Thursday, December 27, 2012
New lamps for old
The west exports lifestyle assumptions to the world, constantly. This includes medical accessorising, designer brands for every conceivable disease or malaise. The Ghanaian population are more and more hooked on the flagrantly disseminated notion, "new cures good, old cures bad." Despite drugs growing on trees all around, they are quickly forgetting their bio-heritage and opting for packaged alternatives. There is an extraordinary advertisment on television at the moment for paracetamol, finishing with an entire, grinning, happy family celebrating the father's cure of a headache, by synchronised dancing and the father holding up the product and pointing to it. It is truly bizarre. (Equally strange is the activity of a friend of ours, a famous veteran of Ghanaian folk songs who has gone round the isolated villages, singing and play acting about Unilever products - followed by a lorry from which villagers can buy them.)
Back to drugs. There is a cultural battle going on. Old treatments or new? Doctors here are trained mostly in allopathic medicine and few GPs give credence to the old ways. Meanwhile, foragers from the drug companies go trekking round the outer limits, sniffing out traditional treatments in the hope of finding new cures - to be packaged in glistening cellophane, in tablets and capsules. It is worth remembering that these companies cannot patent the natural world but CAN patent extractions.
Anyway, here are two natural drugs that grow on trees in our garden. I am starting with the caveat that I cannot be held responsible for the efficacy or otherwise of the two. You can start searching the internet for verification.
The first is bitter leaf. Now this shrub (I grow a hedge of it) is the natural killer of parasites in the blood and so is helpful in preventing malaria. It also cleans out the organs, reduces sugar in the system for diabetics and cures most skin diseases.
The second involves the dark green leaves of the soursop fruit tree. Boil ten of these in a litre of water for 30 minutes and drink a cup or two every day of the concentrate. Soursop is vaunted to be 1,000 times more effective than chemotherapy against 8 of the major cancers.
Are these just folk lore or is there something almost magical in their essence. Am I living in false consciousness (see the last blog) by taking bitter leaf and no anti-malarial prescription from the chemist? Likewise with my daily dose of soursop? Is it any worse than going to the pharmacy and believing what is scripted on the wrappers?
www.chronometerpublications.me
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
The west exports lifestyle assumptions to the world, constantly. This includes medical accessorising, designer brands for every conceivable disease or malaise. The Ghanaian population are more and more hooked on the flagrantly disseminated notion, "new cures good, old cures bad." Despite drugs growing on trees all around, they are quickly forgetting their bio-heritage and opting for packaged alternatives. There is an extraordinary advertisment on television at the moment for paracetamol, finishing with an entire, grinning, happy family celebrating the father's cure of a headache, by synchronised dancing and the father holding up the product and pointing to it. It is truly bizarre. (Equally strange is the activity of a friend of ours, a famous veteran of Ghanaian folk songs who has gone round the isolated villages, singing and play acting about Unilever products - followed by a lorry from which villagers can buy them.)
Back to drugs. There is a cultural battle going on. Old treatments or new? Doctors here are trained mostly in allopathic medicine and few GPs give credence to the old ways. Meanwhile, foragers from the drug companies go trekking round the outer limits, sniffing out traditional treatments in the hope of finding new cures - to be packaged in glistening cellophane, in tablets and capsules. It is worth remembering that these companies cannot patent the natural world but CAN patent extractions.
Anyway, here are two natural drugs that grow on trees in our garden. I am starting with the caveat that I cannot be held responsible for the efficacy or otherwise of the two. You can start searching the internet for verification.
The first is bitter leaf. Now this shrub (I grow a hedge of it) is the natural killer of parasites in the blood and so is helpful in preventing malaria. It also cleans out the organs, reduces sugar in the system for diabetics and cures most skin diseases.
The second involves the dark green leaves of the soursop fruit tree. Boil ten of these in a litre of water for 30 minutes and drink a cup or two every day of the concentrate. Soursop is vaunted to be 1,000 times more effective than chemotherapy against 8 of the major cancers.
Are these just folk lore or is there something almost magical in their essence. Am I living in false consciousness (see the last blog) by taking bitter leaf and no anti-malarial prescription from the chemist? Likewise with my daily dose of soursop? Is it any worse than going to the pharmacy and believing what is scripted on the wrappers?
www.chronometerpublications.me
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Another
dollop of false consciousness
You may recall – or didn’t need me to tell you in the
first place – that when people, mistakenly, believe something to be true when
it isn’t and the evidence suggests it isn’t, they are suffering under an
illusion we call ‘false consciousness’.
Once it is ingrained it is hard to shift. Like creationism. Like the
place of patriarchy in current world religions. Like the world ending on the 21st
December 2012. (Although, for several thousand people it must have been their
death knell!).
When you come up against it personally it certainly
raises a sense of the surreal, sometimes the tragically absurd. Like you are
Alice and this is a bleak Wonderland
Talking with a man who has a very good and expanding brain
the other day, someone who in four or so years has left his village to become
literate, bilingual, an ace photographer, adept at IT and a senior manager in a
clothing factory, I came away disconcerted. Despite my protestations and
careful arguments based on concrete evidence and even biblical or moral
evidence (he is an avid Christian) I could not shake his belief in female
circumcision, in women not being the equal of men and that God is behind every
act in a person’s life from the great to the small. My suggestions that the
world should be – and often is – otherwise, was greeted with cackling laughter,
as though I was the greatest stand up comic of all time. There was no way in to
unseat his moral universe.
Openness to evidence and a critical consciousness are
all we have to counter such resolute beliefs in the indefensible. And they have
to be taught from birth whether it
is to the young of Ghana’s many tribes, or Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus or
the communists of North Korea and China. Once such consciousness is properly
released and matured, it cannot be put back in the locked box of social
conditioning.
But the powerful know this, from the corrupt democracies
of the west to the corrupt dictatorships of the East. Heavily proscribed education that imposes the authority of
the state and the inviolability of the curriculum is always the prize tool of
social engineering, whether in faith or secular schools.
For a riveting and mind-expanding read on the moral mess we call life, read: www.azimuthtrilogy.com
All my published work can be found on www.chronometerpublications.me
Labels: False Consciousness
Saturday, December 22, 2012
-->
Last
Stop
O it was a moonless night suddenly filled
with dark foreboding. The invisible birds had begun their metallic piping, the bats were squeaking
among our ripe mangos and a thousand supplicants in a distant evangelical
hangar were laying down a keening back beat. Then, like a solo singer to this
orchestra of sound, there was a noise we had never heard. A grunting. A
flapping. A scraping. Somewhere, close to the house, was a terrible
manifestation. It had surfaced from the depths of our ancient fears. And it was
working its way around our house.
Not given to craven submission to the
agents of hell my wife opened the main door, fearless and intrepid. No weapon
in her hand. Just vulnerable flesh and blood.
She disappeared into the Ghanaian night,
submerging herself in its hot, thick embrace.
The malevolent sound reached a crescendo
and then stopped abruptly and I heard her in-drawn gasp as clearly as if she
was sitting beside me. It was followed by a terrible silence as if an unspeakable
act had eradicated the very signature of life itself.
The door opened and there she stood like a
female Beowulf carrying the gory trophy in her hands, a piece of folded card
with thick glue on one surface. It was Last Stop, a trap for black mice the
size of British rodents.
Our big but gentle Doberman, Sirius, had
had it stuck to his paws.
www.chronometerpublications.me
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
Labels: #Writing: A short short #story.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
-->
You
are who you write
I wrote a short story recently – which will
appear for free on www.chronometerpublications.me
within a week or so. It’s called The
Sense of Being Sinbad and deals with the last three months of a man’s life.
I sent it to a friend who is wrestling with the best exit strategy for one who
feels everything must be planned in advance of transit to ‘another place’ as he
calls it. He reviewed it just as he would a student’s work, liking the prose
style and some imagery. However, he then went to some lengths to tie me to the
main character. He seemed certain that it was ‘future autobiographical’ and I
would follow the lead of my character as the days wind down. Now he is very
intelligent and so cannot be easily dismissed for his views. Does it mean that
I have planned the last weeks of my life? In my deliberate renouncing of the
usual narratives of death in modern society, religious or atheist, was I doing
a bit of advance mapping? Was the novella, in fact, wishful thinking?
Of course, to some extent writers cannot
escape themselves when they create characters but to say that I am a rapist, a
murderer, a fat detective, a sixteen year old girl, an ancient magus and so on
would be over-egging it a bit. The alternative view is that they are all
fantasies, sometimes wishful and sometimes acting as a form of exorcism from
the troubled depths of the unconscious. A third version and one to which I
adhere, is that we are gem-like in our personalities and every facet represents
different aspects of our characters. Each facet then can find its way into fully-fledged
existence on the page.
I think that writers do what they do
because they want to live other lives. It is very convenient. They don’t have
to go ‘missing’ or seek a divorce. They just shut themselves away and split
into their parts, each one of which graces their prose as a flesh and blood
creation, a simulacrum of reality.
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Magyck, Mystery and Morality
A brief discourse on the making of Azimuth so that you know what you are in for!
A portly and dry historian is commissioned by an emperor to write a trilogy, a history of the progenitor of all modern morality, a man remembered as The Magus. He reads the first two volumes to the daughter of the court and the third to the daughter's own daughter. As he reads to them they draw him into the machinations of court life with mysterious murders, plotting against the throne and occult events. His life is changed as he becomes a detective, a Poirot of ancient times, falls in love with a brothel keeper and kills for the first time. Each of the three volumes consist of twenty two tales recounting the adventures of the Magus. They are set in chapters which also describe the trials and tribulations of the historian. So, like a double helix you read about the historian's own day and then fly back through time to the journeyings of the Magus and his search for the meaning of his existence, involving him in the conflict between good and evil, religion and reason, life and death. His skills as a warrior are gradually superseded by his desire to find a different way to live among people. Reading the tales affects the lives of the historian and his listeners, too. The two narratives begin to intertwine.
Each volume concerns a different journey lasting many years. The Magus ages and becomes wiser. The 66 tales are headed by the images of tarot cards whose interpretation by the historian add a mysterious frisson to proceedings. Each chapter is underscored with a cryptic statement, an aphorism, a zen-like pronouncement. For example:
The book is a roller coaster of action and philosophy and is full of mystery and suspense. The early reviews say it all:
www.azimuthtrilogy.com/reviews
At this same site you can download the first three chapters, free. I hope you do!
A brief discourse on the making of Azimuth so that you know what you are in for!
A portly and dry historian is commissioned by an emperor to write a trilogy, a history of the progenitor of all modern morality, a man remembered as The Magus. He reads the first two volumes to the daughter of the court and the third to the daughter's own daughter. As he reads to them they draw him into the machinations of court life with mysterious murders, plotting against the throne and occult events. His life is changed as he becomes a detective, a Poirot of ancient times, falls in love with a brothel keeper and kills for the first time. Each of the three volumes consist of twenty two tales recounting the adventures of the Magus. They are set in chapters which also describe the trials and tribulations of the historian. So, like a double helix you read about the historian's own day and then fly back through time to the journeyings of the Magus and his search for the meaning of his existence, involving him in the conflict between good and evil, religion and reason, life and death. His skills as a warrior are gradually superseded by his desire to find a different way to live among people. Reading the tales affects the lives of the historian and his listeners, too. The two narratives begin to intertwine.
Each volume concerns a different journey lasting many years. The Magus ages and becomes wiser. The 66 tales are headed by the images of tarot cards whose interpretation by the historian add a mysterious frisson to proceedings. Each chapter is underscored with a cryptic statement, an aphorism, a zen-like pronouncement. For example:
Chapter Two
Believing
what is seen is a form of blindness
The book is a roller coaster of action and philosophy and is full of mystery and suspense. The early reviews say it all:
www.azimuthtrilogy.com/reviews
At this same site you can download the first three chapters, free. I hope you do!
Labels: #Writing: the structure of a trilogy. Tarot and zen.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Some Reviews of the Azimuth Trilogy
“Reading great book. It is either for learning and information, or for pleasure and escape. Azimuth combines both of these. I was fascinated and transported but also what I learned about meditation and spirituality in this epic has helped me on my own path. It is a must read and must own.” – Andrew, Lord Stone of Blackheath
“I love it. A brilliant read, an extraordinary story………..It was compulsive reading — dusting went undusted, vacuuming unvacuumed. I even ate some meals in front of my computer. How gross is that? “– Val, a Canadian reader
“I wanted to write and say a heartfelt thank you for bringing these stories to life. I took so much enlightening and thought provoking thoughts from them all, and yet, far from feeling like I was in a dry lesson, I revelled in the excitement and suspense of the storytelling, yearning to know what happened next at every step and relishing each new discovery. At the same time, I loved each reminder of a philosophy I had forgotten but which now appeared as an old friend with new clothes. I think I have some catching up to do with some of them…
Much to my dismay I discovered that I don’t have the gifts of the Magus and couldn’t see what was coming at all -which meant it was hardly possible to put the book down. Although of course it is this capture of curiosity and emotions within a tale that I love so much about reading a good book. Each time I moved from Kamil to the Magus and back again my heart would fill with sadness that I was leaving one and yet joy that I would find out more about the other. I’m in awe of your talent!
I feel so excited about what I’ve read that I could ramble on but as there’s no point preaching to the converted,
I’ll save it to encourage more people to read the book.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the book will continue to reveal further insights and secrets on each reading depending on one’s own place in life, much like in the way each traveller saw something slightly different when they looked at the fool’s card. And I’m excited to know the book will be on my bookshelf to provide inspiration in future.” Lizzie, UK
“I loved the way the plot came together. Surprises but ones that didn’t strain credibility.
The second two books seemed to me to have tremendous jeopardy – both in the holding story and that of the Magus.
It built to a real crescendo in the third book – both stories absolutely compelling.
The whole turned overnight into a page turner. There’s also something very new about what you are doing in the book. Something to do I feel with the tarot cards
and the aphorisms and the female characters but I am not familiar as you know with the genre”. Vanessa UK
“Story telling at its absolute best!!!! If you would like to be transformed to another world, rich with real people, human beings with all their frailties, and share their gripping journey then read this book. It has all the suspense and excitement of an adventure novel, but much more than that, it offers magic and mystery, it offers the opportunity to suspend disbelief and enjoy and engage with your and the author’s unboundaried imagination. As you travel through the trilogy, you will find yourself unsure as to whether to race ahead and discover what happens, or hold back savouring the opportunity to immerse yourself in each chapter’s revelations and reflections.
Whichever you decide, the wonderful world of Azimuth is somewhere well worth escaping to.” Heather UK
“Jack, in “About the Book” you tell us that it has taken 10 years to write Azimuth. Believe me, it has been time well spent. I love both the story and the way that it is told; the trilogy has been keeping me company in planes, trains and automobiles for a few weeks. The book functions and succeeds on so many levels, whether it be as an adventure, as a tale of court intrigues, or as an examination of some of life’s more profound questions. The trilogy is written in a highly visual style and I think that it would lend itself well to becoming a trilogy of films; this would be a fitting tribute to a man who loves cinema so much. The opening paragraph is beautifully crafted and hooked me from the outset; as I am sure that it is intended to do. The pace and energy continued to carry me through page after page; chapter after chapter; and eventually, volume after volume. I read the book in Kindle format, which deprived me of Holly Etheridge’s beautiful artwork on the cover, but the electronic form is kinder on my arms when I am travelling. However, my partner has just bought the paper edition, so I can still admire the artwork and the quality of the paper by proxy. I shall post a review of the individual volumes when time permits.” (Greg Switzerland)
Excellent trilogy, definitely up there with the Northern Lights trilogy and Lord of the Rings books.
I have recommended this to everyone I know! (Drew UK)
“Un libro fantastico. Debes comprarlo!”. Libro entretenido desde la portada hasta el contenido. Lleno de aventura, magia, bien escrito y caracteristico lleno de fantasia. Merece la pena leerlo. Inmerste en un mundo de magia y aventura. Disfruta de la imaginacion de este fantastico autor. Maria UK/Spain
Sometimes I feel sad when I finish a really good book because I can’t live in its magical world anymore. This time I’m delighted as there’s a second and third part to come! I read this on holiday and had the luxury of being able to read for entire days. I didn’t want to leave the world of the Magus. I love the magic and the story and the questions of faith / destiny / contemplation. I think actually it would make a really good film, a lot of the journey of the Magus there’s no need for speech and the open landscapes conjured by the prose could be filmed beautifully. It’s spiritual, romantic, exotic, intriguing and a real page-turner – un-put-downable. Jennifer UK
“Reading great book. It is either for learning and information, or for pleasure and escape. Azimuth combines both of these. I was fascinated and transported but also what I learned about meditation and spirituality in this epic has helped me on my own path. It is a must read and must own.” – Andrew, Lord Stone of Blackheath
“I love it. A brilliant read, an extraordinary story………..It was compulsive reading — dusting went undusted, vacuuming unvacuumed. I even ate some meals in front of my computer. How gross is that? “– Val, a Canadian reader
“I wanted to write and say a heartfelt thank you for bringing these stories to life. I took so much enlightening and thought provoking thoughts from them all, and yet, far from feeling like I was in a dry lesson, I revelled in the excitement and suspense of the storytelling, yearning to know what happened next at every step and relishing each new discovery. At the same time, I loved each reminder of a philosophy I had forgotten but which now appeared as an old friend with new clothes. I think I have some catching up to do with some of them…
Much to my dismay I discovered that I don’t have the gifts of the Magus and couldn’t see what was coming at all -which meant it was hardly possible to put the book down. Although of course it is this capture of curiosity and emotions within a tale that I love so much about reading a good book. Each time I moved from Kamil to the Magus and back again my heart would fill with sadness that I was leaving one and yet joy that I would find out more about the other. I’m in awe of your talent!
I feel so excited about what I’ve read that I could ramble on but as there’s no point preaching to the converted,
I’ll save it to encourage more people to read the book.I have a sneaking suspicion that the book will continue to reveal further insights and secrets on each reading depending on one’s own place in life, much like in the way each traveller saw something slightly different when they looked at the fool’s card. And I’m excited to know the book will be on my bookshelf to provide inspiration in future.” Lizzie, UK
“I loved the way the plot came together. Surprises but ones that didn’t strain credibility.
The second two books seemed to me to have tremendous jeopardy – both in the holding story and that of the Magus.
It built to a real crescendo in the third book – both stories absolutely compelling.
The whole turned overnight into a page turner. There’s also something very new about what you are doing in the book. Something to do I feel with the tarot cards
and the aphorisms and the female characters but I am not familiar as you know with the genre”. Vanessa UK
“Story telling at its absolute best!!!! If you would like to be transformed to another world, rich with real people, human beings with all their frailties, and share their gripping journey then read this book. It has all the suspense and excitement of an adventure novel, but much more than that, it offers magic and mystery, it offers the opportunity to suspend disbelief and enjoy and engage with your and the author’s unboundaried imagination. As you travel through the trilogy, you will find yourself unsure as to whether to race ahead and discover what happens, or hold back savouring the opportunity to immerse yourself in each chapter’s revelations and reflections.
Whichever you decide, the wonderful world of Azimuth is somewhere well worth escaping to.” Heather UK
“Jack, in “About the Book” you tell us that it has taken 10 years to write Azimuth. Believe me, it has been time well spent. I love both the story and the way that it is told; the trilogy has been keeping me company in planes, trains and automobiles for a few weeks. The book functions and succeeds on so many levels, whether it be as an adventure, as a tale of court intrigues, or as an examination of some of life’s more profound questions. The trilogy is written in a highly visual style and I think that it would lend itself well to becoming a trilogy of films; this would be a fitting tribute to a man who loves cinema so much. The opening paragraph is beautifully crafted and hooked me from the outset; as I am sure that it is intended to do. The pace and energy continued to carry me through page after page; chapter after chapter; and eventually, volume after volume. I read the book in Kindle format, which deprived me of Holly Etheridge’s beautiful artwork on the cover, but the electronic form is kinder on my arms when I am travelling. However, my partner has just bought the paper edition, so I can still admire the artwork and the quality of the paper by proxy. I shall post a review of the individual volumes when time permits.” (Greg Switzerland)
Excellent trilogy, definitely up there with the Northern Lights trilogy and Lord of the Rings books.
I have recommended this to everyone I know! (Drew UK)
“Un libro fantastico. Debes comprarlo!”. Libro entretenido desde la portada hasta el contenido. Lleno de aventura, magia, bien escrito y caracteristico lleno de fantasia. Merece la pena leerlo. Inmerste en un mundo de magia y aventura. Disfruta de la imaginacion de este fantastico autor. Maria UK/Spain
Sometimes I feel sad when I finish a really good book because I can’t live in its magical world anymore. This time I’m delighted as there’s a second and third part to come! I read this on holiday and had the luxury of being able to read for entire days. I didn’t want to leave the world of the Magus. I love the magic and the story and the questions of faith / destiny / contemplation. I think actually it would make a really good film, a lot of the journey of the Magus there’s no need for speech and the open landscapes conjured by the prose could be filmed beautifully. It’s spiritual, romantic, exotic, intriguing and a real page-turner – un-put-downable. Jennifer UK
Friday, December 07, 2012
"The Devil you say...!"
We human beings are a credulous lot. We will turn a bush at night, into a lurking monster, the creak of a floorboard into a ghost and some coincidental meeting or act into evidence of Fate. We have invented the history of God, a fairly full life for Christ and sit and shiver in fear as we imagine the Grim Reaper or the horned beast. Close to my home in France, people are gathering for December 21st 2012 when the world will end. In a broad sense this will mean we will all go happily together rather than individually in the ragged, patternless way that leaves us bereft when family and friends die or we go before them.
In philosophical terms all of the preceding are the consequence of what is called 'false consciousness', that is that if enough people believe, they make it happen or they insist it is true. Human beings set up conspiracies of belief, from Santa Claus for the under fives to creationism or reincarnation. There are many who believe in vampires and werewolves, in spells and potions, in the power of distance healing through prayer and in the Second Coming or the Antichrist. It is possible because we are born into a mysterious flow of life forms and events for which we have no explanation but it is so richly varied that we can impose whatever we like upon it and any hypothesis seems to fit the facts. "If men believe a thing to be true it is true in its consequences," said W. I. Thomas, or words to that effect. Magicians the world over play upon our capacity to believe what is not and cannot be true whether it is sawing a lady in half or climbing a rope hanging from thin air. Groups of people will convince themselves that someone should be lynched for crimes despite having no evidence. Politicians and generals will wage war, stating that their strikes against targets are forensically exact and do not have a child or woman's face on the end of their missiles. Propaganda is what human beings do best to vindicate their actions or assuage their fears.
And now a tale. A few decades ago I came across a friend who was undergoing an episode. He believed he had been chosen to throw Lucifer down the bottomless pit for a further millennium. This man had suddenly developed a hypnotic power and with it he had collected a handful of women (married, in their thirties and forties) whom were necessary to help him in his fight against evil. His wife, alarmed by this turn of events phoned me and explained that her husband was naked, standing on a special carpet with a Persian motif, he on the central abstract shape and the women on smaller, peripheral shapes. She felt he was possessed. I got in my Morris Minor, put a crucifix around my neck and phoned a friend to ready himself. When I picked him up he was in his priest's habit, a bible in his hand and a book on exorcism. We arrived and were shown into the house of devilment. While my friend went round the place waving his burning censer, I entered the room and stood before the man. He put his hands on my shoulders and began to intone that I had come as he had directed and would now fulfill the destiny that had been prescribed. The hypnosis was very powerful but did not lull me into credulity. My priest friend arrived and between us we talked him into lying down and sleeping, there on the carpet. As if a curse had been lifted, the women hurried off to dress. The next day he was in psychiatric hospital. Whether this was the right place for him is a moot point.
Looking back I am not sure how much is true in my current telling. Everything, actually, I believe is the truth, except for the naked women. I think this could have been relayed to me by the wife before I arrived. She was certain that part of the relations he was having with his female acolytes was sexual.
What intrigues me in this set of events is that the man was able to convince the women of his and their place in biblical history, that he was 'talked down' by an old fashioned exorcism and that I felt sufficiently alarmed as to wear a silver cross, though my religious beliefs are non existent. I do remember feeling very anxious as I drove towards the house.
I'd like to believe in reincarnation. I'd like to think that when I return to this earth I will find a sane civilisation of rational, humane, loving human beings who get on with life, knowing that this is their one chance and are making the most of it!
We human beings are a credulous lot. We will turn a bush at night, into a lurking monster, the creak of a floorboard into a ghost and some coincidental meeting or act into evidence of Fate. We have invented the history of God, a fairly full life for Christ and sit and shiver in fear as we imagine the Grim Reaper or the horned beast. Close to my home in France, people are gathering for December 21st 2012 when the world will end. In a broad sense this will mean we will all go happily together rather than individually in the ragged, patternless way that leaves us bereft when family and friends die or we go before them.
In philosophical terms all of the preceding are the consequence of what is called 'false consciousness', that is that if enough people believe, they make it happen or they insist it is true. Human beings set up conspiracies of belief, from Santa Claus for the under fives to creationism or reincarnation. There are many who believe in vampires and werewolves, in spells and potions, in the power of distance healing through prayer and in the Second Coming or the Antichrist. It is possible because we are born into a mysterious flow of life forms and events for which we have no explanation but it is so richly varied that we can impose whatever we like upon it and any hypothesis seems to fit the facts. "If men believe a thing to be true it is true in its consequences," said W. I. Thomas, or words to that effect. Magicians the world over play upon our capacity to believe what is not and cannot be true whether it is sawing a lady in half or climbing a rope hanging from thin air. Groups of people will convince themselves that someone should be lynched for crimes despite having no evidence. Politicians and generals will wage war, stating that their strikes against targets are forensically exact and do not have a child or woman's face on the end of their missiles. Propaganda is what human beings do best to vindicate their actions or assuage their fears.
And now a tale. A few decades ago I came across a friend who was undergoing an episode. He believed he had been chosen to throw Lucifer down the bottomless pit for a further millennium. This man had suddenly developed a hypnotic power and with it he had collected a handful of women (married, in their thirties and forties) whom were necessary to help him in his fight against evil. His wife, alarmed by this turn of events phoned me and explained that her husband was naked, standing on a special carpet with a Persian motif, he on the central abstract shape and the women on smaller, peripheral shapes. She felt he was possessed. I got in my Morris Minor, put a crucifix around my neck and phoned a friend to ready himself. When I picked him up he was in his priest's habit, a bible in his hand and a book on exorcism. We arrived and were shown into the house of devilment. While my friend went round the place waving his burning censer, I entered the room and stood before the man. He put his hands on my shoulders and began to intone that I had come as he had directed and would now fulfill the destiny that had been prescribed. The hypnosis was very powerful but did not lull me into credulity. My priest friend arrived and between us we talked him into lying down and sleeping, there on the carpet. As if a curse had been lifted, the women hurried off to dress. The next day he was in psychiatric hospital. Whether this was the right place for him is a moot point.
Looking back I am not sure how much is true in my current telling. Everything, actually, I believe is the truth, except for the naked women. I think this could have been relayed to me by the wife before I arrived. She was certain that part of the relations he was having with his female acolytes was sexual.
What intrigues me in this set of events is that the man was able to convince the women of his and their place in biblical history, that he was 'talked down' by an old fashioned exorcism and that I felt sufficiently alarmed as to wear a silver cross, though my religious beliefs are non existent. I do remember feeling very anxious as I drove towards the house.
I'd like to believe in reincarnation. I'd like to think that when I return to this earth I will find a sane civilisation of rational, humane, loving human beings who get on with life, knowing that this is their one chance and are making the most of it!
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
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Janus, the writer
I thought I’d offer you a debate to be held
after Christmas with your arty friends. It’s one that can get very passionate
and it’s as old as paintings on cave walls.
“Can you be totally captivated, informed
and elevated by the work of an artist who, you discover, is an appalling human
being?”
There have been many writers who have led
disreputable, even loathsome lives but whose work still grace the shelves of
the great and the good. I happened to see an old edition of QI the other night
and Edgar Allen Poe was featured at one point. Illegally marrying his 13 year
old cousin and an alcoholic, he was also the founder of detective fiction,
science fiction and came up with the Big Bang theory eighty years before
science could catch up with him. At the extreme end, Eric Gill, a Catholic
multi-skilled artist, sexually abused his children and his dog as well as
having a sexual relationship with his sister. Hitler loved Wagner’s work. At a
dinner with friends in France last year a close friend said he detested Woody
Allen and would not watch his films because of his social behaviour (including his
current and long time sexual relationship with his one time adopted child).
Another friend said he’d never watch a Stephen Fry programme, given what he did
to Simon Gray. The fact that he is bipolar was not, for my friend, an excuse.
So, can we divorce the biography from the work? There
is no doubt that many artefacts that we currently consider to be exquisite
works of art may have been fashioned by people we would have liked to have imprisoned
for life for their inhumanity.
A lot of you, reading this, will be
writers. It is possible that you divorce who you are in the day to day, from
whom you prefer to be as an artist. On the one hand you may lead a blameless
life and create works of disgusting sadism and on the other you may be a
sadist to all who cross your path and create wondrous works of beauty.
What are we to do with you?
Labels: #Writing: Art and morality. Love not me, love my work.
Saturday, December 01, 2012
You might like to read a whole short story in the hopes that it will seduce you to read other books of mine at www.chronometerpublications.me
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The Visionary
By Eric le Sange
Chapter One
Jen Cord had not known that she possessed the gift. It made itself known to her on a day
that was indistinguishable from any other in the working week. She had entered
the ophthalmic operating theatre early, as was her habit, to prepare to receive
her staff rather than arrive after them. Jen was aware of role modelling. She
was also anxious not to take anything for granted in her work. Human error
lurked in everyone.
Despite being an attractive woman in her early thirties she had not
married nor it seems did she have a partner in tow of either sex. In the flesh,
blood and disease intimacy of surgical theatres someone as beguiling as she was singularly odd, enduring, as the male doctors saw it, the
privations of a solitary life. There were many who would have liked to put an
end to her solitude for though assiduously non tactile, she was warm, engaging,
amusing, alluring and unconsciously seductive. During the time that she had
worked in the hospital men from various strata of the institution drifted
towards her hopefully only to find themselves gently repelled by some force
within her, as though her magnetic core was designed for that sole purpose.
She never discussed her private life with anyone, having chosen this job
among the many offered her because it was as far from family and friends as it
was possible to imagine on this overcrowded island. Her mother had died giving
birth to her. Her father had then filled the gap of her absent mother, offering
her limitless love and forbearance, sacrificing a social life to attend to her growing
up. Then, one day, the purity of their relationship, the unequivocal bond, was
snapped by an event that, whenever she thought of it, coiled in her stomach,
turning her intestines into snakes. The pain of discovering what she had been
too blind to see led her to return to medical school within an hour of its
revelation. She did not answer his calls or emails or texts, eventually
changing her numbers and addresses to emphasise her desire for an irrevocable
break. Even then he found her easily since she was on the national register of
ophthalmic surgeons. Now and then she received a long, laboured, handwritten
letter in his awkward, spiky script. The length of their separation eventually stretched
to a whole decade, yet, despite her anger and sense of betrayal, there was not
one day when she did not think about him.
There is a special preternatural calm about a silent operating chamber. The
battles for vision, the pain necessarily inflicted, the concentrated minds of
staff, the electronic bleeps and liquid gushes of the glittering machinery, are
temporarily banished. It is as though the theatre has become a sleeping beast
in the waiting darkness. She switched on a beam above her head and looked down
the list. It was short, in inverse proportion to the complexity of the cases.
Each would take at least two hours. She had arranged it some days before with
the managers, as best she could, to allow some variety, knowing her predictions
of what might constitute severity would probably be proven wrong.
Settled in what she termed her ‘driving seat’, she studied her notes.
Her attention was caught and held by the first name on the list, Sandhi Dalah. It
broke a dream that she had had the night before. She remembered that she was
walking on a thin peninsula of land on the Mediterranean coast, towards the
sea. A man with his back to her was painting a canvass on a full easel. Her
foot caught a loose pebble sending it skittering into the water. He turned
violently, his face angry, his long waxed moustaches erect at their ends.
“Who dares interrupt the work of Dali?” he
growled.
“I am an eye surgeon,” she replied firmly as
though that was reason enough. His face instantly changed to subservience.
“Ah,” he said plaintively, “There is no resisting a witch such as you. You open
and shut the windows to the soul.” He closed his eyes as if to demonstrate. But
the lids had slits in them which opened, regardless, to reveal dark holes. As she watched the holes merged and
became the growing mouth of a long tunnel, swallowing Dali’s face, then his
entire body and then the easel. The darkness gave way to light at its far end
where the ocean’s small waves could be seen rolling over one another. She approached
the water and found steps leading below the surface. Descending them she discovered
herself in a vast cave. Artefacts floated in tidy rows everywhere, from the
every day to the exotic, from the recognisable to the surreal. Each was
inscribed with Dali’s famous signature. She reached out to touch a painting. It
was of a giant eye, large, singular and forlorn, drooping shapelessly over the
edge of a shelf. As her fingers brushed it she was pulled backwards by a sudden
force, back from the chamber, back up the steps, back through the tunnel and
back into herself.
The image receded and she was staring at the name Sandhi Dalah again.
She knew enough about Freud’s work to recognise that there was sufficient
similarity in the sound of the name to that of Salvador Dali’s, to have
precipitated her dream. She studied his notes. 46. Anglo-Indian. Samanera.
Member of a western Buddhist sect which had set up a community on an island in
Scotland. As coincidence would have it she had intended to visit it a couple of
years back when on a touring holiday but the weather was atrocious and the
narrow channel of sea, spitting enormous white topped waves, precluded any crossing.
Dalah was suffering from a sudden loss of sight in his right eye. The
optometrist who had sent him to her had found a strange patina on the surface
of the retina, like a scattering of a single layer of cells, pale and a touch
opaque. She cast her mind back but could not remember her first consultation
with him. The waiting rooms were overcrowded these days and patients were
pushed through the investigatory processes in industrial numbers. He seemed not
to be British or of British extraction. His name suggested Tibet but it might
be an erroneous connection. She had a sudden image of unnaturally green eyes.
Were they his?
Her thoughts were arrested by the arrival of the first of her nursing
team. She gave instructions regarding what would be needed. Within five minutes
the entire team was assembled, the technology was blinking and piping high
notes and then the patient was led in. She was troubled that she hadn’t been
able to remember him. In fact she now had misgivings as to her state of mind at
their first meeting, so idiosyncratic was he. Something must have interceded
between her visual appraisal and her memory store for there to have been such a
blanking out. Yes he had green eyes but he also had olive skin and luxuriant
black hair scraped back and tied in a long, intricately woven ponytail. His
features were hawkish like a Parsee’s and those green irises burned with a
feverish intensity.
“Please sit,” she motioned at the waiting
chair. “We are going to make a couple of pinpricks to numb the eye and make it
immobile. Then I’ll put a protective shield over your face, exposing it for
surgery.”
“How long will this last? he asked, evenly in a
slightly accented voice.
“It might be brief. It might take an hour or
two.”
“And I will be fully conscious throughout?”
“Indeed. Rest your head back. Good.” The mask
was put in position and the injections administered. “You can talk at any time,
if you want to. Tell me to stop if the going gets hard.”
“Hm.”
“You are a samanera it says here, from that
Buddhist island in Scotland? What does that mean? ”
“You asked me that last time. A novice.” This
further unsettled her. She had great pride in her memory of useful, associated
facts regarding her patients. She stayed silent so as not to expose her failed
faculty any further. Once he was settled and the eye perfectly still and
levered slightly from its socket for her to begin work, she began a preliminary
examination through the enlarged pupil. She focused the magnifying lens into
the dark centre of the emerald halo and turned up the light. A moment later she
recoiled slightly in disbelief but forced herself to bend forward again as her
incredulity gave way to unprofessional curiosity. Instead of the cavern whose
walls should have been covered by the rods and cones of the retina and
substratum of blood vessels, her beam was lighting up a photographic album. It
was as though her light was exciting memories in the retinal cells and they
were conspiring to project images from Dalah’s life. It was mesmerising as
snapshots flashed, one after another; meteorological, topographical, urban,
wild, nocturnal and diurnal, flames and water, people and houses, jostling
together as though competing to be the one, final and most memorable, single
image. The cascade suddenly ceased and there, before her was a vast Buddha,
carved into an immense rock face. Half of it was lit by golden rays and the
other half remained in a dark shroud.
The Buddha spoke in a deep, sonorous tone, “To
love with only half your being is not to love at all. Ambition is unworthy of a
samanera.”
Upon these words the Buddha disappeared and her
view of the faintly white retinal surface returned. She quivered from the
unworldly experience but covered her reaction with her normal, cool expertise
and set to, probing the vitreous chamber with her instrumentation. It did not
take her long. Needles removed and stitches inserted, she settled back.
“Relax,” she said. A nurse slowly raised his
chair. She pushed away the gantry above them so they could sit face to face.
“What was it? he asked, “The gauzy stuff on the
retina?”
“There was something and nothing,” she said.
“It may be real and may be an illusion.”
He looked at her, his face expressionless,
“Then what must I do?”
She turned to her team and said, “Give me five
minutes with the patient, will you?” They looked a little bemused but left
quickly. She turned back to him. “I do not know how to tell you this.”
“I can take whatever it is. WI have been trained.”
He looked at her calmly.
She pursed her lips and started, “In your eye I saw something…I think it
must have come from your frontal cortex … an image ... I saw a huge Buddha,
carved in a stone cliff. One half of him was lit and the other dark. He said,
“To love with only half your being is not to love at all. Ambition is unworthy
of the samanera.” Sandhi Dalah’s face crumpled and he began to sob silently,
his entire body shaking. She took his hands in hers until he subsided. When the
nurses knocked and entered quietly they found them like this in a silent
tableau.
Chapter Two
She told no-one her experience, continuing her work as if nothing had
happened but her mind revisiting the event, every time she looked at a patient
list. A few weeks later she received a letter from the leader of the Buddhist
island community. It thanked her for her expertise, not surgical but spiritual.
Sandhi Dalah was a changed man. He had recognised that he was not ready for the
contemplative life and must find the half of his being that was not yet at-one
and so he had set off on a journey to find that which he did not know. The
letter brought back the vividness of her vision from inside the man’s eye and
in all likelihood precipitated her next surreal adventure. Once again a dream
precipitated a novel reality which she only recalled when she saw her list. The
name that arrested her attention was Helena Trott and the consequent dream had
some similarities to her encounter with Dali. A woman was standing by an ocean
in a long flowing robe with a golden hem. She held an ornate eyepiece to her
face of a kind Jen Cord had never seen. Sails of innumerable ships were
creeping over the horizon towards her. Again, something she did, some clumsy
act that communicated itself to the woman, made her turn in fury.
“Where are my guards? No-one can approach a
queen in this vulgar, unsolicited manner.”
“I am a doctor of eyes,” she replied.
The queen took a step back. “I fear all
physicians. They are little more than legalised murderers. Many suffer
intolerable pain or die from supposedly efficacious potions dropped into their
eyes. Where once there was clarity, the disease of the white curtain is pulled
across vision, denying the soul’s view of the living world. If it cannot see,
we have no evidence of our purity.”
“What of those born blind?”
“Damned to helplessness. Victims of the sins of
their parents.”
That was all she could remember of her dream. She looked at her notes of
her first meeting with the patient. Helena Trott, aged 90. Living in a small
hamlet close to the city. Frequent retinal tears over the last decade. Regular
laser treatment. Like the samanera she had had a sudden onset of blindness in
her right eye. A scan had revealed the same faint smattering of a white deposit
on the retinal surface, like a carpet of cobwebs on the lawn that you sometimes
find on an autumn morning. An amusing vignette came to her mind in which she
turned the dried old husk of Miss Trott upside down and shook her so that the
white dust floated everywhere as in a child’s glass snow scene.
With a heightened sense of anticipation she had
her team prepare equipment for possible surgery on the old lady’s eye. Trott was
helped to the patient’s chair. They shook hands; the elastic fleshed,
pink-nailed firmness of one, encasing the fleshless, hard-boned, mottled skin
of the other.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Not so well,” said Helena Trott. “The last ten
years have dawdled along and then this sudden blindness arrived to shake me up.”
Her voice was firm and a little self-deprecating.
Once the eye was immobilised she shone her
magnifying light into the wide pupil. The ageing cells and filigree nature of
the retina with its dusting of powder gave way to a cliff top cemetery, eroded
through time so that only one stone had not yet fallen into the sea. On it was
inscribed:
Helena Trott
Home at last where she is truly loved
As with Sandhi Dalah, there was no instrument
fine enough to scrape away the single cell layer of film from the retina,
whether a trick of the ancient eye or real. She finished her probing, in case
there was something she had not itemised and put away her instruments. Then,
with a mounting sense of entering a disturbing new pattern to her life, she
asked her team to leave her alone with the old woman. After explaining that she
could do nothing for the eye for the condition had not been encountered before
by the medical profession and would need much research to ascertain its
pathology, she told her haltingly about the vision she had seen. Helena Trott
smiled in sudden rapture, nodding her head repeatedly and placed her old
fingers on the surgeon’s wrist.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”
The inevitable letter arrived several weeks later. It bore a foreign
stamp. The address was typed using an old typewriter so that letters were not
perfectly spaced nor in a neat line. It read:
Dear
Doctor Cord
You
have wrought a miracle. Miss Trott, our beloved benefactress, returned to her
estate here in Kerala after fifty years absence. She spent a last blissfully
wondrous week of her life on the bougainvillea covered veranda of her old home,
submerged in beauty, eyes drinking in the ocean, waiting, if I may be overly
poetic, for a barque to carry her to that shore to which we all must one day
sail. Here she wrote a final will, sound of mind I can assure you, leaving this
estate to myself and my family forthwith for which we are eternally in your
debt, for it was your gift to see inside the dark well of our desires that
determined her homecoming.
Your
humble servant and grateful friend, always,
Khumi
Kurup
Estate
Manager (Grandson of First Estate Manager)
The
English Villa
Gokarna
Kerala
India
Chapter Four
By the end of the year she had had a dozen encounters of this
extraordinary kind, always presaged by dreams involving well known figures from
history or characters from classical fiction. The names, as in classical
psychoanalysis, related to those of particular individuals on her lists,
sometimes in a crudely obvious fashion and sometimes requiring a more
labyrinthine interpretation. They all suffered from sudden blindness in their
right eyes with a seemingly related fine carpet of something alien on their retinas.
It was almost comical the way her
mind functioned at this Freudian level of correspondence and symbolism. The
pageant of famous personages that passed by her inner eye was often little more
than a cluster of tiny sketches held together by some well known anecdote or singular
characteristic, mental figments from her early school days. She wrote out the
list of her patients’ names in one column and beside it in another, the dream
inhabitants.
Sandhi Dalah
Helena Trott
Robert Heinz
Belle Bird
Colin Tick
Christian Pillar
Casey New
Shirley Mansion
Michael Roddie
Bee English
Sandy Angel
Sally Eye
Barnaby Richardson
Mary Aspray
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Salvador Dali
Helen of Troy
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Karl Marx
Christopher Columbus
Casinova
Sherlock Holmes
Mickey Mouse
Elisabeth the First
Martin Luther
Salome
Charles Dickens
Margot Fontaine
|
In every case a letter had followed her entry
into the mind of her subject extolling her for her miraculous gift of
prescience and her ability to use it to change the life of a sufferer or a
victim. It was occult how these lives had been transformed in profound ways
owing to her intercessions. As she stared at the list, wondering if there might
be a deeper significance holding these names together, there was a knock at the
door and the registrar stuck his head inside her office.
“Coffee Jen?” he asked.
“No thanks,” she replied without really seeing
him. But what had caught her gaze and kept it fixed there was her nameplate on
the office door above his head. Jennifer Cord. He looked at her and then up at
the plate before shaking his head and shutting the door.
Meanwhile, with gathering emotion, Jen Cord
allowed the dream that had just burst into her consciousness, to run across the
inside of her eyes like an old scratchy film. In it she was walking in the
garden of her childhood in a winter’s early snowfall. Her father was burning
leaves and the dead heads of roses and twigs. He stood silhouetted against the
flames and the white landscape and then turned to face her. He had grown a
moustache and wore a strange red uniform. He smiled wolfishly at her, baring
his teeth and then, with a crooked forefinger, he directed her gaze to the
blaze. She looked past him and saw a stake at its centre and a woman tied to
it, naked, skin blistering, bubbling and falling from her. The rapid
dissolution of her flesh left her a skeleton except for her two eyes, piercing
and urgent in their bony sockets. The skull spoke but she could not hear the
words because of the crackling of the leaves and the explosions of the twigs.
She sat, alone in her office, a cold fear
making her shiver. She added her name to the bottom of the patients’ column:
Jen Cord. And then opposite it she wrote Joan of Arc.
Chapter Five
Jen Cord, ophthalmic surgeon, finished her list at six and returned to
her apartment in an elegant square in the old part of the city. It was the most
minimal tribute to her history. The furnishings were sharply geometrical and
toned from white, through greys, to black. Only the light beech, highly
polished parquet flooring offered
a contrast. It was a haven for internal dialogue, there being nothing to distract
her from listening to music, reading or contemplation. Here she laid out case
notes and her columns of names together with summaries of all her dreams. As
she stared at them the vision in her right eye started to dim. She put a hand
over her left and, as she looked on in despair, the writing first became
indecipherable and then disappeared into a blackness. The last name that
remained distinct in her mind was her own.
Chapter Six
It was two in the morning when she arrived back at the hospital. The
genial, fat uniformed man who was manning reception and acting as a guard
smiled and raised a hand before returning to his television screen. She walked
through the waiting room and bumped into the registrar, now on night call,
going through a file of case notes. A patient sat holding his head in obvious distress.
The registrar looked puzzled but did not question her presence nor did her
fixed, stern expression suggest he could ask her for help.
She keyed in the code for the operating theatre
and entered, closing the door firmly behind her, at the same moment switching
on a low, ambient light. Then she went over to the patients’ chair and switched
on a small overhead beam. She sat down and faced her invisible surgeon,
imagining their conversation.
“And how are you, Miss Cord?”
“A little tense. Somewhat concerned. This kind
of operation is experimental … you know. “It is unpredictable.”
“Have no fear, Miss Cord. We know what we are
doing. Now, I’m just going to put some drops in your eye to enlarge your
pupils. Look up.” She administered the drops by pulling away the bottom lid of
her right eye and dripping the chemical into the pouch she had made. While the
drug began its work, she set up the ophthalmic magnifying lens with its tiny
bright beam of illumination. Experimenting with the beam and lens she focused
it and watched as the image from them was relayed on to a small monitor above
her head. There was her brown eye steadily dilating, her untended lashes and
one brow in need of a good plucking. It was a little crude but satisfactory for
her purpose. With the beam turned very low she waited for the dilation to be
complete and then began to increase the illumination, focusing it through her pupil
and on to her retina. Perfectly healthy she thought until she saw the almost
invisible flakes of white dust, like motes in sunlight, falling on its surface.
As she looked at the little screen she found
herself being drawn into it and through the falling powder so that it gathered
on her hair and shoulders. The vault that she had entered expanded and became a
cold scene of dark sky and crisp white snow. A single house stood in front of
her on a hill side. Below it, terraces caterpillared down into the valley below
where there were was a small industrial town with factories and chimneys giving
out black smoke. She walked towards the house, her high heels making circles in
the snow, her thin red silk dress, clammily cold against her calves, her black
satin shrug with its glittering fake diamond brooch pinning it at her throat
and the black pillbox hat with its red feather perched jauntily on her head.
She came to the door. Everything was familiar,
the hard cold iron fluting of its handle as she turned it, the hallway with its
flowery Victorian tiles, the oak stairs. She climbed without hesitation. This
was her home, as intimate to her as her very skin. She opened the bedroom door
with an expectant smile upon her face and froze. Lying on the bed was her father,
older and greyer than when she last saw him and, nestled against his naked body,
was herself, Jen, his daughter.
A terrible screech startled her and she lifted her head from her
father’s shoulder to look at the doorway where she had been standing a moment
before. In her place there, was her father’s young wife, in a white nightdress. Ten
years before she had been her closest friend, her confidante, like a sister so
tight was the bond. As she watched, tears coursed down the young woman’s
cheeks, hands fluttered and her body twisted and convulsed against the door
jamb. The bereft waif was keening something repeatedly, her eyes fixed upon Jen's
own, until finally Jen could just make out the words, “Is this what you want?
Is this what you want?”
“No! No!” she heard herself cry as the scene
dissolved.
Chapter Seven
Slumped back in the patients’ chair, Jennifer Cord lay with her eyes
closed. A cavalcade of ghostly figures walked under her twitching eyelids. All
of them, led by Dali and Helen of Troy, bowed to her as they passed and then vanished
into the air. Last of all was Joan of Arc, now returned to flesh and blood,
voluptuous, breasts bare, shining with the light of intense purpose and holding
a gleaming sword above her head. As she, too, disappeared, Jen heard the door
of the operating theatre open. The registrar stood there.
“Is that you Jen? Are you ok?”
Her gaze took in his handsome, swarthy features
and his intrigued, concerned eyes and she felt her body twist as though it had
a magnetic core and the poles had just reversed. At the same moment her mind
became clear and her vision lost its right sided opacity so that she saw him in
almost transcendent three dimensions.
“A bit shaky,” she whispered,
over-dramatically. “Give me a hand.”
He stepped quickly to her side and helped her
up. Self-consciously she pressed a breast against him, her head looking over
his shoulder, smiling.
End
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