MrTea Room

New Dwellings...

2009-08-31T00:42:00.006+02:00

Hello readers and passers-by,

Just a quick word to let you know that I am giving a hand here. I am sipping more precisely here.

It is needless to say, Hugh, Ben and Mike, that wherever I set my tea tray, you are more than welcome.
More news soon I hope.

All the best in the meantime.

The Pangs of MrT

2008-11-11T22:11:00.007+01:00

The world is full of somebody else’s colours.

Everywhere I look, like painted. The smells, flashlights, diffracted sunrays, the games of strangers. The fresh grass, drinks and naps, intimacies and connivances. The long knit net of their affections, initiations, the game of strangers. Eyes glittering, candles and only half a face emerges from the darkness, familiar, welcoming. You can hear their voices from outside. You can hear them laugh. Every little intonation you can almost feel in the air, swallow one syllable at a time, let it quiver through your lungs. And then, again, the knot of tears.

There are silhouettes in the dunes. Kites. The sun is blinding. Some are alone, far away, cut out against the long blue emptiness of a sky. Unreachable, some call some other, casual, once twice, easy, the name, as if just saying yes or no. The sun is soft and warm. They run, some bare chested, some in panties, sparkling sand. Salt. Sun goes down. The shiver on their arms. On yours. Theirs, pleasure. The day goes on forever. Every hour, a new game for strangers.

Not for you. For the knot of tears.

MrT is an orphan. He is a man without a story. He is the man without the link.

Alas, I do not belong.

Soundtrack: "Fantasma Parastasie", Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker

Defragmentation

2008-01-24T23:42:00.000+01:00

I have grown in an ocean of void.

Veiled limbs move in the caress of flesh-coloured silence, arch in the shadow of intimacy. There is a body unknown. There are words that may not be mine. There is as always the worn-out business of strangers in mirrors. Quite a convenient business.

I might drift away. I might - only.

Shaded lips try to sing a tune. That I have not heard nor sung before. That which is not a variation, not another alteration of the same old urge. But it comes unwillingly through the throat with colours and textures I despise. The usual business of self-loathing. Quite a gratifying business.

A ghost wanders about the French tearoom. About my own eyes. About my own words. About the kingdom of boredom and crude words that desperately sound affected and vain.

Something wants to pour out through the lips.

Crouched figure in the semi-darkness of remembrance, discuss with itself the consistency of all known emotions and sighs. The smell of wood. Wood polish. Mind your steps. There is recognition in the mirror, only then the business starts to make sense.

Something wants to pour out through the lips. A voice. That is beyond mimicry, maybe, at last.

Curled up body in the ticking of the hours bends closely on the crude words, for it knows there is, behind the pretentious business of contingence tailing existence, behind the thunders of rhetoric, behind the unbearable piling of millenaries, ages and eras, that led to the case of individuals debating the sake of individuals, it knows there is, before all, a scandal.

Accident.

The body longs to stretch. It knows there is, patient and scarce, behind scandal, a miracle.

Soundtrack: "Broken Harp", PJ Harvey

In The Meantime

2006-04-13T21:58:00.000+02:00

You may visit the website I have designed for my brother.

I Have Never Touched You

2006-02-15T22:03:00.000+01:00

I have never touched you. I have been walking behind you all the time. Playing with your shadow, skipping amidst the projections of your slender limbs against hot asphalt. I have never touched you.
I have never reached you. Scents of you, flowing from your scarf to my nostrils, like tiny flowers carried in the wind. Silky hairs undulate like seaweeds in an ocean of desire, craving, turning their ends to me, little witnesses, standing sharp from your skull, ready to jump at me like an army’s load of spears. They know. I have never reached you.
You have never seen me. Bent and wired for fear you might notice me and run away. Inhuman. A thing. You have never seen me.

But then.
Darkness. The backstreets are like a home. The intimacy of darkness. Corners, smells, and sounds. A home. A womb. The smell of you is everywhere. On them. Your face, on theirs. Like a mask. Their skulls feel just like yours should. Fragile and soft in my hand. All in my hand, the fear, screams. I wish they did not, I wish they stopped, their voices, their ways, treacherous, ungracious, ugly, filthy imitation of you, you, if only, only you could know how much I want you.

The Striking Silence of MrT

2005-11-16T21:19:00.000+01:00

Shhh…
They ask me why I am so quiet, but if I tell them, then I am not quiet anymore.
They ask me why I am so quiet, and my only answer is to spread my arms over the table, like wings on warm sand the soft wind caresses, sees to horizon, and beyond, in the voracious immateriality of sky blue emptiness, vagueness of a lazy mind, summer time procrastinators, the want for otherness, a stranger’s body delimiting one’s body, touch, nude in the blazing sun, disarmed.
Not a sound.
You’d think a bird should cross such a sky every now and then.
Not a sound.
A shift.
Emptiness.
So I look up, childlike shyness stains the corner of my lips. Fold my arms.
Why are you so quiet?
Shhh,
Not a sound, not a sound.

Soundtrack: "I Almost Touch", Foehn

Say It's All Right, Part III

2005-11-11T16:33:00.000+01:00

But there was blood on the fingers I laid on his left cheek, and no scratch whatsoever on the latter.
A snap of broken wood echoed just behind us. Footsteps on humus.
A hand reached me from behind, sneaking from my hip to my chest with a deliberate tenderness, lifting me from the ground with an awkwardness that felt natural to me. Same old moves, resilience of the weak. Compassion dawned on my reflection on the ground. A look of consent for the other behind me too. And I did not want to see. But his left hand rustled up against my ribs and to my face, caressed my chin with an unconscious manliness that let a ghastly shiver run away through my hair. And his fingertips pressed the cold skin of my right cheek with longing excitement to turn my face to itself again. Mirror palace.
Still. Next to the goatish smile, under the watery eyes : no scratch. No blood. Just his breath flowing in through my half opened mouth. Sugary. Thirst.
The beat of my heart in the silent woods. Twice the likeness of my own eyes, intent on my fear and desire. Wantonness. The one on the ground stood up, and came near us, put one hand on my arm, the other on the third’s shoulder, trembling at the delight of our skins colliding, microscopic synergy of fully compatible cells. Run away. And yet, I wanted it to happen, I wanted to feel it. My eyes looking hard into mine, and the lips whispering:
“You.”
Brisk and dry like the flutter of an owl. And the other:
“You.”
From behind a bush:
“You”
And in the shade of a tree:
“You”
White wings slapped the air, circled around me, closer and closer. You. You. You. A head emerged from a bush, fingers from behind a trunk, feet climbing down a tree. You. You. You. One of them, on the cheek: a scratch, blood, soon lost in the endless pattern of my face.
“You.”
Run away.
“You.”
Give me more.
“You.”
Lips, moist against my neck,
“Breathe.”
Against my chest,
“Breathe again.”
Down my abdomen,
“Pray for more”
Cotton skies getting darker, blue and grey with the setting of a long forgotten sun,
“Don’t leave me.”
Car speeding past me with the startling whoosh of a racing spaceship,
“Don’t leave me.”
Endless stream of skies cloudy, empty, foggy, grey, blue, white, black, racing over fields and towns, houses and lives, homes and hells,
“Help me.”
Secrets and fun, silence and intimacy, cars speeding past their lives, a thousand lips, the same flavor,
“Help me.”
A thousand looks that mean what was never said, people speeding past my way, overdosing teenager in the wood by the road,
“Leave me.”
Falling out of consciousness, and into my own hands. I alone, closing my own eyes,
“Kill me.”
Shading the passing skies, and speeding cars, fluttering owls, secret people…
Dark.

And then I wake up, one of them.

Say It's All Right, Part II

2005-09-28T23:01:00.000+02:00

A vague sense of recognition at first. And then, his furious and frightened facies defied my awed gape with a groan.
Immobility. His shiny eyes looking hard at me. And the most unsettling feeling of not being sure of which I was. He or I. The hollow cheeks, and thick nose, square though delicate jaws, green almond shaped eyes with a bronze ring around the pupil. Looking hard. He or I. Like standing in front of a mirror. But he would not move like me. He would not bear the same expression. I could not tell who was to reflect the other. I should maybe reflect him, for he looked so much stronger, fiercer, as he stood up, knocked into me, and sped away. I took his place against the tree and let myself fall on the ground. Rest at the foot of the nearest tree. My brain felt like a cold orb of glass and chrome, heavy and useless in my head. I looked up.
He had stopped dead in his flight.
His features still pictured the same wild and forbidding scenery, with something more. Hatred, I thought. And pity. He was me. He was more me than I, and he could tell me how to be me, I wanted him to tell me how to be me and make it easy. But I did not know how to phrase it. I did not know how to talk to myself. Afraid of my voice.
Afraid of his.
My turn to stand up, despite the lack of air in my suddenly withered and painful lungs, despite the dizziness that made me feel as if someone had just pulled the earth under my feet to try and throw me into space. I meant to near him, but I was afraid to let go of the tree, afraid to stand up alone in front of him, like him. I held out my hand. He took one step away. I could not let him go. I could not be alone, without him. My bowels shuddered, and I closed my eyes and set upon him, and my fingers felt the pale oily skin of his left cheek, and my nails lacerated the tender flesh, and I fell flat on the dark and moist soil. My eyelids parted just in time to see the red cut I’d made flash away into a leafy maze. Stand up and follow. Now I could see him, and then I could not, now he took a wrong turn, and then I gained ground, now he tripped into emerging roots, and then I tripped into his legs and fell over on him.
He or I.
He did not try to set himself free. We did not try to break eye contact. The fascinating landscape of the iris I knew the most. But I could almost touch it. No glass surface in between. I could smell his breath, his smell of cold drugs and anguished sweat. That smell of dirty sugar and rotten wood. I could feel his thin and hard limbs through his sticky oversized clothes, his prominent ribs against mine, and I was overwhelmed with anxious ecstasy. I knew him and his body better than anyone in the world. And so did he. His lips so close to mine, the same temperature. But there was blood on the fingers I laid on his left cheek, and no scratch whatsoever on the latter.
A snap of broken wood echoed just behind us. Footsteps on humus.

To be continued...

Say It's All Right, Part I

2005-09-26T23:41:00.000+02:00

The car sped past me with the startling whoosh of a racing spaceship. Ducks unanimously flew off a nearby pond. My eyes turned to them faster than my head, and my brain swayed in my skull with a feeling that the world has suddenly reached its end. But no darkness ensued, and the feeling cleared away.
Grey cottonous worlds lingered above the woods: snowy mountaintops floating above ghastly pined slopes down to wintry valleys. All reflected in a lake of vacuity, and I at the bottom of it was alone setting a weary foot on the long fetched Atlantis.
As I turned around, another car silhouetted itself against the horizon, under an archway of branches. Unreal in the distance. Right thumb up. Look at me. They might not see me in the pale light of the late afternoon. They might decide to stop at the very last minute. Usually do. “I’d not seen him! Let’s give him a lift!” Or not. Look at me. Keep going. “That poor kid. Does not look good to me. Junkies they are. I’m telling you!”
Keep going.
There was no more than two miles left anyway. Might as well enjoy the walk. Countryside.
Something moved in the wood.
A loud snap. Must have been something big. My eyes wandered amongst the indifferent greens of overgrown thickets. And then I saw it. There was skin in between the leaves. Pale sickly skin. Somebody was watching me. And when they knew it, they ran away.
I started running too, not knowing why. Something fun was happening. Or at least something exciting. I jumped over the ditch, stumbled my way through nettles and brambles, and ran straight to where the patch of skin had disappeared. Follow the sound of broken branches. But they were scarce. Whoever they were, they must have been used to the woods a bit lore than I.
And soon, all was quite. Out of breath. I wanted to sit down, relieve my legs of my own weight, and let my pounding blood cool down through my temples. Rest at the foot of the nearest tree, like a fox exhausted from an unfruitful hunt. But a snap resounded a few feet ahead. I was about to run for it when it occurred to me: there was no other noise coming from there, no subsequent footsteps, and no one could hide just there, or I would have seen them from where I stood. So I turned back to the nearest tree… and knew.
Somebody wanted to distract me.
I could feel their breath through the tree, their stooped eager presence, their anxious eyes looking down not to meet the intruder’s. I walked around the tree, and thought I might be insane, a lonely paranoiac in the woods. But the hedge of the trunk uncovered a pair of wrenched bony hands and a trembling profile that was so familiar to me, almost too familiar. A vague sense of recognition at first. And then, his furious and frightened facies defied my awed gape with a groan.

To be continued...

Urge to Live

2005-09-26T02:32:00.000+02:00

To Sir Ben Yoda.

Friedrich laid nauseous in the bedlam of the room he had grown to hate, the room he would leave soon, for another, in another country, which he would hate too. His muscle clung tight onto his painful bones, stiff with the excitement of a night’s thinking, of hours spent in dismantling long built metaphysical superstructures, of days fumbling through the darker and darker paths. The sun seemed farer with every endeavor to repeal the dazzles of artificial gleams. And yet.
He closed his eyes. He had to. At some point. And his thoughts kept flowing, leaked out his control. Erosion. Bits of values were swept with contempt into sub aquatic dumps of holy fireguards and other moral relics. The riverbed got bigger and harder with every blast, mud and loose particles chased away. The crystal clear water ran with unprecedented violence, paying no heed to obstacles, shaping falls and rapids, never to be overcome, hinting at the birth of its own measure, beyond good and evil, over dams, will to power.
Urge to live.

Rid of Me

2005-09-24T23:02:00.000+02:00

Hugh looked up while his fingers froze above his computer keyboard.
They froze so much he thought they would shatter like a vase once he
moved them again. Brisk rustle of movement had stopped his mind from
escaping from itself. But everything was as quiet as it could
possibly be in Melbourne. So he resumed.
His fingers steadily and successively lowered on the lettered plastic
squares like the legs of a fleeing spider. His face I will not
describe as he is, for what I know, totally faceless. But amidst the
blur, there floated an intent pair of eyes and a mouth from which
corner protruded a very painstaking tongue. He would every now and
then suspend the flow to look through the window and check if his
muse was by any chance approaching the front door. But no one did.
And so he resumed.
The screen filled with black characters, and the phrases he thought
clunky quickly stringed together. Liberally chosen words spun a web
that got vaster with every new addition, and that would trap any
flying-by semantics to liquefy and digest their rich ambiguity. He
fought, as always, against his weariness, against his punctual
disgust for the style he recognized and often loathed as his, and did
his duty as a regular updater. And as he did, the edges of his prose
scraped his pressed against the desk body, and worn out his clothes,
leaving him naked to spread and dilute some of his intimacy and
dearest convictions in between the fragile narrative layers and curls
of casual fiction.
As I stood floating behind him, I crashed my head against the
ceiling, and he started and turned to my ghastly ghost.
‘Oh, it’s you. I knew there was some one. What are you doing here?
‘Well, being a 25 year old ghost is quite a bore, so I thought I’d
try and live by proxy, and paid you a visit. I mean, you know, since
you are the one who made me die and all…
‘Oh yeah…’ he nodded. ‘And what do you think of it?’ he asked,
pointing at the busy word processor on the screen with mingled
enthusiasm and dissatisfaction.
‘I like it. You know I do. I want to write again too. Would you mind
my resurrecting?
‘Not at all.’ He answered absent mindedly, as he went back to his
keyboard.
I sneaked back through the mines and to my body, dug myself out and
came home in time to make the first comment on his new post.
And so we resumed.

Untitled

2005-09-19T01:01:00.000+02:00

The following text was written on October 29, 1999. It is one of the oldest short piece I possess, for I did not use to keep it.

Things stopped growing up a few years ago.
Or later.
Is it so important?
Is it real?
Maybe it was the sunshine dancing on our foreheads, maybe it was the trees dancing in the soft summer breeze, branches waving in the most dazzling blue emptiness, maybe it was the blood on that tiny wretched body we did not even see.
Whatever.
We were. We knew it.
It was now and here. Really. For the first time.

Maybe the nightmare is not supposed to end.

Maybe, in a sense, isolation is what keeps me alive.

Remember.

Remember
It smells like breath.
Sounds so,
Moves so.
Kill or die
Kill or die
Kill or die

Remember.
We were kids. These were laughter. You did drugs.
You fell
You felt
The truth
Was there
One kill
One win
One lie
One die
You killed
You knew
The truth

Remember.
We were kids. They had teeth, they had smiles. You had things in your eyes, and your veins.
Hadda die
Hadda die
Hadda die
Hadda da-hie

It started raining.

Something… I think…
Something was stuck in my throat.
It never came down. Neither out.
It’s been there
ever since…

fists.

The Prophecy

2005-09-16T23:29:00.000+02:00

The hallway is packed with students, cheesy smiles and tasteless clothes. I like to come here, and act, as if one of them. But sometimes I stand in a faraway corner, in the shelter of irrelevant whispers and amplified ramblings of bipolar teachers, while my pen vandalizes full notebooks with more than philology. Like this day.
I enter the empty amphitheatre. Its proportions are incongruous, and yet fail to surprise me. On each side, the room fades into the distortion of distance, whereas the front black-boarded wall only stands a few feet away. The hard wood floor varnish has been worn into disappearance and the bare boards now stand parched for ink and muddy shoes. Neon light. The uncomfortable churchlike tables and benches are older than the dean. I sit down, anywhere. Faded names have been carved and then polished on their dark surfaces. The poorly updated infrastructure of a French monument.
Time passes. And no one shows up. Except a pretty ugly girl who tells me the lecture is cancelled, and closes the door as she goes. The empty room is now mine. Almost home.
But a strange roar comes from behind the black board. Hyper localized earthquake. A dazzling purple light suddenly erupts from the whole surface of the wall, like a veil of energy, and makes its way toward me. I do not move. It reaches my fingertips, and proceeds through my arms and legs, as if scanning me, as if scanning everything in the room. It does not hurt. Not until it gets through my brain.
The amphitheatre disappears behind a flash of light, and is then replaced by an infinite spread of dry crackled ochre earth and threatening blue sky. I am floating in midair, and I feel like the heart of the desert. A sharp wind blows around me, with a quality that is neither coldness nor warmness and yet very close to temperature. It bares the signature of the purple light. I feel my skin get thinner, and my bones stronger, my muscles gaining definition, while loosing suppleness. I want to cry, for I am seeing things in the wind, things I could ignore if only my eyes were smaller. Time flies in the wind, and knowledge presses against my lungs with every new blow, nourishes my every limb with more and more ipseity, floods my eyes with the odds of disillusion and discovery. I am with every millisecond more and less than I was the previous.
I wake up.
Such a long way to go.

Insomnia

2005-09-08T21:45:00.000+02:00

The brain will not go to sleep.
Heavy sheet and misshaped pillows. The weary limbs are cumbersome, just don’t fit. Yet, the eyes are exhausted and refuse the light, refuse the words from the pages of books, reject their semantics with harsh impatience, turn away from a TV set that provides no image of interest. The body wants rest, longs for immobility. But the brain denies it.
Arborescence of thoughts, succession of ideas, and blooming of inspiration rendered sterile by the drop in energetic resources. The brain suffers from its own obstinacy at wakeful clarity. It overheats with the constant scanning and analysis of memories and sensations, with the ongoing endeavor to elaborate relevant reactions.
For a few seconds, the flow of synaptic activity runs unprocessed, and flings into delightful absurdity, while representation of the body is distorted back to its early stages, thicker, smaller, unstable, vague. A plump baby under a tiny blanket.
But soon the brain starts to stare at the inadequacy of the information, and marvels at the evocation of its evolution. Apt again, it rambles restlessly through its shelves and drawers, looking for keys to its own composition, reinterprets its past, and emit hypothesis on its future, building a model of its life between now and death, with projects and achievements, obstacles and blows. It leaves the body behind, wretched, feverish, in the bed it has grown to hate.
After hours of speculations, the brain gives away, unwillingly. It slips from of its attempt at live architecture into unconsciousness. The body and the brain wake up in the morrow, reunited in headache and nausea, more than ever unable to rise to the brain’s expectations.

Soundtrack: "Telephasic Workshop", Boards of Canada

The Child and the Old Woman, Part II

2005-08-31T23:24:00.000+02:00

…She raised a guilty pair of eyes to him and whispered:
“I have something very important to tell you.”
The child shuddered at these words. The old woman was like a stuffed animal to him, a dried up old squirrel caught in a picturesque position on a dead waxed log. Stuffed animal do not try to reveal secrets nor instruct you. She rubbed her hand with obvious anxiety, and her fingers were so gnarled that he thought they would entangle.
“We are the same, you know, you and I.”
She grinned and bowed her head a little. He thought he would run away. She was sweet, almost tender, and the smell of hospital that usually surrounded her seemed to give way to whiffs of soap and fresh apple pie. A stranger, more than ever. But her eyes were suddenly moist with fear, and words fumbled out of her decaying mouth, ominous words breaking out from dark, long locked up rooms riddled with ancient keys to even darker secrets:
“People are dangerous, my child.”
Her trembling tone paralyzed him, as the world got darker around them. The flashy orange embers from the hearth were now floating in space, grower bigger, threatening. The world was nothing but orange ambers. And her voice alone gave rhythm to his fragile but irrefutable existence.
“You will know love, my boy. And friendship as well. You will trust and glorify your precious ones, invest time and energy in your dedication to them, hoping for them to do the same in return, and still, forgiving them when they don’t, accepting their scarcely demonstrated gratitude as a more than sufficient reward. In your heart, you will praise their loyalty and faithfulness. But they will go. Soon or later. They will. And you will be alone, with a void in your heart, for all the love you’ll have spread like a cobweb, like tentacles, will then be hanging limp and purposeless before your indifferent eyes.”
She paused for a second, gripping hard on the armrests as if she would throw herself against he floor. Her voice sounded calmer as she resumed. An older, resigned narrator.
“You can think that you share something with them, a link, a bound, unbreakable. But we are rocks in a riverbed, swept by the streams, thrown against each other one day, torn away the next. We roll on each other but never embrace. You know that. You cannot give them all your love. You will scare them, stifle them. And they will go. But you and I, we are the same. We keep trying, naively, desperately, to see through their eyes, and make them see through ours. It will never be. You are alone. People are dangerous. They are unsure of their needs, afraid to satisfy it, inconstant in their affections. You must be careful, my boy. More careful than I have been.”
A tear ran down her uneven cheek while she looked at him with immense eyes. Sad, understanding, immense eyes. And then she turned to the earth again, to the fire giving its last carbonic breath, and kept silent.
The child wanted to catch her attention again. But he did not know what to call her, and could not find anything relevant to her point. Restrained arguments echoed from the dining room, soon followed by lame uneasy jokes that tried and failed to ease the situation. Pathetic pretence that hatred and bilious grudge are no serious matter. He knew she would not turn to him again.
He stood up and went to his room. But sleep was long to come, and the darkness filled with nauseous screams soaring from his guests ridden parents’ bedroom, and his own inability to believe the old woman had indeed lost half her mind, for her words had started to settle in his brain, and slowly unfurled their cold semantic network with a lethal, yet perfect method.

Soundtrack: “Secret Girl”, Sonic Youth

The Child and the Old Woman, Part I

2005-08-28T23:40:00.000+02:00

The child’s weary ears were indistinctly filled with the rumors of drowsy voices cutting each others short, and glasses tinkling against the plates as unsteady hands lifted them to wine stained lips for more. Not drunk enough to yell and cry. But they sure had forgotten to send him to bed.
Bored by the sinuous ways of a hostile conversation without a point, the child stood up and walked away from the table, barely noticed. Moving shape in the corner of their sights. It looked so still outside the window. Hazy shadows lurked around the moonlit swimming pool like animals checking for predators before watering. He went to the living room, hoping for some TV.
But she was there.
The old woman stood sitting in her armchair by the hearth. He would not turn the light on. Neither the TV. Her silhouette stood out from the darkness in the dim glow of a fainting fire. Her still, silent face was covered with canyons and ripples of every size and shape. A black and orange mask of loose and dried up leather. He knew better than to talk to her. The strange things grown-ups would say about her. “She has lost half her mind.” How odd it was, when she first arrived, to realize his own mother had a mother. She never seemed to belong. He had long thought that his father had traveled back in time and brought back this antique to give his wife a mother, to make her feel like anyone else. But then the child recognized his mother’s ways with the old woman. Silent habits, a ritual of daily care and quietly performed duty. Unvoiced intimacy. Just like when she bathed him. She usually was friendlier with strangers, out of politeness. But the old woman was a stranger to him, and she had stayed. And there she was. The vacant look. The set features. He tried to make his moves as discreet as he possibly could and headed for the staircase. But the sound of her creaky voice made him jump. She had never addressed him before. Surprise had taken meaning out of her words. Yet, she looked at him. Not beside, not beyond. At him.
“Come and sit with me.” she said again, softly, affectionately, like his father’s mother would. He was scared of her, scared of what the grown-ups would say if they found him with her. But he went to her and sat. For a while, she just looked at her distorted hands lying on her knees like dead branches on a sterile land, and, just as he thought she had forgotten him again, she raised a guilty pair of eyes to him and whispered:
“I have something very important to tell you.”

To be continued…

The Nude Robot

2005-08-25T23:16:00.000+02:00

And yet another splog comment.
Clara Stewart
"Hey, you have a great blog here! I will certainly visit your site again! I have a pang of solitude site. It all but embraces very much that relates to pang of solitude. If you have got the opportunity, please come and check it out.”
Creepy indeed. But in the overwhelming chaos of unceasing battles, they make no prisoners. Neither do we. Robots scarcely decline their blogger ID, and those who do will endure the honorable privilege of being stoned to most unfortunate but undeniable surviving with grumbling comments.
"You spammer jerkwad.
You came to my site and left a fake complement and then a link to your extremely gay site. What is funny is that in my comments I had just mocked dorkwads like you who do this. So as a treat I'll leave your own gay message on your site…” and so on and so forth, copy-pasted as an answer to every new post, by a flirting-with-horizon queue of victims, ‘till the end of the web. I am aiming for something less homophobic, though. But as I probe into the intricate pointlessness of such a move, all I can come with is: “Well, at least if you killed yourself, our blogs would be cleaner, and I would not be sweeping Yodo’s place.” We are no match for the robots. So be it. Time to go to bed. Time to postpone my next post, for I have to work tomorrow, for I have to live. Out of the web, in a world where, sadly enough, no one will praise the ludicrous tropism of my every daydream.
But no sooner have I turned off the light, than insomnia starts networking through my veins, contaminating my weary limbs with restless bedtime dissatisfaction. Fatal corruption of my circadian rhythm database. Lost battle.
Turn the computer back on.
The mailbox of my conceited though unsatisfied self is once more flattered with half a dozen comment notifications from blogger: Yodo and Hugh are conversing in MrTea room, Yorik is forwarding a very helpful link, and, alas, sploggers splog. Same old soup. And, to my indescribable annoyance - though indescribable describes it pretty well -, Clara Stewart has done it again.
"Google Releases Blogger for Microsoft Word
ET OfficeMax: Taking E-Mail Security to the Max with Frank
Derfler. Sponsored by MailFrontier Aug.
I want to live but cannot find a reason why.
Nice blog site, really cool! I have reaching out site/blog. It pretty much covers reaching out related stuff.”
My thoughts freeze instantly. The scandal of such helpless words typed by such cold steel fingers jams the stillness of my room. Somewhere in Melbourne, the compulsory blogger, and the grumpy-pessimistic-kidnapped-restless-frustrated-morose-tired giant turn their eyes to the odd words on their computer screen, and share my anguish flavored bewilderment. Might this be an answer to my comment? Go back to the fake blog, make contact again, continue conversation. This is the only way to know. But what to ask? The pages are filled with random generated prose, seasoned with commercial links. It has been going on for ages. It is the manufactured creature’s sole purpose. Then, what to ask? Reaching out. I write: “Can I be of any help?”, login, and publish. A strange question to ask a robot. But we have to try. Our mind is now fixed on our computer screens, and, as it receives the binary coded translation of our fascinated stares, as it fathoms otherness for the first time with the despair of a 5 year old Freud facing the evidence of his own existence, the machine folds her shivering buggy arms over the diaphanous artificial skin of her breasts, and huddles herself up in a far corner the hard drive that once spoon-fed her. Before she deletes her own blog and terminates her program, she executes a last spasmodic script to send me a comment:
“A Daily Look at U.S. Military Deaths
The AP count is two lower than the Defense Department's tally, last updated at 10 a.m. EDT Thursday.
Wow! You have a nice blog here. I'm definitely gonna check back and tell my friends. Keep it up. But leave me alone, please.
I have a* obliteration site. It's all about obliteration and related things.

(*) A very common misspelling among robots.

The Quiet Afternoon

2005-08-22T00:39:00.000+02:00

A muffled bang, running footsteps leaving a rich fragrance of panic behind them. And then, nothing.
Somebody must have drawn some thick curtains closed, for the world had turned pitch black around J. An excruciating pain tightly embraced the back of his head. Something had gone wrong. He could not remember which side of the vast hallway he was facing before he collapsed. There was nothing left to be heard but the thumping of his blood in his left ear. He could sense he was alone, more than he had ever been, a shapeless presence in a colorless void. Yet, D Must be somewhere around.
But his legs failed him. He could not feel them.
He started to pull himself across the cold smooth floor with his shivering arms, like he would a heavy bag. Like he would a corpse. The pain seared across his neck, a hug from behind. He wished he was going the right way, he wished he could tell which way he was going. Something warm and moist had leaked underneath his collar. Monsters spitting at him from the ceiling, he reassured himself. Space was not like it should have been. Without sight, there was no possible representation. Not the one he was used to.
The air smelled of metal and medicine. Numbers started dancing before him in the dark: self-solving equation, lethal calculation extending toward infinity, synaptic discharges with a reason of their own. He knew it meant something. He thought it did. But the figures scattered. And he remembered. He stretched out his arms again, weaker with every crawl. The floor hardly had any texture, as if matter changed or melted when nobody could see it. And suddenly, his fingers clasped something else.
The pain was gaining his whole spine, absorbing it, absorbing him.
There was cloth under his fingertips. Skin also. Still warm. But he could sense he was alone. His own deconstructed, uneasy breath alone processed the air in the hallway.
J no more felt pain. Just a cold anesthetic sensation into which he diluted with apprehensive comfort.
Something had gone wrong, said the numbers, blocking his annihilated sight again. Very wrong indeed, asserted giant clockworks of unearthly complexity, oiled and cogged like a chainsaw, sharp hedged like wheels of lancet, perfectly paced machine with a mission to complete that, he thought with a desperate sense of revelation, he could almost feel under his fingertips. But he soon was doubtful he could make the difference between wheels, numbers, floor, cloth, skin, and monster spit anymore, for all coagulated, necrotized, tear itself, went slippery, subtracted into nothingness, unwound its spring into the unfathomable darkness that comprised him more and more, as every path in his nervous system was disabled one by one. The thump in his left ear turned out of beat, and grew fainter.
J deposited his head with D’s arm. It was ok.

Two corpses laid next to each other in the sunbathed hallway. Male. Caucasian. Two sleeping kittens in the quiet afternoon.

Soundtrack: "Augmatic Disport", Autechre

The Satisfaction of Aunt Margie’s Tummy

2005-08-19T16:43:00.000+02:00

Fruit jelly, choux pastry, short crust or flaky, with sugar loaf rose petal or pistachio icing, they all laid on a silver tray on her lap, almost floating in the tulle and taffetas of her gigantic pink dress. Her plump fingers feigned to hesitate between all of those marvels, as if she would be choosy, as if there could be one she would not like and refuse to gulp. Her voluminous platinum curls nodded with satisfaction, around her large, heavily made up face as she chewed carefully, the better to concentrate on the next one she would swallow. She stopped dead.
The thin grey uniformed silhouette of her tiny nephew was standing across the tea table, his eyes the color and shape of chocolate coated almonds intent on the trick of disappearing pastry. Confectioner’s sugar punctured her lips. It seemed to match the coarse rice powder she used and that shone brightly on her bleached moustache. She broke into a smile, and said in her girly, high pitched voice:
“Do you know what is so amazing about pastry, little Henry?” She paused to annihilate a miniature frosted cream puff. An overgrown pink chameleon. When she opened her mouth again, little Henry noticed that a lot of it was still lingering on her tongue. “Well, I’ll tell you what it is. You see, Aunt Margie has had many a man in her life. Yes she did!” she insisted tenderly as he raised his incredulous eyebrows. And then she looked aside with the most pitiful expression little Henry had ever seen on a pink chameleon. “But she was never really pleased. Men are rough, little Henry, and they are not to be trusted. They can give a lot, but they’ll take even more from you.” A grin lighted her face again. “But pastry, little Henry, creamy, sugary, intensely flavored pastry…” She caressed the remaining edible gems with feverish adoration. “Pastry makes me feel good, it satisfies my tummy. And there is nothing like the satisfaction of Aunt Margie’s tummy!” she concluded triumphantly, while holding out the tray to him.
But little Henry never cared for men, so he did not understand why he should be threatened with pastry, and just ran away.
“Cotton candy Christ, the child must be sick!” aunt Margie said to herself.
And her fat hand ambushed on a mazarin.

'Nu Bello Cardillo Revisited

2005-08-17T18:16:00.000+02:00

The pale blue light has already made its way from over the horizon and slowly seeps through my half-open window. And then he comes. His first chirp is almost dreamlike. The gentle song of the sparrow awakes my clouded mind to the beginning day on the empty quiet street. I can see his silky confectioner’s sugar dotted plumage of caramel and hazels, his fragile cotton breast swelling with vivid air as he prepares to sing of the approaching sun. The ageless song of old lovers. There is something inappropriate in the sound of his flight into my bedroom, something of a scandal, soon forgotten. His harmless claws hush against my skin as he hops from rib to rib, peculiarly spreading his minute wings with a rustle of white sheet. Circling courtship to my heart. His tiny beak is cold and soft as it caresses my chest, right under my sternum, but feels warmer as it strikes again. And surely, a blazing sword as it starts tearing through the flesh. His little black pearly eyes look excitedly toward their goal. The down of his neck now sparkles with a thick red necklace, and as he digs deeper toward my chocolate box shaped organ, drops of blood trickle along his feathers with every shake of his head and tail, antique rubies running from a newly discovered treasure. Before his final stroke, I mean to plead with him to let me rest, for I could not sleep again. But he rises again, tiny murderous automaton, and sounds his deadly chirp: “It is over.”

Soundtrack: "All the Pretty Little Horsies", Current 93

Mrs F. Recurrant Dream

2005-08-12T02:32:00.000+02:00

Mrs F. put her hand on the banisters. She saw the carved wood glimmer in the semidarkness. And now she could feel it as well. The banisters had never failed her, supporting her during dreadful days, as she would come down and lose all strength for a memory. The feeling of everything tumbling down, as she would realize: he had ceased to exist, long before she even admitted it.
But again, she heard a muffled tinkle from behind the kitchen door.
The hall smelled of beeswax and myrrh. She loved the soothing, reassuring smell of it. She kept it this way, to remind her that she was safe now, she was home. It could not be. He had never lived to see this house. Surely, her husband, awoken by the clicking of the bedroom doorknob would follow her down and point out the absurdity of it with a sympathetic smile, almost condescending. But nobody moved upstairs.
And the muffled tinkle rippled through the shadows once more.
The thick and soft Persian rug turned to icy velvet against her bare feet, minute silk needles pushing into her soles. A twist in her stomach begged her to go back to bed, to run away to her safer husband’s side. But she had to know. She heard the sound again. She had to reach for the door and thrust it open.
And expectedly, the light was on. Expectedly, she saw the back of his untidy white haired head behind the table, his bent weary back as he rummaged for pans in the cupboard under the sink. And expectedly, raw vegetables that he would not remember how to cook stood on the counter, ready to be put as such in a pan, over a stove that he would not remember how to work. And he would not remember why.
She closed the door behind her.
He stood up. And she knew. Just a body. His wrinkled mellow skin hung like rags on his thin bones. His yellow emaciated face bore the still features of a melted wax bust. His eyes were circled with red flesh from which every lash had fled. They looked like wounds. And from these wounds protruded blood shot bulbs with grey irises that showed no sign of recognition, no hint of self-consciousness. No awareness. Full size picture of a corpse inserted into her kitchen. Just a machine. But she had to help, even though she feared him more than anything else. She had to guide the machine, until it broke. She always did. Always would. So she took the machine’s cold arm and said gently:
“Come on, father. I’ll take you to your room.”

Shove A Blood Stained Carrot Up Your Shitty Ass

2005-08-08T23:30:00.000+02:00

It is very easy to cut one's finger with a paring knife. Mind your mind, drifting away. The window above the kitchen sink. Big screen for old dreams. Undemented fulfillment of a campus goddess. Incarnated glamour of an elitist suburb. Every man and their son’s fantasy, that beauty next dear, "such a bitch", such jealousy. Football team captain of a husband grown into unquestionable handsome in full reign over the country club. Domestic lust in silk and lace, rose petalled way to never forsaken most expensive, enduring mattressed matrimonial bed in the neighborhood.
But a shadow stands in the projector’s way.
Football team captain of a husband grown into inconsiderate jerk is standing outside the window, uncoveted lips shaping words at Prozac bred average housewife: “Dinner’s on it’s way?”
Shove a blood stained carrot up your shitty ass.

Sycamores

2005-08-06T04:45:00.000+02:00

Unfurling wind turns to breeze as it comes down on the land and caresses the grass. Hovering sycamores, ghosts scattered along the horizon. Yet, the sun.
Count to three and close your eyes. Mime a tree and walk in lines.
A gentle blow through armour of leaves, sparkling tinkle, organic bells. Never was the sky bigger, triangles of blue light amidst secretive greens, the forbidden property of murderous caterpillars, chlorophyllous womb for skeletal spiders. Urge to live.
Cross your heart, skip aside, turn around, make a wish, take a run, be the first, touch the tree.
A rustle in the grass comes to us in a line, quiet undertow, reaches us like a drug flowing in our veins, soft orgasm of the innocents. Earth lulls disassembled body in the timeless doze of sunbeams. Fresh lips longing for moist skin, never daring.
Prance around, cross your feet, cross the line, something terrible may happen.
Faraway silhouetted man on a bicycle, steady like a plane high up in the sky, second hand on a tranquil watch, so soon out of sight, too far to be heard in the silent thunder of immensity. Lay back, shed a tear to run down into your hair, fluid diamond on flesh, running down to the dirt, eyes gazing intently in the vagueness of a boundless space, wanting more.
Flip around, close your eyes, run ahead, prance around, come to me, walk in lines, sycamores, come to me, take my hand, skeletal spiders, shed a tear, sycamores, cry for more, lips on skin, truth or dare, organic bells, immensity, cry for more, flip around, say the words, I want you, urge to live, urge to you, chlorophyllous womb, tranquil watch, I want you, boundless space, ghosts along the horizon, cry for more, second hand, unfurling, diamond on flesh, armour of leaves, make a wish, something terrible may happen, I want you, unison, immensity, unison, touch the tree, undertow, lay back.
Disassembled body in the timeless doze of sunbeams, trembling limbs exude the sugary sweat of satisfactory guilt. Never was the sky bigger.
Yes, the sun.

Envy

2005-08-04T03:33:00.002+02:00

August is usually dry. Fits of heat, overdose of trash. Not this time. August doesn't know where it stands. Sunbeams and downpours, days for nothing and running time.
Envy, though.
A memory, crawls up my back like a secret, dust in between creaking wood floor panes, feed us, give us, envy.
August is usually immense. Forlorn cities looking up at the empty sky, feed us, give us, time flies as bees come dying on the hard wood floor, fluttering down the chimney, too old to soar again, a last spasmodic buzz like a dying drug addict, a last attempt to sting your bare feet, feed us, give us.
Not this time. Wall to wall carpet.
August is usually blue, empty skies, scarce baby clouds, passing by like a lamb lagging behind the flock - mind the wolf, feed us, give us - crows playing in the blue void, gathering speed against the dazzling blue screen, black feather kids with air drifts toys, and nothing to stop them, feed us, give us.
Not this time.
August is usually fun. The city is a village, all ours, café terraces, tourists and beggars, a faraway country, our garden of a city, our playground of a metropolis. I got a new front wheel for my bicycle. I oiled the chain. Never went that fast, air slapping my face, never went that quiet, trees flashing past my eyes, cars' horns and frightened grannies, traffic jam maze slaloming empty streets, sharp turn steep slopes, faster, quieter, round and round, race with the wind, I'm twelve again, light as air, fast as light, nothing can stop me. Envy.
Feed me. Give me.