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A Song Of Absence
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TITLE (EDIT)
A Song Of Absence |
DESCRIPTION
Absence.
Everybody is on the beach but you. Meister Eckhart sunbathing in bright green shorts. Dostojevski and William James play beach volleyball against the Marx Brothers. In the shadow of a palm tree sits Godzilla, reading the Upanishads. Everybody is wearing shades.
[1,412 words] |
TITLE KEYWORD
Mind |
AUTHOR
Pepijn Sauer |
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Short Biography:
Pepijn Sauer
Born midnight between the 3rd and 4th of February 1970 in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Studied Japanese, Philosophy and Psychology at the universities of Leiden and Utrecht, finished neither because of tendencies towards the more obscure sides of the above mentioned fields. Paints, does illustrations and translates from Dutch to English and vice versa. (mainly scientific articles).
[September 2001] |
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL ADDRESS
[email protected] |
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (8)
Dis-Appointment (Poetry) Short poem. [12 words] [Romance]
For Sofia (Short Stories) You live with the question. Wondering how to proceed, we find ways to make things happen. We do not understand the question. It is there despite our lack of understanding, as are many other things. Fo... [449 words] [Mind]
Gravity (Short Stories) I circle the gravity of this situation in elliptical curves. Inside the fences, so fashionably dressed in distractedly elegant drapings of barbed wire, the TV show goes on showing. (White noise. Fragm... [589 words] [Mind]
Party (Short Stories) Actually the host is dead. It took me a while to notice, but it's true. The host is so dead he has a lot of time to give parties. [581 words] [Mind]
The End Of History And The Last Fish (Short Stories) When Field commander Asinine launched his final all out withdrawal the first one to be killed was major Fuck Up. The loss was grave but they had no time to bury him. [1,168 words] [Mind]
The Function Of Criticism (Short Stories) We forget without remembering what. Something started at some point but the point is now almost identical to everything; or rather, it is starting to be, unstoppably, constantly. [774 words] [Mind]
The Mind That Is Morning (Short Stories) The mind that is morning swims. As it grows later it will become frosted glass; an empty couch by the window; twelve words; a dolphin blowing rings of air and an empty coffee cup in the sunlight. [459 words] [Mind]
Witness (Short Stories) You have seen things. I thank you for describing them to me with so much care and poetic accuracy. Your eyes must be beautiful. As for the things at hand, I am unclear regarding their purpose, if any. [826 words]
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A Song Of Absence
Pepijn Sauer
A Song of Absence.
Absence.
Everybody is on the beach but you. Meister Eckhart sunbathing in bright green shorts. Dostojevski and William James play beach volleyball against the Marx Brothers. In the shadow of a palm tree sits Godzilla, reading the Upanishads. Everybody is wearing shades.
Delayed Arrival.
I have come to the sea. I have come like water streaming down from the mountains of my foolishness. Memories of rocky banks, twigs, leaves linger like the coolness in a sunny-morning air. I have seeped through layers of ages, the tastes of the earth drinking the wishful rain. Now I am only me.
When the sun sets there is a barbecue on the roof. You are not there. I climb higher, Godzilla beside me. Standing at the edge high up, he looks at me quietly, the blue twilight city below. 'You can scream here', he says in a solemn voice, 'no one will hear you.' I spread my arms wide and breathe; his massive head beside me looking of into indigo skies.
Later I follow myself into the sadness. The great space of the world unfolds around me. My face is a worn fisherman's net suffused with light and salt. It goes on and on. Es gibt uns gar nicht.
Analytic Interlude.
I keep analyzing all this stuff. Try to give it some kind of shelter under the umbrella of the all-inclusive order. It is only me - out there in the rain; the rhythm of it forming patterns of footsteps in my muddy mind. Pile on the phone calls and the letters. Pile on the deserted windows in the blizzard of eyes circling your face.
And tomorrow I will be happy. And nothing will have changed. And you will not be here. If I was weak, I was weak for you - the only thing that was ever easy. The world is filling up slowly outside the crystal palace of my head. Nothing won't be long - it's already arriving from all directions. Nothing will disperse it. I already want to forget, have already moved beyond caring for this thing. You are standing around in some corridor packed in boxes, waiting to be moved out at the appropriate time. I will distract myself by being someone for a while; pretending this body is not just the disposable packaging of something that cannot understand itself. While the exit sign will come on in brief flashes behind my eyes, I will breathe: nothing can convince me to believe that either.
A Brief History of the Universe.
And all this is just another ellipsoid curve around your absence. I have asked for none of this. My head is a sequence of chemical flashes inside my head. My body is made up of atoms millions of years old that have been born in the nuclear inferno of stars. The same stars are another sequence of chemical flashes inside the head that is a sequence of chemical flashes inside itself. And this crazy thing, that needed billions of years of universe for it to be shoved into the footlight of existence, wonders: what��s the point of all this.
It is true, things are much simpler then this. I ache for you. I am a pain that is your absence. I am the thirsty sand in the retreating tide of your touches. Your lips are perfect.
Meanwhile Godzilla dances with heavy feet on the wide rooftop while I stand and scream into the wide moonless sky.
Smoke Screens.
The hotel rooms look good, big beds, big windows, big balconies, no TV. Groucho has booked them.
'Always smoke a good cigar while booking hotel rooms', he says. 'Do you want one?'
We light up and five minutes later we are outside on the street.
'Smoke alarm. They have them everywhere these days,' Groucho says looking thoughtful while taking another puff that makes him disappear in an impregnable brownish-gray cloud.
I can still see dense smoke coming from the third floor window.
'Where did you get these things?', I ask him.
'Handmade especially for me', he replies, his body bent slightly backwards, right hand on his back, left hand with cigar hovering around his mouth pointing upwards at an angle of about 120 degrees towards the third floor balcony - 'Like another one?'
I fall into the soft bed. Drifting between the smell of tobacco and the fragrance of jasmine, just before the velvet curtain drops, I think I can hear the faint sound of alarm bells in the distance.
And of course that's what I wake up to: nothing like the sound of smoke alarms in the morning.
At breakfast, which, for some unknown reason, is served on big slabs of granite in the basement, my feet touch the ground. Godzilla watches a rerun of an old war. 'I've seen that face before,' he keeps grumbling, 'I've seen that face before.'
Time frame.
Can't keep going on saying the same thing. There are no ghosts at night. Only in the morning. Like another way of understanding something that has been eluding your grasp. Weather. Location. Time.
Talons beneath the skin
embracing air
now supposed to be built
from minuscule zip code
blueprints also responsible
for the colony of squirrels
inside my head.
The Invention of color.
Colorless. The blue western sky reflected in the glass of a high rise building against the dark eastern sky. I watch colorlessly. I��m not supposed to be here. And - the disappointment of the intellect when it realizes...
Disenchantment? Was I going somewhere? Without you? The sound of emptiness in the refrigerator? Don't be alarmed? Godzilla standing in a triangular glass alcove? Behind a plant? In a hospital? At night? How does this fit in with everything else currently unfolding? Are you sleeping? Did I wake you up? Is love a rain of dead birds? If not where do they keep coming from?
The Words.
'What is it that makes a dream unreal?'
'Where does your face go when I close my eyes?'
'Must we go on like this?'
'Both of us are vulnerable.'
'What have we achieved?'
'I used to understand you. Maybe we would disagree sometimes. Maybe frequently. At least your point of view would remain within the realm of the imaginable. But now...'
'Could you get me out of here?'
'Could you get me another beer?'
'Look a the trumpet player.'
'The giant pianist - my god he's huge - look at his hands!'
'Your personality. It's like a zoo. So many animals.'
'Where were you before?'
'There are so many things, but the loneliness...'
'You are in the street. Yesterday there was sunlight, today it is raining. The weather changes you.'
'And I dreamed, this morning. I made love to her in some mystic ritual.'
'And the blue - endless blue skies inside your head.'
'How can we speak to one another?'
'My weight, suddenly, on the scale of your face. Can I forget?'
'A recurring theme - it happened before - I'm sorry.'
'Am I too serious? I can laugh. Though they have told me I laugh like a madman.'
'A hyena sometimes.'
'Believing too many things. Believing the wrong things. We do too much of it.'
'You. One of your bouts of spontaneous regression. Lying on the couch, your arm over your face.'
'Many things we have to do. Inexcusable things.'
'There is no other way to speak.'
'We have only words. We have to do what we can.'
The mystery of rhythm.
You keep walking in. Goddamn slowly. You walk as if you are never going to get here. Remember when I took you to the funeral? The three guys who were there? One of them was the devil - the one wearing sunglasses. One was the philosopher. The third one was the saint. Only one problem. There was no ultimate meaning. I was just watching. You were curious. There was a fourth one. He was dead. (Hence the funeral.)
The devil is also dead, really. He just doesn't know it because he can't feel it. He doesn't feel it because he doesn't feel anything. He doesn't even feel that he doesn't feel anything. He talks. That's all he does.
� And I must admit, I don't get the point. Later when you sleep I walk out. You tell me I am inside your dreams. Where are your dreams?
I watch your face while you watch something else. It's not that I don't try to get the point. You are still walking in. Is this ever going to end? If it does, then what?
Work.
I am still working on the index. You'll get it as soon as I'm done.
(For Paola.)
������
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READER'S REVIEWS (1)
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"The story you are writing is not common, which i have found it beautiful.They are the introspection and phylosophical sense that you dream into life. Then, your words contain much of visions and sounds. Facts turn into dreams and dreams become facts. I just wonder how you could make such those words. I really like your style. Therefore, I'm fond of the way you express. " -- To Anh, Hanoi, Vietnam.
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 1999 Pepijn Sauer |
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
September 2001 |
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
2297
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