Αλύγιστοι.

Υπάρχουν άνθρωποι αλύγιστοι, άνθρωποι σκληροί.
Αποφασίζουν και χτίζουν τον κόσμο με δύο μονάχα αποχρώσεις,
και οτιδήποτε δε χωράει εντός αυτών παραγράφεται.

Μαζί μας, ή εναντίων μας.

Τόσο απλά. Και τις νύχτες, που δε τους βλέπει κανένας, ονειρεύονται,
στιγμές ευτυχίας αναπολούν, και φαντάζονται τις ίριδας τα χρώματα να γεμίζουν τις στιγμές τους.

Μα σαν ξυπνήσουν, ξαναφοράν το σιδηρούν προσωπειο με το αλύγιστο χαμόγελο,
και ξαναρχίζουν, ανέγγιχτοι να διαγράφουν όσα εμπίπτουν στα όνειρα και τις νυχτόβιες φαντασιώσεις τους.

Μια μέρα, δε θα προλάβουν να κοιμηθούνε και να αγγίξουν το όνειρο,
και συμπιεσμένοι θα μείνουν για πάντα.

Dreaming of water and tar.

You sleep and dream and ideas take form.

The forms of women you loved,
of others you desired,
and yet others you rejected.
The half naked bodies, teasing you, merging into one ideal form,
whose features shift and change each time a wave hits the beach you are standing on.

The sun soars, for in your dream he can and will obey poetry rather than the Cartesian dictatorship. So it soars, far, far above. You are alone, for it is a dream, and the woman is of no importance any more.

Your feet push into the fine white sand. The water licks around them, overcoming the slight rise of sand your weight has created. The water is cold.

Perhaps in the reality, so far away, your feet have escaped the confines of the blankets. Perhaps.
But you ignore it. The water raises to meet your desire to be submerged, and fish and dolphins are flying above you, free.

The silvery bellies of the Seabass reflect a light that keeps spinning. You loose yourself in the moment.

You need to exhale, but fear you will drown, and then, yet again, the body, outside the dream takes over, and as you exhale, a relief spreads inside the sea, before deciding to turn into dread, as you start to inhale water. But your lungs breathe effortlessly the salty liquid. It is a joy so intense that you forget everything, you loose yourself in the water.

When you resurface, the clouds have returned to plague you. You instantly are dry, you instantly are lost in a maddening crowd, that is walking around you, pressing you, bumping against you. They are endless, faceless, with suits of grey or brown. There is no woman in red. Just these faceless drones.

The rain starts falling horizontally, and the pedestrians, in response, start walking vertically on the walls, fleeing the droplets by ascending on the buildings' walls, climbing upwards, overcoming the clouds in their haste to escape the rain. Newton can join Cartesius in shutting the fuck up.

In a moment you are alone in the depressing, flickering street light. No cars are moving, there is no wind, and the rain has abated. You are in Pireus, a city you visited when younger, and realising that, you walk towards the diner where you used to play role playing games.

You pass abandoned shop after abandoned shop, and they all seem to be selling newspapers and dirty magazines, with ladies with huge tits on the cover, all naked, yet in no way desirable. When you look at them, their faces change to bare distorted teeth, their bodies turn fat, with triple chins, and folds all over. You start running.

By the seaside you realise that the water has turned into tar. A black vastness upon which you can see no reflection. All the people that had vanished are bellow its dark surface. All the strangers. All the people you have ever cared for. Your grandfather, with his Charlie Chaplin moustache, and his withered muscles that seemed to be tortuously stretched on his bones. Your cousin, with her bald head after the chemo. Then your exes, and the friends that used to share your life. All there. Your parents, older than they are now, their teeth rotten, their eye sockets empty, staying hugged in a loving, yet sad, embrace. You cannot see anyone but you know that below the tar, everything you ever loved or could have loved, lies.

And you look back, and the city is old and destroyed, nature taking back its rightful due, trees erupting from amongst stopped cars, and from inside the buildings, wolves howling in the darkness. You are afraid, and you know that once again you fear your own mortality.

Realising that brings a flicker to the world. For a moment your room in Paris superimposes itself on this grim world. And then the moment is gone and the dream is gone, and you are naked under the blanket in Paris, in your apartment, on the sofa, alone. It is 3 or 4 in the morning, and you lie there awake, and this reality seems more frightening than the dream. You are thirsty.

Casino Surnatural

I sit, surrounded by blackness, hearing her breath; it has the regular, slow pace of the drugged. After quite some time, I hear her stirring. I switch the lights on. I had hoped she would remain under the drug's influence for the whole 3 hours it takes for the medicine to work. Still. Since she is awake, I might as well proceed.

“Ah, you are coming back. Just in time for some civilised conversation. No no no.”

The sound of a metal implement hitting flesh resounds.

“I have to insist. Don’t get up. Let us talk”.

Sobbing noises. Blood is running from the fresh would on her shoulder.

“And when I say us, I mean me. Where was I? Ah, yes.”

“There are many types of casinos.

I have seen modern ones, that try, and usually succeed, to pull off this Swedish/Japanese minimalistic style, with empty spaces, with colours of black and white and deep emerald green, with carpets made of some strange synthetic that feels like a Gray-sand beach lays beneath your feet. Their  tables are modern, supported only one leg, which tends to not even reside bellow the barycentre of the table, usually favouring one of the corners of the table for its position. And that is if the tables even have corners! They can also be elegantly suspended tables, hanging from the roof. The walls are covered with flat-screens, showing a permanent calm sea, or some other bullshit Zen concept, on an infinite, one hour long loop. The columns at those places are statues of the finest detail. If only you could see them.

Then, there are what I have come to consider the standard casinos, with patterns of red, yellow, brow and gold all around, with light bulbs and lights wheeling and changing around you. The music is loud in the aisles, forcing you to get to the quiet spots, where gambling is taking place. The walls are brown, the tables are brown, the carpets are thick and monochrome and make always give me the impression of being a huge lichen that has invaded the room.

Finally there are the ones that are just like the standard ones, just older and sadder. Like all casinos, these casinos put on a lot of make-up on, but, like the stewardesses these employ, no amount of make up manages to hide the fact they are past their prime. The golds and reds and lights seem to be fading away when you do not focus on them. The carpets are torn, and the stick of beer can no longer be removed. But what am I talking about, you obviously know these ones, we are in the basement of one of them.

My, oh my, this is turning more into a monologue than a dialogue! Logos is speech, and mono means only, or one, in Greek. 

Dio, means two. It also means God in Latin, but what did they know about the subtleties of language?

So it takes two, dio, to dialogue, miss... I am sorry, I did not catch your name.”

She has been crying there, tied on her chair.

“My,” she sobs after seeing my expression, “my name is Hanna. Please, please let me go. I ...”

I kick her and the chair down. The sound of her meat hitting the ground from a certain hight and her cry of pain, interrupts her tiresome interruption.

“Hanna; I am sorry for this, but you were diverging from our subject. Now, what do you think all types of casinos have in common, Hanna?”

The girl only sobs.

“I asked you”

, the sounds of a boot,

 ”a”,

 repeatedly,

 “fucking”,

 connecting with flesh,

 “question”,

punctuating  my words,

 “Hanna”.

The cries of pain, the sobs, continue.

“But you do not seem disposed to answer me. Well, I will tell you what people think about casinos. People think that casinos are places you always loose. Everyone knows it. Statisticians know it, gamblers know it, everyone knows it. What they sell, people say, is the dream. The dream of easy money.

Or they might say that casinos exist to clean away dirty money. Let me tell you something Hanna: Money is never dirty. I have to quote the Romans, even though I hate them, on this one:  “Pecunia non olet”, money does not smell. It has a funny story, this phrase does. Do you want to hear it Hanna?”

She has not stopped crying, but she manages a “Yes” between two gasps for air.

“Vespasian, he was a Roman emperor,  imposed a Piss tax on the distribution of urine from public urinals in Rome. You see, the urine collected from public urinals was sold as an ingredient for several chemical processes. It was used in tanning, and also by launderers as a source of ammonia to clean and whiten woollen togas. Imagine that. The buyers of the urine paid the tax. Well, Vespasian's wimp of a son, Titus or something, complained about the disgusting nature of this tax. His father held up a gold coin and asked, whether he felt offended by its smell. When Titus said "No," he replied, "Yet it comes from urine". I always feel baffled by this, me.

But I mention this because I believe it ties in with the next, very interesting, point. Can you guess what the next point is, Hanna?”

Her crying has abated a bit. Her breath has steadied. They always do that, them. She answers. “No”.

I bend down, getting closer to her.

“Come on Hanna,”, the sound of a finger snapping, “be a sport,” and a scream, ” take a guess”.

The scream keeps on going. Progressively it turns itself into a moan.

“No, I am sorry, Hanna, that is not a correct guess.

The topic we are going to move on to, is the topic of evolution. Amazing thing, is it not? Evolution. To say that before Lamarc, no one had properly thought of it. Oh, I hear you protest, surely it is Darwin that first came up with the idea of evolution. Well it is not. Lamarc was fist to postulate that the ones most fitting their environment reproduce better and get to procreate and spread even more of themselves. Sadly Darwin reaped all the glory.

Well, personally, I dislike evolution. To be more precise I dislike biological evolution. We are where we are right now as a species, in this comfortable niche, thanks to this evolution. But we managed to extract ourselves from this biological bog, dry the bog out, plant bio-engineered corn in it, and eat all other animals thanks to the use of tools in order to modify our environment. I, like most humans, would be loath to see some fluke of biological evolution come out of the sad remains of the biological bog and supplant us. Evolution has had its day, has served its purpose for us.

We are civilised now, and we use tools. We do not have need of abominations. We have no need of the likes of you Hanna.”

The girl, the abomination, looks at me. My words must have given her a resolve of some kind. She is gritting her teeth, glancing from her broken finger to my face. Will she try to bargain, or will she try to react again?

“But... I am not an abomination. I am human. I am like you!”

Bargain it is, then. This might be a bit more fun.

“Oh, sorry, I had not noticed! You are no abomination, you say. So you mean you did not come to this place in order to cheat. You think that we did not notice you. That you were the first one, that you were unique. My, my...

Well. I cannot complain. You see, most people who develop super-powers like you, tend to quickly come to one of two possible conclusions, or rather delusions. 

The first delusion is believing they are superheroes, and that they therefore need to use their powers to save the world. When they reach that conclusion they can try to be discrete, hide themselves, and disperse their version of justice from the shadows; then they get themselves in difficult situations and die when the odds and the guns of the mob stack up against them. They can also choose to try to be flashy, get as much attention as possible on them. Well, when they are flashy, we find them, and our friends at the media make sure we are the first and last to find about them. That is the first delusion.

The second delusion is that you can use this biological advantage of yours in order to further your own egoistic dreams. You can try to be flashy, be an amazing entertainer or whatever, to try and get fame. I told you what happens to the flashy types. We find them, and we are always the last that can be say they found them. But then... then there are the smart ones. The ones who do not try to be flashy. The ones like you.”

The emotions have been shifting on her face all through my monologue. She currently tentatively tries a weak smile at the compliment, yet the pain quickly brings her features back to a proper expression of despair and loathing.

“Like you.”, I reiterate.

“Yet you all fall to the same hubris. I asked you Hanna, before, what you thought all types of casinos have in common. You thought that the money making aspect was the important one. I might have misled you with this one. To be honest, the one saying those words might even have been me. Well, whilst it is true that casinos make money, it is not the most important shared aspect of all casinos. The most important one is that all casinos are closed places. You cannot see the sky from inside a casino. The time is of no relevance to the ambience inside them. There are no windows. Analysts say this is done on purpose in order to lure the gamblers in, and make them loose track of time. That is certainly true. But this closed spaces...

 One could almost think of them as traps...

Do you know what makes for a good trap? A good trap must promise a difficult to obtain goal as an easy achievement, and remain inconspicuous while luring their prey to a point where they cannot escape. Mice eat cheese from the mousetraps, focusing on the cheese part, not the trap. You, and the other smart homo superiors, those of you that try to stay hidden, despite your telekinesis and whatever other powers you have, choose to remain in our society. And our society has created a new breeding criterion: money.

Remember how I told you about money? It is not tied to morality. It is tied to social success. The means by which you acquire it are not important so long as you are able to keep it and there is a society. Those with money will get better education, will have longer life expectancies and will get healthier kids. Those that are weak of body can compensate it with money. Our whole society ranks us by our gross salary. And since you decide to stay hidden, but still want to advance, what do you do? How are you going to make easy money and remain anonymous? When you can stop a roulette ball with your magnetic waves, control dice, see from inside the eyes of other people? You are going to come here.

Just like the mice, we let you get to the cheese. It is at the checkout where we get you. When you take the money, all happy, we inject you. And just like that, you loose all your powers.”

She tries to interject, but I am tired. The product has been active for a whole 3 hours, she must have been rendered safely killable by the medicine by now, her powers neutralised. I kick her in the head.

“Well Hanna, I cannot say it has been a pleasure. It never is. But sometimes you have to know. Nothing personal.”

Then I kick her again. And again. I kick her until my legs are sore and there is nothing properly worth kicking left.

I page Michael to come and dispose of the remains. I turn the lights off, take off my shoes and work clothes in the hall, throw them in the refuse bin and proceed to my office. I start whistling as I start writing my report. We will need to check Hanna’s family and arrange for sterilisation, cancers and what-have-yous to her immediate blood relatives.

It is hard to do my job. I keep people safe, I keep humanity alive, like the many thousands of us in the know. Yet as far as job recognition goes, ours is crap. No one knows of us, as well they shouldn’t. It is so hard not having anyone to talk about your job however, that you end up talking about it with the abominations. It makes as much sense as a hunter talking to his prey... but what can you do about it?

Bar "L'amertume"

I do not know who will read this. I just have to put it in words, and hope that it is a work of fiction.

 

I recently went to a bar, called “L’amertume”, in Paris. "L’amertume" roughly translates to bitterness, and I thought it fit my mood like a glove. I had just been left by the one I thought to be the woman of my life, and, when this happened, everything had not crumbled around me. I was still alive, still miserable, without any plan for the future, but I had expected things to be worse. I had expected I would have lost my will to live. I was bummed at life, angry that things were not as movies and books had insinuated they should be. A pretty fucked-up feeling.

So when, wandering aimlessly in the streets of Paris, I found myself in front of this bar, bitter at the normality of it all, it felt pretty natural to go inside.

The walls were Gray, decorated with framed pictures of old actors, turned yellow with time. There were wooden tables and chairs like in most places in Paris, and the floor was stone-paved. The air was humid, yet did not stink of moisture. It was dark, it was grim, the music was depressing. This, I felt, was what I needed.

 

The few angst or melancholy-ridden customers were sipping cocktails at their tables, in groups of varying size, and an elderly barman stood behind the bar. The latter paid me no heed and was murmuring through his wrinkled lips the words to a song that was clearly not the one that served as ambient music to the place. I approached the bar, and sat on one of the high stools. A hunched figure of a man was sitting two stools away. The sleeves of his shirt were pulled up, his coat was hanging on the stool besides him. He seemed to be nursing his drink.

The music played on, the barman muttered lyrics to songs a personal muse was whispering to his ears, and the stranger kept downing his drink, with slow, ponderous sips. For a while, time passed.

  

I contemplated my choice of drink.

As I was about done with my contemplation, the hunched man surprised me:

 

“Michel, un Bourbon pour monsieur.”¹ , he said to the barman.

  

“J’espère que vous vous offusquez pas.”² He proceeded, in my direction.

I was baffled that he had ordered the exact drink I had been willing to order for myself. The shock had momentarily snapped me out of my brooding mood, and this shift in my mood made the general atmosphere of the bar “L’amertume” feel quite surreal.

I opened my mouth to protest, only to find him saying the words I was about to utter, a fraction of a second before I could say them, but doing so in a flat, emotionless tone.

“Comment savais-tu ce que je voulais commander? C’est la première foi que je commande un bourbon de ma vie.”³

A few seconds passed. The man had short-cut hair, of a colour that best resembles the one found on the fingers of obsessive smokers. He looked tired, in his 50es. He was of above average hight, and I could have called him handsome. Clearly not a married man, although I was not sure how I knew this. His eyes were a pale hue of blue, and seemed like pools, in the depth of which he hoarded sorrows and time.

I felt lost. Once again when I was about to talk, I was in for a repeat of the previous strangeness:

“How did you do that?”, he said before I could talk. He had said it in English, just as I had intended to, switching languages.

I stood up, freaked out. My stool fell back with a clang, and this brought out some exclamations and protests from the patrons. I sprouted a quick “Pardon” in general, and fled the place. At the door, I got one last glimpse of the man. Michel had handed him my Bourbon and he was holding it in a salute towards me, a sad smile on his face.

I ran in the streets, until each breath I took was agony, and then I run some more.

Days latter, I got back to the same neighbourhood, and the bar “L’amertume” was not there. On the internet, I could not find any trace of it ever existing.
 

And just like that, I stopped complaining about life feeling ordinary. I will take ordinary, any given day of the week. Yet I still sometimes pass the place I think I lived these moments, and wonder.

_______________________________

Translations:

¹"Michel, a Burbon for this man."

² "I hope you are not offended."

³ "How did you know what I wanted to order? It was the first time in my life I wanted to order a Burbon!"

The heart of the Sobroken.

21 April 2007.
Great news. I found a mention of a huge Kraken sighting near Tasmania. A huge ruby red calamari. They said the people who saw it were high on drugs. Bollocks. The description they gave on that video was far too accurate. It has to be the Sobroken. Will be off to get it, love. Just hang in there. Sold the house. Bought tickets and a boat, hired an expert called mister Trench. Love, Mark.

27 July 2007.
Been scanning the waters for a month now. The water is too calm. The boat is too calm, the sonar picking up only whales and fish, and one regular huge squid.
The blog is getting a lot of attention, especially since Steven Tyler mentioned it by name during an interview. Hadn't figured he was interested in cryptozoology. Seems strange to have that many hits. I wonder if I should take it down.

29 July 2007.
Storm. Hit us bad. Boat sunk. The bomb I was going to use sunk too. That is our life's money honey. Crap. For a moment I thought I saw it. I despair I will never find it. Mr Trench quit.

9 September 2007.
I heard from the doctors. Your heart is getting worse. I am wondering if I should abandon this quest. Come back. Spend the year or so they told us you have left with you instead of hunting this myth, in order to save you. I am lost Dina. Lost without you, here on the shores of Tasmania. The Sobroken has to be there. In the open waters.

The book of the fall of Atlantis you found and translated has to be correct. The heart of the beast will save you. The Sobroken has to be there. But you are not here. I am torn, Dina. I love you.

21 September 2007.
Fund-raising was a success, since, after the advice of Steven Tyler, of all men, I addressed myself to the Epicurian club. They are in it for the feast, these rare-animal eaters, but we are still in it for the heart, love. I got better equipment this time around. They were very generous. Steven is going to come with me. Hold on. I will find it and kill it. "Ζων δια ζων" as was written in the book. The living live through the living.

27 September 2007.
We found it on the sonar, and the radar signature does show strong radiation as we expected. We are on its tail, but it has plunged deep. We are trying to get less than two miles away in order to send the biomissiles in. Love, Mark.

28 September 2007.
We CAUGHT IT! DINA! WE CAUGHT IT! Hahahaha! I have its heart, a human sized, emerald-red, pulsating heart, in the life preservation unit. A human heart can live for 3 days in that. The Sobroken's? I can bet it will never stop. I am so relieved. We are getting to the port and flying back for the operation. I love you. I am crazy about you.

27 November 2007.
It took me forever to hunt this beast. And you had to die on the operation table. I think I will never recover. You got the heart. And you died.

Now we are both Sobroken Hearted. Heh.

I am coming for you Dina. This is my last post in this world. I love you.

You need to know.

There are things you need to know my child,
things you need to know.

What you want in your life,
_________what makes you cry, what makes you laugh.

There are things you need to know my child,
that I cannot teach to you.

What you choose to believe,
_________how to choose who to trust, and who to love.

There are things you need to teach me, my child,
for I have forgotten them.

When it is time to forget,
_________when it is time to forgive, when it is time to forsake.

Child, I tell you these, for I can no longer answer.
Child, I tell you these, for I can henceforth only ask.

Can you find your answers for your self,
_________walk proud and tall, and happy?
Will you embrace the world for what it is,
_________not what you want it to be?

I have no idea. What you needed to know, I taught you.
Now, you need to teach yourself.
And with these final words, my platypus died.