Special Effects

It is overwhelming, inside, reaching the surface through the eyes, maybe in the extremities of teeth. The sorceres in special effects departments are performing their evil magic, bringing the world to its knees through obscene images of The End. Shall we go to the cinema on the eve of your greatgrandmother's funeral? It's a film about the end of the world. I'll bring a sweater, the evening might be cold. The power within stirs and surfaces, this time as indigestion. "Did you want something from the buffet?" she asks annoyedly with the key still in the door. "No, I'm just waiting for my wife." There is no point to the conversation from either side. "Will the old lady be burried in the ground?" "Yes, yes, I believe so." "I have never seen anything like it before." Have you never wondered where dead people go? I ask the child within. I know, answers he or whoever, grandma has grandpa in a little plastic container on her desk. That is correct, you get an A for that. It is probably a writing desk - you would have gotten an A+ for that answer. But then again, grandma never writes anything. The last postcard she sent us said: "I am sending you kisses. If you don't want them, send them back." It was both nice and cruel, don't you think? The film starts with perfect images of the flood, the last big flood. Black magic, methinks, and I get this idea (it comes from the power and the power of the child): all cinematography should be returned to its original role as mere entertainment. And entertinament, weapon against time, are all graphic novels and rock'n'roll and literary and other magazines, don't let anyone tell you differently, says I aloud to the dark and presumably empty auditorium, with images of civilisation's end on the screen. Mere knick-knacks, fandangles and whimsy-whamsies! They have fooled us into believing they deserve our undivided attention. Let us push all literature back to where it belongs - to pre-Gutenberg hiding holes, to monasteries high up in the mountains. Only then can all words and images be free again, receive back their original meaning, the meaning that is given to them through life, the life the remnants of which still cause power to shoot up in diminishing intervals as hiccups. Let us silence the banal, there is only one Book (how will this sound to the learned ear? how will this sound to you, little fella writing these words?). One Film (now, that's better). Taste the screen, lick it, tear it up, touch the material, the canvass, the paper. The cinema has nice and cosy and new blue seats, I cuddle up to the person sitting next to me in the dark but forget to check whether it is still M. and for the rest of the end of the world am afraid to look again. In the car on the way back I study her carefully. It is her. In a new release - The Dream - words and images break free again. Coming soon to a cinema near you.

Slow Train

Flowers need no watering when it looks like rain. When it looks like rain for too long, flowers need watering. I can always step into the swimming pool with cold chemical water waist-high. When I fall into it backwards, my underpants blow up with air. It is dark, the neighbours cannot see me, I can play at farting. The water is shallow and clean, for once there seem to be no monsters there. Comfort has no need for courage, however absurd. I walk to meet them, I walk barefoot to the neareby woods with sandy paths. I feel nature sucking on my blood as a mosquito, I hear it in the bushes as a bird cry, I see it climbing up my leg as an ant, bent over backwards in an attempt to inflict damage on me by squirting microspopic amounts of its acid. I listen or speak aloud when there is M. walking next to me, I try to follow my own thoughts and supress the urge for defecation when I walk by myself. When I meet someone, I say hello, but my voice doesn't sound right. I hear a little boy saying: "But he will cut his feet! I saw him, his feet are bare!" His mother laughs and whispers something. I can cut my feet but I don't, not even further up the forest, where sand mixed with tree cones and stones changes into grass and whatever else below.
"I know the rules like everybody else and was intent to keep them until I realised that nobody else does. Since then we are on a mission to discover the very source of rules. It is our experience that makes us free, therefore we can never all live in freedom, other than the freedom of gaining experience. "
I scream with frightened surprise when something pricks the skin on my ankle. I am afraid of the huge scaly monster even here. I did see a dead snake on the path and it did transform into a dead thought. The little boy was right and will make a good adult. When the small hand car with the children approached the place where I was hiding, I put on the hat, sat on the bike and set off toward the rails. M. saw me and pointed. The children turned their heads with question in their eyes. The grass was so high I could not go on and fell off the bike. My sister laughed when I apppeared again, fixing my sunglasses and straw hat, looking around, not being able to see them. The hair dryer that was to serve as a gun was lost in the tumble. I stole their caps and bags and warned them of my brother, an even more infamous thief, living further down the rails. As I rode fast to be there first, I found the hair dryer lying in the grass, next to a glove. Its fingers were green with moss. When I came back, I watered the vegetables in the greenhous and stepped into the swimming pool with a beer bottle and an opener.
"When you call to the other players, you are in danger of receiving the ball. It is difficult to pretend there is no game, when you hear the referee's whistle."
The hand car is not really a handcar, it moves like a bike.