A Magnificent Silence & Place des Vosges

It's a fine sunny morning in Place des Vosges. Today, without warning, R.K. died in a half empty flat. My name is Lid (spelt without the L), a phony professor, of sorts: well aware of R.K.'s successes and failures, but not my own. I was first on the scene. His last words? 'Milo! Come in out of the rain! You'll catch your death!' Some might say, 'Poor R. K.' Others may say: 'He was due the alternative.' 'Was he juggling carving knives? Not that he had any.' 'He was born with a face you longed to thump.'

Was he a dark-eyed tomboy? No. Blue eyes, blond hair (until he was born), with an amicable anxious face. His humour could make a deceased person breathless; carry one to a place of exclusion, where nothing exists except a magnificent silence. The occasional tear, but no self-pity. A suggestion of despair, but no fresh disasters.

He was once dismissed as a mixture of repressed emotion and personable; it can never be said he was an actor; that his life was built around performance. His life was unactable. He once admitted, 'Life is a hateful comedy. If only I had been a character in a book I should have remained unseen, unheard, implausible. I pleased many people by being elsewhere. I openly scorned charm radiated by others; though I softened my abrasive edge prior to my demise.'

'My happiest time? The mid-1960s. Why? Without exhaustion I was loquacious, a loose cannon. I recall talking to people about matters I knew little of myself. The absurd conversing with the absurd. Deliberation. Animation. Vanity. Inescapable.'

His father (short on humour, long in the leg) was a nun. He died in 1998 after falling off a donkey in the family home and swallowing the donkey's false teeth. The donkey died in jail after being caught interfering with a hen. R.K.'s mother (short in the leg, long on humour) was a recluse who enjoyed walking the fields, lanes and roads near her home with her dog, Plato. A woman fond of reciting Aristotle's Law of Non-Contradiction to those she encountered.

When R.K. reached seventy his world moved progressively inward. He moved to Paris in 2006 and lived in a fish tank in a French Restaurant on the Rue Saint-Marc. A year later he relocated (with two fish) to a soup bowl in a café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The fact that neither R.K. nor the fish spoke French did not provoke despair, tension, or yearnings. For entertainment they listened, and danced, to a gramophone recording of barnyard noises.

*

Reflections: A blind man once told me he could tell by my voice that I had never observed or understood anything in my life with any degree of clarity. When I asked him, 'What does it mean to be a good person?' he smiled. 'That is hard to define. But one should know, and not need to inquire of another human being.' 

A Thousand Pitfalls a Day

 

Today I received an 'old-fashioned' letter which I read several times at the Café Rousseau. The village is immaterial: the letter isn't. The message is beautiful and haunting. A letter accords a sense of the individual which an email, a text, a phone call, or a face to face meeting can ever hope to express. Tonight I shall sleep with the letter beneath my pillow as the moon lights up the rooftops in the village, and lazily watch my chest gently rise and fall as tranquility fills the room. 

I feel stronger than I did yesterday, and, indeed, the day before. Sometimes, thinking is worst than physical pain. I'm thankful, however, that bleak thoughts can be sweetened by satin words from a fresh-faced, beautiful - not necessarily, attractive - young woman. What do I fear? Perhaps drowning in my own thoughts, when frightening memories wash back and forth, and overwhelm my strength and spirit.

I recall watching a cow giving birth. And how the mother tenderly licked her calf. I was seven-years-old. The grass in the field graced my father's knees. His face, normally hard, was covered in a shiny coat of sweat. I could sense he was content, happy. For a moment he stood motionless, glanced at me, and smiled. I thought, 'It's so beautiful. The newly-born calf is so beautiful!' I had witnessed the birth of a new life.

*

'What do you want?!' a shrill voice exclaimed. A boorish waitress with a red face and pink arms stared down at me. 

'A coffee, please.'

'We don't have any!'

'Tea ...' I felt like a hunted animal.

'There's nothing to eat or drink! Don't you know there's a war on!' she said frostily.

The main shopping street was busy. Everything seemed normal. The coffee shop was full of people. I looked at them, one by one, through pale eyes. What were they thinking about? Some sat with their eyes closed, as if asleep.

'What war?' I enquired. The dazzling glare of the lights made me giddy. Everything that seemed simple a moment before now seemed complicated.  'What war are you talking about?'

The waitress came close to me. Her mustard breath tortured me. 'You must be a foreigner! What war?! Look around you! There has to be balance in nature between good and evil, love and hatred, murderers and bodies, or all hell breaks loose!'

To change the subject, I expressed interest in the coffee shop, and its customers.

'Don't they all look sad?' she asked, without waiting for an answer.

At such moments I wait for my thinking to produce words to lighten my heart and mind. It's strange how individuals and groups can cultivate fear. They trade in life and death, and can penetrate the strongest ceilings and walls. Their eyes shine in the darkness as their claws dig deeper and deeper into the bodies and souls of victims. The scent of death is never far from all things beautiful.

*

Reflections: It is not possible to identify yourself in someone else, dream their dreams, or to enter their soul. We are alone, finite, prisoners of our own egotism. Each one of us face 'a thousand pitfalls a day.'

Each second on this earth a person's mouth quivers with contempt and hatred of fellow human beings. They live in a restricted world of unceasing conflict. Such individuals may breathe copiously but they are already dead: they feel no sense of love, compassion, sadness, or loss. The one thing they cannot tolerate, above all other things, is life.

What did Vincent van Gogh eat for Breakfast?

The image one acquires of a genius is dependent on the selection. Whether the individual is a gifted painter, poet, philosopher, musician, inventor, or scientist, is, in fact, immaterial. Genius remains a matter of opinion and can't be measured. The genius, by accident of birth, possesses the special gift of originality, heightened perception and intuition, and embraces individualism in spite of (or because of) ridicule from contemporaries, in pursuit of their own vision and goal.

There remains a potent romantic image of the genius – probably, from Victorian times – as someone disturbed, on the verge of mental collapse, unable to keep their body and soul together. This is not the case with most geniuses. Jonathan Swift, David Hume, and Galileo Galilei, come to mind. There are others, of course.

The image of the artist Vincent van Gogh is a case in point. We know Van Gogh was a great artist: his works exist to to prove it. However, what is authentically known of Van Gogh's thinking, his inner tensions, the struggles his gifts bestowed upon him, his family and friends? A study of his life and work reveals a complex individual. This raises a further question: which human isn't complex?

Who decides whether a painting, a poem, a novel is, or, is not, a great work of art? In reality, it is a small coterie of academics, critics, merchandisers (so-called experts); an informal jury of sorts, who can make or break an artist's reputation and fortune.

Indeed, if we approach the works of geniuses without knowledge of a tragic backstory how would we view their works? It is impossible to know. The fact an artist may have died tragically at an early age draws some individuals to their works. This prior knowledge undoubtedly distorts one's view of the artist's output. How would such art be received if the artist were still alive? Would it be venerated to the same degree?

As with all individuals labeled geniuses, or not, excess of natural ability does not make for satisfaction and happiness, any more than excess of wealth.

Finally, what is normal? Each one of us is unique. We all have discreteness. We are all outstanding in our own way. Primarily, we are all moving in the same direction: seeking to live an authentic life out of the reach of false judges.

*

Reflections: For some people fame and fortune are a cross or a crown. They are recognised everywhere they go. As I live in anonymity, I am able to walk around my home unrecognised by my wife and children. Even our dog has stopped peeing on my leg, an affection which, oddly, I miss.

Lena & The Seagull

I'm married, at present, to my fifth wife, Lena - she is a beautiful and lively person; sometimes extremely emotional, sometimes chaotic, sometimes tall, sometimes small (I'm not a scientist, nor aware of the cause of this condition). Buying Lena clothes, however, can present extreme difficulties, as I'm not sure what size she will be at a particular hour of the day. She has a talent for imitating people. At breakfast this morning she let her jaw drop, rolled her eyes across the table, and mumbled incoherently in a dull, dark voice. Silence fell over the table, over a chair, and left the room to go to the toilet. I laughed and smiled at Lena. " Well, who were you impersonating? I must admit I'm at a loss." "You," said Lena, lowering her eyes.

Silence returned to the room, and I asked if he had washed his hands. He replied yes. I was immediately suspicious as he doesn't have hands. Any fool could see that! Anyway, where was I? Yes. Love anything that lives and you will eventually get hurt, whether it's a relative, a friend, a lover, a pet. I looked at Lena, then Silence, then Lena. "Do you still love me?" Lena replied, "Yes", her voice controlled, and unexciting. "Do you still share my passions for soil, fertilizer, pruning, being drunk at 9:30 in the morning, and pressing your body against rocky walls?" She smiled sarcastically, and said yes. I felt like pulling my hair but my wig was upstairs in our bedroom.

Anyway, I am suspicious that a son from a previous marriage named, Seagull - a result of my admiration for the works of Anton Chekhov - is also in love with Lena. Why do I think this, I hear you say? Frankly, Seagull shares our marital bed: he sleeps with Lena and I. There I've said it! And worse, he decides when the lighting should be turned of, and its usually when I'm in the throes of a good book. Outrageous behaviour, you'll agree. Then the bed seems to move like a "horse and carriage" eloping at great haste. I can't take the darkness and deceit much longer. I'd be at my wit's end, if I had any. No man should be expected to live like this? I swiftly found my pistol and put it against my temple, but the bullet was a blank filled with soot!

Am I condemned to face aging, loneliness, anxiety - by myself - dressed in a pink, cotton nightshirt, red nightcap, and Russian-made gumshoes, and covered in soot?

*

Reflections: I'm currently working on a humorous piece for submission to a magazine. I expect the usual pro-forma rejection letter. That doesn't alter the fact I enjoy writing, being creative, watching the tide coming in.

I'm sitting in the library. It is late afternoon; late spring. I sit and think for a while. The light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs can be intensive. I’m finding it hard to concentrate. The library is perched where traffic, pedestrians, pigeons, dogs merge, and congregate. Sometimes the echoed, scrambled shouting of high school pupils pierces the air.

The traffic on the street near the entrance to the library never stops between the hours of 8.00 am and 6.00 pm. It moans, screeches and aggravates. Occasionally, stray plastic bags – mostly white – roll along the street, fill with air and levitate. Sometimes I feel out of fashion, but I shall go on. I must.

A Day at the Office

Tony is sitting behind his desk. Adam enters.

Tony: Sit down.

(Adam does so.)

Tony: Do you know what I’m holding in my hand?

Adam: A straight flush?

Tony: (sighing) Your latest appraisal. (Pause) Frankly, the organisation expected greater things.

Adam: Well, I've been working on a restricted canvas. (Smiling) Still reading through the classics?

Tony: (pretentiously) Just finished reading Don Quixote for the third time.

Adam: Did you skip the dull bits?

Tony: That would be sacrilegious … Though it’s overrated, of course.

Adam: Of course.

Long pause.

Tony: (uncomfortable) I’m afraid I’ve some bad news.

Adam: You’ve had a full body scan and received a clean bill of health?

(Tony raises his eyes heavenward.)

Adam: Your hair-piece is writing an autobiography?

(Tony shrugs helplessly.)

Long pause.

Tony: Have you lost weight?

Adam: I’m on a diet.

Tony: Finding it easy?

Adam: Definitely. I’ve no money for food since my wife left me.

Awkward pause.

Adam: How is she by the way?

Tony: Melissa? Never better ... Wants for nothing ... Damn gorgeous ... Great in bed. No need to tell you ... eh?

Adam: (thoughtful) Well ... No.

Pause

Adam: And the townhouse?

Tony: (smiling) Great. You invested a great deal of time and capital in the property.

Adam: Yes.

Tony: I haven’t had to modify or improve a single thing since I moved in.

Adam: I’m pleased.

Tony: (softly) Did we ... Did I ever thank you?

Adam: I don’t believe so ... No.

Tony: Not a word? (Pause) Astounding.

Pause

Tony: How do you relax?

Adam: I play blank CDs full blast and dance to annoy the neighbours in the next dust bin. I hope to move to a skip soon.

Long Pause

Tony: Melissa and I are concerned about your mental state.

Adam: Really? I’m flattered.

Tony: (apprehensively) You don’t mind?

Adam: Mind? I don’t have a mind. I pawned my brain years ago. (Smiling) It’s sitting in a shop window beside a Second World War hand grenade. In fact, it's hard to tell the difference between them.

Pause

Tony: Are you undergoing therapy?

Adam: Once a week. The psychiatrist pops pills during our sessions. It tends to interrupt the flow. She maintains I’m the only patient she has encountered who suffers from 'sibling rivalry' and is an only child.

Long Pause

Tony: You’ve been at this organisation a long time without any appreciable increase in rank, or salary. Any ideas why?

Adam: Losing my wife and home to my boss—you— had a profound effect. Other than that, I’m at a loss.

Tony: 'The gods support those who are stronger.'

Adam: Tacitus.

Tony: (unsure) Indeed ... You’ve a sharp mind when used properly.

Adam: Think so?

Tony: Yes.

Pause

Tony: No sour grapes?

Adam: None.

Long Pause

Tony: Any financial difficulties?

Adam: Other than being forced into personal bankruptcy several times, and a credit rating below 'Absolute zero'—fine. However, living in a dust bin has drawbacks in terms of comfort and the pursuit of a meaningful social life.

Pause

Tony: 'Sometimes it’s necessary to destroy the man to save him.'

Adam: Really? Has it ever happened to you?

Tony: No. I’m sorry to say it’s happening to you. As of today you can leave the past entirely behind. You’re no longer an employee of this organisation. I’d write you a reference ... What would be the point?

Adam: Exactly.

Tony: (smiling) I wish I was starting afresh again.

Adam: Shall I say I was fired, resigned, lost motivation and direction, or that the boss took my wife, home, and assorted assets?

Tony: (uneasily) I would never advise an individual to be less than honest. In this case, however, economy may be advantageous for all concerned.

Long Pause

Tony: (rising from his chair) I hope you found this conversation uplifting and rewarding. I know I did. (Pause) As your contract is terminated with immediate effect, please leave your employee card with security. (Pause) I would advise against returning to your workspace ... We don’t want your 'ex-work colleagues' to get upset, do we?

Adam: No ... Yes ... I understand.

Tony: Just look at the last twenty years as a right step in the wrong direction.

Adam: Really?

Tony: Hell, yes. (Pause) On the bright side, I met Melissa, socialised at your home, and eventually moved in. It changed my life no end. Couldn’t live without Melissa, or the 'townhouse', or my job for that matter. (Pause) Anyway, enough about me.

Awkward pause.

Adam: Do you remember the first question I asked when I joined the organisation?

Tony: No. (Chuckling) I remember asking if you were married. Didn’t realise your wife would be so attractive. I’ve still got that first photograph you showed me―I cut you out, of course.

Adam: 'What are the first projects I will be involved with?'

Tony: (smiling) You’re kidding me? Did I give an answer? ... No? ... No.

Adam: I wanted to make my mark on those initial critical projects.

Tony: Really? I wish I had known.

Pause

Tony: 'Fate always goes as it must.'

Adam: Beowulf.

Tony: (hesitant) Indeed ... A sharp mind.

Pause

Tony: (blandly) A message for Melissa?

Adam: Tell her ... Tell her, 'I loved her too much to hate her now.'

(Adam moves toward the door.)

Tony: And me?

Adam: (turns round) You have this strange effect on people that causes oily discharge and loss of appetite. In fact, the list is endless. My advice? Come back from the 'dark side'. Trust me, we’re all just one step from the slaughterhouse. You take care now.

Adam exits, leaving Tony shaking with trepidation and doubt.

THE END?

Reflections: My girlfriend Jennifer rang me to enquire if I'd seen her mustache trimmer, hair gel, brass knuckles and police baton. I replied in the negative. She was still speaking when I ended the call. Her conversation ambushed me when I felt most awake and required silence.

When Jennifer was nineteen she paid to have a mole and a water rat removed from her face. I blame it on her fixation with 'simply messing about in boats' and her constant re-reading of The Wind in the Willows while dressed as a weasel.