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Slender Strain
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The document, when printed, contains 95 A4 pages and the material in it is copyrighted in Argo Spier’s name.

©Argo Spier.
ISDN - 2003-09-06 and upon request.
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, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Slender Strain
[A Mantissa and inside the Grid Of a Writer's Mind]


Note by the Publisher

Reference notes accompany the poetic additions inside the text of Slender Strain to their respective authors.
Slender Strain started off as a facilitator's attempt to generate creative writing at the cyber community Salty Dreams' Lounge. The thread posted was Poet needed to get in the car with me and comment and posted in February 2004. The first suggested title for Slender Strain was Responsible Young Driver. But as the story proceeded title change proved inevitable. First it became A!hora - Ourania's Drive. And then to Ourania's Drive And towards the end of the creative process it was changed again City Looking and a sub-title was added, Inside the Grid of a Writer's mind. In the 13th draft the title was changed yet again and became Slender Strain. The story was completed on the 11th of March 2004, the day extremists planted 13 bombs in Madrid, Spain killing 203 people, maiming and wounding 1200 others. The story of Slender Strain carries many references to Spain (and also to Catalan) and since Ourania 'really' is of Mediterranean origin in the story, she usually answers the driver with a 'Si, of course!' This horrible cowardice in Spain came as a shock, both to the author and to the participants in the story. There was a hesitation, deciding whether to postpone the completion of the story as a form of solidarity with the victims, innocent mothers, children and working fathers. Since however the story of Slender Strain started off with a quote appealing to poetic nations and seekers of beauty the decision was quickly made. Beauty should reign over destruction. Terror shall not lead deprivation. Writing and the working with myths elevates culture to higher levels and prevails over indiscriminant, callous murder, especially when this murder is committed under the vague name of political aims or an idolized and pathetic god. Draft 12, the final draft before copy read, was completed the same day and the author commenced with drafts 13, 14 and 15.
The quote referred to is one by E.B. Taylor. Myth is the history of its authors, not of its subjects; it records the lives not of superhuman heroes, but of poetic nations. The chapter Blue grey for Madrid was written on this day and was one of the final chapter inserted. As the extremists who blow up trains, busses, hospitals, Embassy’s and United Nations help organisations' buildings wish to generate a so-called Clash of Civilisations. Slender Strain and the collective effort put forth to write it on the Internet by people world-wide, proves that the opposite is true. Madrid only shows how great the difference is between uncivilised extremism and poetic nations. In this respect Slender Strain had now taken on a this political dimension.
Lastly, use was made of background material provided in Alone in all her sex (Vintage) by Marina Warner, Visiting Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. The author recommends the reading of it. -Ed., March 2004.

content

publisher's note - 5
greens across - 11
coming home pennon - 15
snatch and steal - 21
blue note - 24
indecipherable print - 28
dash of lemon - 34
fawed toad - 41
mixing saliva - 44
orange muse - 47
love yeti - 58
wee-ing muse - 59
blue grey for Madrid - 64
moodropped muse - 65
breaking the fast - 75
legally a muse - 79
taking you home - 98
on the verge - 103

Total Pages = 109

Master file: asslenderstrainpad.doc

Dedicated to the art of co-motion

Myth is the history of its authors, not of its subjects; it records the lives not of superhuman heroes, but of poetic nations.
E.B. Taylor

Greens across

How could I tell you
to make it simple for me, to make it true for you,
that often I know myself close to you, if I sing,
that often I know you to be close to me,
If you listen,
and I think that I never even dared to tell you,
that I should thank you for all the time that I have
loved you.
Lluis Llach

The edible green of unsullied fingers
swell into gardens of godlike deluxe
Normandy France, the road out East
from Eden
And there saliva wet celestial bodies
tip on tongues
slithy with sinful imagination
- a husbandless wife …oh, at the concaved
epicentrum of my universe:
the Autobahn Kreuz Köln-West West
from Eden.
RaE Pater, edition Argo Spier, Literary Board Salty Dreams.

The welcoming sunshine of Normandy on the fields look delicious, almost edible. And the greens across the spacious meadow played in its light. There's an easy flow as the road cut the horizon into two halves. It runs through it forward and towards calm and fantasy. The scented imprints of this bias lead me on. I was going ever more homewards and the house of the future in the distance … in it my destiny lies.
'Boy, driving is a beautiful soft experience!'
Happy and whistling a tune I knew my mind was made up. I was never going to write anymore.
'…Free manning man at last! Oh, I am Ok…!'
With all the books that I have written I have completed a genre. It was such a relief to know this. But now it was over.
'The well-contented middle-aged man… free at last!'
And I quickly pulled in my tummy.
'Edward Thomas did that too when he was my age…' I pondered 'and so did Thomas Hardy … and Joyce, James'.
Oh, I felt so classy and cool as I drove into the Freedom of Escape. Even the 'Oh, I was good' and 'Oh I was bloody good at that!' that came from my mind's tenured tongue stated my compliance. Being a good writer was always good I felt. And having fame… I had that too! Don't pass me by. Yes, I was done with the drama and nightmare of writing … and the slavery imposed by the so-called muses.
'I don't need anybody! Bye bye boogie-woogie!'
No more tension. No more elicit catastrophes in books, etc.
'Thank god! Over … was!'

'Indeed, the Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and the driver that now holding the steer in this pastoral and peaceful domain and whom was on the inner road of his own universe, has done his bit' I mused, thinking of The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy, The Complete Works of James Joyce and The Complete Works of Edward Thomas.

'Yes, the paintings I had painted in my books, using the themes of the work of the great artists and writers… And the women I had… I had women from here to the down unders of Vienna and from Vienna, up to the high icy regions of Hammerfest in Norway, etc. Yes, I was in the minds and hearts of many people. I was famous, wasn't I? No? Many people… But yes, the overture was over for me now. One could say the Press Releases and the Live TV-interviews were covered to their full. And that it went well. The chats with groupies and the serious meditative art-historical positioning with the professors… mmmm all was breezy'
And I thought of my struggles.
'Quite a lot of adrenaline is zapped when one is popular. Yes I know…! Oh, do I know!' I reminded myself '…but si si over. And voila on into France now. Normandy and peace, then Burgundy perhaps! Even the whole of the coastal drive waits there. Zakk! Onto peace and quietness. Eretrea, Saint Malo, Ville Saint-Gilles-de-Croix … wine and dine. Food! My god, look at the quietness of the happy road!'


Home coming pennon

When you find a fork in the road, take it!
Yogi Berra, Benedict's Dharma, Riverhead, 2001

Winter comes winter goes
summer comes summer comes
highway run on fast
and faster
I run towards you
faster I run away from you
but say my love
'nu'
what are you doing 'nu' my love?
what are you doing 'nu' for love?
now that winter goes goes
summer comes comes comes
and I am running towards you
again?
Argo Spier

Driving north towards Cap Gris-Néz I just couldn't shake off the feeling that I was actually driving south, into Germany. It was as if I was on my way to a small town called Freschen. I have never heard of the name though and when the turn-off sign to Köln-West flashed by I was driving so fast that it was hardly readable. It just seemed a banner swivelling with white letters on a blue square.
It was a last call to switch between south and north.

'You should never have done that! And it's not true that you have stopped writing!'
The traffic on the E47 southwards was quite heavy for the time of day and her remark had a matter of fact tone in it. 'You cannot stop writing' she said again, looked at the map on her knee for the oomph time and pinpointed our exact location once more.
'You did see the sign for W-eest!' she asked 'Autobahn Kreuz, how terrible! What does it mean? I think you better slow down and move to the right lane'.
'Küln-W-eest' she lavished in pronouncing it one more time and she spoke out the Köln with a pretty German ü and the West with a flat eest. Küln-W-eest'. Then she reminded me what the bearing of it to Freschen was on the map on her lap.
Freschen's about 20 kilometres from here…'
Her reliance on me and the confidence she had in my driving ability was indisputably solid. It was for her the most obvious thing there was, that I should know the road in a place I have never been. And Autobahn Kreuz Köln-West … well I should know German too! I was the driver and that was my responsibility to bring us save and sound to our destination. But the remark she made … the probing into my career… that was something of another order. It had magnitude. It was an issue of variety. And she really didn't know what to make of the fact that I tell everybody that I have stopped with writing.
'You haven't stopped with writing, have you?'
'Yes … was, darling … past tense!'
I thought to be firm about it. The archaic role as a mature writer, the confident superior one in creative processes … oh, that attitude was way past me. It didn't interest me anymore. I was bored with it.
'A writer, my god … how pathetic!'
With a jest I fled the interrogation, fabricated a new story and thrived in it. I gave her a different version of the so-called reason for having stopped with being a writer.
'It happened because of that ridiculous affair I had with a married woman…' I explained and added some hector nonsense to it.
I was mocking her. And I continued adding 'If I was to write ever again only incipient stuff, stories of ME's and IOU's would flow from my hand … witless plots about some new-found love, such. And in it would be many sexy Mayas from Mediterranean origins, Carmens with dark chestnut hair and deep black-brown pools for eyes! Like yours…!'
She liked it. She had sensed the entertainment and my jest.
'And in it I would make the two of us driving south. This time towards god-knows-where in Germany, etc. We would be making fabulous stopovers. Si si, Madama Afaba, there would be lots of elicit checking INS into foreign hotels for us. Ooh, road hotels, trucks and traffic! And space! The Nu…'
I laughed carefree feeling the adrenaline of a writer writing again and I noticed the coming-on of paragraphs and how they seemed to be running in lanes like the cars around us. The hard returns formed the dotted white lines leading forward, onwards and towards hidden Imaginary World tarmacs.
'If I was to write again I'd write it for you! For your eyes only, James!' I jousted and chuckled in my sharpness.
'Zakk!' I said 'for you! Not Joyce'.
She laughed gaily about it, relaxing and stretching herself into a comfortable position leaning lazily backwards in the passenger seat. I had diffused her rummage. We were now conspirators sharing a happy story instead, and two teenagers plotting with childlike enthusiasm. But she was sharp too.
'Oooee and then again…' she said 'Lluis Llach, isn't he passé?
'Noooo no! I'm not writing Lluis Llach' I contested 'I will be making for Lluis Alberto … the gentleman with a new lady'
And I took my eyes off the road and traffic and winked right into her swimming pools of thrilling possibilities. They were so lovely brown. Oh, it almost got me when she showed the tender acquisition of their interiors.
'How did you -eeuw the coat I bought was a Lluis Alberto?' she frowned.
'Mmmm I am a writer, am I not? Was … I mean!'
I was winning. And I was winning her.
'Writers see things and remember everything for their stories and what's more you -eeuw Montzerat Madama Queen, we take a third party with us on our trip! And for background music Mahler. No, Mahler's taken! Buckovski claimed him in the nineties… Sorry! What about soft piano music, Mussorgsky, for the ride? Or Cabballé? She's got a strong mamma voice. Opera! She could be the second Carmen travelling with us! The three of us, all mercurial and shiny, onwards, towards Germany … all in the same car and happy for the trip. Wouldn't that be something? Ooh, I would like that, two to one, a twin Carmen … even a triad and me, the anneal of kinfolk. Nice, no? I tell you what we do, we also use Jacobus De Varagine's script of The Golden Legend and his solutio of the doubles!'
'Of course! It would be nice. Oh, this is thrilling!' she cried out sparkling like a virgin.
She touted her lips.
'And the title? What are you going to make it with the title?' she asked.
'Eh Hugh? Eh…? Young Responsible Driver … how does that sound? A good title for a drive for us?'
'Oeee yes! That's a good one!'
'Really? Ok, it's Young Responsible Driver it is and that straight from the source's mouth … yours! No, mine! Mister ex-writer is writing Gyoung Gresponsible Griver for g-eese love, gouuu'.'
We both laughed cheerfully. It was nice and I kept on indulging.
'I will put in a lot of ohm's and ashes. And the M&M's from Garamond. A Bar-B-Que with the gin on the fire… Two more girls from Salty Dreams. Nora Joans and lush P!nk? She looks beautiful in black, don't you think? Have you seen her latest video? She's really nice and wild! I like that in a woman, the tomboy. Yes, we take her! Also Buddhist truths, flying geese … and friends forever … in the mist! Haiku. Only westerner ones though, not the newfound Hosui ones of housewife-turned-poet-at-pension stuff, ok? And bounties! Thrusts! Nouveau Ethics. And we incorporate everything into the text with lots of eye-catching italic print typeface. Boy, just think of it! We could make this a great trip!'
'And pictures, water … and Atlantis? Atlantis si!' she added.
I was a victorious seasoned ripe salmon and jumping higher and higher up the stream for the annual lovemaking get-together of ex-writers. Yet the wimpy was coming on.
'As long as I don't fall in love again!' I cautioned myself 'This New Carmen with your hair and your eyes, she could be a killer, no? Another lynx in a Belim vault! A Stella from Offenbach's Les Contes D'Hoffmann? Eve's three faces … young girl, artist and courtisane. No no, that's hideous! You are not Stella! You are you! Oh my god, I will see to that! Oh, you are so seductive and lovely, my lovely! I've waited for you all my life! Etc.'
She sat there gay as a pimple sparrow thriving on my words, enjoying the cosiness of our insider chat to its full. The thought of her being happy made me gay too. She was such an easy maid and the soft velvet of her skin, oh thinking of it … it was all around her body and so malleable. And the little hairs on her arms! It would be a tantalising familiar sensation to touch her. The freshness of her being had the necessary vagrancy. It brings old poets to life again. I could even feel the old Chimalzky flow. It was pungently coming on in the process.
'Creative dialogue ex nihilo … that was the thing that counts' I thought 'It provided the occasion'.

Snatch and steal

Carmens in mango passion
raised the day in naked breast
and where they jubilate
upon the driving window-ledge
they wave and snatch
and steal
away

a kiss, a crux and a heart
RaE Pater, edition Argo Spier, Literary Board Salty Dreams.

'Turn! Turn! You got to take the turn-off to W-eest here!' she startled talons pointing in all possible directions.
The Autobahn Kreuz was upon us! A multitude of roads entered the junction with such a terrifying speed that I almost panic and pulled the car skew. Literally thousands of cars came in and ran amok, all unexpected visitors on a reception planned for a few.
'W-eest's to the right! To the right…! Go right!' she carried on shouting and automatic as a lever I shocked onto the gas.
The car jerked forwards faster, a horse with immaculate power in its legs. Then, a second later, I swerved in front of the car that was a moment ago next to me. It slammed on its brakes, nearly causing an accident with the car behind it. I crossed the white line forbidding me to go right and shot into the right lane with the firm belief that that was the right thing to do. Purpose spurred me on. Several angry hoots affirmed my intent and I made the turn-off right … in time.
In the process she fell onto my shoulder smacking my head with hers. I took a dangerous veer to the left because of it but as she rammed right again against the window I twisted the steer and corrected the swerve. Route descriptions, hotel folders, minted humbugs and part of the roadmap that was on her lap fell to her feet. Yet with her right-hand pointing finger she stayed firmly on the spot of our orientation, Autobahn Kreutz Köln-West. The finger was now our only hope in the hole through which our destiny was pulling us with its entire calamity.
'By god, she's a wonderful wench' flashed through me as I won the new road and direction!
And 'Woof … fasten seatbelts!'
We had made it. We were through it. Autobahn Kreuz Küln-W-eest whoosh was done. We had slipped through its oozy intestine like clever eels. It lay now wounded behind us, a dead octopus on the beach between south and north.
'I've seen inert things like that in Normandy' I said to her and stepped again slightly on the gas.
We shot away faster and looking back at it in the mirror I saw its decaying creepy … slimy tentacles shrinking.
'Freschen's not far now…' I lied 'Can I have a humbug?'
She just shrugged and kept on following the road on the map with her finger. I had to drive where the finger went. She didn't give me a humbug and because of it a strange fearful thought entered my mind. I couldn't answer it.
'Who was she? Saving grace Carmen? A Madonna della Misericordia magna mater? Or one of the nine and a mirage in the pool of my mind? How did she get into the car?'

And then I saw the French town of Lille materialising in the French landscape. And the junction sign to Cap Gris-Néz. It confused me because I had the feeling that I was driving south. Into Germany. The sign slow-motioned by, black-lettered blocks of words on a white background. I read it in German. It said Kommen Zie rein and beckoned me to slow down and take the split.
'…Code or revelation? The beckoning of it … was it a home coming pennon hailing me in?'
I thought about it but I just couldn't answer it.

Blue note

Adam and Eve, after they had eaten the forbidden fruit, covered their genitals, not their hands and mouths, which had done the deed.
Augustine, City of God, 413-26.

Spent physicality
squandered emotion
small moans and panting
rebound off

Walls and
collide shattering
until deflated and spent
they drop to the floor.
RaE Pater

'My god, no love for the poet! It's a killer … true love!' I thought when she startled into my study where I had just completed 14 new vital pages for Young Responsible Driver.
She came through the door ramming so hard open that it whacked against the wall with such a slam my favourite painting Blue Note on the panel behind me dropped from its hook and smashed to the floor. She was furious. She cannot stand it when I write, crafting hours and hours in front of the computer to get story lines of sequences in order. And she made this again crystal clear with her theatrical entrance shouting 'Sitting in front of that bloody computer again! So-called idiotic poems and doing nothing the whole day! My god, you do nothing! You are so god forsaken lazy! Don't you see the dirt in the house? Don't you see how everything is falling down on us? There is broken everythings in every room we have? This house … and you do nothing about it! I sat on the loo and the rim came off, god, I am the artist…! And you just sit there!'
She stomped with her foot struggling to grasp air. My little piggy penholder dropped from the table ans smashed into pieces.
I stared at her, an alien from a different planet, sliming green from the slit of her mouth. Arachne the spider!
'Sweet Jesus, a dream eater!'
One thing was very apparent. Time for the fraternising between species from different origin wasn't now. She got her breath and spat on the floor. Retreating I, as quietly as I could, clicked on the cross in the right upper corner of the screen in front of me closing the document I was working on for the past 4 hours.
'Whoosh gone text! Young Responsible Driver delayed for another ion'.
The acid in her saliva where it had hit the carpet started a sizzling sound as it ate yet another hole into it. Pornography! She flung round going for the hi-fi and killed Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an exhibition with one flick of the button. Complete silence now fell in the room and in our conversation. I had nothing to say to her and she had made her point. Elevation Phase One was over. Confrontation done. I had fucked-up and was caught in the act. Writing … cruising in middle lane, it was a sin. The price is the missing of the turn-off to W-eeest.
'Here' I said 'Here's the title - and price list for the exhibition you asked me to print out for you' and reached for the Mediocre Microshift Publisher's printouts I'd done for her before I was sucked into Responsible Driver.
'What's this?' she screamed into my face as she took the A4 sheet and looked at it.
Acid drawled on my desk and sizzling holes appeared where it oozed. Even some important drafts of other stories got incinerated. I look at the disappearance of literature.
'…I never asked you price lists! These titles are wrong! I wanted invitation cards! My god…! You do nothing the whole day. You are such a sick passé old fart feeding on poetry you wrote when you were young!'
That was then when I grabbed hold of the steer firmly. This I couldn't allow! Driving's my business! I gave it a jerk and the car swerved dangerously too to the left. Then I pulled it towards the opposite side. Wheels ground on the tarmac. I hit the side of the highway and within a split second shot back onto it. This time right across slow and middle lanes and made for the turn-off on the right. I made it in time.
'Now you know what you do now, my love?' I calmly said to her. 'You take the list I had printed for you and you leave my study. Tomorrow I will print the corrections. But now you go back slowly to the door. Yes that door … very slowly and shut it from the other side. Shut it gently. And when you are outside you take a deep breath and go downstairs. Easy. Come come. Gently. Return to your paintings, pick up your brushes … and create the most beautiful art one can get in your universe. Do that. That is all there is to do. Your exhibition will be a great success. Don't worry about it. With the money you will make on it selling all those unaffordable utmost beautiful paintings we will buy another house. A house full of nice, beautiful, working things. Like the neighbours' house. That'll give us another 10 years cessation to run it down too. The road is clear now, look at it, my love. Go! There … there, that's it … yes back. Yes, the door … close it behind you. Byeeee!'
When she was out of the study a strange quietness settled into the room. The sizzling drafts had charcoaled out. The hole in the carpet too had stopped with sizzling. Mussorgsky was dead and I sat there empty as a bucket with a hole in it in front of a blank computer screen. There was a steering wheel in my hands but no car in which to sit in. I looked at the blank screen. It had been relieved of 14 pages all filled with winning words providing the backbone of Responsible Driver … all gone. I don't even remember what I had written. And then it hit me like a piece of James Joyce writing. I hadn't saved it! I had forgotten to push the yes button too after I had hit the cross.
'My god, love's a killer of the poets … and literature! I should have had the foresight to have fixed the toilet seat … before it broke!'
Indecipherable print

Her slender fingers
send me notes on graceful cards
messages private I hold of loneliness
a small candle glow
to warm my palms
her words are rose damask
on a silk coverlet.

I pull it over my face
watch how it diffuses the light
RaE Pater

While intelligence considers options, I am somewhere lost in the wind.
Rumi, Benedict's Dharma, Riverhead, 2001

When we got to the turn-off to Freschen … it was the wrong turn-off to Freschen. It was the turn-off to the Björg Industrial area on the north side of Freschen. It was absolutely not the turn-of to the Centre Ville or the Altsdtadt Mitte. No! It led into horrible space with industrial factories, businesses and warehouses. Huge impersonal letters shout it over it's entrance. Willkomme Björg Werke. And what was more, it was closing time late afternoon. With the on-coming night everybody working in Björg seemed to be rushing out of it at the same time. Cars, lorries and big trucks were bailing out, hooting and skirmishing. Six o'clock! The bumpy road and gravel heaps to the side of it … from everywhere and across every obstacle the migration took place.
'I don't seem to find thi-eest on the map … it's Björg something…' she said calm as a mother with children running and playing all over the place.
'Look for Centre Ville or Altstadt, Middle-of-the-town … anything like that!'
'You did take the right turn-off, did you not?'
'Of course I did!'
But I didn't seem so sure of it anymore. However, there wasn't any blame in her voice.
'I thought I did' I softened my remark.
I was sure I couldn't have had when we passed a huge building with strange looking vehicles in front of it.
'Look at the size of that building! What the devil are they manufacturing in there? Space shuttles?' I said trying to soften the blow of our mistake.
But she was frantically busy with the map on her knee.
'Autobahn Kreutz Küln-W-eest … then eh, Freschen… It's to the right! What's a Kreuz?'
'Kreuz? It's where we almost botched it up! It did say Freschen when I took the turn-off, didn't it? Kreuz is German for cross … a big one. It sucks up cars. They confuse it out here for junctions … madhouses. But we have taken the wrong road, my love! There's no cosy hotel in this area'.
'They are all going home' she said 'Their wives will be happy for them…' she replied with compassion.
Not once has she complained since we took the wrong turn-off. And even now as we were moving at a bumper to bumper crawl along with the local traffic her thoughts go out to the people around us also stuck in the congestion of traffic.
We were still next to the tall building.
'How can they build big buildings like these?' I pondered.
It seemed set that we going to be along side it for a while to come.
'I think we should turn here…' she said with her head bowed low scrutinising the roadmap, optimistic but practical.
Her pretty finger shifted from indecipherable print to the warp hole Autobahn Kreuz Köln-West.
'Let's go back to W-eest and start it all over again!' I made up her mind for her and the finger entered the black hole of the word Kreuz.
It was a vagina dentata. It started munching at her finger.
'I need a humbug…' I said and had an inexplicable need to suck at something too.
Without caring too much about the on-coming traffic I made a U-turn without any ado. I cut in front of a car. It ran off the road and into a gravel heap. I too went off the road and bumped along next to it till I found a flat strip to drive up it again. In my rear-view mirror the driver of the car got out of his car and looked at the front and wheels.
'Oops Sorry!' I thought hoping she hadn't seen it.
But she had.
'Ah, writers… and the way they drive! Watch that heap in front of you!'
I saw the heap just in time to avoid it. I missed it with a spilt second, went into a hole next to it and then over a rock hidden among the undergrowth. Dirt showered up the sides of the car and the rear axle gave a whack but we were still moving.
'Its ok' she remarked 'Just drive on!'
She exceeded herself in composition.
'Oh Deutchland … what a wonderful world full of Naturschutz! Deutchland Deutchland über Alles'
I found another flat strip, drove onto it and got back onto the road.
'Oh god, where's the exit? We haven't missed that too!'
Stress was slowly mounting in me. I asked for a humbug again. She didn't hear me.
'When you find the entrance you go left then right … and remember Küln-W-eest is east now. We have to drive east for west from here' she navigated me with such clear and understandable logic that I knew exactly what to do when I should ever find the entrance … of our exit.
'Right! We got to go left to get to W-eest, which is east! Yes, I got it!'
'Yes, go east! The W-eest's e-eest'.
I stuck my hand out reaching for the cubbyhole trying to get hold of a humbug myself but she had already reached for the packet without looking up. She took one, unruffled it for me and stuck it in my mouth still studying the map. I thought of her fingers as I felt them touching my lips. And I curled my tongue round some of them. The humbug fell into my lap. She had to search for it between my legs. I smiled wickedly at my face in the mirror as she fumbled into my drone trying to locate the humbug.
'Good trick!' I thought.
But she found the humbug quickly and put it in my mouth again without any reaction, eyes on the map again.
'In…' I thought.
And as I winked at myself in the mirror I noticed that another car had run into a gravel heap.
'Oops! We not! Mary-in-the-Apocrypha, Saint Christopher's Lady and me, we were safely driving the perilous waves of zeee Björg' I mused in silence 'She was a darling one and guiding us … oh, her fragile finger is on the map. Nothing can go wrong'.
And 'Voila!' as I tasted the mint of the humbug. It shrunk as I suck it. The sensation of the taste and the thought of its diminishing size reminded me of good times.
'It won't be long now… The exit's coming up' I assured her and thought about writing.
'Not a bad line and a nice cameo for Young Responsible Driver … the humbug taste! Maybe I should work out a whole series of dialogue around it. Corpulant women and sucking. I could even upload it to Salty Dreams when I get home. Get nice crit on it! Justagirltoo would know the taste and love it. And Jaël in Geneva… ! Aha, twice. New Zealand's a bit far, but that's ok for experimental love … such, no? Si, all countries! Young Responsible Driver, yes! Boy, what a title…!'
And then Mary-the-Patient spoke and said 'Nah! Nah! No dreaming! Get back on to the road, you are going to hit that gravel heap!'
I slammed on the brakes! My god, I was driving next to the road again.
'Ooh! Saved!'
And I stopped the car, switched off the engine and turned to look at her. I saw her lovely dark pools of deep brown eyes. In the lights of the passing cars it reflected flinting stars. I looked at her lips. They were full of blossoms and spring-like attributes. There was that shiny hint of glossy saliva on them that makes me mad. And as I looked I saw how they were turning rose, consenting… She had saved us! She was from a race of Saviours and had come down from her universe and into my orb … alone in all her sex. And that with the sole purpose of reminding me not to drive into the gravel heap we were now parked in front of. I was not to wreck our first night together on the planet called Björg.
'I bet all your sisters are angels too! Oh, I love you!' I yelled without any scruples and rammed my face into hers.
I kissed her full on the mouth. I felt how the tip of my tongue slightly touched hers. Our first kiss! I pulled back and looked again into her brown pools of wonder, so salient open and soft-toned. Then I kissed her again. This time slowly and softer. Tenderly and away. And again. She was made from precious, fragile, crystal glass and could break. And when I finally stopped kissing her I knew that all that was expected of me then, was to find the hole out of the hole of Björg … and the cosy hotel wonderfully situated in its woodlands setting. The brochure had said distinctly that it was a super lovely hotel!
And with assertive action I grabbed the steering wheel, started the car with a gesture, scrambled the gears with confidence and reversed from the heap. I found the road again, slipped onto it … another eel had struck again.
'With her at my side … my god, finding the Kreuz now would be as easy as pissing from a roof!'
And we found the exit.
And I hit for the Kreuz … east.
'I know the way…!' I said to her and was proud as a hero and confident like Lucifer's doorman.
'Of course!' she replied and her words fired me on.
I was hot and I was on the road.
Dash of lemon

Inside your words is an easy glide
I can feel you there
softly between the lines
like the pasteled Catalan villas
along the shoreline - tears
rising from rolling breaker
breezes in the wind
salt: the taste that opens me
like a crocus as if openness
were my nature
my openness towards you…
RaE Pater, edition Argo Spier, Literary Boars Salty Dreams.

'Sure…' she sailed along in her Mediterranean accent 'but look at the road and mind you stay on it!'
The tease was ripe as tomatoes grown on lavished landscapes and her smile … she just was the sweetest thing.
'Gravel heaps… Pronto postino stalkers at the side of the road! Burkas' she added as if mixing a salad and adding now the onions.
'We haven't by any chance missed the inlet to the Autobahn, have we?'
'No, Sweet, it's coming up too'.
'Yes. We have missed it!'
'No, we haven't' she said adding balsamic-acid and a dash of lemon.
Then her mind drifted as she hanged onto the map with one little fragile finger firmly still on the spot of the Autobahn Köln-West Kreuz and another on the name Freschen. The roads in between all were being suck up by the Kreuz. Death came to them meticulously and without option.
'I don't believe that you have stopped writing!' she said lifted the veil of distraction, sounding worried 'You shouldn't have done that! And this idiotic story you told of that woman…! Was she really married? You wouldn't do a thing like that, would you?'
She also mentioned something about being ridiculous and the way she pronounced the word ridiculous was ridiculous but also syrupy her … Emphorian old. I liked it. I liked it when she was getting serious. Her mellifluous use of emphasis on certain words was so novel, even rich, and foreign. Though her question… It was on the tip of my tongue to answer it with a 'Yes, I would' and a 'She was on the reception too last night' but I bit part of my tongue off and managed a pause. The woman I told her about, she was indeed at the reception I was on. And she was together with another man, not her husband of course! I know her husband well. 'I should know if she was with her husband or not!' I thought 'Her husband was a nice guy and we had been in some conversation once'. But the other man! 'Ok he was nice too'.
'Etc.' I said.
And 'A new guy for her eh … when I consider how all the other women on the reception looked at the two of them… 'God, he was even nicer than her husband and I together!'
And 'She had looked so happy and springy with him!' And 'It was so noticeable! She shone as she shone when she had met me. She just was such a gladdened married woman … and that was what hurt'.
And 'Ah, it had cut into me but yes, you are right, I would never do such a thing! Never!'
And I realised I was talking complete rubbish and grabbing theme lines from thin air and everywhere just to keep afloat. I was trying lines and a style that weren't even supposed to be in Responsible Young Driver.
'An art exhibition? Last night? How did I get to that? Stories are not told with such add-on frivolous events out of nowhere!'
'You do understand what I mean, do you?' I ended up asking her.
'Si, gravel heaps and pitfalls…' she replied to the apparent honesty I displayed.
It satisfied her question and she smiled contentedly. Knowing understanding oozed from her.
'Was it the right kind?'
'Yes, gravel heaps … and things in writers lives' I said 'Things one cannot explain it words'.
Fragility and hurt was all of a sudden a thing of corporeality in me and lurking. The full darkness of the night accentuated the solitude of it. It grew darker and the dark looked like a hand trying to come at us. I was very sorry I diffused her with an offbeat answer. It spoiled trust. She was so straightforward and honest with me and her emotions… And I … oh, I was worse than a french frog, I was hiding mine.
I changed the subject.
'Yes women … and the essentiality of their decisive deeds in the history of mankind … love and love bungle-ups! Love making…' I started a new subject and also decided to be academic about it to show her my worth.
'Women through the ages … Queens! We all need a return to referential virginity, kindness and trust, don't you think? Honesty! Complete trust and truth! Love! Oh, the freedom a writer has when those women who trust him trust him completely and when they never leave him!' I reasoned into the new lane the conversation was running.
'Trust and the power of intercession…' I said thinking of how heavenly she was to me when we still knew each other and how we had played like intimates on the thick carpet in their living room with her husband being away with the children.
'She shouldn't have gone to the exhibition with that new guy! She knew I would have been there! Oh no, this heavenly new Beaux … love bug, that is the only thing in women that a man can… and that always result in … in … Quentin and such, no? Don't you think?'
I didn't know what I was trying to say. And I was still hiding all of it, masking my fragility.
'Yes … and then no again' she reflected not giving a wince at my fumbling and strange use of semantic categorical values in dialogue sentences.
And she reminded me of the fact that I was driving and really should concentrate on the direction of our travelling.
'Don't forget w-eest is now East from itself. If you see the East one sign, then take it, ok? The road … you understand?'
She was concerned about me.
'Yes' I said meekly brooding on the happiness of women with particular men.
'…To your remark' she replied 'what a fuddy-duddy use of words you have … but anyway, the question! It depends on whether you are referring to the 50-ties or really do want to dig into the mediaeval profane literature as such. It's undercurrent and the issues as they arose from New wallpaper … Argo Spier's kind. The idea of Regina … complete Virginia intercession … that was only instated and taken up in the universal in 1954. Or actually only some years after that. And trust? Trust wasn't part of the literary scene in this century or … ever! You should know that! And writers lie as a natural impulse. Always. And they live in Ira-reality. And when you speak of trust … what do you mean by it? Trust always had only symbolic value. Not only in literature. It's always really only a question of a temporal association with someone and in your case … an author who has stopped writing, well … you know what I mean? You have stopped writing, have you not? And when you hinted and fabricated about women in this era, well Mister Ex, who were greater bitches in the history of so-called queenship of women tarts than Elizabeth II and Juliana from the Netherlands? They were queens, no? And English … ugh, I know the English! Don't tell me about the English and their language. I study it! They always think everybody except they are stupid'.
I couldn't believe my ears! Where did she get that? I never thought she had that insight in Modern Prose, dolce stil novo.
'Oh, my darling, I am so sorry! But Juliana is from the Netherlands and was Dutch! She was from the Netherlands! Not from England!'
'No she wasn't! Otherwise she wouldn't have been such a bitch! But ok yes, the queenship of Maria Regina expresses her signal triumph in cult and in literature. Western civilisation! She was the plain honest Virgin!'
I listened to her response. She was good and her tongue fall was music like. And the knowledgeable logic of her reasoning was as sweet as holy drops of water on the cracked dried soil of my tormented rejection.
'My beloved married friend with her new esquire at the reception! That was the issue!'
And it bugged me. Yet my defence was growing meek. I looked at the darkness around us. It was growing starker still. I was feeling the pang of hurt and almost wanted to cry.
'He was such a nice man … too. God and she was so happy with him! Do you understand that?' I continued with shoulders sagging into a sad position.
There was nothing to build on I felt. My remark had slipped out of my mouth, a Freudian slip of the tongue, showing some the Id and its scathed body. The dark outside the car had become a man, a full-grown man now. Dogon!
'I am so happy for her…' I said and swallowed.
Our headlights and the lights of the oncoming cars, some on flare, was the only torch that could keep us en route. Our real Kreuz, it was ahead still. The Old Hand Writer's affairs was a smouldering lump of dung inside himself I thought and realised what a nice sentence the last one was for a song one could write later. The title could be something like Soft spring breeze at Freschen.
'Irresponsibility, not responsibility seemed to be a factorising thing one could use for songs, no?'
And I thought of spoiled faces. That could fit in too. And The heavy dark oak doors of the cruel night locked us in. Good concepts! Also And then there was a gush of wind and we entered through the gap that had opened up in front of us … it was the dark emptiness of the black road. And Where two dying birds in need of urgent care and cosiness of a hearth of true sentiment, etc.
'Si, si Guapo, I know! But you'll find the entrance again. We have found the exit of Küln W-eest, haven't we? Don't worry so much! Look! There's the entrance to the highway! The ingress we took this afternoon. Stay on the left side and get it in! Let's go! Get e-eest! The Kreuz's to the right, East. No on-coming cars … yes, go!'
'My god, hear her speak! Ingress…'
She just smiled.
I yank at the steer, a winner in action again all of a sudden, and we were leaving. Behind us Freschen was burning. We were leaving for good! Lot and his family, running from Gomorrah.
'Don't look back! Don't look back!'
Then I made for another sprint, swung the car with screeching wheels to the left, then right again and wham! We were on the highway and into the direction we came. I have sliced us in between the traffic like ham into the sandwich.
'East, no w-eest here we come! East!'
Only this time we were chasing it from the wrong direction … from w-eest itself! But we both were relieved and that was what mattered. We both also understood what was said and done was yesterday.
'Such a relief' I blew out.
Oh, she was my companion! My trust! My supporter! And we were right on! On the road!

Fawked toad

Laissons tuit le fol usage
D'amour qui foloie…
Amons la bele et la sage
La douce, la quoie
Annonymous
(Let us leave off the mad practice of love which drives men mad
Let us love the one who is beautiful and good, sweet and quiet).
Carleton Brown, English Lyrics of the thirteenth Century, Oxford 1932.

I am as close to you as you are close to me.
Buddhist saying

'Let's stop for a while. We can just sit and wait for the traffic to subside' she suggested sensing my fatigue from the long drive we had put behind us.
I agreed and pulled off the road without any ceremony or use of indicators. I just cut off the engine and let the car roll to a standstill next to the road. Flying cars hooted angrily but I didn't care. I was dead tired. The Björg had beaten me in a big way. Both of us and were disgusted at the 'easy access' to the Hotel advertisement in the brochure. We sat there in silence for a while trying to get our senses and calm back. We still had to start the second calvari for the Kreutz. We were not even on the main artery back to it. And after the that we still had to come back to the back.
It was a good suggestion of hers to stop for a while, I agreed.
At long last she said 'A rocked road is a fawked toad'.
'Huh? A rocked road? A fawked toad? What is that?'
'Rocked is rocks, no? Its a road full of rockeds'.
'Oh! Rocks you mean? A road full of rocks, is that it?'
'Si, yes of course! A rocked road…'
'Mmm and a fawked toad? What is a fawked? Daffy Duck speaking?'
'No, no ducks in it… Its from fawked'.
'Fawked?'
'Yes, when a man and a woman … you know, fawked. Love…!'
'Fawked? Oh that! Yes…?'
'Its a bad road!'
'Si si a bad road. What is a bad road? The toad or the love?'
I didn't completely follow her.
'…If you are onto rhyme, yes, the two words rhyme, don't they? Road and toad. Is it a bad road you mean?'
'No, no, not that! A toad is a frog, no?'
'Yes, it is. And? Is a rocky road … is a frog? Is that what you are saying? A frog's a road? Do you want me to help you with your English?'
She burst out laughing.
'No, of course not! Its a joke! Its a fawked toad …a fawking jumpy bad rockeding road' she screamed rollicking like a naughty red little chilly pepper called bitxo in the passenger seat next to me.
She was having the fun of life!
'The word's fucking not fawking!' I said bitten and feeling like the frog she had used in the rhyme but I didn't really see the joke.
I racked my brains.
'A fawking toad…?' I thought.
Then I got out of the parked car, went over to a bush in front of it and peed on it. Only then a smile came to me.
'A fawking toad! I smiled 'O clemens, o pia. O dulcis Maria merciful, kind, sweet Mary. The toad was me … the high specialist in languages and long time super writer! What a bumpy road!'
I had to admire her. She really took me in there for a nice ride.
'Fawking toad that I was!'
Going back to the car and her where she still sparkled among the maps and road descriptions I thought of the iconoclasts in the thirteenth century. German Iconoclasts. They smashed church windows. There was this Le Vieil in Paris and he smashed a blue window in the Notre Dame with the triumph of the Virgin that was depicted on it. He was a real toad! A Frenchy frog! That blue glass was invaluable. Ok, Le Vieil wasn't German but he was an iconoclast … the result was the same' I mused and when I got back to the car I said to her 'Let's go find the Kreuz' and acknowledged her victory with a nod.
'Virgin's triumph!'
'Si … it's getting dark now, no? Not virgin for long' was all she said and then we hit into the traffic again. Once in it I noticed that it hadn't thinned itself out as we thought it would. It was a childish idea for us to have thought that…

Mixing saliva

Danced along by Carmen
and Montzy Madama Queens
the young responsible driver
his Calais oasis rising
Autobahn Kreuz Köln-West fading
as he swerves to remain

Yellow and black the signage bearing
pennant in specks of green and blue
it pulls him in yet symbols five
and nine retain
and three

She serves to regain
a treasured Virgin painted
on a slate where
Calais oasis fading
and Autobahn Kreuz Köln-West rising
yellow and green the signage bearing
pennant in specks of orange and tear
it pulls him in
yet symbols five and four retain
acquiesence with the dragon of nine.
RaE Pater, edition Argo Spier, Literary Board Salty Dreams.

'Life is a lone boat when driving in a car … it can be very lonely at times, don't you thing so, Madame Dapper? Writing too is a lonely business and the way I used to do it … I get nowhere and no love'.
'You want a humbug?' she asked opening one for me.
It was a Pavlov reward compesating awkwardness, a thing to suck on. She stuck it in my mouth with a glitz of proficiency.
'Thanks! Mmmm the mint taste of it does it for humbugs, no?'
'Si, also saliva does it'.
Was she playing? And the lead-on in her voice?
'She was leading me on, wasn't she? Oh, she will get me! Oh, let her get me!' I silently thought and prayed.
'Harlequins run away and tortoises get prices' I said to her 'I am done with writing! I will never write a single word again!'
'Yes, I know, Beaux' she said, eyes shiny in the lights of the oncoming traffic, two fireflies.
'No, you don't! You are too young for knowing. 37 eh? Or no wait let me guess, 38. Beaux you said?'
'Si, 3737 but stop!'
The way she said it was sweet like a lolly. I was touché once more by her. And she acted like a prune, stuck out her tongue and laughed into my face. Play was on!
'Of course!' she said and growled kitten wise.
And playing mouse with me she snatched another humbug for me from the cubbyhole with the easy of a professional seducer unruffling it with even more proficiency than the one she gave me a minute ago. The eager nails of her claws tore the cellophane from it with a sharp crisp. She thud it into my mouth. I was on too. I tried play-biting at her fingers and almost hit an on-coming car when I stole my eyes off the road to indulge in the saliva-wet fragile fingers in front of my face.
'Liar!' she said 'you haven't stopped writing!'
I smiled and stepped on the gas to prove it to her. The substantial weight loaded in my foot … I felt the heat of the pressure right through my sole. My shoe seemed so hot that I had to lift it up reducing our speed again.
'Writers! Ex-writers! What's the difference?' she asked and licked at her own fingers where I had play-bitten them.
Then she opened her legs and fell back into the passenger seat, relaxing in it as if it was a heavenly bed.
'And her fingers…' I thought 'god, I have this thing about fragile fingers!'
On hers now our saliva was mixing and tasting of mint.
'Nah! Nah! No mixing!' she broke in and very demonstratively wiped off the saliva from her hands stroking them up and down over her tiny breasts under her sweater.
'Oh Creation!' I thought 'One should never confuse chastity with virginity and scrolling wallpaper with innocence. That's not how I work … and win roads'.

Orange muse

'In the first half of the Trecento painters as well as poets tended to transform the metaphors by which Middle Ages expressed spiritual qualities of relations into more concrete, though still symbolic, scenes of familiar human circumstances and events.
Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Sienna after the Black Death, New York, 1964.

Comrades, if you know where the white moon sleeps
Tell her I love her
yet I cannot get close to her
because there's still fighting going on

Comrades, if you know the song of the mermaid
There in the middle of the sea,
I would approach to look for her
But there's still fighting going on.
Lluis Llach and Josep Carreras, Abril, Junta.

She smiled when I thought it. She wasn't a Mary from some mediaeval painting secluded in an antique castle. She was a muse. She knew my thoughts. She knew all writers and ex-writers' thoughts. She provides them. As a woman however, now in the car with me and in the flesh, and halfway back to the Autobahn Kreuz Köln- W-eest, she was real. I just had to find a way to hit the Kreuz, soonest, win it, and whoosh back to Freschen … to our lovely situated Wald hotel. But then … and while I was writing the paragraph, of course, it had to start raining! Firts tint trinklets of drops tickt on the windscreen. Then, after their tiny tickling little bigger speckles marvelled on it. And then the mothers came tearing down. And 3 km onwards an army of aggressive hailstones attacked the car with such power that I had to slow down virtually to a standstill. Cabbaleros Salvajos.
We were in a rainstorm and it rained like it rained in the fourth book I wrote, Sample Four. The onslaught on us had the force of a conviction. Hard drops hit the windows. Hailstones started coming down too and hit the roof and road. Everything was in the ban of the storm. The sound on the roof of the car was immense and scary. Waves and waves of rain followed without a hint of stopping. I stopped the car surrendering unconditionally and pulled off from the road, as did all the drivers around me. Highway E47 in the vicinity of Köln-W-eest was all of a sudden empty and abandoned, a desolated marsh. The rain had conquered it and was dancing all over its surface.
We sat there at the side of the road looking at the feral chanting of drops and smashing of hailstones as they landed on the tarmac, both of us two frightened children hiding in a cube. And we looked at each other. Our early planned night in the mentioned coy roadside hotel situated somewhere in the peaceful German Wald setting of Freschen… oh, it was bye bye for it now. We had been robbed of it. We just wouldn't be able to make it back from the Kreuz in time. Besides, the brochure was a liar!
'Easy access!' it had said 'My god…!'
There was nothing in the brochure of the Björg Industrial complex … nor of the rain!
She smiled when I thought it.
'Wait, let me light a candle' she said and she tossed her shirt open, frolicking like a nun under her garments and by Jupiter she produced a candle from under her drapings and lit it! She was playing the nun. One who had jumped the walls of her convent and was eloping with an ex-writer, the young responsible esquire and Beaux Argo Spier. And lighting the candle she tossed the nun away again.
With the small flame kindled and the candle secured on the dashboard between the minted humbugs and maps, she started to permeate time and hit on reciting in a spooky inflection a verse that I wasn't familiar with. It sounded as if it was something from the 14th century, it was theatrical, old and odd.

My beloved spake
and said onto me
rise up, my love,
my fair one
and come away…Aye ay!
Annonymous, 13th Century

Her voice had a deep and forced grotesque unearthliness.
'Whooow! Shakespearean or close to it, no?' I wrought.
'Yes! But no, it's not!' she explained 'It's from the Hymne of the Pearl written in the second half of the Trecento. The roots of it probably lie with Catharina of Alexandria. It's still used today, you know, in the ceremony of nuns when they get consecrated. The symbolism of it is still very much alive'.
'Oho! Cool!'
The water was streaming down the side window behind her in snaky swizzles. I hadn't had a clue what to make of her Pearl.
'Never heard of it! Do you think it'll last some while?' I asked pointing at the rain.
'Please! Allow me some pedagogical aspirations. Do you think I would fit as a nun … a Virgin?'
'Oh! Eh…'
She was so different in the dark half-lit car, almost out of character. Her English and pronunciation was all of a sudden perfect too. Also her academic use of words and knowledge of mediaeval belcanto… She just amazed me.
'Where did she get it from?' I wondered and thought about her proposal … nun … virgin?
'It was quite something to ask a gentleman like me. 'Young and responsible eh? What are you driving at?' I asked her placing a careful bet.
I had sensed another lead-on like the fawked frog pun she had pulled on me. On the other hand she was sincere in her advance. Yet her come-on look was ambiguous. It was honest and straight too, almost innocent.
Should I reciprocate with a nun's sobriety too?
I chose confession.
'I was thinking if I was ever to write again' I conceded 'I'd … well eh, I did tell you about Berlioze, Mahler … Mussorgsky? Ok, the Carmens too! All these names were just bravura and page filling to ger Driver on the road. I was actually joking about it when I mentioned it. I never intended to really use the references to them, but you know that, don't you? And Montzerat … and I? Well, there is someting. Probably only from my side … like always and of course it's only fantasy, some naughtiness perhaps. My problem really is style. I use fantasy insinuations and names, stuff like that, to create style. Its this ex-nihilo Wallpaper I write. And what's really terrible about it is that I have used it before! Both the names and the trick! Wisecracks! I constantly use it. Get through it into people's souls. But it is a slip back into the old. It's my old style. The one that I have had to face all the years I was busy with literature. I so dearly wanted to change that. Get a new style. I wanted to write serious literature. Not melodrama and Weltsmerz. Or about stupid cars, buses, trucks, gravel, Björg, etc. Drives that never took place. I want to be a new me when I write again! Not old me! I need a different kind of trip I suppose, leaving my old stuff behind like suitcases forgotten on stations … only that'll freak out the security personnel and so on. You see?' and I waved with my hand helplessly across the space between us. It went right through her apparition.
'I hate hype!' I continued 'That's old style! Puns, flat characters, art exhibitions, Blue Notes, elicit love and married women. God, I hate married women! They are always married when you want to talk to them or they go for other Beaux's when you turn your back. Anyway … many ex-writers used what I am using now. It's called catalogueing. That's why I had stopped writing. I don't want to do it anymore. I stopped writing to get out of it all. But I feel I am still in that prison. Oh, I am dying for new literature. Something such as John Fowels's Mantissa. But, bad bad, sad sad, he had written it already, hadn't he? And my mentioning it here … well, even this is old style! I did the same trick in The Story of Caroline. I mentioned him there too. Point however is, Fowels was the first to have made it differently with literature and that makes the difference. He is the modern James Joyce! That hurts! Writers always want to be first, be Joyce's!' and I swallowed and said 'But I can't … I am not!' And I repeated the sentence That's why I have stopped writing.
It was out. I needed a humbug quick.
She gave me one without me having to ask for it. I unruffled it myself and put it in my mouth.
I wanted to confess more.
'Yes of course, I know' she answered listening and responding 'Hmmm yes, women get pissed off with writers, I know that. That's what you are telling me, no? You don't seem to realise how pissed off women get with writers. You lost it for her, haven't you? Is that what you are trying to tell me … the art exhibition and reception? Blue note and Dash of Lemon? I watched you curl and swirl as you tried to explain it but I know. So what do you do? You don't have to curl and swirl. You did curl and swirl, didn't you? What do curl and swirl mean in English?'
She was the art of understanding itself.
'God, she knows everything…!' I thought 'she's not only a muse but a psychotherapist as well … Gestalt'. And I had a sense of being the Able one being absolutely free to say what I want.
'And oh, she understood me so well!' I thought 'She knew it was about women … real women, Earth species. Writing is…'
'Yes?' I answerd.
'No, but yes, si, no?' she continued.
'I daunt know! Nau Nauwns. It's so difficult, you know!'
'What is? Nuns?'
'Yes. Funny…' I said and I thought of a story I could tell 'I was thinking of nuns'.
Did she put it in my head?
'Anyway' I said 'I was in love with a nun once … ah, not in love, I mean, it was just a fooling around thing. We were smart aleck and there was a nun in one of the compartments on a train. We were on a train. Some of the friends … well friends?' and I inverted two commas with my fingers 'They dared me to go try the nun, you know? I did it. I went over to her, told her that I loved her and I tried to hold her hand to seduce her. Do you know what she said to me?'
'Yes … No? What did she say?'
'She said she had waited for me to come over to her. And she loved me too, she said. Oh, that had freaked me out so much that I am still thinking about it today. I am telling you about it now, am I not?'
'Yes' she said and laughed '…and what happened?'
'She said she loved everybody on God's Earth and I had never in my life, afterwards also ever, ever, seen such honesty and sincerity in a woman's eyes! I mean, it was so powerful the way she had phrased it. She had looked through me and saw the incomprehention in my soul. I fell in love with her right then and there. And it didn't even hurt! It was another kind of love, you understand? I was just open and free!'
'Of course I do! That's a beautiful story!'
And she looked into my eyes with such intensity that I saw the nun in it. And I felt the same feeling I had felt then. And I became equally unafraid and free. It gave me such a powerful boost and I opened up even more. Like a flower in midday. Someone was listening to me at last and I could reciprocate, confidingly! It was such a lovely feeling.
'Yes it is, isn't it? You know what?' I asked her and told her more of me 'My writing… I listened to Lluis Llach and Josep Carreras's Junts the other day and especially that song Abril 74 … it impressed me so terribly much. I was working on Driver and Girl had mailed me the first copyread …oh, It was so beautiful I could cry. I thought of the nun then! And also I still dream about her at night … still. And in my dreams she always would come to me and listen to me'.
'Si, I understand. I know the song. Beautiful eh? And now you want to write a nun and you have me?'
Her practicality sometimes was so shockingly straightforward. It can rip through a conversation and produce alacrity.
'Yes! Llach sings about characters so different than the ones I used to write about. Mine were the dark ones. I got so tired of the stuff I wrote, god I can't tell how much! And towards the end of my career it was always that which I wrote. And the people, that grouping around me was so tiring. They all thought I was still hot in the end but they just didn't know. It made me so fed-up, their consummation of my stories for laughs! And women… They mostly fell in love with me. I had a hard time, letters, mails and especially the mature women freaked out on me. They thought I was Ken and when they thought about me they saw themselves as Barbi. The senility game! They made out of me their little bambino Kenny. And the nun never did thought that of me'.
And another incident came to my mind. It was an on and on scroll of paper … almost towards the edge of bordom. And I left it out.
'Yes, use it later… But you are slipping into lying again. Old style, no?'

Outside it was still raining cats and dogs. Inside our little hearth it was lovely and in our hideout we cuddled comfortably into the cosiness of it. Ten million classy German hotels in Westerwald settings near Freschen could not have come near to what we experienced in our cocoon where we spun our silken threads of literary chitchat and honesty. The candle on the dashboard romanticised the atmosphere and its small flame was flickering the hope of a silent night … with holy shadows of our reflections dancing on the inside of the windscreen.
She smiled compassionately at us, a woman of 35 feeling safe in the company of a wise old man, her father of 53.
'And you know why?' I said to her 'Its because Die Gedanken zind frei in Germany!'
Her smile broadened. She knew me inside out. I was the young man of 35 and she the mother of 53. We have loved each other for many years without knowing it …and with a different love. A nun's love.
'Who said that? The Viennese? Or Richard Mey?'
'What? The love part or Die Gedanken?'
'Die Gedanken!'
'Goethe, and he had said he wanted more of it, 19th century. Wahl Verwantscaften. I thought you were a Muosai. It's Greek for muse … but oh, you are real!'
And I wanted to hug her but then it hit me, I had talked to her as if she should have known the names of the great poets and figures I mentioned … and she knew them! She must be real! And yet! Has she got a name? Who was she? What was her name?
And then the name Ourania came to me. The same name as the name of the youngest daughter of Mnemosyne! 'The sisters under the agnus castus tree…!'
And the hairs on the back of my neck raised. Cold shiver wash like the rain snakelets down my spine.
I got the fright of my life!
'Ourania that's Oura … Ora … Orange and Golden Orange. Also Time and Ahora. Ah!ora, Hi! New times… Golden New Times! Ourania! Newest … youngest of the muses! My god I…' I stuttered feeling how she entered my soul through my discovery.
And in my minds eye I saw a Castle! Empourdia, Tourella Mont Gri. It was on Cap Gris-Néz! I was standing on the trellis rock face on Cap Gris-Néz!
But she just sat there opposite me, firm, solid, honest and in real flesh. She was body and blood with a beautiful soft skin tightly waxed on her, a woman's skin. She didn't say a word. She just let the probity of my recognition work in on me. She was Madama Curie. It was night, cold, lonely but my discovery dawned on me like a bright daylight and with a thunder like traffic rushing into the abyss of a Kreuz.
'This was the new dimension I was looking for in Driver!' I shouted at her.
'Yes! Go on! Come away… I've waited for you to grasp what you have waffled the whole evening!' she spake and I shuddered where I sat, legs curled up upon the steering wheel with my shoe laces untied.
I was full of disbelief and surprise. It was her in the living flesh! Here, in Young Responsible Driver…
'My love… What have you now?' she spake again.
'Her voice! Oh my god, its your voice!' faintly escaped from my lips and I shook my head.
Once, twice.
'I am in Cap Gris-Néz!'
The spacious greens of the cornfields roll over the downs.
And 'look!'
There was the five-cornered star of the pentax, its rugged walls, the first tower!
And 'look!'
The second tower … in the distance, the World War I and II ruines of the German bunkers! There England and the cliffs of Dover across the sea! Their brilliance in the sun strips of cream coloured paint against the Turnerian vague disappearance of the island.
'Oh Ora! I am in France!?'
'Yes … My beloved spake and said onto me … rise up, my love, my fair one … and come away…' she knodded and touched my cheek with a warm sensual stroke of love and compassion.

Love yeti

We go back and forth between extremes, from indulgence to abstemiousness.
Norman Fisher, Benedict's Dharma, Riverhead, 2001

Natural discipline arises when we let go of our customary discursiveness and discover what a situation demands. Our life circumstances are not enemies; they are direct manifestations of the magical ordinariness of things as they really are.
Judith Simmer-Brown, Benedict's Dharma, Riverhead, 2001

'Ok, try this: Ever heard of Cyber sex? And housewives whose husbands you know … are busy? Or just insensitive. Soccer? Hmmm ixx ixx in the neck? Lower! Play! No, wait, stop…!'
'Yes, I have … si, stop!'

'Once, some years ago, one quite elderly saw a picture of me in short safari pants in her dreams and she wrote to me about it saying in her mail that she thought I had such fantastic legs! Imagine! It made her horny the way I wrote she told me. A writer's legs making a woman horny, my god! She was 74! That's why I have stopped writing. I hated it! I had wanted a younger woman to write it. Ok, it was flattering and love yeti but still…!'

Wee-ing muse

In the tenth century began the first stirrings of the adoration that transformed the Virgin from a distant queen into gentle, merciful mother, Our Lady, the inspirer of love and joy, the private sweetheart of monks and sinners, and the most prominent figure in the Christian hierarchy.
Marina Warner.

The equality of women … requires to be metaphysically anchored in the figure of a 'divine' woman, a bride!
Carl Jung.

She laughed and I walked a couple of yards to the front of the car so that I was out of sight from the passing traffic. There I stood firm, opened up my zipper and took my tootti out and got it in an upward position. Then I pee-ed a long strange yet perfect parabola into the waking new morning of the zeee Kingdom of Germany.

I dreamt of a huge wedding taking place. There was a father and a mother and they too were going to the wedding feast. Whether the father was getting married with the mother or whether they were just of the invitees I didn't know. I was the little boy watching them get into the car and leave for the ceremony and feast. I thought they were my parents and I thought they were getting married. I was so was happy for them, especially for my mother. She was so beautiful and so majestically dressed … a queen she was. Oh yes, she was the most beautiful woman of them… si, she was the real Mamma magna mater. And I heard many cars racing to the wedding feast. And there were sounds of water splashing. It was as if the whole occasion was planned as an Oda a un pais petité in the rain.
Then I woke up and opened my eyes.
The rain had stopped. I was in a car parked at the side of a highway … in Germany. Next to me, leaning on my shoulder was Ourania still fast asleep. She lay there cuddled up in the passenger seat with her hands and arms in my lap. Her palms were open and turned upwards begging for presents. And then I became aware of her soft regular breathing.
'She was alive…!'
Her chest heaved up and down and experiencing her that way tender feelings towards her aroused in me. She was a fragile dispense of fluffiness. A little bear or a bunny.
Outside the car the rain had stopped. And I became aware of the splashing sound of cars rushing past on the road. Everybody was already on their way. The early morning light was dawning and in the distance a sunrise hinted across the horizon like a shy girl cautiously entering her mother's chamber.
Nothing is as pretty as Mary in the morning.
I tilted her head slowly stretching myself. Her innocence and subtlety as she sleep was so immaculate that I didn't want to wake her briskly. But she moved too and woke up. She was so much of a child bride as she surfaced and looked at me. I couldn't help myself, I just had to bend over and kiss her very delicately on the top of her forehead smelling the sweet-sourness of her hair.
She opened her eyes widely.
'Has the rain stopped?' she asked sleepily.
Her dark dreamers vague and unfocussed. Blue eyes crying in the rain!'
'Hmmm si, you're awake?'
But I had to wee all of a sudden urgently.
'Oeee, I got to wee…' I excused myself and made advances to get out of the car wriggling and trying to find a shoe. I seemed to have lost one during the night.
She sat upright stretching her arms and legs while yawning 'Ghwaaaaaw! Hmmm, that was a lovely night, no?' And seeing the cars passing she remarked something about a wedding.
'Everybody's dressed and on the move already'.
I marked her inscribed reference to my dream and got out of the car stiffly with only one shoe on. When I put my foot down I felt the soggy wet ground underneath it through my sock.
'Aaaaah non! I stepped into a puddle!' I cried out.
She laughed and I walked a couple of yards to the front of the car so that I was out of sight from the passing traffic. There I stood firm, opened up my zipper and took my tootti out and got it in an upward position. Then I pee-ed a long strange yet perfect parabola into the waking new morning of the zeee Kingdom of Germany. When I had done and had shaken off all the plethora of drops from it I carefully housed it again. And when I pulled up my zipper I thought of her beautiful pooled brown eyes.
And then it came to … she never wee's!
'Oh, I have never thought of that!'
We had been in the car the full day of yesterday and the whole last night … in Björg, and not once had she asked me to stop for her to wee! I was quite puzzIed by such an accost.
'Muses… Do they wee?'
I bend down and standing crooked on one leg removed my wet sock. When I turned and hopped back towards the car and her, she wasn't there.
'Hey…! Where are you?' I called out almost in panic.
'Here! I am wee-ing!' she answered from the other side of the car where she sat next to the highway in full view of all the on-coming cars with her dress and panty pulled high over her knees.
E caddi come corpo mortocade! She was wee-ing! Her head was down as she looked at her pee cutting a neat small little slit in the middle of the puddle of pee.
'Hey, you are wee-ing…!'
Dementia of Dido! I was caught by such a surprise.
'Of course I am wee-ing!' she said and she looked at me with a frown as large as a cross on a hill '…you wee, why can't I wee?'
'Oh yes, that's right … but … eh?'
I was puzzled. She was frowning too, also puzzled.
'What is it?' she wanted to know.
'You wee-ed!' I said.
'Yes, I wee-ed! Never saw a Muse wee? Or did you think its only ex-writers who can wee?'
She was blunt and looked guilty, almost as if being caught out on doing something she wasn't supposed to do. Then she stood up, pulled up her see-through panty and arranged her dress as she did so. Her thighs … I saw her thighs and the pubic hair where the rose of her pussy resides.
I looked away quickly.
'Well I never…' I thought and chortled to myself 'She had wee-ed!'
'What's that?' she quick questioned at me.
'Oh, nothing… I think we too have to start moving'.
'Yes of course'.
We got into the car. It was driving time again! I couldn't find my shoe and put the wet sock on again. But it was wet and soggy on my foot and I took it off again. Then we took off and were on the road and into the traffic with screeching wheels and wet gravel stones flying behind us. I with one bare foot. She the perfect companion in the passenger seat, a muse that can wee. But when I said to her again 'By god, you had wee-ed!' you should have seen her face. It was blank with incomprehension. She didn't follow me. And I felt silly, a little boy but I knew I had discovered something that many writers never would even guess…
'Muses can wee!'

Blue grey for Madrid

Today, 11th of April 2004, a flash of news: 203 dead and more than 1200 maimed and wounded in Otocha, Santa Eugenia and El Pozo, Madrid.
BBC

Cap Gris-Néz what? There are the ruins of German bunkers all along the coastline between Cap Blanc and Cap Gris-Néz. The two towers on the two hills watch at night and search into souls with their lights. There are whispers and sullen quietness. Regret. The repose of the reserve … but yes, only the sea with its deep grey colour dares interrupt it. And the wind. Its eery howls in the morning are a screaming child awakening and calling for its mother. But she was by a Herod arse-licker butchered.
'He killed the child!'
Between spears, swords, knives … sharpened to the bone and bombs, time bombs and the cowardice of getting on a bus chitchatting with the driver moments before you blow up the rest of the children … is there any difference?

Moondropped muse

Supple fingers mould him
autonomy a distant
throbbing dream
to finger his own keys
RaE Pater

There was no stopping her it seemed. I just had to join in. She was moon-dropped, a mermaid and not a bird in a brook and her temperament had the lukewarm readiness of a Mediterranean dark-eyed lynx. I sat there behind the steering wheel with a wry smile on my face trying to concentrate on the oncoming traffic. It was more than I could congest. She was such a joy to have as a driving companion. Her abundance and the youthful energy she oozed out invigorated me. It built a good man out of me. She made the day.

'I thought that maybe you would like it … you know? I like the name Ora' she said just as I thought of telling her that the Kreuz was coming up because of the increased traffic we were running into.
And she continued.
'I felt at first I had no name. I felt dry … eh not empty, but dry! You understand? I wanted to have a body!' and out of the blue she referred to a song.
'It's a little song…'
'A song? What do you mean, its a song? There's a song … is that it? A short small song?'
'Si, a little song…!'
'What song is that?'
She started singing it, her voice husky and lovely. The touch of foreignness enchanted it.

Sol, solet,
vine'm a veure,
vine'm a veure.
Sol, solet,
vine'm a veure
que tinc fred!
Annonymous, Catalan folksong, Medieaval.

'Oh, that's deeeeep! Catalan, no? That's lovely!' I encouraged her.
The song and hearing her sing it somehow grabbed onto me. The words of it seemed, although I didn't understand their meanings, to refer to tender and fragile feelings. Naked openness. There was recognition in it I thought. It touched me.
'What does it mean?'
'Sun little sun come to visit me that I got cold'.
'Oh, so foreign! Catalan, si?'
It was however on the tip of my tongue to comment on her translation of it. I refrained because she was apparently still working and explaining the translation to herself trying with this reversed work order to explain the fullness of its meaning to me.
'Solsolet also means little one. Sol solet is alone little one. Its an ixx ixx solsolet. Stop!'
'Right! Eh English…? Where did you get it from, Madame Solsolet?' I teased her.
'Solasoleta…! A woman is solasoleta!'
'Ok, Madame Solasolata!'
I played with the word.
'Slasol-eet-a! I mean Solasoleta! Not Spanish! Grrrrr!'
'Ok-Ok, Madama Solasoleta! Where did you get it from?'
'Solasoleta!'
'Solasoleta?'
'Yes, its from the song…!'
'Oh!'
I had to smile at the logic of it. Her sloppiness too with the English syntax was a cute characteristic of her.
'Si, never mind!'
'You know, if you want me to help you with your English…' I was again about to say but she perked into my line of thought.
'Of course not!' she said affirmatively.
'You have got lovely ideas … puzzles, you know?' I steered into a different direction but it slipped my mouth.
'…Sometimes … my love, your English…'
And I tried to avoid it 'Well, it's perfect!' but I felt a fool.
'Of course it is … no fool!' she answered me straight as a dye and I felt how she shuffled thoroughly the thoughts in my brain.
'God, she knows me!' I gasped.
'Of course I do … but I said never the mind, didn't I?'
And she slipped spontaneously into a fit of giggling, happy and loud like a bird doing an early morning splash in a runlet.
'Ourania! What have you? We're not even half way … to…' I protested but I couldn't help smiling too.
Her good mood was contagious. And she was again so carefree and good-hearted. She was learning English and the art of scrolling Wallpaper dialogue at an unbelievable rate.
'Oh, I am learning English! And you! I learn you!'
Now she was screaming out with laughter and bluntly she started on my ex-career of being a writer again.
'You are an ex-writer!' she managed to get in between the fits of giggling and coughing '…one who had stop-ped writing!'
I listened to her and laughed myself.
'You tell me how can writers stop? If you are ex you are ex…!'
Screaming laughter and another try.
'Stop-ped ex…! Then you write!'
'A moon-dropped mermaid!'
Screams of laughter.
'A moon-dropped mermaid? That's serious! And I don't write a thing anymore! See? I have stopped! Whoosh, stop-ped!'
We both screamed it out. Not noticing how the traffic congested by the meter as we flew towards the Autobahn Kreuz … West or East.
'Who cares…!'
'No of course not! I don't see a thing and I don't believe you!'
We shot passed a huge puddle of water on the side. I jerked on the steering wheel and we missed it by meters. I jerked again on the steer and we went straight again. Grade aus. We both immediately stopped laughing.
'Seat belts…!'
She flicked her head backwards and looked at the water. Then splayed another of her weird connections to logic on me.
'I am wet with desire' she said, seriously as a duck on a pond and as if that was the most natural thing to say when passing a puddle of water on the side of a road.
'By god! What?'
It shocked me off my rocker.
'What? Don't say it like that!'
She frowned.
'Rain taps the window in moon-drop buttons … a mermaid'.
Now it was my turn to frown.
'My words…'
'No! And or yes, depends … eh? Look, rain, recognition and isolation … that's what the song is about. And the mermaid, she is wet with desire to be freed from her fate. She's alone … sol solet is alone little one. She's a little mermaid and very, very isolated. She wants you to cuddle her but she is a fish. There's too much distances between you and her. She's the moon-dropped mermaid… crying for your love'.
And she sounded sad.
My frowned deepened. I became defeated. It was all suddenly getting a bit much for me. She, the song , oh the road, the heavily congested traffic. I had to watch the road, drove and waited for the turn-off to Freschen. The sad young little mermaid, her logic, etc.
'And a servile responsible driver… boy, look at the traffic!' I blew out on the verge of placation.
She was in my mind and I was in hers. We both were alive.
'Whose words were on the paper?'

A sickle sun
of lemon sour,
growing darker
hour on hour.
RaE Pater

'The mermaid is caught in being a beautiful woman…' she continued neglecting my disgust.
'But' she said 'she has no, you know what I mean … woman's genitalia. She is a swimmer at the bottom of her being. There!' and she pointed to her pelvis and touched her pussy.
'She is a fish. A fish like you. She desires you. But you are a writer that has stop-ped writing. You can do nothing for her now. You are half fish and half ex … you don't use your genitalia anymore either… Oh, this English is getting too much for me again!'
'My gauss, yes! I see what you mean!' was about all I could say to that but I couldn't help the acute awareness that she was driving home a serious point. A magna mater point of view and truth! My own isolation, the recognition of it in literature … the song! Sol solet is alone little one. Alone… It scared me.
'I don't use my genitalia? And you are wet with desire? The muse is wet and the ex-writer is castrated because he is nothing without his writing!'
It hit me hard and I realised how unpredictable writing ex nihilo in the fond is.
'Is it dangerous? The deeper stream? Yeats … Shelly? No, it was Yeats!'
'Si, it was Yeats … William Butler … the dragonfly on the water'.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon the silence
W.B. Yeats, Complete Works

'No, that's not from Yeats … its from Girl!'
'Forget it! That's not true! She did the same, that's it … the same theme of stream … the flow of the collective unconscious in the Poetica Universalis. But ok, it wasn't the same, no? Its from Yeats!'
'No, yes it wasn't the same, ok? But having a companion poet in the backseat … is she the third party and hidden Carmen? The three of us? I'd never had a companion poet'.
'No? And I? What am I? I can also write poems! Or you think like the English I am just a stupid muse? I am not stupid! Why don't you dance with me and sing in the rain?'
Her manner was confident and it soothed. It was almost as if she had again patience with and compassion for me.
'Rain? We should have done that last night! The rain has stop-ped now' I flatly responded.
'Am I being malicious?' she asked.
'Now where did you get that word from?'
She frowned. She didn't know anger. Or maliciousness. The meaning of malice even was beyond her scope and when that dawned on me I realised that I too could know her thoughts … if only I too could become innocent as she.
'Oh we could share! Are we both mermaids?'
'Si, of course!'
'Of course memaids or of course we could share?'
'Si, si, of course…! I share with you the mermaid!'
I thought of the fateful isolation of mermaids and the limited scope words have when one shares. Her commitment to me was heartrending.
'Nuns…' she said 'are mermaids too. They don't use their genitalia for faw-king. It was only in troubadour poetry that love songs championed adultery's cause with nuns. There's no conflict or sin in sex pleasure … or is there? That's what you want, no? Sexual pleasure with a companion … and then you write and is it finished with ex'.
'Oh my god, Mahler… Symphony Number One! Listen to it! The isolation of nuns? Why nuns? Nuns are not isolated in their cells! They live a full life in there. Is this the recognition you meant?'
Isolation, mermaids … nuns? Nuns in cells… priests? The irresistible love of nuns! Nuns, priests, mermaids … writers, they all have the same problem of alienation.
'You are thinking about it, are you not?'
'Yes, I am'.
'Ex-writer's serious now, isn't he? Look, the English play tennis on Sundays, Ok? Here's an English ball for you too' she said and search for a humbug in the cubby-hole. As she bend over she opened her legs and her dress moved up her thigh. I saw how her knee bared. It looked round and soft and was beautifully formed. It wasn't at all like the fin-part of a mermaid. It was a fragile young woman's knee. And without being able to resist it, I reached out my hand and stroked it. Then I turned my hand up side down and held it open for the humbug. She unraffeled it and placed it squarely into my palm. It was a Virginia kiss of a nun. And while doing it, she didn't wince. She didn't know play I realised.
'What play?' she asked.
She was so eager to learn… yet she already knew whatever will be written by writers or ex-es. And she knew the plots of all stories…
'Watch the walls of the turn-off' she said 'Köln-w-eest is Köln-east at the Kreuz'.
We ran into it, a bulwark unprecedented. Her English and grasp of reality as Autobahn road builders prescribed it was now perfect. She was gallant … it was she who created it. Autobahn Kreuz Koln-W-eest.
It was upon us! Dangling! Dangling! Help! The junction washed over us like a freak wave of water. We drove into the on-coming swell with all its early morning rush-hour jam. A million cars drifted past us and in front of us they gathered in schools of floating debris. They came from many directions, Dinky Toys in the water, ready to switch from 4-laned roads to 2-laned turn-offs. They rushed off to unknown distances and unfathomed depths. Their clockwork precision, the tide, the waving signs and the shoutings of Kreutz Kreuz Kreutz shuffled us on. Antobahn Kreuz Küln-E-eeast.
'Where is w-eest?'
We were caught up in suck and West was East and Freschen, our goal and destination … it was nowhere to be found! Both the sign of down and town of up had ceased to exist. Both were sucked into the whirlpool of Kreuz East.
'Dangling! Dangling! Help!'

Runs
fingers through soil
dark fragrant thoughts
crumble and fall
RaE Pater

There was nothing for us to do but to follow the flood and the cars in their flight to go to work … and to go to work with them. And in the process we missed totally what we had come for, the turn-off and junction to homespun lovely little Freschen. Freschen … it was just a little song. A Solsoleta and a girl. Alone little one. And 15 kilometres after the Kreuz we both realised that we had junk-ed it at the junction Kreuz. We were driving back into the direction we came the previous day.
'Another foolish idea to have thought we could switch to Köln-West at Köln-East' she whispered pronouncing it with an even more perfect Oxford English tint.
It was what exactly what I had thought because the 'foolish idea' of it was a structural element I needed here for Driver!
'My god! She is learning fast' I mused and also 'she would love it when I think it!'
'Yes… I am and I do love it!' she said happily 'Will you marry me, Mister Ex? Or is that too fishy for you?'
I was an ex-writer and she was a maiden muse, the lovely virgin called Ora … a full time distant princess and private sweetheart of monks, sinners and writers … ex-writers, of me. She was there with me … for me!
'Oh my mermaid…! What are you saying?'

Breaking the fast

Veni electa mea, ponam in te tronam meam
(Come my chosen one I shall place thee on my throne)
Pope Gregory the Great, Liber Pontificalis

It was a very lucrative business and the feasibility of it makes it a super marketing ploy. It wasn't only my kingdom I traded I thought when settling the bill … and the coffee, it was all the coffees for the next 4 four months too! But I didn't care. I was hungry and whether muses eat chocolates or not, it was my connubial gift for her.

We pulled off at the first truckstop we found. Huge trucks … fifty or more were parked in neat rows. The drivers were standing in pairs and threes next to their trucks munching sandwiches and drinking coffee.
'Mmmm coffee…!' I said 'let's go eat the place empty, I am starving! My kingdom for a cup of coffee!'
'You really would do that? Trade your kingdom?' she wanted to know with a stern serious surprise on her face.
'Of course not but yes for a cup of coffee now … yes!'
'Kingdom is a dominion. It has nothing to do with a kingdom, understand? So you can't trade it! Its who you are!'
'Sure I can! Like that! One cup of coffee and whoosh, kingdom gone. Come!'
We found a free parking lot at the end of the truckstop and I parked. Then I looked for my shoe but couldn't find it. She looked for it too but the shoe seemed to be nowhere in the car.
'I can't go into the restaurant in a wet sock!'
'Of course you can!'
I put on my sock and off we set for coffee and something to eat. I, bobbing next to her with my hand on her shoulder. In the hall which really turned out to be a small mall there were various little restaurants and a lot of people entering and going out. We scouted around a bit looking for the nicest one and empty chairs. Next to the Whimpy Bar and opposite McDonalds we discovered a stand full of chocolates. Belgian Chocolates.
'In Germany…? Oeee, I'll buy you some' I said and hopped towards the dressing window with her following.
Belgian Chocolates … Godiva and Toison D'or!
'You do want chocolates, do you?'
'Yes of course!'
'Any ones in particular?'
'Aaah! The little hearty ones…'
'Coeur de Brussels'.
'Any others in particular?'
Si, the golden little blockies…'
'Palma Bleu'.
'…And the shells'.
'Huitre'
'And the white stripy ones…'
'Giandju Blanc'.
'And the brown stripy ones…'
'Nippon'.
'And the little ones with the faces…'
'Noix Caraque'.
'And… Mmmm eh'.
'Take some Toison D'or too!'
'Ok, the white hearts'.
'Automme'.
And… those phallic ones'.
'Phallic ones? Oh … the Orangettes! Si, their're nice. They are filled with whole orange peels. I like them too. We'll buy a lot of them! 250 grams. No, 500 grams'.
'And these shieldy ones?'
'Eusson Lait … look, let's buy 6 of everyone from this corner. Each 3. Say, you do eat chocolates, do you?'
'No, but it doesn't matter. I will eat them with you. You are nice'.
Had I not knew her way of thinking and reasoning by then I would have irked for a moment.
'Oh, Mermy, we buy 8 of everything, ok? I trade my coffee for it!'
'Yes, and your dominion is safe then! Make it safer still and buy 9 of each. One for every sister! I pay half of the bill and then we can be quits, no?'
'No no, I tell you what we do … that's even safer … I buy 10 of each? The sisters and me!'
'Ok 12 … quits! Fathers and mothers too'.
'Done!'
I went into the shop and ordered 12 pieces of every single brand. When I got the bill I knew why they were selling Belgian Chocolates on a highway in Allemange close to an Autobahn Kreuz. The quits deal… Oh, she can forget about that! 'I am paying. The chocolates were for her.
'Of course!' she smiled, once again an eager child.
We left the hall mall and went back to the car at the end of the parking lot, I bobbing alongside her again on one wet sock. In the car we both became impulsive and hurriedly opened the packets of chocolates … all of them and we had the sweetest breakfast I ever had with a muse in a parking lot of a truckstop in Germany. It was sweeter and more invigorating than all the poetry I ever wrote in my life. And indulging we didn't care about the missed junction at Autobahn Kreuz Köln-East or even the missing Kreuz W-eest turn-off to Freschen for that matter. Nor about anything else what so ever. Inside the cosy steel of our car we were the happy bride and bridegroom from fairy tales and already married. Comrades forever until death do us part. And we were breaking the fast from the night in the rain. We, the two characters travelling together for the good or the worst. I with a missing shoe and she with her ardent Mediterranean accent.
'You like it? Chocolates for breakfast?' I asked her and glistened with my eyes into her salient dark pools of contentment.
'Si, of course… Oh mia babinio caro, Bellini!' she voluptuously responded and bending over she licked me on the mouth with a brown smudgy chocolate coated tongue and smiled with the mouthful of chocolate mumbling 'Stop-ped with writing … eating chocolates is better, no?'
I just had to say 'Si' to that. Writing wasn't my scene… Not at all, no! Chocolates, yes!

Legally a muse

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

And I learnt about a husband, the Dane called Björg. He was still a literature student as the story goes. A writer in-becoming and still nourishing a twenty year old dream to publish a book, a story or something, anything. 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…

And a Poosywoosy said '…We were in a movie and I took my script seriously'
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-wheeny little margin of what had become of the write and the wrong disappeared. And she kissed me again and more thustingly. This time she ventured deeper into the forbidden zone of makeshift communication. Plain adultory. 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 discription 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 duicy sause 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 upperclass 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 dialed 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-wheeny 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 adultory. 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 poosywoosy. The poosywoosy 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 poosywoosy'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 mustache 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 poosywoosy, 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 poosywoosy 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 Poosy-woosy 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 poosywoosy 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 poosywoosy 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?'
Poosywoosy 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!' Poosywoosy 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 Poosy-woosy's heart. She stuck her finger into poosywoosy's chest between her two tiny tits so hard that poosywoosy hiccuped.
Oh, it was easy! There wasn't even a fight. Poosywoosy 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?' Poosywoosy 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 Poosywoosy and staying in control.
'Do you use a condom when you sleep with married men?'
'Nooooon!' Poosywoosy 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?'
Poosywoosy 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 Poosywoosy and had secured her domain that was enough for her. She looked at the bundle into which poosywoosy had crumbled. She knew she had to resuscitate her somehow. Give her a domain of her own. She took poosywoosy's hand. A mother nurturing the young. It was obvious to her that she would not kill her husband as poosywoosy 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 poosywoosy and her husband … for good. She spoke to poosywoosy.
'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.
Poosywoosy 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.
Poosy-woosy 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 poosywoosy nodded. It definitely wasn't a case for Swindle and Swindle and company!
'No, it wasn't' both of them agreed.
Slowly poosywoosy 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 poosywoosy'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 poosywoosy'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'.
Poosywoosy 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 poosywoosy 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?'

Taking you home

Where, alack,
Shall Time's jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
William Sheakspear, Sonnet LXV

Driving into the outskirts of Calais I dreamed I was a writer again. The countryside was beautiful but the dream… And being a writer again, it was a nightmare. In it I watched the unfolding and closure of a story called Young Responsible Driver. The writer of it told everybody that he had stopped being a writer but it wasn't really clear what he meant. Nobody knew whether this was true or not. He was an apparent opportunist. His character too, was ambiguous. And in the dream the setting of the story was bizarre and grotesque. First he was driving into Germany and heading for a place called Freschen but that was all in his mind. And dreaming and driving he also… Oh, I think he was also driving into France. The French thing of naming towns names persisted throughout the dream. And the journey got botched up ever so often. The story ended in Cap Gris-Néz in Normandy. The overall vagueness in both story and dream and the writer's decision to stop writing was unbearable.
And while I dreamt it I couldn't help but thinking that there must be more than truth in the story. I however also dreamt I didn't want to mentioned it to her. I couldn’t risk it I dreamt. It might disappointed her…

When I started the car after our wonderful breakfast both of us were sweetened to the bone.
'We can't go back to the Kreuz from here, can we?' I told her.
'Of course we can, can we not?' she immediately responded.
'No no … no way! I am not getting over the middle strip for a quick wish my luck U-turn back to the Kreuz!'.
'Of course you can … we go home, no?'
I switched off the motor again.
'Now … my darling, what are you saying? What do you mean by we go home, no?'
'We go our way … where we go. Anyway…'
'And what do you mean by that? Any way?'
'That we go home, no?'
'Which way is that?'
'…Home'.
'And… ?'
'Si, and then we are on our way!'
I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time but it was impossible to get cross with her. And certainly not after our exceptional breakfast and all those chocolates.
'Look, Mermy, I am just the driver. I drive, you see? We had made a lot of split second decisions together. But I honest to honest don't think we should hop the highway ghostriding to get back to that stupid Kreuz. We can't do that. Do you understand what I am saying?'
And I imitated steering and waved with my hands over my shoulder in the direction of which we came.
'Drive! Kreuz. Vroem vroem' I articulated trying to stress the point with childish gesture but only making a complete fool of myself.
'Si, we drive!' she laughed 'it's a little joke!'
I started the car again, backed up and slowly drove in the parking area exit and just as we were about to hit on the highway and enter the madhouse of flying cars I slowed down to a stand still.
'We drive, no?'
At that moment a king size truck honked loudly behind us. I got such a fright that I stalled the engine. I looked backwards and saw that it was coming at us with purpose. The driver wanted to get onto the highway and didn't care. I saw grill and front tyres moving towards us with speed.
'We got to get out of the way!'
I grab the keys started the car but when I gave gas my foot with the sock only slipped from the pedal and the engine stalled again. The truck was coming unfalteringly and its driver didn't show any sign of caring to slow down. In a rush I tried starting the car again. It stalled again.
'Oh my god, we've got to move!' I shouted and tried the starter again.
It took. The truck was on us and gave out its last screaming warning.
I stepped on the gas professionally.
'Run! Run!'
I stomped the gas lever down as deep as it could go. The car shot out under us. It went up the curb and hit a fence tearing down some of the hedges and we landed in the drainage burrow while the truck rushed pass us with the driver shouting Ars-a-elog. I caught a glimpse of his fat skinhead and upper body in a vest. He had dark glasses on and the tattoo on upper arm was a cross with a snake crawling over it. I was ready to hoist a middle finger but then I remembered the time when I had done exactly that to another truck and the driver had slammed on brakes and stopped and come over to me. Instead of the finger I shouted back at him Pardon Monsieur! To her I explained that he now thought that we were French.
'…The French had a habit of bad driving…' I worded it.
'Yes? Do they? Why? ' she wanted to know.
And then I really wanted to cry. I felt so ashamed of my irresponsibility.
'Oh Ourania' I pleaded with her 'I am so sorry … please forgive me!'
She took my hands and kissed both of them. A majestic mother with a dominion of solid forgiveness.
'Ah!ora' she said '…it's a little joke'.
I felt better and thinking of the word Ah!ora I started to smile. It was a good one. Ah!ora… Ah! Time and Ah! Gold. But Ah!Ora was also how I called her the first time I thought of her as a person having a name: Ourania the Golden One, youngest of the muses and friend of mine. Some part of her was so far above me and the character I was when I was with her.
'Good joke!' I confirmed now taking her hands and rubbing them in mine. It was the old dilemma! Falling in love.
'You want your shoe?'
'What? Yessss? Have you found it!'
She opened the cubbyhole and took it out.
'Ah!ora' she said 'A shoe! I've kept it for you. While you slept last night I took it off to look at your toes. You have lovely feet'.
'Ah you Ora! So you do know how to play? Naughty girl!'
'Si, of course … I learn you!' she winked like a vamp and laughed her giggled laugh which was so contagious.
'The word is teach … you will teach me!' I corrected her laughing too.
'Of course, that too…'
I put the car in gear, reversed out of the burrow and away from the hedge. Then I pull off nice and quietly like an old responsible driver. This time no rubble went flying and the wheels of the car didn't screech. We were going home…
'Ah!ora' I said when we hit the traffic in its full fury again as it gushed away from the Autobahn Kreauz Küln-East and West.
'Ah what a time I have with you!'

The two companions were on their way again, travelling North and back from where they came the previous day. North and towards the sea, Cap Gris-Néz. One thing was provocatively clear. The driver was taking his beloved little Lorelei home…

On the verge

Its making me itch
Its making me bad
I think I get out of here
where I can run as fast as I can.
P!nk, Just like a pill

I am as close to you as you are close to me
Buddhist Slogan

What really felt good was that I had come to the decision to stop with writing all by myself and that it was taken in all free will. Nobody had forced me to take it. I had designed it all by myself in sobriety and with the necessary responsibility to face such a life changing decision. And as I stood there above the world and watched from the heights the friendly face of the scenery around me I felt very contented and sure of myself.
'Atlantis may be down there! Mermaids…'
I stood firm on the hillside. Behind me was the First Tower of the bay of Cap Gris-Néz and my feet were firmly rooted and secured in the white clay of Normandy. Towards the left of me and across the 15 kilometres crow flight distance the second tower's silhouette etched itself into the sky like big pointing finger warning for an omen. Cap Blanc. Below me there was the grey steel coloured seabed of the Channel between France and England. It looked unearthly silver as it stretched itself out across the 50 odd sea miles between the continent and the island. On the side of Great Brittany the whitened Cliffs of Dover lit up, splashes of paint in a still life.
I had made up my mind. I would never write a single word of literature ever again.
'Not ever again! Too spooky … writing!'
And while I thought about it I envisaged myself as a heroic figure standing on the verge of a new frontier. An armoured knight, one with a great history behind him. One with a rough and haggard past but a warrior who was now returning home. It was a nice thought.
'A Ring leader hero… Francis Bacon style' I mused and smiled at my own musing 'I have made it!'
And I straightened my back standing proud. I felt the firmness of my feet on the ground. My work was still selling well and the amount of stories I had accomplished… 'Oh, I could live off it for years to come still'.
Above me was the sky with its clear day message. The air in it was fresh and scented with sea smells. It was so wide and open, an ocean of wealth laid out especially for me. Looking up I watched it in wonderment.
I lowered my head to watch the Cliffs of Dover again.
'The distance between the two landmasses wasn't so great after all' I thought.
Then my eyes shifted closer to the shore on which I stood. There were the broken chunks of cliff in front of me. And the old disregarded World War One and Two German bunkers. The shoreline formed a rugged diagonal line stretching from Calais right down to the second Tower in the upper right corner. Cap Gris-Néz. On both hills the Towers were standing guard. My eyes followed the rugged coastline. In between there were small overgrowth and patches of sparse thickets cuddled into save groups bracing against constant exposure of the sea winds. Nearer to where I stood there was also grass and small white and poppy red flowers.
Then I watched the white stones some meters away from me. They marked the safe ground on which to stay behind. And I saw my feet in front of me. My neatly polished black shoes contrasted sharply with the yellowish clay on which I stood.
I smiled.
'Spanish leather…'
I saw the bottom of my Armani charcoal pants. The rough-ironed lines in them lead upwards. My eyes followed the lines. I saw my dark brown crocodile belt with its expensive buckle. It matched with the pants. My gaze went upwards towards my lemon coloured silk shirt and the maroon tie.
'No belly…!'
And I followed the tie up its length towards my neck… And then I got a fright! I realised I couldn't look further up myself! I couldn't see my chin or neck! I thought of my face, I couldn't see my face either!
'My god!' I thought in disgust 'Where is my face? What if I have no face?'
Heathen alarm and anaemic disquietude bolted in me. There was a spider jumping for a kill. I stood there with my head on my chest with straining eyes to look at my neck and was full of naked fear.
'I am neck-less!' I thought 'Where is my face?'
I moved my tie away with one hand searching. But there were only the lemon shirt and its buttons. My hand touched upwards and I counted three buttons. Then I felt the ruff of the shirt and above it soft flesh.
'Was it my neck?'
I felt towards my head with both hands. There was fluffy stuff like hair on it. I touched around my head. I felt my brim and my eyebrows. And sockets below it with round things in them.
'Eyes?'
Then I touched my nose and below it I felt at my mouth. My fingers went into a hole. There was oozy wetness in it.
'Saliva?'
I looked at the gluey substance on my fingers and a cold maddening shiver ran down my spine. I pictured myself standing there in my neat city clothes. I was on the hill at Cap Gris-Néz and I had no face, no head and no eyes. Where my face was supposed to be, I saw only a gaping wound of a mouth with slime oozing out of it.
'Blood! Oh my god! A knight with a chopped off head and a figure of a body looking from a hilltop and having no neck, chin and face!'
I wanted to run!
But I told myself to not do it obviously. There were the Towers. I shuffled backwards towards the car and then couldn't help it but got into it hastely and locked the doors.
I needed air. I swallowed. Took a deep breath.
'Relax! Relax!'
I put on the safety belt and started the car. Then I drove off.
'Holy Mother of Christ!' I whispered 'Am so glad I had made that decision!'
My voice was coming from the gaping wound in my face. I gave gas. And when I stole a glance in the hind mirror I saw another dark gaping hole! It was in the side of a bunker to the side of the tower. It was a hole made by British artillery in 44. They had hit the bunker and took out the whole of the German command in it. I gave more gas and ran the car up the culvert but quickly managed to get back onto the road again.
'I am out of here!'
History was behind me … like my career. I was racing towards the second Tower and a different scene closing the cycle of Cap Gris-Néz as fast as I could.
'Young Responsible Driver … my arse! Was…'

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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