Bloodbath

During the day we manage to forget about them.
The heat warms up the air and our mood, nature sings with joy, our hearts get lighter, there's no room left for dread. As the sun sets, the world becomes peacefully quiet. After the day's excitement, life retreats to savour the night's chill.

Meanwhile, we wretched souls are not granted this sweet lull and another kind of chill trickles down our spine, stinging like needles between our vertebrae for we know they're waiting in the dark to fall upon us mercilessly. We strive to remain alert but they know exhaustion will seize us. They know that soon enough, their time will come to sneak upon us in the vulnerability of our sleep.

One by one, in every home, they attack. It always start quietly yet no less vile but soon a blood frenzy will take hold of them. No one will be spared, they bare no distinction and have no sense of pity. They're sharp and precise but never satiated, they will come and come at you again. We don't know why they can't simply strike at once, perhaps they feed on our pain and insanity too.

Thus will the night go. Every time we collapse with fatigue despite the agony, they will assault and taunt and torture, on and on until finally, they withdraw with daylight. Once again mosquitoes have ruined your night.

Know how to waste your time.

Sit down on the balcony.

It’s half past five, there’s a smell of going-back-to-school in the air, soon the bell is going to chime the end of summer. The sun is on its way down but it’s still warm and angled just right. Up in the solid blue sky, time is passing. Let it go past. Enjoy the breeze, the warmth, the subtleties of the light’s reflections and bounces. Watch the honeysuckle grow back.

Take a good chunk of time and savour it for what it is. Don’t make anything of it, don’t grind it into efficiency. Nurture it, cherish it. Let it embrace you and sway along its gentle hum. It is of good advice: it always knows what you truly need, rather than what you think you want.

It takes actual skills to waste one’s time. Don’t do it properly and you’ll only end up with guilt, remorse and the sour aftertaste of stale butterflies. Do it with purpose and a smile on your face and you’ll feel rejuvenated.

Why spending one’s life multitasking on a treadmill? What’s the point of turning oneself into a mere operating unit? When life’s a bitch and she tries hard to break you down, just turn your back to her and send her to hell. Have a rest and be thoroughly unproductive. Have a good taste of time, enjoy it like a pipe, a piece of chocolate, a glass of whisky or all three at once. Let it fill you up until everything else has been pushed out and remain there for a while. Peacefully.

Sweet angel.

Why do I always have to catch cute things, like butterflies or ladybirds? Why can’t I catch fire or the small pox? Or even a bullet in my leg?

In the cartoons there’s a bunny with a tiny bunny on each of his shoulders. One is a little angel him and the other one is a little demon him. One tells him to do good, the other tells him to do bad. I’ve had a look over my shoulders but I could see no one. I think it’s because a long time ago, the tiny demon me slaughtered the tiny angel me and now he just wears his skin. It is who I am but people only see the sweet angel skin. Sometimes the demon wants to jump out and shout but the angel skin is very tight. One day he will find his way out. Not now, not yet. It would be quite nice and I would be freed but I can’t let them see the real me. In the meantime, I keep him busy.

They sometimes call me naughty. They’d be more accurate with nasty. It’s only little mean  actions, yet satisfactory. The maid got severely whipped for the silverware she had never sneaked in her drawers. From the vantage point of the heavy curtains, I saw the white skin of her back get more and more lashed with pink, then dots of red, until it turned fully purple. Then they kicked her out of the back door, half naked and sobbing pathetically. I never liked that Emily. She didn’t know how to comb my hair properly.

I found the stables cat hideout. She didn’t found her litter the day after. It’s annoying because now she miaows desperately at night when I’m trying to focus and write. But it also makes me giggle because I remember the funny high pitch gurgly sound from the bottom of the pond. Anyway, she won’t complain much longer; I heard the butler say that noisy cat wouldn’t last two more nights if she didn’t hush at last. 

It’s only bits and pieces, little mischief. When I am strong and cunning enough, it will be a different story. Day after day, I observe silently. I note I retain, I deduce I discern. I teach myself the art of deceit. I will grow manipulative, I will grow powerful. And the angel skin will fool them all.

4 o'clock break.

I am sitting outside, in the sun, with a glass of red wine in my hand. I badly needed some rest, my body is shattered. I lay slouched and slumped while the descending sun bakes me gently. Birds are tweeting all around, some squirrel argue, flies and bumblebees buzz right under my nose. My little orange tree proudly explodes with regained vigour. Time flows around my bubble of absolute hold. I’m in a motionless state of peace.

I think of you.

Can the blazing sun even reach you? Has your mind been at peace at all? I wish you too could halt and unstrain just as I do right now.

I think of you and my heart sinks. Tears have left tepid trails on my fiery skin. They slowly dry up and evaporate. I wish summer could dry up your sorrows so they too could evaporate.

I am thinking of you so much, every day, and there’s nothing else I can do.

Drifting thoughts at the gym.

Here we are again, entering the temple of sweat.

I walk along the alley at my usual slow pace, going past the rowers. Over there in the back is the free weight section, the grunting men territory. The rest of the gym is mostly my girls’ kingdom. When you come regularly as I do, you learn to recognize them, you start knowing their habits, the day they normally come, what their routine is.

Right now, my blonds are on the mats. One is skipping while the other stretches and does all sorts of legs movements on the floor. I seem to feel some kind of tension between them. I don’t think they know eachother other than from using the same gym. I can feel them weighting eachother up like cats do, from the corner of their eyes, pretending not to. Clearly the blondest one has the advantage on flexibility, she’s impressively souple that one. I suspect the skipper is envious. She clearly struggles when comes her stretching time, just before she leaves. For now she keeps the skipping going. I’d say she’s trying to show off her stamina.

Ah, but do not worry my loves, I appreciate you two just as much. None of you needs to win, you are equally beautiful in your own way.

Next to the mats are a couple of bikes and then the treadmills. How differently each body reacts is fascinating. Every step sends a vibration that climbs and curls up, stroking and waggling thighs, bums, even backs sometimes on its way, to end up swinged away by the tip of a bouncing ponytail.

Sport clothes for women are normally on the tight side. I wonder where that comes from. Although this is not in my habits, if I met the man who had that brilliant idea I would hug him very fondly. (It can only be a man’s idea.) That being said, there’s that girl who only does jogging, in large shorts and Tshirt. It’s quite nice for a change. It leaves more room to the imagination.

Oh, here come my indian princesses. Hello my sweet chubby little girls.

Considering their pace of training, I guess their silhouette is not likely to change some time soon. Great. Beauty lies in variety. They are such a couple of adorable dolls. I would get tired of athletic girls if that was all there was. Amongst all these people training like madmen, they are a peaceful breeze, a halt, a minute of grace. Their words roll like so many waves over the shore. I love listening to them talking softly in the distance, there is so much gentleness in those two.

My Indonesian sweety is here too. She limps quite strongly but that couldn’t make her any less beautiful. I wonder how old she really is; she’s so petite she looks like a child. She seems so sweet and fragile you want to protect her.

You just saw me now and I can see your face grow longer and your eyes open wide. A hint of disgust starts building up. Yes, I’m an old man. Yet that’s doesn’t necessarily make me a pervert, does it? These girls are young enough to be my grand daughters, I observe them with a caring fondness, I admire their youth and energy. You cannot understand what it is to see your body let you down some more every day, not grasping how that happened. Yesterday I was forty and today people look at me as though I had never been young.

Believe it or not, I too was young once. Strong and unstoppable. I had endless possibilities ahead of me. Wrinkled as I am you wouldn’t picture it, yet I have charmed many hearts and embraced many tender bodies in my time. I remember these soft skins, these ferm hips under my palms, our insouciance and our passion. Now I watch others glowing with vigour. From my side of the existence, it is even more so admirable. Back then I was not aware how much I ought to cherish it, how transient youth is. 

Do not think I am a dispirited old man, however. I have no longing nor regrets: I can appreciate beauty to a fuller extent. Bless them, when the beauty of life materialises in the form of pretty young women, your day gets even brighter.

Three cans and a poney.

‘Hey there!’

‘Oh, hi!’

‘Good to see you, how have you been? I haven’t caught the sleeve of you in ages.’

‘Mmh, there’s been silt in my watercan lately, it was a bit chilly for the bees to pollinate.’

‘Oh, poor thing, I had no idea. You should have scrubbed the pan, that’s what friends are for.’

‘Yeah, I know… But hey, when the doormat is stuck sideways, it’s hard for the hinges to let go, right?’

‘What happened? Is the cover still on fire?’

‘Nah. Mostly sorted now. You remember Anna? From work?’

‘The tall one? The one who was always after the treadmill?’

‘Ahah, yes exactly. That Anna. Well. Months ago, maybe you remember, she decided she wouldn’t sort out the socks no more. At that time, I thought: “fair enough”. No woman likes a hair in her cleavage so I couldn’t blame her. Plus at the end of the day, it’s all about sharing the pipe isn’t it? But then you know how she is, she’s got a penny in her belly. So instead of filling up the bucket as everyone thought she would, she kept the fallen pips under the fridge, sat along the river and waited for the hedgehog to cross the road.’

‘No way?!’

‘Yes, but here’s the best bit: she didn’t realise her leather bag would get mouldy when she left it on the carpet.’

‘Ahah, brilliant! You should learn not to stay under the branch while you’re cutting it.’

‘Tell me about it. There she was, thinking she had an aeroplane in the garage. But when the cake rises too much, it’s just dry and empty inside. Savory or not.’

‘So… Is the horse back to the stable then?’

‘Kinda. Well, almost. There’s still a bit of mould in the corners.’

‘Don't you worry, love. The ice cubes will melt even in a late summer.’

‘I know… I just wished I had turned the mattress over in the first place. Normally, if I think there might be a cat under the stool, I scratch my ear at it. I suppose I just had too much faith in the weather forecast this time.’

Spring cleaning!

Mop the floors, dust down the top of every wardrobe and door frame.

Defreeze the freezer and clear every unidentifiable item from it.

Dislodge the fridge and sweep away the woodlouse corpses.

Attack the last inch of mould with bleach, make sure you wear gloves.

Beat the dust and hell out of the door mats.

Every mirror, every window should gleam and shine.

Degrease that kitchen hood. You know it needs it. And how about the top of the kitchen furnitures?

Make the tile grouts white again. Every last of them. Bathroom and kitchen included.

Plug the high sucking extension on your hoover, the long one, and suck up all the mess lodged between the carpet and skirting boards. (dust, rug pills, astroturf pellets, random screws, more woodlouse corpses).

Give the microwave a fresh start.

Get out all the spices, salt and pepper, wipe inside the kitchen cupboards. Same for the flour / sugar / tea one. Brush away all those remaining powders.

Once this is done scrub every door. The ones you open and spread your hands on so many times a day.

Get the last hair off of the living room rug.

May each smeared cloth be an ex voto, each dusty sneeze a prayer. Moping backaches shall be invocations, hoover chants shall be litanies. Let us clean together like we’ve never cleaned before and together worship Spring.

May Spring raise again in all its glory, may He resurrect from the cold ashes of Winter.

Little Green Riding Hood.

Once upon a time there lived a little country girl. She was an only child who lived with her mother on the outskirts of a village, in the middle of a vast land of hills. Everything was green all around for as far as the eye could see. The little girl was not used to the other children who impressed her a bit whenever she would meet them on market days. Her only friends were the farm animals: she would play the school teacher with rabbits, chase hens and sing nursery rhymes to newborn calves. Still, her games of choice would always take place in the fields. She loved running down the hills as fast as she could without falling, or would sometimes roll them down on purpose as she found the dizziness exhilarating. She would also build luxurious mansions by flattening the tall grass blades and layout mazes of corridors leading to spacious dining rooms. She knew the name of each flower in the meadow and picked a little bouquet for her mother every day. As much as she rejoiced in seeing her daughter so delighted, her mother often felt sorry to find her clothes smudged with grass stains. One day, she made a little green riding hood for the girl to wear when playing outdoors. The child liked it so much she would wear it at all times, and this is why everybody called her Little Green Riding Hood.

One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her: Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter. Little Green Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village. Somewhere in the middle of the forest, she met with a wolf. He would have very much like to devour her on the spot, for he had eaten but a shrew in the past three days, yet he dared not: he was too wary of the woodcutters who could be heard working nearby. As softly as he could he asked her: Well lovely girl, beautiful day for a walk. Where are you off to, alone in these woods? The poor child was innocent and very fond of animals. She only knew the gentle ones from the farm and could have not imagined there existed fiendish, dangerous beasts. She said to him: I am on my way to visit my grandmother who has been feeling ill. My mother sent me to carry her this cake and this little pot of butter. Why, the poor women. I know her very well but I had not heard of her misfortune. You see me extremely sorry to learn such terrible news. I shall walk along with you and bid her my best wishes.

Little Green Riding Hood loved her grandmother dearly so she was very pleased to hear a good friend would come and visit her too. On the way she was cheerful and voluble, asking the wolf a thousand questions about the woods, which she wasn’t familiar with. At the sight of an unknown flower she chortled and clapped her hands and called the wolf in her high pitched voice. The wolf patience was wearing thin. His stomach rumbled, he was drooling over the girl’s plump little fingers, and her shrieks made him nervous, for he did not want to be found out. Nevertheless he had to remain patient and play along some more but he knew his time would come soon. In fact he suddenly realized he had not heard the sound of an axe for quite some time and set out to jump on the girl. At that very moment, they were approaching a clearing and the child exclaimed excitedly: Oh look wolf! Look at that hill down there! Let’s race down! With these words she left him no choice and grabbed the wolf by the pawn. Caught unprepared, he immediately stumbled over a large root and hurtled down the hill, rolling and tumbling, only to violently end up his flight in a crash against the trunk of a wide oak tree.

Crying with guilt and despair, Little Green Riding Hood carried the unconscious wolf to her grandmother’s house. The good woman dressed his wounds and took care of him, and soon he recovered. He never regained his wit however, and the grandmother became famous in the land for owning the only pet wolf ever heard of since time immemorial.

Night time (part 2)

Ok, I’ll have to describe it eventually. Beware, that’s going to be ridiculous. I suppose that’s why I’m delaying it so much, I can’t get myself to face it. I know there’s no reason to be upset about it but I can’t explain it. It’s not about the events, it’s about the overlap between dream world and real world. The same uneasiness you find in A Nightmare on Elm Street. See what I mean? So. Deep inside I don’t know what truly happened or didn’t. I’ll just describe it as I seem to remember it.

I went to bed early yesterday. I was knackered, my house wouldn’t heat up so all I could think off was tucking in in bed with a good book. I love my house by the way, it’s an awesome duplex with the kitchen and living room downstairs and the bedroom and bathroom upstairs. Small terraced house but perfect for a single woman. I don’t need more rooms, it feels like a proper living space since it’s on two floors. I like how even though quite small, it feels like a grown up space, not a student accomodation. The downside is: because up and downstairs communicate, it’s one single space with no doors to block the heat then the living room gets pretty chilly in winter. Well, to put it straight it’s freezing cold when I come back from work in the evening these days. Especially since the open kitchen is an extension which was build as a veranda. It looks fantastic on sunny days or in spring when all the trees blossom but again. Even chillier in winter. So anyway, doing it again, escaping the problem, not getting to the heart of it. I went to be bed early. As it turned I didn’t read much and quickly started to doze off, but I tried to fight it. I didn’t want to wake up all sharp and fresh at five the next morning. Already I got in that strange mood of sleeping and not, reading a sentence and finishing it in a dream, mixing up the story I was reading and the events of the day. I kept on hearing distant clicking sounds, faint scraping or something. It was a windy night, I was confusing dream and reality again. And I even did this thing I hate: the dream within a dream where you dream you woke up. Nothing messes me up with me as much as that.

Eventually I woke up and got up. For real. At least that’s what it felt like. Brrr it was cold outside of the bed so I slipped in my woolen dressing gown, the ugly but warm one. And in my knackered slippers, same style. Yeah baby, that’s the beauty of single life. I had to go downstairs, there was something in the kitchen, I could hear it. I checked around, I needed some kind of weapon. Handbag? useless. Bedside lamp? maybe. Glass of water? I could hurt myself. A pile of books to throw away? I like my books too much. Eventually I opted out for the iron, blunt enough and it’s got a good grip. Perhaps the power cable could also come in handy one way or another. I was trying to retrace my steps mentally and check whether I had closed the door properly. If I had not, one of the neighbourhood cats could have got in and that’s what would be messing about in the kitchen. Like that black and white one, the one which gnawed on my gammon last summer. He knows the way that one.

I soon realized I wouldn’t have to worry about a hissing cat resisting my authority when I saw the shadow of man. Holy crap, there’s a man in my kitchen, what am I going to do? The landline phone is in the living room, if I shout he’ll hear me before the neighbours do, I don’t want to lock myself up in the bathroom like the stupid girl who dies in the movie and my mobile’s in my jacket on the coat stand next to the entrance. Shitshitshitshitshit. My heart was pounding and my skin tingled in waves. Awake or not I can tell that felt real. I went down a few steps to try and catch the man’s face. And then I saw the whole of him. He was wearing an apron. ‘I kiss better than I cook’. And he was making an omelette, visibly trying to beat the eggs as discreetly as he could. He looked agitated, always checking towards the stairs so I had to spy on his reflection instead. He poured the beaten eggs in the preheated frying pan, added salt and pepper and fumbled in my cupboard while it was cooking. By the time the omelette was ready he had laid the table for himself and when he sat down in front of it he suddenly relaxed with a blissful, relieved smile on his face. For a second there he seemed like the happiest man on earth. He quickly ate up, checking around nervously again.

All that time I just sat in the stairs and I couldn’t do a thing. I was fascinated, stunned even. What on earth was it all about? Could I be dreaming of a man preparing his dinner in my kitchen? Once he finished he cleaned the table, did all the dishes and wipe everything dry to put it away in the cupboards, threw all the rubbish in a carrier bag which he put in a backpack along with his eggs and pepper. He then got to the french window, put his shoes back on (yes, he had removed them), sneaked out and kneeled outside the door. He fiddled at the lock which went ‘click’ and vanished in the night.

I can’t remember how I got back to bed. Could that be because I never got up, because this is too silly to be real. Beside that’s so typical of my dreams. A hint of absurdity and large measure of ordinary, it would fit. And yet… As I said there’s that feeling deep inside that it took place for real. If that was to happen again, I need to find something, some way to prove myself it really happened.

Night time (part 1)

Night time is a strange time. It’s too… fuzzy. Anything happening overnight becomes very unsure in the morning. Did it actually happen or have I dreamt it? Often it lays somewhere in between. Say you are very thirsty. You sort of wake up, think that you should get up and go to the bathroom. Can’t because it’s way too comfy and nice and warm and there you go: you’re asleep again. But your nose is blocked so you’re breathing through your mouth and you are seriously thirsty. You can barely swallow, it feels like the inside of your mouth is turning solid and is going to shatter if you try and close it. As you’re thinking that, you realize with terror this is truly happening. Well it’s not shattering per se but when you closed your mouth your inside cheeks started flaking off. Your try to spit out the flakes but your mouth is too dry and it feels numb. You can’t control your muscles anymore. You try and try again but cannot spit. You’re actually making it worse and your mouth is filling up with more and more flakes. You can feel your cheeks wearing thin. Perhaps it will be better in a second: as your cheeks tear out all the flakes might take off through the gaps. Instead, in a moment of panic you have breathed in too heavily, gasping for air and a cluster of flakes got stuck in your throat.

You wake up coughing. Something feels indeed stuck in your throat but it’s just you being ill and congested. You are really thirsty though, your dreams too are telling you you really should go have some water. Ok this time you will get up. In a second. The bathroom tiling is going to feel so cold under the bare sole of your feet, and the bed sheets will have lost all their warmth when you come back. You know you will have no choice but to go at some point, though. The more you wait the worse you will feel, so you might as well go now. As you gather your will and strength and are just about to drag yourself out of bed, you mum walks in with a pint of water on a tray. ‘You’re ok honey? I heard you cough I thought you might need some water’. She sits down on the edge of your bed and starts stroking your hair. You sit down sleepily and start drinking but the thirst remains. You keep on gulping but no water gets swallowed. Your throat remains thick and dry. You feel like an owl unable to regurgitate its pellets. The glass seems not to empty out, the water remains level. You want to ask your mum what’s going on but your bed lays between dunes and she’s nowhere to be seen. You get out of bed and start sinking through the sand. Slowly it engulfs you. Swallows you. As your head is just about to sink in you wake up in choc. Of course. You fell asleep again.

That’s the time when you were thirsty. There’s the one when foxes fought in the street, the one when you felt too exhausted to brush your teeth before going to bed, the one when you needed to go grab some tissues and woke up set out to blow your nose in your bed sheets. And there’s last night.

I’ve been thinking about it all day. It’s bound to be a dream, it just doesn’t make sense. Yet... It feels so real, it feels so much like it did happened. My mind is playing tricks on me I don’t know what to believe. My instincts are adamant it happened, no doubts, not for a second. But it can’t be real, I know it can’t and it’s distressing as hell. The feeling of this dream reality is so potent it has leaked through my awake life and I’ve been restless since this morning. It feels like I’m losing my mind a bit. I’m going slightly mad. I had the song in mind all day. Oh dear.

Yet the dream wasn’t so horrifying, it was very mundane actually. I had dreams before of a tyrannosaurus devouring me in a swimming pool, of chasing nazi communists who wanted to murder me, of that girl in the girls dorms and showers who was slicing everyone’s wrists. That one was two nights ago actually and it didn’t affect me for a second. I happened to remember bits of it, random sensations while I was having breakfast and simply went ‘blimey, I just had the most horrible dream’. But last night’s... It was unremarkable but it still feels too real.

Oh for God’s sake !

I mean… What the fuck? Seriously.

Back when I was put on the job I was given clear goals and deadlines. Well, supposedly clear. I analysed studies of all the figures from the previous years stats, I prepared my plans. I was set and ready, resources were planned, it was going to be awesome. Super well organised and tracked and managed and everything. We were going to have the best results ever. The deadline was always going to be a bit tight but with good planning we’d not only be able to manage but even to perform well. And then bam! There is comes, in your face.

Three month disappear from your schedule and what used to be a long-term concern suddenly becomes super high priority, very urgent, the most important and only thing everyone should care about. Morons as we are, caring about the job so much, we obediently went along. Admittedly moaning in our corner but never openly, not questioning any decision. It didn’t even occur to us. Damn should we have banged our fists on the table then. Instead we just worked twice as hard, the whole lot of us and every other team around as well. We were all on the same boat, and somehow it made it easier. Tell you what? I think we even kinda enjoyed it for a while. Against all odds, it was going to be alright, we were managing. We were getting that sense of pride and achievement. We were sticking together, we could trust and count and rely on eachother. Yeah, like a bunch of cheerful cretins.

We eventually submitted our projects, they all got signed off, everyone patted eachother’s back. A couple of week later, just when we started to relax a bit, ready to recover at last, have a bit of a rest it just bloody snowed and froze! We all had bloomed! OK you can say it’s kinda fair enough for the hellebores or the winter jasmine somehow, even for the bergenia maybe. But there was a flipping rose out there! It’s frozen to death now, literally so. I can’t believe it’s just dead and nobody care. Go have fun with your snowmen bullshit. Go complain about oh, ‘how hard was it to walk in my heels on that slippery pavement this morning’? There’s some goddamn corpses here, hello.

They told us spring was gonna be early, we had to start blooming now, no choice. Look at that, twelve degrees in December, it can’t go unflowered, that’d be ridiculous. We were so proud of our pre spring, unexpected yet so successful. I promise there was some joy and happiness in the air, and it was thanks to us all. We were giving hope to people, every new petal was pushing the spleen further away. We were doing so well, and so much better than the guys over the channel. We laughed at them then, some old rivalry just never fully gets resolved. Boy must they be laughing now. Well, I guess they don’t actually. Who could laugh at such a carnage? I wouldn’t wish that situation even to my worst enemy. It is just too cruel.

It walks!

We should have known better. No one reacted when the pine cones started to walk. To be fair, how could we? What can you do but freeze when events overwhelm your understanding? There was nothing else to do but ignore and block out a truth that couldn’t be. Acknowledgement would have meant admitting the loss of your own sanity. We all pretended to our individual selves it was the wind, and together we simply wouldn’t mention it. Only the odd supernatural magazine would and we all laughed at it of course. Until that timelapse video was published on vimeo.

The usual clouds rushing through, forming and vanishing on the spot, the light smoothly changing while the grass blades shook frantically. Then, in the middle of the night, it entered the frame. A pine cone going against the direction of what was merely a gentle breeze and couldn’t have pushed it anyway. Brazenly moving with intent, it went across the frame and back, changing directions and angles.

Everyone called fake, obviously. Some said it was a hedgehog after a food trail, some said it was the work of a very skillful stopmotion and compositing artist. Yet, as we all tried to play clever, in the back of our minds were crawling the images of undeniably increasing amounts of crushed pine cones on every road. While no one believed in that nonsense, no one would miss the opportunity to give it a good kick when they came across one, or train their dogs to attack them, just for a laugh. ‘That one didn’t ran away did it?’ Ahah.

And because the internet is terribly bored, it wasn’t long before someone realized that the now famous pine cone was not moving just randomly. If you retraced its trail, it spelt ‘fuck off’. This video became the one online phenomenon, and Psy got quickly forgotten. People started to believe and freak out. It was just like back in the days with the Blair Witch Project and the cairn jokes. Only this time it wasn’t a joke.

Scientists studied their moves and concluded they were indeed purposely and autonomously moving. Somewhat like caterpillars, they would patiently unfold their scales one after the other to push themselves forwards.

You’d think it shouldn’t have mattered so much, if rude at times they were harmless after all. And to be fair, that one got famous but another one in Albania wished people a happy new 2013. Just got less exposition because of the language I suppose. Most of the cones didn’t left messages and simply moved resolutely in a straight line. To me, these ones just couldn’t be bothered but who knows? Maybe the majority is illiterate. Nevermind. The thing is, the cones themselves didn’t represent a threat as such but their new behaviour clashed so hard against the models and representations we relied on, it fucked up everything we believed in. 

And it was only the beginning.

On hold.

When I come back, everything will be just where I left it. I’ll retrace my steps as if I had left the day before. Somehow I will have for all the house knows. The bathroom mat will still be in the corridor, away from the bleach I used to clean the sink with. The two books I couldn’t pack and the copy of Brotherwood I need to give back will be waiting on the coffee table. The plates and cutlery will be dead dry and my last mug still stained with tea in the kitchen. Everything will be unplugged or switched off but the fridge. It’s always the same, nothing happens while you’re away. Time holds its breath and whoever would walk in could get a frozen glimpse of my life.

Sometimes this can happen for over 25,000 years. We watched the Cave of Forgotten Dreams the other day; a documentary film by Werner Herzog about Chauvet Cave, a cave discovered in 1994 in the south of France. Not the best documentary ever, it’s not the editing and visual quality of a BBC documentary by David Attenborough but the subject itself is still fascinating. That cave used to be occupied by human beings who left plenty of drawings and marks before the entrance collapsed, sealing it tightly for 27,000 years or so. Nothing moved; nothing got shuffled around. Only limescale made its way through, slowly but surely. In places you can find not only black marks on the walls where the previous tenants rubbed their torches, but even the fallen pieces of charcoal remain on the ledge below. Very few people are allowed to enter the cave. If someone can testify of what time travel feels like, it must be one of them.

No post

Sorry, no post today. I'm too busy digesting a needlestack.

Ouch.

Back in fifty.

Do you wonder sometimes? How is it all going to be in fifty years time. Look at how you live now, at every detail. Try and take a good snapshot of it so that even in fifty years you can remember today. With luck I’ll still be alive in fifty years and I’ll be eighty. I will have lived close to three times what I’ve lived so far. I’ll be an old woman, I will have lost many loved ones, I’ll struggle with my body to get it to respond. People around will find it hard to believe I have ever been a young woman. My skin will be wrinkled, I’ll look at my hands and see my veins through. So blue under my skin, so thin. It is stretchy today, even though my eyelids are a lot softer than they used to be. There’s a chance I’ll be very much the same person. Wiser hopefully, but probably speaking the same way. Using words already old fashioned now but which used to be youngster slang ten years ago. And everyday I guess, I’ll find hard to believe I’m not forty anymore.

As I’ll read these fifty years old lines I’ll try to remember this very moment. Jb’s having a shower, I’m in the study, we’ve just been watching source code on the projector. The light is on in the corridor to my left. Dark clothes are hanging all over the room. They should be dry by now and they’re waiting to be folded and back to their cupboard. Soon we’ll leave this flat. It’s too damp, too small. Everything gets moldy, even clothes in the cupboard sometimes for god’s sake. Those clothes are probably quite happy just hanging there, actually. It’s Sunday evening and I’m writing for tomorrow.Tomorrow morning I’ll be back at work, making effects in the unreal engine. In fifty years I’ll be retired. What will I do all day long? Now I’m always complaining about time, about all the things I want to make but never find the time for. Will I be making those things as an old lady? Will I have managed to be a writer, an artist? I will probably have children then, possibly even grandchildren. I need to make bread for tomorrow morning. I got some drawing done this weekend, but I still haven’t sorted my old computer. My first computer, the ten years old one I bought with my first salary. We’ve cooked a fine porc Wellington, with sage, bacon and prunes today. One of Jb’s mum recipe. Oh, match of the day now? I had no idea that film was so long.

Hey old lady, do you remember all of that? Well you’re bound to now, as I‘m describing it. Sorry that’s a bit intimate, this conversation between you and me that I’m making public. I didn’t mean it you know, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. It just happened. I kinda pictured you to start with and you’re the one who made me drift away. I hope you can read me, I hope I haven’t forgotten the English language. Today I can marvel at German words I’ve written with that very hand twelve years ago which I simply can’t understand anymore. ‘Noch dazu bezeichnet er sich höher als, deshalb denkt er den Menschen an Sarah jämmerlich’. Yeah, right. If you say so. (That’s most likely not grammatically correct by the way.) I’m hoping so much this won’t happen to my English. I wanted to talk about the world, not about me and certainly not to you. But… I don’t know. Alone in this small room… it makes you navel-gaze a bit I suppose. Had I been in the open, out in a garden with a clear sky above my head, it would have all been different. I would have followed my original intention and focused on the big everything, not on me. Let’s get back to it shall we?

Do you wonder sometimes? How is it all going to be in fifty years time. Everything has changed so much since the sixties. In fifty years, we’ll be in the sixties. For our children, the twenties will be old times for sure, but not the one we would mean. Our twenties will be the nineteen-twenties. The old century. The first world war will be just as vague and confused to them as the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 is to us now. Well to us French people. I bet most of you Brits haven’t even heard of it. Most of the French haven’t either to be fair. While we’re at it. Wars. These days Israel and Palestine are bombing each other again. Again and endlessly. This fight is more than fifty years old already. Will they have found a common ground then? What about north Korea? We know just so little about what’s happening there. What about all the arabic countries fighting their way to freedom? Will they have managed to maintain it, to secure stability and build peaceful nations? What about all the suffering countries I don’t even know the name of? Will Europe be a federal nation and us oldies the last remembrance of old fashioned nationalism then? Or will it have collapsed with each nation withdrawing into itself and glancing sidelong at its neighbours?  What energy will we run on? What will information be like? We’ll be the ones who lived before the internet. Just how our grandparents used to not have cars or even running water in some cases. Will we be lost in a world running at a different pace, based on paradigms we won’t get? It might also end up just being the same old thing, slowing evolving but all in all dragging along for fifty years to remain quite the same after all.

Anyway. However the world around, I hope I haven’t messed it up for you old lady. Take care.

Words and their special meanings.

 Potent.

This one is interesting. I have some memories about this word but I also know already of what it will evoke to me someday.

For the current memories: It must be spring, I am gardening as always. Potent to me is a red plastic watering can and my previous upstairs neighbours with his hat on. I borrowed the former from the latter one day and he warned me not to be surprised by the smell (the latter did). It had been hosting nettle leaf plant food, and he told me it was potent. Because of that first encounter, for a long time I thought potent should be used about something smelling heavily and unpleasantly.

Even though I know the whole meaning of potent now, its special meaning is only partly what I used to know about it: a smell so strong it makes you jump back and try expel it from your body, and probably frown and wrinkle and wince. Interesting fact for those who don’t know about nettle plant food: the literal French translation would be ‘nettle manure’. That should give you a good picture of how strong it gets.

The other part of potent is all gardening bliss: robins getting closer and closer over the summer to come and steal the worms I’ve digged out, and even grabbing them from my palm a few times. The soothing smell of damp soil and leaves I love so much, the joy and excitement at every new bud. That time when I dug out a stump and managed to make a mess more massive than my strip of garden will ever be. The fruitless fight against ivy who’s going to claim its territory back as soon as I move out but I don’t care and keep on ripping it off until my fingers are sore. The satisfaction of seeing that lily of the valley field in front of my house where I’ve cleared out some space for it to grow better. (Essentially by ripping off ivy. See ivy, SEE?)

Now for the future. Potent is all about spring and gardening in our current flat, here and now. It can’t really be about Cambridge yet because everything’s covered in Cambridge when you still live there. But some day I know, potent will make me wistful. I will remember a period of my life, and all the good friends I’ve left behind whom I’ll probably never meet again. The weekend playing games or drinking out or visiting the nearby countryside. Grandchester blackberries, ballet classes at Bodyworks, Sunday morning’s breakfast from Sainsbury’s in town on that bench over that Cam’s bend with St John’s in the background. And Wednesday dinners. All the little things you can take for granted, all the everyday places. All the minor things which have become meaningful just because they’ve been part of your life one day. That constant smell of washing powder in that alley leading to that footbridge, that shop where the pasta on display always looks dry. The parks, cows and pubs, the colleges and the river. The local shops and all the people you know but don’t, but who are part of your happy day to day life.

Mirror mirror on the wall.

There is such a thing as a faulty mirror. Not a mirror that merely distorts shapes a bit or a lot. These ones we know about: concave, convex, we have seen them before in funfairs and they cannot trick us anymore. Back in forty-eight, Orson Welles had them tamed already.

Sometimes they are not intentionally fancy, just… cheap. These ones, you might want to try and get tricked by. We had one of them in London. That mirror was reflecting the house of long and thin model students. The cheap reduced-to-clear diet had no effect on these guys.

No. Here I am talking truly faulty mirror. One that does not reflect the correct image. It is unclear where it picks it up from but one thing for sure, it is not not from whom who faces it.

Mind you, some mirrors are diligent. Take the one from your workplace. You’d meet it in the morning, when you have just arrived and need to wash your hands because your bicycle chain came off again or quickly check your hair as it is so windy today. This one does just fine. Your hair is neat and glossy, skin fresh, make up spotless. The morning sun adds a touch of grace and makes you so worth it. And the mirror captures it just fine.

However, try the mirror down your workplace local pub on a Friday night. This one gets it all wrong. Every single time. At least it’s consistent. You leave work, go for a drink and normally need the toilet at one point or another. Up to that moment you were rather jolly, having a good untroubled time. That’s precisely when you have to meet that vile mirror. Your face is that of roast chicken, your nose could easily lead French boats over a stormy North Sea, and you look like an exhausted racoon losing its pretend human shape (minus the stretchy balls).

You turn around but you’re alone in the room, it’s not someone else’s reflection you mistook for yours. The mirror is really pretending that is you. The lighting is not so good here but you couldn’t righteously blame so much on it. It could be a prank mirror which is really a screen displaying the results of an elaborate real time hag algorithm, but that seems a bit expensive. Besides, there couldn’t be any electrical equipment allowed in the restroom for health and safety reasons. Then…it has got to a portal to another dimension very much like our world. Only over there, people look terribly unhealthy. Mmmh, no, not very plausible. Surely they would be some lag.

In that case I can only see one explanation: mirrors simply get tired. It all ties in. The one from work just had a long quiet night, and for sure it gets breaks throughout the day. Why would it keep on reflecting if no one’s here to appreciate? Work bathrooms never get so busy, people are usually not very inclined to linger there. Therefore, those mirrors get plenty of rest and they can easily be sharp and zealous when you walk in. But the pub one on a Friday night must be exhausted with all those back and forth of pint drinkers. When you think about it, you never look so bad when you go for a quick drink on a weekday or for team lunch. It’s always on Fridays.

It must be such hard work scrutinizing and mimicking all those details. You have to understand colour, motion, acting, physics, light bounces… You need to analyze and assimilate every single detail, then seamlessly reproduce each to perfection. My… no wonder they wear themselves out.

So we got to the bottom of it, what to do about it now? Maybe I should talk to the pub owners and get them to swap mirrors halfway through the evening. I can very well understand the poor mirror is having a hard time but that’s doesn’t justify the groundless concerns inflicted to blameless customers either.

Back home.

October cows, resting in the dark

do you really like horse chestnuts?

Shadows of fur upon shadows of grass, they are watching

over the river Cam.

Cycles whizzing past,

streaks of reds or streaks of whites

it is not the time for a courtly ride

along the river Cam.

White stains of still swans

a gathered herd of marine sheeps

so bright in the moonlight they hover

above the river Cam

At night the river Cam gets bored of staying in bed.

in a myriad of herself she plunges into the air.

with thousands of chirpy eyes

she peeps in the streets and the parks.

When she is contented she will rest on the blades 

and let herself slide down to bed.