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Long Weekend Short Story
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©Argo Spier.

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

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

The document, when printed, contains 135 A4 pages.

Contents

[ short stories]

riceman in baix Empordà - 3
oliver - 21
legally a muse - 43
long weekend - 34
circle of champions - 59
breakfast with francis bacon - 67
the days of chang!s lue - 67
slender strain – 74
muria the muse of Trivandrum - 139

blurbs - 125

[Total number of pages = 135]


1. Rice in Baix Empordà
[a dragon tale fragment and mantissa]

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

Content

1. the non-official Catalan spirit
2. the Thomas Bissom 1998 report
3. her pitch-black, thick, southern straight hair hanging
4. a soft knock on the door

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

1. the non-official Catalan spirit

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

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

2. the Thomas Bissom 1998 report

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

3. her pitch-black, thick, southern straight hair hanging

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

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

4. a soft knock on the door

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

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

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

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

2. Oliver and the art of sharing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

3. Legally a muse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. long weekend

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

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

4. Circle of champions

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

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

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

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

5. Bacon's breakfast and eggs

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

5. Changs! lue's log

[To the Days looking in from the Window]

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

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

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

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

6. Slender Strain

[Inside the Grid Of a Writer's Mind]

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
flawed toad - 41
mixing saliva - 44
orange muse - 47
love yeti - 58
Peeing muse - 59
blue grey for Madrid - 64
moon dropped muse - 65
breaking the fast - 75
legally a muse II - 79
taking you home - 98
on the verge - 103

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

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.
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.

'...Like Byron, the traveller believes that 'there are words that are things', but unlike Byron, who 'has not found any yet', he forces words into things'.

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
epicentre 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 under 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 passionraised the day in naked breast and where they jubilateupon the driving window-ledgethey wave and snatch
and steal
awaya 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 physicalitysquandered emotionsmall moans and pantingrebound off

Walls andcollide shatteringuntil deflated and spentthey 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 every things 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 and 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 Micro shift 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 Queensthe 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 blueit pulls him in yet symbols fiveand nine retain and three

She serves to regaina treasured Virgin paintedon a slate where Calais oasis fading and Autobahn Kreuz Köln-West rising
yellow and green the signage bearing pennant in specks of orange and tearit pulls him in
yet symbols five and four retainacquiesence 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 heryet I cannot get close to herbecause 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?

Moon dropped muse

Supple fingers mould himautonomy a distantthrobbing dreamto 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 II

'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 herewhere 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 and whatever small town in Germany was mentioned in Silent Strain as fast as I could.
'Writing … my arse! Was…'

8. Muria on the pavement

It was a grey and rainy day. The wind was picking up as well and Stuart, as he stood on his balcony gazing out across the bleak Mediterranean Sea, wondered whether he should take the afternoon off or spend more time with the story he had heard at Arrilla’s. It's about the poet who went to India and had the experience with the Muse Muria who had materialised on the pavement behind him. The meet with Muria had been real, Marti had told him, and much had come of it afterwards. Muria wasn’t only a Muse, but a Dakini too and the little niece of the godhead associated with the 1000 lotus flowers on the lake of Jodipur. Muria, the teasing young thing that inspires artists, poets and storytellers right out of the Dark Ages of India’s pan mogul rule by Caesar Taskbar till today, the Muria who brings men to their knees.
”A Traumata’s coming … mountain wind? Tramuntana! Oh, rainy days are such a drain on creativity” Stuart thought, “and the poet, that poor soul … he did go to India and attended the International Poetry Festival in Thruvananthapuram after all”.
He inspected the sky scrupulously with narrowed eyes. Rain clouds, cumulus nimbus, were forming. At the harbour, where he dropped his gaze, he noticed the flapping of the sails against the long poles of the yachts picking up. He could hear the tinkling sound of the ropes against the poles even on his balcony. Damp cold was creeping into his feet. The normally cool, tiled floor was turning icy. His red espadrilles weren’t made for ‘autumn-like summers’ but for beach loafing and relaxation, writing.
“Dhambala rice cakes and the tasty peanut butter mixed with mango Jawalhi roles … great breakfast … and lukewarm Djarling tea,” he smiled, “Mamma mica … breakfast without coffee. That is something new!”
And he shrugged as a shiver ran down his spine. Muria was very, very real when one thinks of the story.

Marti had told him that when the poet stepped out onto the porch at his hotel in the backstreets of Trivarndumsutra where it was raining too. A lovely smell of wet earth, a dash of mint mixed with Jasmine was hanging in the early morning air. Though it was winter in Kerala, it felt like springtime. Huge puddles of water were all over, in the road and on the pavement in front of the hotel. Puddles of water were constantly forming as the the rain came down. On the zinc roof of the porch there was the clatter of raindrops. It was a ‘new’ experience to him to hear rain on a zinc roof. It excited him, brought back a child’s joy of the past. He wasn’t a ‘rain man’ but the way it rains in Kerala, in such abundance, in gushes, and drops so huge, it was as if he was discovering rain for the first time and that lifted his spirit.
“Rain … it gives a totally new dimension to the concept rain”, he thought looking at the downpour.
Being used to Northeren European rain, he knew the slow drizzle of continuous rain that goes on undisturbed for months. But in Kerala, on that day, the day of the opening of the yearly International Poetry Festival, the rain was very different. It was a kind of ‘active agent’ he felt, complimenting what he was about to do - give a speech about poetry to 150 poets from across the world.
"This rain has character ... it fits to my speech." he mused. ‘Poetry in India … Bharat. Spice from Udaipur. Sensuality. Monsoon. It fits together.’
A lovely velvet-eyed lady from Punjab, from the Indian side of it, had told him on the aeroplane, “It's because of the rice that Monsoon come. The rice grows quick … so high" and had shown him how high with her copper coloured hand."… and then they need water. Then Monsoon come … that why the Monsoon is there..”
“Yes, the world is one and all are assets to Being,” he had agreed, repeating his words out loud again now. He felt proud: he had made it to India.
The Porter at the door thought he was saying something and in return offered him an answer.
“Yes, sir! No Sir, no acid rain. Monsoon rain. Monsoon velly good for the lice clops.”
The way the Porter used ‘lice’ for ‘rice’ was quite charming to him. The meaning of poetry in an international context and the fragility of sensual communication was the theme of his speech and in it he had in calculated a discussion of the function of wordplay and pronounciation in the various languages to get cognative meaning over.
“They will love it.” he said to the Porter and indicated the bundle of papers under his arm.
The papers got dislodged from his hand and nearly dropped to the floor, but he was quick to grab them, his umbrella between his legs, and secure and reshuffle them into a neat bundle again..
”Yes Sir, love is velly good,” the Porter said with a trained immediacy.
“A little bit of rain won’t put me off, now would it?”
He waved with his umbrella.
"No Sir, no wally Monsoon. Velly wet but chapelli good."
He had come prepared for rain. He had brought with him, all the way on the two-night Middle East flight with its 12-hour transit waiting time in Dubai, a special umbrella, a sufficiently big one. The umbrella was the largest sold in the Brussels shops. The size of it was huge; to be exact, one meter 15 centimetres, and when it opened it looked like a medium-sized beach umbrella.
“It will protect me fully from rain and give me space in the crowds,” was his argument for buying it.
”It’s a solid one - strong material. Manufactured in Europe,” he said to the Porter and showed him the Italian label.
”Yes Sir, velly good manufactuling. Not falt, is good for wet water,” the Porter replied with quick punctuality.
The tarry and hassle with the umbrella on the various aeroplanes he had to board were well worth it he thought, and unfolded the umbrella with the exaggerated gesture of a winner, clutching his speech papers between his legs. He took it in both hands and touched the special click-and-open mechanism. The umbrella shot opened with a whoosh and secured his one meter 15 centimetres of space. The Porter had to back up to allow him to swerve it over his head. Proudly he presented it. The Porter inspected it and gave his blessing.
“Velly good umblella. Now Monsoon will cry many tears of water for you.”
He just knew his ideas for the speech would be successful. He was absolutely sure of it as well that the role he was going to play at the festival would be performed well. With a subtheme to his speech of, 'the meaning of Modern Day Sensual Poetry,' he would provoke and make the grade.
”I’m giving a speech on poetry today - sensuality and love in poetry,” he said as a by-the-way remark to the Porter as he waited on the porch with his huge umbrella open over his head and his valuable papers under his arm, ready to venture into the wet streets and embrace the Monsoon rain.
‘ Yes Sir, velly good!”
He blushed at the Porter’s naivety. Like a child having a naughty thought he wanted to say more but refrained. Instead he asked the Porter whether he thought love was childish.
”No Sir, no children, just wife … much love,” the Porter replied and grinned like a boy.
The Poet always has jovial intentions. He knows this about himself and acknowledges it. Clutching his papers tightly under his right arm and holding the over-sized umbrella high over his head, he set out for the Festival’s opening session. The Porter had to step off the porch and into the rain to let him past the stoop.
“I'm singgggggging in the rain, I am happppppppy again,” he hummed as he stepped into the Indian streets and the Monsoon.
It was early morning still and there weren’t many people on the street. He had the space he had calculated that he needed for himself. He was a happy academic, safely under his one meter 15 centimetres sized umbrella and a master in his own domain. The next street had a little bit more traffic. The daily commuters were starting to rush to work. The third block he passed led to a large artery in the city’s centre. Here many people were on the street and traffic was picking up. He held tightly onto his papers and the umbrella bobbed over his head as he avoided, sidestepped and jumped over water puddles. But he stayed dry. When he got to a corner where he had to cross the street, he saw that people were now crowding to cross. They all waited obediently at a dilapidated signpost. He filed onto the back of the queue and waited his turn. To his horror, several youngsters shuffled under his umbrella to wait with him, sticking their heads close to his. When it was his turn to cross the street he looked right, left and right again, ogling the on-coming traffic carefully. The umbrella flitted left and right too, along with his movements. He realised that the crossing of streets in India can only come about when one has a firm and quick approach to it. So he adopted the attitude and looked businesslike. He tried a couple of times but couldn’t make it. Luckily for him a couple of cows came from across the street and halted in the middle of the road, claiming the space undisturbed. He saw his chance and made a move to flit over. But his sequence of looking at the traffic was still a European one. In India they drive on the left-hand side of the road. One has to look left, right and then left again, in the opposite order of what he was used to. By mistake, he didn’t see the scooter coming at him at a reckless pace. It swerved dangerously around the cows, missed a pothole and a puddle and was on him. The shrill honk of the emergency hoot in his face made him jump with fright. Just in time. To avoid being run over, he pulled himself and his umbrella back to the safe position next to the dilapidated crossing sign. ‘Oh my Jesus, that was a close one!” he gasped.
After he had finally recovered, he stepped off the curb again, now scrutinising every single car, scooter and bicycle with the utmost attention. His eyes were on the traffic, not the road and when he stepped off the curb he didn’t see the floating splash of cow dung that was sliding slowly down the street. He stepped on it and slipped. His right hand went up into the air and his papers fell from it, flapping in all directions and landing, face up and down, into the flowing water. His hand holding the umbrella shot backwards at the same time, taking the umbrella with it. The umbrella got hooked over a skew panel of the signpost and as he went down, pulling the umbrella with him, it ripped open and tore across the entire span of its diameter. Then it flapped shut with the click-and-open mechanism broken. He landed flat on his bum in his neatly-pressed new India-designed pants he had bought for the purpose of ‘blending in’ at the Poetry festival. And he lay there, partly on the curb and partly off. Monsoon water and mud gushed over his ankles, knees and up his thighs. He was stunned. Only after he came to his senses again did he hear the boyantly rollicking, highly amused female laughter behind him. Turning his head, the first thing he saw was a pair of bare female feet in the water and mud. They looked very real and fleshy and had a bronze shine. He raised his head and saw the full torso in a bright red and green silk sari, wet and tightly wrapped over a sensual body. He saw her breasts through the wet silk and her beautiful mouth, her full white rows of teeth, the amber skin of her face, her nutmeg eyes, the dreadlocks wet too, and hanging in dripping tussles, pitch black.
“Oh my god! It's Muria!” he cried out as he recognised her.
He had read about her in mythological publications. She was the niece, on the mother’s side, of the god with the thousand lotuses in his pond. His Vedic consultant too had mentioned her to him before he had left for India.
”Muria, the Muse of Thruvananthapuram!”
She had come to him! She stopped laughing and he looked into the eyes. The pestering glint in them had changed into a most compassionate shine. She smiled.
“Velly bad weathler we have. Oh, I am solly but couldn’t help it. Come, give me your hand. I will help you. You are a good wlitel.”
And she extended to him her soft feminine palm.

Stuart felt cold all over. The wind on his terrace was stronger now, the clouds over the Mediterranean, thicker.
“It’s going to rain,” he said and abruptly he turned around and went back inside his apartment. He shut the glass door to keep the cold air out. A sudden sadness washed over him as he went to his laptop. Kicking off his espadrilles and shuffling into slippers he switched on the laptop.
“Wish I could have phoned Doncia now! She shouldn’t have left so early on Saturday … why didn’t she stay till Sunday?“ he lamented and heard the busy hard disk of the laptop loading his stories, one by one.

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