures painted with bright colours and stressed the currents of ‘terrible loneliness’ that rules people’s lives. She left her themes unfinished and started more, one after the other.
‘Brilliant pedagogical approach’ I thought and floated on her words understanding terrible loneliness ‘at night in big houses with husbands and wives gone off to Tuscany for matrimonial infidelity cases’
'There are some rare species of fungi deeper into the forest!’ she ordered ‘We go there … I know their locations. I'll show you some interesting ones I've discovered only last week. It's my passion, fungi, you know?'
And she talked about risk in life.
'One should risk it in here, don’t you think? … that's the only way to get it, isn't it?’
Yes, Frau Hölle!
And we went deeper and deeper into the forest zigzagging over muddy ovaries and slouching through wet marshes till we finally reached the densest part of the thicket. In the middle of it, in a strange opening among the overgrowth, she stopped abruptly and with a gestaltliches Ja she drew my attention to a circle of champions which laid in the centre of the opening. From it steamed ominously damp into the chilly cold autumn air. And all of a sudden she burst out laughing.
'Here lies the body of a fool who made it out with too many women!' she remarked. Naughtily pretending that what she was saying it with some kind of certitude.
’He was hanged in oe-oe-two for promiscuity!' she elaborated 'Mediaeval times! What a poor fool he was to have let himself been caught in the act!'
And she play-poked at me with her nutmeg eyes.
'Oh my god no!' I thought 'its too cold and damp! What a fool the man was…' and 'Oh no, no, not nutmeg eyes!’ and then I realised her eyes matches the fawn colour of Mercury’s fur!'
I looked at her. Her mouth, underneath the lovely eyes, looked sensual. Her face was younger, more energetic, now that she was where she had wanted to bring me to. She was a ripe fruit. A 44 year old woman, confident and not used to no’s in her endeavours. My eyes fixed on her mouth again. As her lips parted slightly I saw the rosy coloured moist flesh in her throat. I realised she knew what she was doing and was used to get what she wishes to conquer.
'Oh, look here…!' she let, innocent like a child, bending over with meticulous unawareness to pick up something right in front of me and the full measure of her well formed behind with its points de honneurs in her tightly packed Armani walk-about blurred my vision.
'Look…!' she said erecting herself to her beautiful full height and turning around she presented me with a rotten twig.
I looked at it. On it were 5 microscopic orange dot's.
'This species is called the Ptychozoon kubli … fungi' she explained with enthusiasm. 'There are always only 5 small mandala like spoors together, little orange dot's, where it grows. Its something special, don’t you think?'
And she explaining about the significance of the number 5 of it.
'5's Jewish for micro-cosmic things and masculinity, did you know that? And femininity and the macro-cosmos are 6. 5 + 6 = 10, the best number. That'll work for us too! Oh yes, it will!'
She had a deep throat in all her relaxed newfound freedom in the damp opening in the forest. I knew about the use of numbers in the Jewish alphabet but her kabbalic explanation of the numbers 5 and 6 seemed rather strange. Also the arithmetic of it. 5 + 6 = 10. I always thought 5 + 6 = 11. Yet I experienced a weird sense of surprise that chilled my spine. I felt a slow crawling gecko on my naked skin. I gasped.
'Mandlebröt Julia! A yellow-orange Pentagram!'
I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe my eyes. 5 microscopic dot's … and orange. The dots were of the tone of orange I was thinking of when I started to write the Circle of champions… when Lacan’s theory of the indestructibility of desire came to me. I stole at her face and soft skin of her cheek again. I was trembling. Was she offering me orange witchcraft? And was this a trap? I saw the fullness of her lips. There were the golden teeth in her mouth!
‘By J'ove, the dots were orange alright!'
I swallowed thickly and when I realised that she was lying about the Ptychozoon kubli I got even more startled. Ptychozoon kubli wasn't fungi. It was Flying Gecko.
Oh, Women-of-Celtic-poise, how did you knew I was looking for this shade of orange? How?
And the gheko ran up and down my naked skin. And there was a strange smell in my nostrils. Something wrong with the air. Something was very wrong here I thought. Yet I could resist the pull towards her that I was feeling. It was wrong and it was an indestructible form of wrongness. It was illicit arousal. The Circle of Champions … it was bewitched. And I felt how the arousal was seeping up from the inside of the circle. How it was oozing out and up from the damp turf. And there was the déjà vu recognition of it. And the twig, reddish-brown, the dots, orange, the fungi that wasn't fungi at all but Flying Gecko they were all part of it. All the colours matched. And she was a lawyer's wife. And Tuscany was very far away in another world. And her house was big and empty and terrible lonely at night. And her dog … it was a fawn one called Mercury whose name was fire.
'I am a writer' I stuttered helplessly into her appearance as if that would explain it but my I felt how the staccato of my breath became uncontrollable. My voice had a quivering timbre. The words I spoke didn't seemed to matter. She was just looking at me with pools of nutmeg. Eyes the same colour as fur. We were completely alone in the secluded bewitched privacy of the circle. It was a perfect hide-out with overgrowth encamping it.
'déjà vu … I was here before…' I tried but it sounded as if I said 'It happened before. This happened before!'.
And closed in on me ready for the kill. I could hear her breath beating irregular too as she came closer. Her breath was a swelling balloon. Her bosom … breasts, her nipples, they looked so real. I thought of water. The tide was making a wave. I saw the sea. It erupted with white foam on the rocks. My temples throbbed. There was a grand mother's hut and a she wolf in the promiscuity of grown woman's pyjama. And her eyes were bigger nutmeg jewels, her ears werewolf’s, fluffy and her teeth wet with the over production of saliva. They shun like golden amulets.
'Orange' she said ‘…its orange, the orange I looked for!’ I said.
'I beg your pardon? What?' Her pitched high, nauseating and full of oestrogen.
'What do you mean … writing this before?' she inquired ignoring my remark about the orange colour of the fungi.
There was a sudden irk on her face as it was right up to mine. I saw she was trying to striking a cord and testing its strength. Now her slanted tone grounded me. She came even closer to my face. I smelled her sweat was sour … sweet sweet natural odour, dark with seduction. She was a 44 year old married wife of a lawyer hooked on a 53 year old man, a writer, assuming he was free.
'You are embarrassed, no?' she pulled back, hanging with her full weight on the rope.
It was an ultimatum. The point of no return. The omega arrival of the yes or the no. The split. I was utterly aware of her femininity and physical evanesce in the Circle of Champions. I pulled back too.
The Flying Gecko … god what? Its fungi'.

'Damp swamp’ I said trying to save the occasion ‘How come you know so much about nature?' and immediately knew it was a shame. An idiot and I, we are reduced to the King and I and I heard her sigh as she sussed at the gawked miss.
'I … sir, I … know so much about nature … you wouldn't believe it! Oh yes, you are a writer!' she said 'I sensed that a mile off write from the beginning!'
Her words were meticulously selected and pinned to be exactly that what they were. She gave out a nervous giggle to hide her disappointment and was ready for the run.
'Let's go' she changed the subject 'I get the fucking shivers in these circles … and oh, about the hanged man … it was a joke! And oh, sorry that I used the word fuck. Its an oopsy, no … Mister Writer!'
'Of course it was!' I wearily smiled choosing to refer to the joke only but I knew she wasn't joking. She was blank faced lying again, the Witch! Oh Frau Hölle! The story she had told me was the story of Jehannot De Lescurel and it was true! He was a writer too. He had composed Gracieusette Gillette and he was hanged for promiscuity in 1304 oe-oe-two. He had mentioned his mistress's name in the laïs Gracieusette Gillette. She was from Tuscany … a lawyer wife. That cost him his life.
Gillette in the circle of champions… with Jehannot De Lescurel, Sweet Mary, Jesus!
But she was already fast retracing our tracks. The door was done for and she wanted to close it completely now. I felt a fool. A stupid gecko. In my hand was the rotten twig, Ptychozoon kubli … fungi, Flying Gecko, orange, and at my feet there was the circle of champions and the grave of Jehannot De Lescurel the poet who made it out with too many women. I wanted to run too yet all I could do then was to hip-hop along after her like a Cassidy, a 53 year old man, hung up on a 44 year old wife of a lawyer with a case in Tuscany … his entire lonely, lonely wife.

'Damp swamp, it was close, oh yes its was so fucking close, using her crude way of expression, you wouldn’t believe it! Oh, you couldn't even tell the difference!'
And I blushed as I moaned to myself. Frau Helga Hölle de Qlzrck, werewolf with golden crowned teeth Vagina dentate. The sentence of death was on me! Like her, all I could do was to run too!

Bacon's breakfast and eggs

'Poetry … rude times and barbarous Regions, where other learning stood excluded'.
Sir Francis Bacon.
Sir Francis Bacon bright as a bird and in a beautiful gay morning mood entered the dining room. It was quite early in the morning and he had a good night's sleep. His butler Aspen greeted him instantaneously with a bright professional enthusiasm as he entered the room.
'Good morning, Sir! Breakfast, Sir? It is a fair morning for an early start, Sir' he volunteered imitating Sir Francis Bacon springiness.
'Yes it is … just eggs, please!' Sir Francis answered.
'Your mail, Sir!' Aspen volunteered and handed Sir Francis his morning mail.
Sir Francis went to the fully laid breakfast table and opened the first letter. Inside it was a poem written with a neat hand. It is called Bacon's breakfast and eggs and was send to him by Argo Spier.
'Good god' he gasped when he realised it was a poem he was looking at and he threw the letter down on table with disgust.
'I beg your pardony, Sir?' Aspen asked and automatically reflected Sir Francis's amazement and disgust as a well trained butler should do.
Sir Francis picked up the letter again and looked the a second time. Then he turned to Aspen with a frown and regained his wit.
'Aspen, old boy' he said '… did you know poetry is an especially flagrant surrender of the mind to the vanities of imagination?'*
Aspen didn't quite follow what Sir Francis meant and adopted a listening attitude.
'Poetry is a survival in the modern world of primitive habits of mind!'* Sir Francis elaborated.
'Yes, Sir' Aspen replied in all earnest.
'And…' Sir Francis continued saying 'It is the nature of poetry to distort that what is real* … the material world, you see!'
'Yes, Sir. Are you sure, Sir?' Aspen asked and showed more expected eagerness to learn from Sir Francis.
'Of course I am bloody sure about this!' Sir Francis answered and with a firm decision to illustrate his pointe he creased the letter with the poem on it and violently tossed it into the waste basket from across the table.
'My eggs…?' he frowned at Aspen as if nothing has happened.
Half-stunned Aspen uttered 'I beg your pardony, Sir?'
'Eggs, man, eggs! Breakfast and eggs! I did say eggs, didn't I?' Sir Francis replied impatiently.
'Oh…! Yes Sir, you did, Sir. Two eggs you said, Sir. Don't you want some bacon as well?' Aspen asks.
'No, for gods sake, just the eggs … I have said only eggs, haven't I?'
Sir Francis's impatience seemed now to have been established. Something has crept over him and irked him. Aspen noticed this change of mood an became solemn too and tried to comfort him by saying 'The poem was your bacon then, Sir?'
But the joke didn't solve the problem. The remark had an overt effect on Sir Francis. His mood deteriorated. The day now didn't seemed so bright anymore. He had become irritated and when he rudely says to Aspen 'Oh, clear it off, Aspen!' Aspen looks confused. And to that he said straight into Aspen's face 'Leave the bloody eggs!' and stood up. He didn't want breakfast anymore.
'Yes, Sir!' Aspen answered but he couldn't help himself to think 'It was the poem … then!'
Sir Francis now completely drew into himself and went to the fireplace. After a while he bowed down and seeded out the poem again from the wasted papers in the basket. He unruffled it from the ball it was wrinkled into and looked at it for the third time. He looked distressed and haggard. His shoulders sagged. Somehow all the joy for the day had vanished from him.
'Bacon's breakfast and eggs! My arse…' he groans '… if this is a poem!'
Aspen not wanting to interfere any longer, cleared the table and left the room quietly carrying cutlery and clean plates to the kitchen. He was have inward fun however at the fluency of the breakfast.
'No eggs and no bacon for Sir Francis Bacon! Just a poem called Bacon's breakfast and eggs … for breakfast … oh this is a good one, pardony me!' he chuckled to himself.
Sir Francis's day and for that matter his whole life after that morning wasn't the same again. The question of what a poem was and when it was that a poem started to be a poem started from then on to dictate all his thinking.
'My god … a poem!'

Changs! lue's log

[To the Days looking in from the Window]

a. The Story-of-One-Day-in-the-Life-of-Mr.-Chang!s-Lue-from-Ching-Ching

In the morning, in front of the Mirror on the Day of the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lee from Ching-Ching, Mister Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching saw the impartiality of his Teeth. He saw how Independent they were. Each Tooth went its own Way and refused to conciliate with any other Individual Tooth. They all travelled away from each other with ever increasing inflated Speed, and those that had left first faded into the distance like Fleeting Days in the Lives of Poets. Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching looked at his own Eyes watching him from the Mirror. To his surprise he saw that his Eyes were also showing a similar Pattern of Behaviour. They were fading. Travelling towards unknown Destinies. The Spot where his Eyes were at this particular Moment in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching, was hours away from where he stood. He hardly recognised his New Age from what he saw. He didn't even recognise the impassioned Movement of the Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching as it was trying to balance on the narrow Windowsill outside his Window. The Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching scuffled uncomfortably as it tried to peep through his half-drawn curtains. It wanted to see what could be seen. Mr. Chang!s Lue saw Nothing of its Efforts. He saw Nothing as usual. He was concerned with the Movements of his Eyes and Teeth. But the Day was there, waiting and sighing on the Windowsill. It smiled secretly as it caught Glimpses of Mr. Chang!s in front of the Mirror. Mr. Chang!s was humming happily a Fast Translated Verse from Paul Celan's Full German Translation of the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co Kg from October 1991 while trying to communicate with his Teeth and Eyes.
'Die Hand voller Stunden', he hummed. 'You are ein Hohlweg through my heart! Come and kiss me! Come and kiss me'.
Little did Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching know that this Fast Translation of the stated Full German Translation of Celan's Work he was humming would be the sole Driving Force of the Whole Course of the Day and that it would, towards the Evening, bring him to very Deep Existential Thoughts. As he hummed he bobbed his Head. The Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching watched him with spying Eyes. With the umpteenth Bob of Mr. Chang!s' Head his Eyes rolled and fell out of their Sockets onto the Windowsill. With a startled Look he discovered the Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching on the Windowsill, watching him while trying to hang onto the Windowsill in a very awkward position and almost falling off. It was Late Morning already. Trying to recover from the Shock while managing to hide his Surprise, he said with a very Composed and Stern Voice:
'Oh ... Day! Good Morning ... Careful, you'll slip off that 'sill'.
But the Day was grumpy from All the hours of unnecessary Waiting on the Windowsill and wasn't in a good Mood at All. It replied spitefully to the comment of Mr. Chang!s by mumbling through it's own Teeth:
'That Verse you just hummed while Fast Translating it: it's not a good Fast Translation!'
And then, seeing Mr. Chang!s reaction, it hit harder by starting to recite a Verse from the Same Full German Translation of the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co Kg of October 1991 that Mr. Chang!s used for his Fast Translated Humming and personal use. Only it didn't use Fast Translation but switched directly to the Original Translation of the Full Version mentioned. There was a spiteful Sting in its Voice. It was sniggering at the Way Mr. Chang!s did his Fast Translating while humming:
'Du sagst: Leg das Blattwerk der Jahren zu dir, es ist Zeit, dass du kommst und mich küsstest!'
Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching blushed a little. For Many Days now he had thought about the Quality of his Fast Translations and was Sometimes rather insecure about them. He realised at this particular Moment in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching that there might arise Certain Discussions in the Course of Time about the Validity of his Fast Translations of Celan's Work. But before he could think of Anything to say to save Some Face, the Day broke in again, reciting another Verse from another Poem of the Full German Translation of the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co Kg from October 1991:
'Neben mir lebst du, gleich mir, als ein Stein in der eingesunkenen Wange der Nacht'.
Mr. Chang!s Lue detested this and called out!
'Oh no!' , he cried out and his Shout was exaggerated in an Attempt to change the Subject.
'Not that too!', he called out again and, being so occupied in trying to change the subject, he didn't even realize he was employing very quick Fast Translating, when he cried out the following revelation:
'I am just crying for you from a Bowl that stays empty, see! Please Please me Please Kiss me.'
Then, realising his Mistake, he switched as fast as he could to Normal Full Version Fast Translating, and, trying to restore some confidence in the Day, as well as proving some Fast Translating Point, he mixed Poems and Pages together as he skilfully rhymed the following:
'Was du aus Leichtem wobst,
trag ich dem Stein zu Ehren.
Wenn ich im Dunkel die Schreie
wecke, weht es sie an'.
But the Day cut him short with a snort:.
'I don't know if I can do that!'
And it continued with much emphasis:
'I mean kiss you. Days are not allowed to kiss Men. And I don't think I should do it anyway. Your Fast Translations aren't good enough, as the Years in the Millenium doubted, and there's this Thing about Illicit Behaviour between Men and Days anyhow! Do you know what The Next Couple of Days of this Week and also Some of Days of Next Week have already decided?'
The Conversation between Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching and the Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching carried on like that for most of the Day. It went on and on till late into Late Late Afternoon but it never really got to Any Point of Any Value at All. Till, at Some Point in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching, the Day got bored and said Something to Mr. Chang!s that Mr. Chang!s had secretly known all along but didn't want to hear from Any Day! Not from an Ordinary Day he didn't want to hear it! And certainly not from the Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching! The Day had said:
'You are making a Fool of yourself! Not only early in the Morning does your Fast Translating not work, but hardly Any of the Time, any Time of the Day Time! Fast Translating, as it is, is one of the Immature Kind of Actions'.
Mr. Chang!s was getting upset! The Day had been driving into Mr. Chang!s with much Force and pushed him into great Insecurity. The Last Straw and Breaking Point in their Discussion was when the Day said:
'There'll no kissing for you! No kissing! Not between you and me there won't!'
Mr. Chang!s Lue broke down! Like a Ball of Lightning suddenly Everything that the Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching could have brought had turned sour. Mr. Chang's turned pale and looked haggard. For a Flash of a Moment, at this Point in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching!, his Vague Vanishing Eyes seemed to depart even farther from each other. He didn't know what to say. Then he remembered the Previous Days. They had done the same to him. Insulted him! None of them had wanted to kiss him! He remembered how all the Years that had come to his Windowsill had done the same. He had wanted to say to the Day:
'We can make it so beautiful, don't talk yourself away, just stay!'
But now! He pushed the Day away! He shouted at it in a Grave, Loud and uncouth Manner:
'Fackua off from my Windowsill! Leave me alone! Don't even try to come back!'
But it was too Late! The Day had made its own individual Decision. It pulled a Face, stuck out it's Tongue and vanished from Mr. Chang!s Room as it rushed into the Night. Not another Word about Fast Translating was spoken. Not even a Glance was tossed at him from the Windowsill! Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching was terribly hurt! Wearily he drifted to his Mirror and stood in front of it. The Day was done and had gone. That was so cruel of the Day! All Days are the Same! They come and they go!
'Is Fast Translation so bad?'
With sagging Shoulders he watched his own Migrating Face, his Stubborn Teeth. His Eyes even. They were so Vague and Moist and the Distance they were from the Spot where he stood encompassed more Miles than Hours, more than he had ever noticed.

b. The Story-of-the-Next-Day-in-the-Life-of-Mr.-Chang!s-Lue-from-Ching-Ching

In the morning, in front of the Mirror on the Day of the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lee from Ching-Ching, Mister Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching saw the impartiality of his Teeth. He saw how Independent they were. Each Tooth went its own Way and refused to conciliate with any other Individual Tooth. They all travelled away from each other with ever-increasing inflated Speed, and those that had left first faded into the distance like Fleeting Days in the Lives of Poets. Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching looked at his own Eyes watching him from the Mirror. To his surprise he saw that his Eyes were also showing a similar Pattern of Behaviour. They were fading. Travelling towards unknown Destinies. The Spot where his Eyes were at this particular Moment in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching, was hours away from where he stood. He hardly recognised his New Age from what he saw. He didn't even recognise the impassioned Movement of the Day in the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching as it was trying to balance on the narrow Window-sill outside his Window. The Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching scuffled uncomfortably as it tried to peep through his half-drawn curtains. It wanted to see what could be seen. Mr. Chang!s Lue saw Nothing of its Efforts. He saw Nothing as usual. He was concerned with the Movements of his Eyes and Teeth. But the Day was there, waiting and sighing on the Window-sill. It smiled secretly as it caught Glimpses of Mr. Chang!s in front of the Mirror. Mr. Chang!s was humming happily a Fast Translated Verse from Paul Celan's Full German Translation of the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co Kg from October 1991 while trying to communicate with his Teeth and Eyes. 'Die Hand voller Stunden', he hummed.
'You are ein Hohlweg through my heart! Come and kiss me! Yesterday's gone! What happened to Yesterday? Come and kiss me! Come and kiss me!'
Little did Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching know that this Fast Translation of the stated Full German Translation of Celan's Work he was humming would be the sole Driving Force of the Whole Course of the Day and that it would, towards the Evening, bring him to very Deep Existential Thoughts. As he hummed he bobbed his Head. The Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching watched him with spying Eyes. With the umpteenth Bob of Mr. Chang!s' Head his Eyes rolled and fell out of their Sockets onto the Window-sill. With a startled Look he discovered the Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching on the Window-sill, watching him while trying to hang onto the Window-sill in a very awkward position and almost falling off. It was quite early in the Morning still. The Day was young. Trying to recover from the Shock while managing to hide his Surprise, he said with a very Composed and Stern Voice:
'Oh ... Day! Good Morning ... Careful, you'll slip from that 'sill'
But the Day broke without even bothering to balance on the Window-sill any more and shot right into Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching's Room. It was a Sunny Day and it was in a very good Mood.
'I will kiss you', the Day responded with a cheerful voice and started to laugh merrily. Without further delay it said:
'Fast Translating Celan's Work isn't that bad! Fast Translating Anybody's Work is nice! Possibly naughty, but nice! The Years of the Millennium know about it'.
And it continued as sprightly as before. It immediately started Fast Translating itself, using the Full Paul Celan's German Translation of the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co Kg of October 1991.
'She combs her Hair ... she loves me!
She drinks the Eyes of those who see ... empty!
Me oh my
Eye in Eye
I dry your Eye and I will kiss you!'
It rings with laughter in Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching's Room. The Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching was so gay and young, almost like a dear little babbling Stream running down from the Slopes of the impeccable and viciously high mountain, the mountain of Ching-Ching where Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching lives. It carried on and on Fast Translating without bothering about correct References or any Prescribed Fast Translating Protocol. It mixed Poems and Pages together in a beautiful Soup of lovely Rhymes! Mr. Chang!s was delighted! The Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching was such a Sweet little Thing! It talked and talked and laughed and out of the Blue it bent over and placed a sweet little Kiss on Mr. Chang!s cheek. What a daring thing to do! Mr. Chang!s froze! With a Shock he realised what was Happening! How he had let himself go. Good God! Fast Translation is bad! It corrupts! The Day was too young! His expectations of Days were wrong! He was in an impossible Situation! He had wanted to love the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching! And yet, this business of Fast Translation, Paul Celan, the Surrealists, its Protocol, all the Days of Yesterday! What would the Mature Days say when they found out? The Years that had past? Tomorrow? What will tomorrow bring? Before the Day had kissed him he wanted to say to the Day:
'Oh how lovely, stay! Oh Day stay, please stay!'
But now!
The Danger the Poor Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching had exposed itself to was so much greater! The Wrath of the Normal Days in his Life would destroy it! He pushed the Day away and shouted in a Grave Loud Manner:
'Fackua off from my Window-sill! Leave me alone! Never Come Back!' But it was too Late! The Days of Last week and the Days of the Weeks before came rushing back like a Flash of Memory! They had seen what the Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching had done! They had seen the Kissing and the Moment of Joy! They had seen Mr. Chang!s' secret Happy Reaction to the Kiss! They had heard both his and the Day's Fast Translations of the Full Paul Celan's German Translation of the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co Kg of October 1991.
But that was not All. The whole Community of Days of All the Previous Months, their Neighbours and Some Other Days from Past Perfect Tenses rushed in. And they All flew at the Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching. They screamed at it! Shouted at it! There was fighting and hair tearing! The poor little Day in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching was beaten up. It was humilated and scorned. It did not have a Chance! Towards the Afternoon, at this particular Point in the Story of the Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching, and after much commotion, it was kicked out of the Circle of Time. It was banished from the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching! It may never return! Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching was so very upset, he couldn't utter a Word. He forgot All about Fast Translating. All about everything else.
'... look what they have done to my Day! ... look what they have done to my Day!', was All he could think of. He could have cried! It was so cruel of the Other Days in his Life!
'Fast Translating is Bad! Kissing a beautiful Day is intolerable! There'll be no kissing for you! No kissing! Not between Men and Days there won't'
Mr. Chang!s looked haggard and turned pale as the Day in the Story of Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching was dragged from his Room. He saw it hurled from his Window-sill and thrust into the Night. He was so sad. His Vague Vanishing Eyes departed even further from each other as he watched the Day in the Story of Next Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching disappear from his Life. He didn't know what to say. Words had left him.
'Is Fast Translation so bad?'
That Night when Night came Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching went to his Mirror again and looked at his Teeth. Most of them were gone. Those that were still there moved on Individual Courses. With sagging Shoulders he watched his own Migrating Face. He saw his Stubborn Teeth. Even His Eyes. They were so Vague and Moist and the Distance they were from the Spot where he stood encompassed more Miles than Hours, more than he had ever noticed.

a soft knock on the door

There is a soft knock on the door. Ubove the merry chatter, Marti Corbonell is the only one whe hears it. Arnau, Ermengallus, Cathella and Emilia are too busy talking to one another.
He gets up, puts his half-empty glass of Sangria down on the sideboard next to the Hi-fi and turns down the sound. Villa Lobos’s string quartets’ din is a pitch higher than acceptable by house rules and the neighbours have already complained more than once about noise disturbances. When the pitch of it goes down everybody in the room stops talking for a second and notices how he goes to the front door.
‘Someone at the door…’ he excuses himself and touches his bow-tie to make sure it’s hanging neatly.
With the neighbours in mind, Marti opens the door. But what he sees is such a shock to him that he forgets all about sound levels and string quartets. In front of him are two of the blackest and most high velvet eyes he has ever seen. Their exuberant brightness pierces right through him.
The only words he can utter are ‘Eh … uh!’
It is Doncia. She has a towel in her hand. She holds it out to him.
But he can’t take it. His one hand is glued to the doorknob and the other is halfway in the air, breast high, frozen in motion. He can’t react. He just looks at her eyes and the long black hair flowing to her hips.
‘This fell on my head … is it yours?’ she asks politely.
Her voice is like a soprano’s, joining in with Lobos’ string quartets, which are still softly audible from the living room. And…

‘No!’ Stuart exclaims loudly with a shout, pushing his chair away from the kitchen table.‘No! … Marti cannot be surprised to see Doncia! She went to school in Torroella with him. He knows her!’
Immediately he pulls his chair up to his laptop again and frantically opens another Word.doc file. He anxiously scrolls down the text.
‘Voila! Here…! See!’ he says, and reads the text out loud.
‘…She was a beautiful woman, schooled in Catalonia, Torroella, Girona and Barcelona and … and … and, in chapter 3, she has been in Torroella for many many years!.’
He sighs with relief. Marti’s reaction has taken him by surprise.
‘I am right!’ he says to himself and then to Marti ‘You are at fault here! You cannot do that, act as if you’ve seen Doncia for the first time today.’
And he stands up from behind the table and goes to the door where Marti is still hanging on to the doornop with his one hand. And he carefully explains to Marti why his play-acting has such disastrous consequences with regard to what he has written so far.
‘It blurs the plot! It’s non sequitur … the exposure in time is wrong. It cannot be the first time you lay eyes on Doncia. The towel also … it’s not true. It’s just a story I have made up,’ he flares out at Marti.
Arnau, Ermengallus, Cathella and Emilia stop their homespun joviality altogether and cock their ears, looking at each other. They hear Stuart say with firm finality to Marti, ‘Listen, you really are wrong in this. I don’t want to be impolite but, you know, I have had problems with you before. GSM, bowtie, and those discussions with Arnau at Senora Arrilla’s about City Council gossip … I know nothing about it. And your sudden entrances in about every chapter … Are you a Jew in Diaspora or what?’
But Marti still doesn’t seem to be able to divert his attention from Doncia. All Stuart can hear from him is his strange pronunciation of the word ‘towel’.
‘T w owl?’ he says to Doncia as if she were some kind of nitwit and keep on looking into her eyes.
Cathella cuts in.
‘Who’s there, Marti?’ she calls from the couch in the living room.
Stuart wants to turn to her and pip her too, but Doncia has already answered over Marti’s shoulder and passed Stuart, telling everybody that it is she.
‘Somebody dropped a towel down the balcony. Whose is it?’ she calls out.
‘Marti, let her in,’ Emilia shouts ‘Come in Doncia!’
‘No!’ Stuart screams at her. ‘She doesn’t come in! She can’t come in!’
He panics.
‘Keep quiet! Tune off that bloody Lobos! I can’t hear what I am thinking’. And to Marti he repeats, ‘don’t let her in! She can’t come in!’
Marti Corbonell is under a lot of stress. He doesn’t know what to do. He has recovered from the confrontation with Doncia’s eyes and … the towel, but there is Stuart’s voice. He cannot decide whether he should let Doncia in or listen to Stuart.
‘I’ll delete you!’ Stuart warns him. ‘Now shut the door!’
Immediately Marti shuts the door.
’Wham!’
A door shut right in the face of the deadliest Carmen in Torroella!

‘Oh, that has never happened before,’ Stuart’s neighbors say to one another from across the hallway where they are all standing now, listening to the commotion in the apartment. They see how Doncia is shut out and they speculate as to the reasons why a Spanish tart with wild hair hanging to her buttocks and sporting a towel loiters in front of a writer’s apartment.
‘Those Spaniards take Catalonia for granted,’ one of them says to his aged wife. He and his wife are from the mountain village of Santa Marti Sacalm on holiday in Estartit.

Stuart touches his temples with both his hands. Cold sweat covers his forehead. Then he jumps up from behind his laptop with impulsive firmness, rushes to the adapter on the sideboard, fumbles and knocks over a half empty glass of Sangria next to the Hi-fi, and rips the computer’s plug from its socket. The story he is writing dies on the LSD screen of his laptop and black space replaces it.
He is relieved.
What he doesn’t realize however, is that the software he is working with has a last document-capturing mechanism in case of power failure. The story has been captured in precise form and layout. The next time he starts up his laptop, the same text will appear in front of his eyes and Doncia will still be hanging out, there in the hallway … in front of his shut door.

Other storytelling poetic sequences by Argo Spier

Bogy Road - A multi-levelled search into the essence of Wallpaper poetry and glimpses of the power and darker sub-conscious side of Necro poetica.
Sampel Four -Wallpaper poetry and Necro poetic seances, moving into the absurd with the printing out of wini.ini files as poetry.
Mucus Gravel - A compilation of sea and farmer poems, hilarious Wallpaper poetry and beautiful songs.
Raam - The only work in his mother tongue, the Afrikaans language; a Kubrickian space narration with translations of poems into various languages.
Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Café - Containing The Blackwater Stories, Wallpaper poetry and dreams.
Santa Christiana D'Aro - Wallpaper poetry and a brilliant and homely story.
Belim Tower Road - Wallpaper poetry, containing perfect illustrations of Necro Poetica, the resurrection of words already said and cold and the creation of fragile Vestalian sound poetry.
On the beach of Ville St. Gillis Croix de Vie - Miscellaneous and uncompleted.
Mister Page on Page International Airport - Miscellaneous.
A Lover's Sundae Sarum - Anniversary love poems.
Douche and Addition - Poetry and columns.
Zinzli come home Albi - Summer Poems from Chur.
Seasons of Sarum - Storytelling poetic sequences and a deep drive into Sarum.
Green Muse Trying - Columns and Storytelling Wallpaper poetry.

Blurbs on some of Argo Spier’s publications

Green Water Pain -
[When Night grew with the Dew]

'… with fingers that pat into the core of feeling'

'Green Water Pain contains the right mix of art-historical issues, love verses, vague sadness and frivolous ditty-like rhyme. It is a sensitive journey and to the pointe poetry. The intermingled references throughout the story to the poetry Paul Celan gives it its eary palpate'.

Was it Mucha's?
No it wasn't Mucha's, it
was Jan Zrzavy's Cleopatra 1 and the Still-Life-
with-Lillies-of-the-Valley, it
wasn't Mucha's, it was
Frantisek Bilek's How-Time-Models-Its-Poet, it
wasn't Mucha's, it was Maximilian Pirer's
Medusa washing her wriggling hair
no it wasn't Mucha's, it

From Medusa's wait
Nights grow with the dew and slowly
night after night they swell like love puffed virgins
hungry women
night after night at night they wink their eyes
and wriggle their snakes
oh you vile guilty ones laughing sweet
when spawning your basilisk egg
screaming loud when breeding your feral foul
when hauling your little snakiest babes
from Medusa's wait

Mr. Changs! from Ching-Ching
[Summer Love from Chur]

'... hilarious, sad and yet lovely. Soft tender insider poetry'

'The story of Mister-Chang!s-Lue-from-Ching-Ching refreshes and will bring a tear to the eye ... but it is also a story of a very compassionate and understanding smile!'

'In the morning, in front of the Mirror on the Day of the Story of One Day in the Life of Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching, Mister Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching saw the impartiality of his Teeth. He saw how Independent they were. Each Tooth went its own Way and refused to conciliate with any other Individual Tooth. They all travelled away from each other with ever increasing inflated Speed, and those that had left first faded into the distance like Fleeting Days in the Lives of Poets. Mr. Chang!s Lue from Ching-Ching looked at his own Eyes watching him from the Mirror. To his surprise he saw that his Eyes were also showing a similar Pattern of Behaviour. They were fading. Travelling towards unknown Destinies'.

Castle and Flower
[Winter love story in verse and exercises in the Art of Imitation of Haiku]

I dedicate this short draft and exercise in the art of imitating Haiku, to the three “Witches of Eve”, Maya Nuda, Maya Vestita and there bigger sister, known since the beginning of time as the cruellest and most incisive, Nancy Muse, who, in the slow months of the year of 1997, castigated my cringing soul and making me run, beg crawl and return to the feeding dens of their love for me.

All of what is written down here on paper happened in actual life. It happened with me in the same year. The Year I refused to be what I am not: a Poet!

A Winter Love Story in Verse and Exercises in the Art of Imitation of Haiku - When leaning she laughs - When shines a Moon - Humanoid your Face.

THE MOVING MYRIAD

A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
Laggard winds and clarion breezes … colour, laïs and a circle.

The Moving Myriad was written in the weeks before the author was to appear in court on a charge of refusal of payment for a misprint of one his mayor publication, Green Muse Trying. The Moving Myriad gives a good insight into how the author's mind functions in catastrophic events and how he battles to come to terms with his persecution by the KOLV VZW printing house. The association he makes with the prosecuted medieval chanson composer and poet JEHANNOT DE LESCUREL who was hung in 1304 for promiscuity and immoral love is transparent. DE LESCURAL was author and composer of one of the first three-voiced laïs in the history of polyphonic mediaeval music. His song and composition, Gracieusette Gillette, of which the original text is given in the footnotes along side the English translation of it, is theme grande in The Story of a Myriad and its recurring echo's throughout the book tells the story of a tender and indestructible love.

… thought provoking and tender with the delicate honesty of a fearful heart… Just a lovely sequence and completely worthwhile to read.
LWCFSD Poetic Society.

Recognition Song for Madam Gillette

A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
clarion breezes and the colour of life

Recognition Song for Madam Gillette and its recurring echo's of the licentiousness of carnal love tell a fragile story of a tender and indestructible love, the love of words.
The author uses the sad history of the prosecuted medieval chanson composer and poet JEHANNOT DE LESCUREL who was hung in 1304 for promiscuity and inmoral love. DE LESCURAL was author and composer of one of the first three-voiced laïs in the history of polyphonic mediaeval music, Gracieusette Gillette. At the time writing the author too was prosecuted and fined, but not for immoral love, but for the refusal to pay for a misprint by the Kolv Vzw publishing house in Ghent, Belgium of his book called Green Muse Trying.

Thought provoking and well structured. A story of the delicate honesty of a fearful heart but a lovely sequence and serious alchemy. … The poet is a charm and his seduction power is great.
LWCFSD POETIC SOCIETY.

Sym-
metry breaks. Russet sound
and brass replaces guise; pewter and alloy, tin.
And into the foreground a dark myriad slowly
motions. It breaks from the clinging archetype;
while in the widening space of the rearing
no man's land, the ABEL man runs.

And there is a call. It calls as if calling
from a hinterland. It calls you.

Legally a Muse

Aspirations and motivations, the theme of love-and-war and small worlds are the ingredients that make Legally a Muse a story of light complexity and lovely predictable suspense. Its about the forbidden zone of makeshift communication and the overkill of innocence in the face of instinctive rivalry.

'We were in a movie. And she couldn't help it. But she took her script serious and did at that moment something that she had never done before. She bent over and kissed me full on the lips. The teeny-whiny little margin of what had become of the write and the wrong disappeared. And she kissed me again. And this time she ventured deeper into the forbidden zone of makeshift communication. Plain adulatory. Her heart pounded fresh and I was a writer. Some flesh. She stuck the tip of her tongue into the small slit between my lips. I felt lithe and ordered another round coffee'.

Oliver and the Art of Sharing

Boundless self-centricity verses its counterpart, the perilous desire to share inner feelings, and the challenge between these two rivals as well as the deadly pursuit of cause-and-effect throughout 'Oliver', mould the story as it slips from happiness to a quest for happiness into an unpretentiousness and very recognisable readable piece of writing.

'An unbounded compassion washed over me. From then on every single motion I made in the Old City became a journey of joy into Wonderland. The Wheel of my karma had started to turn and I was caught in its positive tolling. My soul and I were reincarnated in the body that was with us and we both were excited like children going on an errant with their mother'.

Machines of Art
[From the Argo Spier Prague Interview]
'The material used in the Praha Interview, originated on a walk in Prague…'

'The Praha Interview, originated on a walk in the mountains surrounding the little town of Tsciertschen in the Swiss Canton of Graubunden. Argo Spier, a pupil of the South African poet, N.P. van Wyk-Louw claims to be the Master-of-the-art-of-recombination of words. The interview collects and recombines parole, creating a meta language and poetry ... the scrolling kind. As are his poems, it is picturesque and interlinked. It is a story, Argo Spier is a storyteller ... and his stories are his work, Wallpaper poetry and Necro Poetica, the ghastly rituals of writing poetry, his kind'.

'Poetry! You want to know what poetry is! You want to know what makes a poem a poem! A poet does not know answers to fit questions like these and the last person to ask what the essence of poetry is, is a poet! I have not discovered this so called essence yet and probably never will! I am still searching for the it of it like every other natural born writer under the sun. I just don’t know the answer to it and I am not the write person to be interviewed about it!'

BOGY ROAD
[POEMS OF INNOCENCE AND JOY]

A Wilgcoffee stand-alone publication
'... utterances and everyday dialogue shaped into shocking rhyme'

'... working with flat characters and a simple plot, SMUTTY creates a racy story with a constant night marsh and chilly touch as it reaches its tentacles into the subconscious. Bogy Road has a newness and a fresh vagrancy. It contains séance-like poetry which excites'.
LWCFSD Poetic Society

Then she opened her mouth and showed me her tongue. JUVANTE JEZU,
it was split! It was split like DI THE LEVIATHAN'S. She spoke with a voice.
'I am not dead. I am alive and I am a woman not a feman!
Honestly I can also be a man!
I am the poem you are writing!' she said and then she opened her mouth again and hissed into my face.
I saw her skin color.
It changed from amethyst turf to moist mud.
I smelled the vagrancy of revitalized life seeping through the air like a cool drug, breezing, promising, inviting, sweetening, growing, ripening and segmenting.

Blue Sweet -
[Mr. Page on Page International Airport]

'... desolate spaces of feeling, accumulated debris of used words.'

'Blue Sweet is a neat but strange step in the spoor of Wallpaper poetry storytelling. It contains sediment of gall, its unscrupulously honest and there is a typical touch of classy hilarity. The right mix of ordinary utterances, irrelevant dialogue, stark expression and the inevitable dramatic drive, makes it the perfect setting for a true Sduttian story of a Mr. Page

on a Page International Airport.

And you’re lonely.
And you. Don’t know which. Way.
And your words. Are juxtaposed with images.
Of long Bien Temps. Ago.

Blue Space. Up the slopes. The Hex.

And you’re lonely.
And you. Don’t know which. Way.
And your words. Are juxtaposed with images.
Of long Bien Temps. Ago.
And you are.

… daring wallpaper poetic storytelling and a sweet suck on…

With minimal strokes and well selected words the author works his way through the vast amount of accumulated encyclopaedic debris left behind on the road of literature and reshapes waste to beauty. With its 6 separate stories Blue Sweet, carries the reader over the threshold of hesitation into the surreal world of the process of creative writing. Vast spaces containing human feeling emerge as the pace is set and kept throughout the book … a decorous contribution to the debate re the essence of creative literature.

The master poet is here, once again, at his best and he uses his seduction power with great ease, skill and unscrupulous honesty. Blue Sweet with its irony, pathetic mien and off-beat bravura … a daring statement, lovely and an experience in depth to read.
LWCFSD POETIC SOCIETY

Cocked Poise
[When I castled your Eye in my Loess]
' ... bracing and garrulous ... yet a gentle read and a tender story'

'… intricate and to the bone, a referral to Seasons of Sarum. Cocked Poise has several deconstructive doors offering contemporary art-historical rumpus. It has fingers touching in deep water, the ritual of writing tout court'.

'No musician', I said, 'there’s no musician
on the beach, other than me! There’s nobody
other than me, to stain your sky. There’s no mountain,
no valley so high,
no sea so high,
as the day, the almighty day, I castled
your eye in my loess.'

A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
... refreshing and loquacious...

Taken up in this publication are the sequences Zinsli came home Albi, which contains the so-called Chur poems and originated in Switzerland, A lover's sundae sarum, love poetry written in Austria, a third sequence written on the beach of Ville St. Gillis Croix de Vie, France and the in 1997 well received Canterbury Carillon which was written in England as a contribution to the defamed child abduction and murders in Belgian in 1995-1996 and presented in schools across Europe

'… intricate … core material from the author's Seasons of Sarum. The sequence has its fingers touching into the sub planes of the great poetic undercurrent unconsciousness. The ritual of writing tout court'.
LWCFSD Poetic Society

[THE POET IS A NOMAD]

The diurnal alternation of light,
and poacher night, its weight,
and the weight of day,
and earth in its dreary sleep,
and sea, and earth, in the wake
and depth of douse,
and the stabbing stone, its height,
and the moon,
the immortal moon,
its silver dish, and your sun,
its flame,
and the flare of shining flaxen
gold.
- Your re-enactment of IT, of the Primal Scene,
that is what makes the poet a Nomad. -

The naked star, its meandered scatter
outside of the ring of the sky,
the rambled maze
in which the poet's frail reward

is solitude and sand,
and in which, wolf and coyote,
jackal and fox,
and howl, carouse,
celebrating death, resur-
rection,
and birth and birth,
and stirring dying days,
and surviving twilight.
- The dawning of your re-enactment of IT,
of the Primal Scene, that is what makes the poet

Sample Four
[The Masked Man of Sainte Margarita]

' ... the endless generation of words, images, themes and stories'

'Sample Four employs Wallpaper poetry (the endless generation of words, images, themes and stories) and results in Necro Poetica (the ritual of writing). It is a Sduttian and Argo Spier pushes his own genre to the limit by incorporating a transcript of a TV Soap Opera and the so-called Computer poems, the latter which are print-outs of the wini.ini file of his own computer. The dark and cult-like undertone throughout the book hint towards what edge Argo Spier wants to drive language and poetic storytelling. Sample Four is also an encyclopaedia of sound, pictures and non-sensible sense and an intriguing story of four poets in a bar in the middle of the Karoian desert discussing meta aspects of writing tout court'.

next day ... static life
they gathered on the beach of Miramar
(they knew about the nightly raid)
Phaedo Phaerus Timaeus
and
the Masked Knight of Sainte Marguerite
sat on a rock feet in the water
don't be metaphysically naïve
the soul belongs to the world of fluid forms
that's why it rains so much it's easier to fight
that way when all is wet
the earth dogged
're you sure?
absolutely poems are written

MUNICIPAL PAINT OPERA LODGE CAFÉ
A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION

The Story of Helena and the Secret Pleasures in the Palace of Joy.

The master poet is here, once again, lover and at most, in control. His seduction power is great and he is just the Master Lover. The speed, versatility in matter choice, use of words and themes and skill makes it the most beautiful and boldest story written at the change of millennium. Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Café with its irony, pathetic mien and on-beat bravura is a most pleasant experience to encounter. The reader will just love it. It is wallpaper poetic storytelling sec.
LWCFSD POETIC SOCIETY

somewhere
backstage Vienna another life VALENTINE
winter spring summer autumn
rain
subversive thoughts authentic Passions JOYCE
JAMES sure waiting behind the doors shoes
dreams writing poems landslides roofs
shoes numbers room numbers upstairs
sky
don't read what you don't write
slippery mud slices slippery slices
slipping under feet Macintoshes more
rain more steep rain poems
my many poems
wait! wait! wait! open the door
who's behind that door door door
do you hear hear hear the echo echo?
people notice poems everyday when
I write
poems everyday deconstructing poems
writing
people write about poems filamentary writings
signs of the Zodiac SAGITTARIUS VIRGO
WASSERMANN fire earth water breath and men
people many people Northerners
Southerners United East Indian
Companies
they write about poems my many
poems
they read about poems my many
poems
they read naughty things in poems very naughty
things in my poems naughty things with married
women children Muses of Dark Pools death
poisonous life lies lies lies lies lies

Santa Christiana D'Aro

WALLPAPER POETRY SEC THAT FAST SCROLLS THE PERILOUS 'HOLIDAY' ADVENTURES AT SANTA CHRISTIANA D'ARO.

Look ... you put flowers on the table you make it nice they knock it over when reaching for the milk and butter there is water in your plate water on your bread water all over you you don't like that you don't want to make it nice anymore you knock the bread on the floor it mushed up the floor you get up you slip on the smooch you hurt your back you don't like that you think why you had put flowers on the table why you had made it nice why look at you you are like an old idiot you don't like that nobody likes that nobody likes an old man they ask you hey why you walk like that like an old man all crooked and bent askew you put flowers on the table or something someone knocked it over when reaching for milk and butter or what all that water in your plate water on your bread water all over you you didn't like that you didn't want to make it nice anymore you knocked the bread on the floor it mashed up the floor you got up you slipped on the smooch you hurt your back you didn't like that you thought why you had put flowers on the table why you had made it nice why look at you you are like an old man you don't like that nobody likes that nobody likes an old man everybody's gone ask you hey ...
Municipal Paint Opera Lodge Café

…. seduction power, exuberance in cadence, speed, complaisance in matter-, word- and theme choice, appropriateness of thrust and the brilliancy of hidden rhyme make of 'Lodge' a push of one in a million. And with its irony, pathetic mien and on-beat bravura it is an experience to apperceive. The rendezvous of the poet and his beloved on the steps of the Opera lodge Café at Backwater Bridge is just too beautiful an experience … too beautiful to describe in words other than his own.

somewhere
backstage Vienna another life VALENTINE
winter spring summer autumn
rain
subversive thoughts authentic Passions JOYCE
JAMES sure waiting behind the doors shoes
dreams writing poems landslides roofs
shoes numbers room numbers upstairs
sky
don't read what you don't write
slippery mud slices slippery slices
slipping under feet Macintoshes more
rain more steep rain poems
my many poems
wait! wait! wait! open the door
who's behind that door door door
do you hear hear hear the echo echo?
people notice poems everyday when
I write
poems everyday deconstructing poems
writing
people write about poems filamentary writings

The Story of Caroline

A Wilgcoffee stand-alone publication
A quest for the sanity of love and a drive into the unconscious … stark and a never ending story…

The story of CAROLINE and her double diagnosed male persona with overt personality traits, T'ALBERT, EUGENE is one large encyclopedic peeping box in which emotion intermingles with about everything to tell the story of the creation of the story of CAROLINE.

… well structured and the multitude of theme lines are running a steady course throughout the book only to intertwined in the end into a tight knot.
… hilarious at times, chilly at others, with poetry and prose interlinked. There's the 'reality-at-home' and the 'reality-abroad' and there's the merge of these two with very recognizable patterns... An exciting story of a writer's love for the love of words. - LWCFSD Poetic Society

Then, and honestly, I couldn't helped it, I devilishly thought why not drop a pebble in as well? Just for the tease.
'If you think I am so kind, why don't you tell your wife that?', I said and added, 'Or do you have a husband?' and burst out in laughter. Victory! However it was short lived. She stung me immediately where it smites. Chapeau!
'I already have!', she touché-ed.
I repressed a frown. The tight elastic band around this cheap unbounded novelette was squeegee-ing tighter.
'Yes...? Everything...? Oh dumbfounded love!'
'Of course not! But if he is to ask me ... sure I will tell her!', she replied.

Raam in 5 talen: Afrikaans, Nederlands, Frans, Duits, Engels

A WILGCOFFEE STAND-ALONE PUBLICATION
'Een Kubrickiaanse reis doorheen de grenzen van taal'.

RAAM, een Kubrickiaans ruimte epos, beschrijft niet alleen een reis in de ruimte, maar is zelf een reis , een reis doorheen de ruimte van taal. De lezer wordt meegenomen doorheen een veelvoud van goed gestructureerde taallagen, lagen die in elkaar verstrengeld zijn en die in elkaar overvloeien, afzonderlijk en toch onafscheidelijk van elkaar. Met een bijzondere en suggestieve stijl en een zekere geladenheid, creëert de schrijver in dit prachtige en compacte werk de illusie van een geboorteproces van taal en van een taal die zich ontwikkelt vanaf het vroege archaïsche begin van klank, menselijke klank, tot volwassen geworden zingevende expressie. Naast de originele versie in Afro-Afrikaans van de dichtbundel RAAM, bevat deze publicatie ook Nederlandse, Franse, Duitse en Engelse vertalingen ervan en een inleidende artikel over RAAM.

[AFRIKAANS]

De tijd wordt zwaarder
in de verte verschijnt een speer
een vernauwende buis
vuur

een schijnende monoiliet

vreesaanjagend in de schaduwkring
die wachtende wildehond
canus lupus : roofdier of wolfshond

en het sterrebeeld het getal 58

[Français]

Le temps est saturé
dans le lointain un point est apparu
le tuyau se rétrécissant
ou le feu

le monolithe luisant

terrifiant
dans le cercle d'ombre
le loup qui attend
canus lupus : fauve ou chienet la constellation
avec le chiffre 58

[Deutsch]

Die Zeit wurde bleiern
In der Ferne tauchte ein Punkt auf

eine sich verengende Röhre
oder eine Flamme
ein gleißender Monolith
Kälte verströmend

Im Kreis der Schatten
wartete der wilde Hund
Canus Lupus:
Urhund oder Wolfshund
und die Sternenkonstellation Nummer 58

[English]

The time grew heavy
in the distance the point
the narrowing tube
or the flame

a shining monolith chilling
in the shadow-circle

the wild dog
awaiting
canus lupus: vulture or wolf dog
and the star constellation
with the number 58

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