De Fièvre Nuits.

There is no sense to be found in the gutters that run alongside A-Road’s in the deep south of Holland. I know because I was there, bent double in the shadows contemplating Epicureanism. The cars and the common men crept by as though it were a summer night just like an other. Though they too couldn’t help but notice that there was no sense to be found on a night like this. The festival had just drawn its last breath, burst at the seams, spilling its besotted offspring onto the silent streets. Back to the hommes communs, the masses, to collectively mourn the death of long anticipated fantasies. Being versed in this sort of scene we’d foreseen a struggle and opted to duck out early, before animosity reared its ugly heads. We being myself, Adele and Talia, two old hands of the English scene, who had travelled the distance by slowcoach to watch dawn break with little old me. Only, dawn was a long way away yet. Not unlike like our tent, which was pitched some 5 or 50 miles away, through the sleepy streets of Landgraaf.

In less transient times a quiet meander through as yet unseen parts of the world might have been reason enough to start the journey at once. But not tonight. Tonight would be over in the blink of glass eye and if it must be so, there had to be a finale. So we slumped like late night drunks onto the blackened grass, onto which I proceeded to empty the contents of my backpack; a whole camembert, a slice of bree, pickled gherkins, anchovies, cold sliced ham, day old beef bourguignon, a stick of crusty bread, hot buttered croissants, foie gras, crackers, crêpes, éclairs, a bunch of red grapes, a bottle of Bordeaux, a bottle of Anisette, a couple inches of Absinthe, a slab of dark chocolate, a selection of nuts, a pot of coffee and a copy of Plexus by Henry Miller.

“I don’t understand.” Talia cut in before I’d chance to explain “Where did? What the? Sasha, you’re a real fucking selection of nuts!”

I looked first at the intangible feast, then at Talia, who wore upon her painted face that same curious look she often saved for myself in moments like these. She smiled knowingly. Lastly, I looked at Adele, who saw right through me and into the swarming thicket. Through that black mass of impenetrable branches and beyond, to the other side of the journey that lay ahead of us. She is nobodies fool, there’s no pulling the wool over her ornamental eyes. She granted me a small token, a simple nod, as though to say “Carry on Sasha, if you must, play your silly games”. With that, we ate. We drank too. We dunked, chewed, spread, smeared, gulped, coughed, belched, licked, cracked, choked, spluttered and swallowed. Until there was nothing left; not a crumb, not a drop. Nothing that was but Plexus.

“Is anyone going to eat that?” I asked, greedily eyeing the 614 pages. Another smile, another nod and I’d swallowed it all in one…

“Now, if we want to have fun…” Talia said, “All we have to do is dance…”

We didn’t wait for the grass to grow… We were off… In all directions at once… Divided and unleashed… There were 36 of us… Each claimed he or she knew the way back… We danced… We dispersed… I chased after a familiar figure… Not unlike myself… Only more convincing… Together we galloped off, towards the old Parisian suburbs… Screaming French somethings into the night…

I hotfooted it down the Boulevard De Batignolles calling His name… I drop in at His place in Clichy… I’m a decade too early… I hit the familiar streets running… Past the long string of cafes, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, haberdashers, hotels and bordels… He is nowhere to be seen…. I retrace and erase all the same steps… The ones we’d walked together during those quiet days… The ones that followed the storm… It swept me up… It spat me out… I owe it all to Him… My thanks, my eternal gratitude… I must find Him… The sad sonnet of a distant accordion accompanies my madness…

“WHERE ARE YOU HENRY MILLER?”

I stop all the passers by… Jump into their path… Grasp at their arms… I plead with the pimps… Strike bargains with the whores… Sing songs to the drunks… They brush me aside; confused, irritated, perhaps even a little afraid… It’s all Greek to them… I spit feathers… I shoot the shit… Something about Brooklyn… He must still be there… I’ve got to have faith in June… She’ll get Him here… I’ll wait!… In the meantime, an apéritif… I ask for directions the Dôme… nobody seems to know the way… On I march… I see Adele sinking into bliss… She mumbles something softly to me… Wants me to slow down… Soak up the scenery… The Siene… I scream an indecipherable retort… I don’t quite catch it myself… I race off down the Boulevard De Clichy… Passed the Moulin Rouge… A wolf whistles at the moon… I’m caught in a swollen cloud of Chanel No. 5… I’m carried toward Rue De Matyrs… I find Talia dancing around the crossroads… Dressed in handmade floral hareems… Exposing skinned knees… She’s grown 5 hands… Each is waving frantically to the hot air balloons that roar overhead… I’ve forgotten all about my search for Henry as I turned onto Rue d’Orsel… I surf the incorporeal crowds… Topple over townhouses… Sail through open windows… I climb the eternal staircase… I reach the top… The Basilique du Sacré-Cœur… I gasp… A little too early perhaps… Just… Emptiness…

“Tu vois,“ I began, turning to address the crowd “à la fin je suis qu’un seul parmi ces hommes communs dont nous parlions. Seulement, parfois je reçois des flashes. Parfois je pense que je suis un artiste, des fois je pense même que je suis un visionnaire mais jamais un prophète, un voyant.”

Let Them Say We’re Crazy.

In the first instance I had to squint, to strain my eyes, draw it out with my ruminations, take off on a wild flight of fancy simply in order to catch a glimpse of something incongruous, something that didn‘t quite belong. “Look,” I point out to Effy, who was yapping away like an otter beside me, “if you stare at the same patch of grass and squint a little it ripples gently like a lake.” But my excitement was forced, I didn’t care about ripples on a placid lake. I wanted a vicious ocean. I wanted to drown in a flood of cerulean… Soak up waves of deep azure and glistening sapphire… I wanted to struggle against a current of rich perse… Swallow salt water… Choke down a breaker of smalt… Ride a great crest of glaucous into the argent foam. I want to see ships made of bleached bone smashing against the storm… I want to cackle wildly with the sea hag, drunk on the rainbow surf. I wanted ideas, gargantuan ideas, fierce and multi-limbed like the ancient kraken. I wanted a hearty discourse with Poseidon himself. I wanted to close red raw eyes and see all of this… not strain them to see a gentle ripple.

A period of time passed by me, any attempt to calculate it would have been madness and the deranged do not concern themselves with such trivial things. Time has no meaning for those who are blind to it, they cannot see it, calculate with it, plan by it, or even believe in it. It flashes before their eyes and slips through their fingers. I had slipped through fingers too, into the fourth dimension. And upon opening my eyes I was pleased to note that I no longer required them to see. My gaze was still secured to that same unassuming patch of earth which I had unravelled all those moments ago. I crawled out of my sight and into the periphery, where I cut loose with Mother Nature herself. I pirouetted around the trees, skipped across the lake, gamboled through the daisys. I did all of this at once, I acted out every part, I left no stone unturned, the most thorough method actor of our age. I was seeing nature for the very first time through the eyes of those who inhale carbon dioxide and exhale pure poetry, those who make the pages of great novels dance with fantastically maudlin prose, with hypnotic hyperbole, saccharine songs and voluptuous verse. All of it so intoxicating that your head spins uncontrollably on the Earths own axis. And here I was in the middle of this great masterpiece, just one of the subtle strokes that helped to fill the canvas.

I felt a sudden urge rush through me, I had to share all this, for I knew, despite myself, that this was but a moment and all moments are fleeting and even without the curse of time this one was bound to end too. I tried to calm the storm swirling about inside my head, to collect my thoughts, to make some sense of it all. But I failed to tame my faculty of speech. I didn’t quite possess the language or ability to structure it in a way that would do these scenes justice. I wallowed momentarily in my grief and was consumed briefly by my own lack of faith in expressing myself. But then something struck me, something so simple, something so profound. In this instance, in the throes of this moment, talking was superfluous anyhow, I did not need to say out loud what Effy could see too clearly. More clearly in fact. Through her own eyes, in a way which she understood better then if even the greatest of public figures were to explain using his own words. And by the very nature of us all being one, we understood each other telepathically and subconsciously we communicated without the use of too extravagant gestures or too simple turns of phrase.

I was stirred from my reverie by a familiar but distant sound. It came to me through a shining ivory smile and thick crimson lips. It burst fourth from the belly of a too easily forgotten past and by it I was immediately whisked back to the brutal and unforgiving streets on which we’d first danced, together, Effy and I. We stalked those dark streets, throwing caution to the howling winds. She was a cold hearted bitch and I a heartless cunt. We gave no mercy, we looted, we raped, we pillaged, we took everything we could from those humble beginnings but still it was not enough. They did not offer us the required sustenance that we needed to feed our insatiable imaginations. We had no means of escape and so what could we do but laugh? Laugh in spite of it all, laugh in the face of it all, laugh together, in all the filthy little corners of the only world that we knew.

I looked over at her now, lips so sweet, eyes so filled with romance. I didn’t even know what she was laughing at but I let it wash over me, soak me to the bone, I drowned in the sonic surf, bathed in the beautiful warmth of the lost laughs of youth. Although I knew that neither of us possessed the words or the courage to tell the other exactly what we saw I felt I had to let her know, give her something, some words or some gesture. Pick her a flower from the fourth dimension, perhaps? Just then ,something struck me, something so simple, something so profound. I dove into my bag and surfaced holding a little cork book, I unwound the binding as she watched on with a increasingly nervous look upon her face. I took a pen from my coat pocket and scribbled three little words hastily onto a blank page and held it out for all the worlds to see.

The Infinite Jest.

We wrote this one on the same chipped dead elephant ivory, grinning eternally, Jack Andrew Lantern & I.

A storm was gathering over the Playa Del Forum. Thunder rumbled through the Spanish hills and white forks lit up the land. A singular cloud amassed around the centre of the stage, the crowd gasped and watched on. I half-imagined a preacher with a black sandwich board proclaiming ‘the end is nigh.’ The cloud began to swell with the monstrous clatter of the mythological horde who worked mechanically below it. Nymphs picked cosmic riffs from six lustrous strings as Dryads danced tributes atop the howling winds and Satyrs orchestrated the hollow pounding of the barbaric percussion. A Minotaur hammered at a brass gong with all the might in his clenched fists and each separate sound shook me to my core and filled me with a strange brew of fear and bravery; astonishment and disbelief at the ancient world unravelling upon the modern world. The night began to withdraw into itself leaving in its wake a behemoth. It burst through the belly of the stage and ambled fourth blindly from a decade of unrest, hell-bent on a massacre.

“This definitely isn’t cardboard River” I began.

“Hmm..”

I watch him closely and as I await his answer I observ a frenzied grin grow to consume his cherubic face.

“You may be right, I haven’t felt this way for 6 years.”

We sat sinking into the fringe and watched the catatonic crowd which had gathered under the blackened sky. They moved as though under a spell. They clawed at their own flesh and poured molten iron and fresh sea salt into their wounds. They picked at the scabs and licked the remnants clean with forked tongues in a Bacchic frenzy. A flock of Swans took flight and dove in amongst the waves, breaking bodies, cracking bones, and crashing violently against the midnight cliffs. The ground beneath us began dance like oil on the surface of a lake, slithering like so many multi-coloured snakes. I had finally arrived, after a lifetime of searching through magic eyes, in the throes of the unfathomable illusion.

“Tell me what you see, Sasha. Serve it to me raw.”

I met his request with a calm reserve as though I were attempting to pluck each word from the nether. But in this distorted reality, all words had escaped me.

“I can’t River.” I drawled.

“Bullshit! You can soliloquise eloquently enough, you can fill blank pages with your brainwork and you can talk a fucking blue streak too. Don‘t give me any crap about ‘you can‘t’”

“I’ll write a story for you when it’s over.”

“No, it’s not good enough.”

“You’re insatiable man! Can’t you just enjoy the moment?”

“Fuck the moment, you‘re lost in the moment. You don’t realise that it’s we who create these moments! Create Sasha, don‘t just lie there like a fish!”

“Fuck you River” I laughed, sensing his warmth. “If you must fucking have it then I see the sky. It’s a sheet of pure obsidian and beneath it lies a thousand bare-skinned harlots, who, through some act of devilry have taken the place of the Angels. They are writhing, naked and unholy, beckoning me to them with painted black fingernails. Fuck, if only I could figure out how to rid my self of this damn body. They’ve already left impressions of teeth deep in my thoughts, swallowed my creative juices laughing, slipped a hot finger inside my mind’s eye. And now look at them, puffing away casually at the cherry-red stars like they’re fucking Marlboro lights. They’re whisper sweet nothings, tell me not to fear and although their intentions seem selfish, I trust them. I am filled with calm, an unparalleled clarity, I can see clearly into the future and it looks like everything will be okay. As long as we carry on along this path.”

“I’m drowning too, drowning in all the words, the sentences, all the poems and prose I want compose for you, but hell, I don’t know where to begin. My guts are filled with hot coals. I breathe fire and spit sulphur. But goddamn River you’re a relentless perfectionist. You want each night to be a masterpiece, not any word or any body out of place. You make impossible demands. You want to turn the page every minute. I can’t keep up. I’m a sluggish pile of flesh and bone.”
“We’re bound to each other. We are two fauns in amongst all this. Carved from the same ancient oak, born of the same primordial soup. But we are not the same. You are the eternal poet and I am the eternal drunk. Now leave me be, there’s a cosmic fuck fest going on up there and I still have the eternal problem of this body to solve.”

It started as a sleepy far-off rumble. It came from depths of the black sea skulking behind beyond the boundary fences. It washed over the stage drowning Swans, it washed over the heads of the masochistic, it washed over me and finally, it reached River. It settled in the pit of his stomach before bursting out in all directions; through his double-barrelled chest, through his thin black eyes and through his monstrous grin. It was black thunder and white lightning, it was sheets of torrential rain, a tsunami tearing through a biblical village of sin. It was the grinding of tectonic plates, it broke the Richter scale, it shattered the sound barrier and scattered the shards. It was indefatigable, boundless, incurable, it was an epidemic, it caught alight and spread like wild fire, it lit up the skies, it infected every body, every mind, every soul. It bubbled away in pits of thousand stomachs, it rattled behind a thousand ribcages, it parted a thousand red lips and it gave birth to thousand grins just like his. In unison, we let out a collective sigh of relief, which lingered in the heavily perfumed air. The bricks of the Babylonian tower broke over us and we took stock in the calmness of complete annihilation.

Now This Molested Trash Has A Tongue Like A Serpent.

I arrived at the end of the road. That ominous concept which conjures such vivid images of desolation, of ruins littered about the hollow shell of all that once was. All that had once upon a time provided such promise and such hope was receding behind me like a cowering shadow and still I look forward into impending uncertainty. And if today is the end of all of this, then why is the sun shinning? Why are there bourgeoisie women leisurely draped about Sapharti park decorated in coral coloured bikinis? Why is there whiskey and words on which to get drunk and blank pages onto which I can spill my guts? No, this is not a fitting end for a wretch like me.

I spat a months worth of bottled venom at the mallards who’d gathered all around to watch my performance, thinking that in my madness I would surely drop a few crumbs. But I dropped nothing, not a word, not a crumb, not stitch. I was magnificent, intoxicating myself with all the words I dared finally to speak aloud, even if it was only to myself. I marvelled at how eloquently I put forward my case and revelled in my vicious wit. No longer would I hold my tongue, no longer will I suffer the small talk and the filthy looks of fools!

“This calls for a toast!“ I said to myself as I reached for the bottle, flashing a twisted grin to the mallards as I did. “This isn’t for you, my dears.” I told them, bottleneck suspended above the shot glass I’d brought along to convince myself this was a more sophisticated decent into madness. “This should be shared with someone though.” I said suddenly, pausing as I did. I cannot possibly toast this moment alone, not while I‘m surrounded by so much… my eyes darted frantically this way and that before resting upon an unsuspecting victim.

She was sitting on a crumpled picnic blanket in shade of a huge oak, her head buried in one text book and plenty more littered all around her.

“Hi, do you mind if I sit here?” I asked her as I sat down on the blanket. “Firstly, my apologies for intruding but I could not resist asking if you would join me for a toast? It just seems too damn miserable on a day like today to propose a toast to oneself when I’m surrounded by so much… well, life.” At this point, feeling slightly out of place, I broke eye contact.
“But we’re humans, right?” I began again, this time with a great deal more reserve. “We’re a social animal, why should it be considered strange for me to approach a beautiful girl on a sunny day and ask her something so harmless as will she join me in a toast?”

She had not stopped looking at me once and this unnerved me slightly, and though she hadn’t yet said anything I started to pour out two drinks.

“Okay, so the toast is to the tongue… and its amazing faculty to both get us into and save us, from all kinds of trouble.”

I hand the glass to her, which to my surprise she accepts with a smile, looking up at me with big bright eyes and an a curious look sketched across her pretty little face.

“Oh, but wait. You should toast something too, so we’re both getting something out of this superstition. I have a feeling about this toast, a good feeling, you should share it too.”

“Urm..” she mumbles, breaking her silence.

“What about that work you’re doing there? Let’s toast that and its eventual understanding, completion and success.”

She smiles. I nod. Our glasses kiss and she brings hers slowly to her lips and finishes it with one gulp. Her pretty little face twists and contorts and momentarily retreats inside of itself as if she had just now been delivered the most devastating news. I laugh silently to myself at how precious she is and for a moment, I think I’m in love.

“Waarom heb je toast de tong?” she asks after rediscovering her composure.

“Well, recently I’ve been biting it so hard that it has become the most bruised and bloodied of stumps. In doing so, I’ve wandered a great deal down an unfamiliar path, almost to the end of it, in fact. It’s not natural, for me to act so against my basic instincts. And so just now on that bench over there I decided that at last, I’m going to speak my mind. And it’s by the weight of my tongues conviction I hope relieve myself. And I suppose… that the rest of my life… or certainly my future in Amsterdam, lies largely on that conviction. Tonight we shall see, tonight I go to war.”

“Oh, Ik zie.” she said.

But she didn’t see and at this point I was doubting whether she even spoke English. But what did it matter anyway, what she saw or what she didn‘t? She drank the toast and that’s in itself is a good enough story for me.

“Do you mind if I take a photo of you sitting here on this bench?” I ask “If you hadn’t guessed it from my sitting here alone in the park with a book to read, a book to write in, a bottle of whiskey and such elaborate come-ons, I am a writer. I write stories about the world behind a photograph and I need a picture of this one so that I can tell this story.”

She didn’t mind.

“How is it… to be a writer?” she asked.

“Oh it’s fun, I get to play God, y’know? I have the freedom to turn any situation into my own ideal version of itself.”

“And this one too?”

“Yes,” I laughed “this one too.”

“So what then happens at the end?”

“Oh, I don’t know yet, I’m just making it up as we go along. We fuck, I suppose?”

Tonight We’re Gonna Dance, Like We’ve Never Danced Before.

Hand in hand, stumbling through the half-soaked streets blinking heavily with eyelids made from double cream, heading in the general direction of home, wherever that might be. We tight-roped across the pale yellow pathways, laughing, hiccoughing, silently singing each others praises to the red sky. According to my absent-minded influence we slowed down in front of the same spot I always slowed down to feast on the smells of hot brodjes and crispy frittes.
“Mmm, something smells good!” Minnie excalimed. “Actually, I’m very hungry, shall we stop and share some chips?” As though it were as easy as that, just stopping to get frittes as you pleased. Stopping to eat, when ever it should take your fancy.

A moment later we were stepping cautiously inside, the way late night drunks might when they haven’t quite drank enough to lose their manners. The place was empty besides a gang of three, one woman and two men, all mid-to-old age. They sat at a table down front amongst the scattered signs of a lovingly ran family business. The lady, obviously the owner, greeted us cordially as she got up from her throne. She spoke of course in Dutch, but none of her warmth was lost in translation. I awkwardly pieced together a few foreign words in reply. The two men, who wore expressions that suggested we had just stirred them from a most serious debate, stopped to listen as I fumbled over their clunky language.

“Kunnen… we still get…some frittes, alstublieft?” I asked them sheepishly.

“Ja, Ja, Ja.” The proprietoress answered with a familiar smile.

They were drinking too, or they just had been, for on the table they were gathered around were three stubby cans of bier. Just three cans mind, nothing excessive, they savour their drinks in these parts, take their time over them, sipping in between sentences, always listening to see what their company has to say instead of jumping at the chance to have theirs. I saw all this but still I spoke, quite unintentionally mind. This time round I opted for plain English.

“So, you’re just chillin’ huh?” I asked nervously and regretted doing so almost immediately. In my stupor I hadn’t recognised that there was no pressing need for small talk, I should have just kept quiet and left the talking to Minnie, I thought to myself.

“Chillin‘?” The older of the two man said with an air contemplation, as though he might be weighing up exactly what the question was before he answered it. “Ja, I like that, we‘re just chillin‘.”

I decided that the man who spoke had, prior to our intrusion, been leading the discussion. As I mentioned, he was the oldest and though I think I had only heard him utter that one brief sentence, already there was something about him I liked. He spoke calmly, with self-assurance and though he was obviously well learned he didn’t take himself too seriously, I liked that most. One could see this just by looking at him, dressed in thigh high black leather boots, faded denim jeans, a long wax jacket and finished with a beaten black cap pulled low to his brow.

“I’m the blind guy who lives round these parts.” he offered after a short but comfortable silence, touching the brim of his cap.

“Ahh, I’m from round these parts too,” I said “though I’ve not seen you before, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

“No, me neither.” He said gaily, obviously enjoying his retort. “But you two are together though, yes? I can see that despite only having 3% sight.”

“Well, not exactly” Minnie interjected, “He lives here, I live there, you know?”

By there she meant London, which I sensed had already somehow cropped up, perhaps during that short but comfortable silence I have just mentioned. Which, now come to think of it hadn’t been as short or as silent as I had just led you to believe. Minnie had probably been chatting away the whole time, while I stood swaying; lost in my own thoughts, half listening, half thinking too hard on whether or not I looked like I was listening. I laughed to myself at how absurd this was and as I did, I slipped cheerfully into my little drunken world…

“So, how long are you out here?” The blind man asked, startling me.

“Erm.. I’m not quite sure yet… until I run out of money.. or energy, I guess.”

“Do you wait tables?” Asked the other man, who up until this point had not managed to get a word in.

My eyes narrowed as I stood there, contemplating, trying to think of a delicate way of saying how much I despised waiting tables.

“Him?” Minnie laughed, “He’s far too clumsy.”

“Oh!” the blind man cut in, “It’s too bad he’s not gay then, I do like a clumsy man.”

Minnie laughed nervously.

“Don’t feel threatened my dear” he continued, “I’m not about to steal him from you, I’m going be a Grandfather next month. Yes, my daughter is in full bloom, as James Joyce might say.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed, “my father gave me seeds to sew, do you know it? Marvellous book. They are all grown, the seeds I’ve sewn, and now they are about to sew their own. Anyway, where do you live?”

“Just around the corner, on Albert Cuypstraat” I answered.

“Oh, what a fun place to live. Claustrophobic though, I imagine?”

“Yes, not least because I’m sharing a one bedroom studio with a couple.”

“Oh.” he hesitated, “that simply won’t do.”

I looked at Minnie with a raised eyebrow.

“No, no no that won’t do at all.” he continued “Well, I am going away at the end of this month for a little while, perhaps the both of you should rent my place while I‘m gone. You can have it cheap, of course…”

“What a mad and beautiful city this is.” I said under my breath, laughing heartily and slipping further into my drunken little world.

Standing On The Edge Of Summer.

Half of the Pacific building stood emphatically against the corrosive greys and reds of the broken sky. It was propping up the horizon some incalculable distance away from me. Or is it me? I certainly felt the same. Heavy with the nagging self-consciousness of sobriety but light with the somewhat selfish desires of a self-confessed egotist. Yes, it was all still present though despite myself it appeared I had no control over my actions, no means to comprehend my surroundings. I was meandering through a familiar scene but I had no connection to any of it, as though I were staring at it all in the bottom of a muddy puddle. I was in belly of Westerpark which lay like sleeping giant on the outskirts of a city I barely knew, warming itself in the sun. Scattered between me and the Pacific were the discombobulated shapes of several gaping black holes which lay ominously open like the portals to some lost dimension. One false step and I’d be lost forever, falling weightlessly without end, ad infinitum. Or worse perhaps that I might wake from this esoteric reality to find myself with eyes wide open starting listlessly at an LCD screen. It was not quite summer and as yet the illusion still bore some reality, a glimmer of hope lit up the soft skulls floating all around which were still half filled with childlike anticipation. Chattering amongst themselves their jaws rattled away like dice inside a half clenched fist. Hearts still filled with the hope that that split second holds right before you cast away. You give yourself to the game, throw yourself at lady luck, revel in the glorious notion of rolling a double three and winning six weeks of freedom. And even if it’s nothing more than a frivolous idea it’s better to at least have entertained the impression of freedom, to have believed in it and to have imagined it then not to have breathed it or believed in it at all.

Somewhere along this path, it seems, I’d misplaced the winter and spring entirely. I found myself somehow straddling the banks of a lukewarm body of murky looking water which was flickering in and out of existence. I’m here with a fat red grape in my hand, pinching it softly between two timid fingers, waiting my turn to send it out into the world, to watch as it walks blindly over water, bouncing along to the far reaches of the opposite bank before exploding into a cheap wine. I looked all around me and watched as the half remembered friends of my lost youth flickered too in and out of this occult and thus far unfathomable scene. Names without faces, faces without features, features with expressions, expressions without cause, cause without beginning. Where were the bright eyes wet with juvenile delight? Where were the dehydrated chocolate ice cream stained smiles, the black jack coloured tongues stuck out in defiance, the rosy cheeks, the thick ears and the half picked scabs of so many skinned knees. It all came to me in a flash and in a flash, it was gone again.

I was full with excitement, I felt the boundless energy of youth bubbling in the pit of my stomach, flowing through my underdeveloped bones, bursting from my still frail growing body. I wanted to run and jump across brooks, climb to the summit of perilous spider webs, dance through the olive fields, skim stones, ride bikes and wade through muddy waters chasing after balls. I wanted to get my fill, to stuff my grubby little round mouth full of sugary treats and dry roasted nuts, sweet pink ladies and sour nectarines, hot fudge and cold chicken drumsticks, whipped cream, whipped cream on everything.

This summer promised it all. I too had promised so much, running my big mouth all about town, talking feverishly of this and that. But where was I now? Walking alone in the clouds with not a soul to share all this with. I’d left everyone behind, for a chance to chase this idea of freedom, to go out into the big wide world and see for myself if it’s on truth we build these castles in the sky. I called out in hope of an answer but nothing I said made any sense. I stuttered and stammered as I tried to spit it all out but the words would not bear fruit and nobody answered my call. That is, none but the faint cry of one just as desperate as I. I pushed my way through the cloud in the direction of the tiny voice, all the while shouting back, promising it a leading part in all the adventures I was about to embark upon. Finally, I stopped at the edge of one of these black holes and from inside I could hear the voice, calling out to me, begging for my hand. I bent down and thrust my arm into the void and almost immediately felt the grip of another pass through mine. With little physical effort and great mental strain I succeeded in pulling this figure from the depths of non-existence and into this semi-state of somewhere in between.

He stood before me now, body shimmering like a shy ghost caught in a cameras flash. Already he was smiling, though he did not yet realise what exactly he’d gotten himself in to. I sensed that he had an inclination though, for this character who stood before me is much more than figment of my imagination. He is his own person, with his own genius, his own faculty of wonder and his own thirst for the senseless pursuit of unknown pleasures. In his cloudy eyes I could see he too wanted to sever the many heads off that great beast of boredom. I flashed him a mischievous grin, this new friend of mine, I took his hand mine and off we marched like toy soldiers towards the end of the night.

Black & White Horse.

I sat in the same empty room where we always met, weighing up whether or not I should pour him another drink. It was Makers Mark, a good bourbon which he’d bought along for the occasion, his treat, though as yet he hadn’t told me what we were celebrating. He seemed uncharacteristically subdued, lost in the throes of some weighty meditation, as though he had something of great consequence to share with me. He was drinking much more than usual too, the bottle was almost finished and we’d only just begun.

“Pour me a goddamned drink won’t you?” he interrupted, slurring slightly.

To hell with it, I thought, who I am to deprive anyone of something they need. And I say need here because gazing into the eyes which betrayed him so, I could see that he was in need. Some form of escape, Dutch courage or a violent current. He, in this moment, wore an expression that suggested he was more conscious now of that feeling than I would ever be. I poured out two more drinks threw in a couple of ice cubes and slid one glass toward him, flashing him a weak but ingratiating smile as I did. After a brief struggle to bring the glass to his muzzle he necked it one gulp and fixed his gaze to mine.

“I’m dying man.”

“What are you talking about, you’re not dying, stop being so dramatic.”

“No, I am. I can feel the life fading from me.”

“You’ve had too many whiskies bud, that’s all.”

“Oh don’t give me that shit, I know about the effect of whiskey, just because I don’t write about it or reflect on it like you do. What do you imagine got me thinking in the first place, how do you suppose I ever got out of Africa, that other life… that other world.”

“I dunno man, I was just pleased to have someone to drink with.”

“You’re just pleased to have something to drink.”

“Easy.”

“No man, I admire you for it.”

“You’re drunk”

“I’m dying. That’s why I’m trying to tell you how I feel.”

“Okay, lets agree for a second that you are dying, you seem to be taking it awfully well?”

“And what are you basing that on Sasha? How many people do you know who have died, how much has the stink of death saturated your world? How many people do you know who’ve lived for that matter?“ he paused… “How do you want me to take it? Run around screaming and making a big fuss, you know that’s not me. I’ve seen plenty of it back on the plains, hell, I’ve seen lions eat those closest to me. You know what that made me realise? That death is an unavoidable part of life. And no two lives are the same, so why should death be any different? My life ain’t been so bad y’know, so maybe death won’t be that bad either. I managed to get over here, at least, get out of that rut and do something worthy of remembrance.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Just that. No one will ever remember me, who ever heard of anyone remembering a Zebra?”

“Bullshit. Of course people will remember you, you must have some family that didn’t get eaten by lions? What about the friends you’ve made along the way? What about me?”

“Don’t give me that family shit, they don’t even know what day of the week it is. They could pick me out of a line-up of 10 Zebras, sure, but they couldn’t tell me why.”

“Well shit, you’re lucky. My parents couldn’t pick me out of a line-up of one person.”

“Yeah but anyone who does care about you could pick you out of a line-up of everyone else in the world and plenty of people care immensely about you. You’ve got something, something I can’t put my hoof on but I’m certain that people will remember you. Even after you’re gone, even after all the people who’ve loved you are gone, because you’ve got your stories… and people don’t forget a good story.”

“Shit, you’re joking right? Nobody reads my goddamned stories.”

“Not now maybe, but they will, if you just keep writing people will read them eventually. Trust me.”

“Trust you? Man, you’re just a Zebra,” I said, grinning broadly at him, “what do you know about these things?”

“I know a lot more than I get credit for and I’m right about this.”

“Okay, if you’re so convinced that I’m going to be remembered then how about I write a story about you and what a great friend you are.”

“You’re alright,“ he laughed “for a human that is. You know that, right?”

“Man, I’m a piece of shit. And I’m thirsty, you want another drink?”

“No, I’m done. I think this is it.”

“You mean…”

“Yeah, it’s time or whatever you want to call it.”

“Oh shit, do you want me go?”

“No, you stay, just don’t start crying. I can’t stand it when you humans cry.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

We’d arrived suddenly at the end of the story. The 1000 words that had been spoken were by no means enough to tell it to it’s fullest, but yet, everything seemed to have been said. And so we sat with sealed lips, waiting, staring blankly at the dusty ground. We were looking for something that never came, some form of distress, a profound gesture, a simple sign or even a string of fitting words to tumble from the others mouth.

Slowly and without disturbing the silence his physical form began to extricate itself from existence. It took what seemed to be a lifetime for him to fade completely, from life, from this world, from these pages. And without even the slightest of protests he was delivered calmly to death, a death that was born of and belonged to only him.

“This one is for you Hugh.” I said, draining my glass.