Stories

At that moment I looked up and saw all the naked branches against the white clouds. It was a quiet town and trees could still thrive here, so the branches grew wildly, reaching for something that was always too far away.

It made me think of the darkness of her pubes reaching for the white plane of her stomach, or the roots towards the heart of existence. She had kind eyes but not a single hair on her body wanted to relinquish the wildness. She noticed I was looking up, but could not see anything special there.

I touched her hand as though it was the first time and I had to keep it a secret. Her hand was cold, we had been out too long walking on the cobblestones, looking for something we did not need. At least when I sensed her warmth, it felt like nothing else was important.

I drew her close just to smell her own scent under the one she was wearing. It was earthy, slightly sour, not at all like the floral sweetness under which she was hiding. But I did not want the mask, I always wanted to know what lay beyond her ideas on how to be attractive. They were so much based on old compliments, half-remembered smiles or long gazes, that it was difficult to tell which parts of her mask she had painted herself, reflecting her own tastes instead of those of others.

As I pressed my face against her neck, I thought that love must always contain a vestige of loneliness, because no matter what I do, my longing will always stay there, it is never quenched.

She will always be a mystery, a mind that rotates differently and shines with different colours from mine. But the difference excited me, I would always be trying to understand her, no matter how easy or hard.

So the thought of loneliness never frightened me, as it was an essential part of love that renews itself every moment. It only becomes torture when the desire to understand is not mutual.

I lifted up my eyes and saw her smiling. She would still be beautiful fifty years from now. I wrote a wordless prayer on her skin with my lips. Let this be enough.

He loved her like the serpent loves the Sun, longing for warmth that would animate him.

It was like he had barely had any pulse before, now he only wanted to stretch out in front of her, exposing himself to all the nasty elements, the children who would scream “Snake!” and the sons of Adam who would cut his head off for daring to worship the Sun.

And like the Sun she was indeed, infinite was her warmth, endless her indifference. For friendliness costs nothing and she was either too happy or too scared to show any uncertainty. After a while he slithered away and hid among the rocks and hissed his terrifying love songs that made most people recoil in horror.

In some ways it was good, even people pregnant with boredom could finally feel something. Hungry with disappointment he went out onto the fields and in the long grass waited for something special to happen, and soon enough he saw a herd of cows.

He swallowed one of them whole, his jaws wide open, but he was still hungry. He kept eating large animals until he was the size of a house and only a cat the size of a palace could kill him. But he was no longer a danger to anyone, he was tired of eating and made a nest close to the Moon. It would have been an ideal place to guard eggs, and sometimes he dreamt of having offspring he could send out into space to love other stars much warmer and bigger and even more indifferent.

But despite the way he had seen her, she had always loved him, given him life, and even now on the rocky surface of the Moon she was his only comfort. In fact, what he called indifference was only love that did not discriminate between life forms, and the serpent was just as beautiful as the cows and the mice he ate.

He was so big now that he was almost as lonely as the Moon itself and thus one day he said “I am ready to die” and started travelling towards the Sun to see if he could swallow her whole like everything else.

But she was still too big for him, and she welcomed him with open arms. As he plunged into the hot plasma she let out a loud hiss, although of course no one on Earth heard it. This was a private moment.

He smiled mischievously.

Finally they spoke the same language.

Comment. This story is doused in myths. The style reminds me now of some African myths, but the idea of a serpent or some other animal swallowing the Sun must be pretty universal. In addition, there’s some play on perspectives, the differences between how the serpent sees itself, how it imagines everyone else sees it, and how they actually see it. In that respect there are some questions of postmodernism lurking in the background. Maybe it’s better not to lock down the meanings of myths. I like the idea of this Sun as an eternal mystery, a kind of deity, and how indiscriminate love may look like indifference.

I cannot remember exactly when I decided to live under the bell.

It is dark here but the absence of light encourages me to seek images of my own instead of those of others. It is also very comforting. I burn candles in the evenings even though fresh air should be more valuable. When I blow them out I see my beloved in the traces of light left in my eyes.

Sometimes I light the candles and blow them out several times in a row.

At night I listen to symphonies and look at the stars that my mind has created inside the bell. She is among them too, wearing a blue top and black jeans. Her smile is very soft, like a cucumber, and she gets little dimples on her cheeks.

My family does not know I live here now. They would not understand, they would say that the silence has driven me mad. The walls of my home are made of iron and when I bang my fists against the bell I hear a hollow sound that resonates with my soul. Or maybe no sound is actually produced and all I hear is the echoes of my mind. It is sometimes difficult to tell what is real here.

I can feel that the grass has withered and when I have flowers delivered they never thrive for long in the darkness. It does not matter, I broke my vase anyway.

There is a railway track not far from here but there are no stations nearby. However, people who have not told the conductor where they wish to alight are often dropped here. They really should make up their minds before boarding the train, it is not like there are many spare bells lying around.

I have drawn dozens of pictures of my beloved but they all disappear when exposed to light, perhaps they are a bit shy like me. It really is a wonderful world, often I wish that we all could live under a bell, although not necessarily the same one.

Then again, maybe there already is a much bigger bell outside mine, one that includes all the other people, the elephants and the cucumbers. From there she is smiling to me, her lips like petals, her eyes like an afternoon shower.

She must have her own bell somewhere. Do you think that if I strike my bell hard enough she will hear, that her bell will resonate? But I am scared of breaking my bell. Where would I live if not here?

Comment: a somewhat disturbing image of isolation, detachment, and the inability to connect with people. In A Beastly Comedy Canto 1.23 I used a similar image as a form of punishment for revolutionary leaders become tyrants. The time between writing the two passages was probably around 5 years. Looking at them now, maybe this complements the canto, as here the perspective is from the inside, telling something about the psychological condition, and raising the question whether all people are similar. Personally I have no answer. This is not how I experience the world, and yet the metaphor is recognizable as a feeling of loneliness so deep it seems to be a deep human condition.

At most I can say that people have a tendency to see other people’s minds as similar to their own, so if you feel detached and isolated under a bell, you might think that others are the same, doubly beyond reach, even if there’s no evidence for it, just your own story of who you are and the assumption that if you can’t help yourself, no-one else is capable of reaching out either.

One day she wants to paint a picture of happiness, but right now it seems impossible, like painting a perfect circle.

Or perhaps that would indeed be the image she is looking for.

Once she tried to paint her lover’s kiss. She tried using all the colours she had and turn the image into a kaleidoscope. The painting should have been transparent really, for there was no way to portray both the chaos and the peace inside.

She disappeared into the kiss and found herself in an empty room where her footsteps echoed eerily. The sky was singing outside but she did not care for its melodies. They had nothing to offer except temporary escapes, and she did not want to leave.

Yet, she began to despair because the house was made of canvases that could be torn all too easily. She realised that it was not the room where the echo was, it was the whole world. It felt like opening her eyes would be a crime, it would return the illusion that the ordinary world is real. The world inside the kiss had everything that she had craved for, but that was the very thing making her anxious. It was too much.

She walked outside and saw that God had fallen into the sea and was now drowning, but she did not go and help because she was distracted by beautiful horses. So that is what she finally painted after experimenting with chaos and with canvases painted entirely ultramarine or burnt umber.

When her lover saw the horses he said ‘I thought you were going to paint a kissing couple,’ and she said ‘I did,’ but by then it was too late. He would never understand, and she realised that he had never been in that world of beauty, he merely opened a gate through which he was unable to pass.

Maybe if such beauty, the inexplicable charm of horses, could emerge from within her onto the canvas, there would also be a way to describe happiness. But she would need someone’s help again, these gates are all rusty.

This lover did not have the strength nor the patience to look for the gate. He shrivelled before her eyes, emptied of all he had to offer. He did not have an image of happiness within him, they could not search for it together.

Nevertheless, it was a really nice kiss.

He was only sitting in the park minding his own business when it happened. Everyone had told him not to feed the pigeons because they will get too bold and besides they might carry diseases. Now this was his punishment, although no one thought it was fair. Love started gushing out of him like from an open wound, this would surely leave a scar.

A young woman screamed and people scrambled to get away from him. Give him space to breathe! People were not sure whom to call but surely there must be an authority to take care of these cases.

He smiled stupidly, hardly even knowing what was going on. All these panicking people were so beautiful he wanted to laugh. For a while it looked like he had recovered from this malady but it turned out that – instead of continuously streaming out – his love formed big bubbles that were only faintly red, people could hardly see them.

Two best friends got caught in one, an elderly couple, even children were trapped and like soap bubbles they floated high, rising above the earth and crossing the seas. Some of them disappeared behind the sun. When the whole town was covered in another bubble nobody noticed anything special anymore but there were more birds singing.

He looked exhausted, not so much from the disease but from people’s efforts to contain it. When he moved his feet on the gravel it sounded like music, he found the grass and the hedges fascinating. People shook their heads but accepted his condition as he was merely eccentric, not dangerous.

One day a stranger came into town, a woman who had followed the glow on the horizon. When she smiled he knew she could lead him to the land of light. They walked out of town, into the woods, and with her desire she healed him.

People started missing his presence, he might not have been much but it was sad to lose the village idiot. But in the autumn he came back, looking satisfied but wistful. Now he sits on the bench once more, looking up at the sky as though waiting for something. Everything seems normal again, perhaps he looks a bit sad. But most people don’t notice him anymore anyway.

Comment: these early stories were written almost 11 years ago, this one on 21/02/11. In many cases I’m not sure whether I like them anymore. This story has more than a hint of irony in it, which makes me wonder now how to read it. It’s possible to see it as a reflection on how the presence of love doesn’t mean it’s reciprocated or even understood, and how it may bring more light into the world even while nobody appreciates it. But I think the story works better if you think of it as a broader allegory on religious figures and how their messages are received, whether truthful or not. Generally I like ambiguity and letting readers decide how to see the characters and their meanings, but looking back on this story now I wonder whether I should have directed the reader a bit more towards an allegorical interpretation.

The morning sun laid its head on her chest, which made her look like she was made of gold, only more precious. Light never disturbs our sleep except when it is so bright that it awakens the desire to exist more fully, to burn like a star. But we were young then and more often awakened by lust than the desire to keep on living. Maybe it was just a craving of the flesh but it felt like enlightenment.

I was in love and the whole world was present in us, everything was made of joy as though the universe was a fluid made of feelings. Her skin was an empty sheet of paper on which I could write my invisible love. Why does it have to be invisible? Perhaps so that we would not know that the paper is never empty.

My fingers drew paths on her stomach but left no traces. Just when I was thinking of tiny strawberries swimming in milk she sighed something and I lifted my head from her breast. It is enough of a miracle that we are breathing, which made this moment sacred. She is the altar on which I worship our existence.

From the window we could see the beach and the ocean kissing the sands without tiring. The sea is more patient than we could ever be, but she is more beautiful. I wanted the sea to stay outside but it kept coming out of our pores and I would keep swimming in her currents, breathing in the scent of her sweat, the scent of eternity.

The morning made us both glimmer but I was not sure whether the light came from within us or from the sun. It surely felt like we had turned into two stars orbiting each other. The space was gone now, the world had never been this empty, or this full. But time still existed, the movements of her legs were showing the way to the future. Will death be waiting for us there? Do not worry, it will.

She smiled and touched my chin gently. We had only now been born.

When she says we cannot be together I am looking at the trees. The yews remind me of death, but maybe they also symbolise resurrection in other forms, other lives.

She is smiling and I cannot help feeling happy despite the rejection because I think that she will be happy without me. It is not so bad. The world is full of people who do not need me. But her hands are so beautiful I want to bury my face in them and I know that every touch would bring forth a new part of me, something forgotten and lost.

She has dark hair with orange streaks like gentle flames covering her head. I reach out my hand as though trying to pick up something high in the air. I never touch anything, maybe that is the problem. Feelings are not there to be touched directly and it feels so cheap to try and charm anyone with casual touching.

But now her smile is transforming, it is a lake into which I wade. I start sinking but I am not afraid of drowning. Do all people feel this bliss right before dying?

There must be new life, new hope in the waters. The darkness of her eyes makes me shiver. I do not see my reflection, only the place where life began, the puddles of primordial soup, the depths of the ocean. The end of life is also there, the eternal darkness. For we were born in the eyes of others, in their personal darkness. We were shaped by prejudice.

I have given my everything to her, I have given the end of the world but we are still smiling. She says it is a really nice day. I can only agree, the sun is burning through my skin and the wind is making my lips crack.

She asks what else is new. There is nothing to say, certainly there is nothing new about this situation. I bury my grief. She might be unhappy to see it. I want her to keep on smiling, even if it means denying myself. The tears can wait.

I wrote all the stories in this section between 2011-14. After all these years I no longer feel happy with the styles, yet it seems worth it to record them somewhere, since people have enjoyed the way I tried to explore different emotions in each piece.

Each story was originally written as just one paragraph. For readability I have split the paragraph into several more only now, several years later.

The idea was to have a short piece that hints at a larger story. Describing emotions or a situation like a snapshot I tried to imply what the main characters were like beyond the constraints of the paragraph. Sometimes there is a clear narrative, other times it’s more expressionist. There are a few allegories. I also experimented with the kind of detached style which is quite popular among authors today, as well as purple prose which is often ridiculed but fun to write.

The stories don’t describe my own life or mentality at the time. While writing I was always trying to inhabit the skin of a character, even if the narration is in first person. I find this aspect of writing difficult to explain. Of course when you write about emotions, you must have some experience of them. But the more you write, the further away from your real life the text gets, because ordinary life doesn’t have enough variation to make the writing interesting. Even when a story looks more like a blog post, it is still fiction. There are a couple of exceptions, when the mood of a story has clearly been affected by something in my life. I’ll point out those exceptions when I get there.