this is not a joke

what did the seagull say to his octopus wife?

“i miss my life on the shore”

“it’s going to be okay, alonso”

alonso was a nervous man. when he got dressed in the morning, he would routinely think “but this outfit makes me look like a malnourished otter!” these were not happy thoughts. and when he was introduced to strangers he would offer them items out of his pockets to avoid talking about himself. these were not happy encounters.

one day, when he was despairing about his nervous disposition, alonso was walking beside the river on the edge of town when he saw a man named ‘damien heulog’ sitting on the river bank. damien was throwing small flat stones on the surface of the water in the hope that they would skim to the other side of the river. they never did. in fact, each one sank without a trace the moment it splashed into the water. damien’s face was painted with a variety of products – lipstick, eye liner, eye shadow and just a hint of rouge. he wore his hair in a bun and his clothes originated from both the “male” and “female” sections of local shops.

jessica….we have to go

it was absolutely beautiful. right there at the top of petra i’d found the closest thing i’d ever known to complete silence. the only thing that punctured it was the occasional siren-like call of the hawk that i could just see navigating the invisible lanes of the sky.

and in front of me the desert extended forever. it was a parched eternity that i had never seen traces of before. this eternity filled up my vision, as though the matter of my eyes were composed entirely of sand and rock and therefore constantly obliterating themselves through each movement.

petra, jordan

i had decided to leave my classmates a few minutes earlier. i saw the peak coming and felt the urge to be alone. now i think it was a similar sensation that overcame icarus. according to the myth, icarus’ father, daedalus, attached wings to the feet of his son while they were exiled in crete, in the hope that they would carry both he and icarus away from the island. but daedalus had not known his son’s deepest desire.

icarus was a citizen of the ‘heroic age’ in greece’s mythological history. this epoch was constructed from endless poetic allegories that portrayed mortals perishing or triumphing in dazzling acts of courage and audacity, often against higher beings. in a greater sense, within greek culture, the ‘heroic age’ represented a shift away from an untouchable array of magnificent and terrible gods towards humans possessing similar qualities. that is to say, the age of the gods collapsed into the heroic age whilst maintaining tragic brilliance at the heart of the zeitgeist.

icarus, however, was dedicated to acts of rebellion against the myth that he was a part of. from childhood, he had devoted himself to a kind of passivity that, in this case, was aimed at undoing his inevitable ascension to heroic heights. he hoped to peel off the masculine, masochistic ethos that presided over his kind, as if it were an invisible layer of kind attached at birth.

it was not until he took flight on his father’s wings that icarus saw his chance. he began to ascend higher and higher, ripping through the wind, in an attempt to eject the world from his bones. his father soon tumbled downwards, leaving icarus free to hurtle himself towards the sun. each passing moment felt like another rejection of the conditions of his existence.

daedalus and icarus

for icarus, evading a valiant flight from exile and allowing himself to become a victim of nature was an attack on the egoism of the heroic culture and, therefore, a self-inflicted attack on the cult of the hero by the poets who created it. perhaps this was a reactionary impulse, an urge to see the position of the gods restored. but it can also be seen as an attempt to take us beyond the adoration of any and all individuals.

icarus’ actions were of course futile. his death became embroidered into the tapestry of the heroic age. all of its anomalous features were erased. yet, for a brief instant, he defied the state of real world culture from a position within fiction.

watching old videotapes

when i was younger i was a wolfboy. it’s hard being a wolfboy when other children are made of meat.

my parents (who, incidentally, were not wolf people) would warn me, “sebastian, you must never eat other children”.

i tried to reach a compromise with them. “just a nibble?” i asked.

“no,” they insisted “the townspeople would kill you, or worse”.

so for the first fourteen years of my life i went without a meal or snack. i got very thin in this time and was forced to make more and more notches on my belt. but, like any other child, by the time i reached adolescence i wanted to experiment. that’s when the trouble began.

on one september afternoon tom bradley, the class snitch, walked up to our teacher, mrs applebaum and whined, “teacher, sebastian, bit my arm off and ate it”.

mrs applebaum, who was sitting at her desk, looked up from the papers she was marking and surveyed the boy’s limbless right side, “oh yes…i can see that. well, this won’t do at all. sebastian, come up here.”

i left my desk and walked to the front of the classroom, head down, watching the little trail of blood drops i was leaving behind.

“did you bite off tom’s arm and eat it?” asked mrs applebaum.

“yes teacher,” i admitted, barely looking up and entirely avoiding her eyes.

“sebastian, you know you mustn’t do this…..and you know what the law says i have to do with you.” spoke mrs applebaum, earnestly.

“yes, i know teacher. you’re supposed to boil me alive in a pot of honey.”

“that’s right,” said the teacher with a heavy sigh. “i’m afraid i’m going to have to start heating the honey now unless you can give me a good explanation for why you did this.”

i had figured out the truth long ago but i’d kept it to myself. i was a shy sort of child and i wasn’t the kind to engage in lively debates or collaborations. but i knew this speech off by heart and, more to the point, i knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that i was right. so i plucked up my courage and began.

“teacher, were you ever a wolfgirl?” i asked, already knowing the answer.

“well, no” said mrs applebaum, somewhat surprised, “of course not. i was a normal girl. i played with dolls and dreamt of warm chocolate sundaes. i knew nothing of eating other children.”

“then you can’t possibly know what it’s been like for me” i said clearly and calmly, “all my life people have told me i’m a viscous animal. ever since i left the womb i’ve been told that my teeth were made for cutting flesh and my paws were made for breaking bones. don’t you see? i never stood a chance. if only people had shown me kindness and love, i wouldn’t be like this. if only people had told me ‘sebastian, you can be whoever you want to be’ then i wouldn’t have bitten off tom’s arm this afternoon and eaten it. people like you have turned me into this.”

she didn’t understand. and the townspeople who came after me with knives and pistols didn’t understand. so i left and won’t ever go back.

“i was upset, you see, almost all the time.” new order

“leonard cohen walked to the back of the bar, where he’d left his station wagon. what he found there was a twenty foot high representation of the planet mercury made out of papier mache. ‘what are you doing here, mercury?’ asked leonard cohen. ‘just trying to get out of the sun’ replied mercury.”

don’t do that

this (above) is claudette. claudette resembles a seagull and sits atop a rock on something that looks not unlike the ocean. but it is important to remember that claudette is not a seagull. and the rock that she sits atop does not protrude out of the ocean. claudette is just a simple souvenir, bought from a busy shop in a tourist resort. and the blue that surrounds her is merely a blue fabric. now that you know claudette only resembles a living creature and her surroundings only resemble water, let me tell you something about her.

claudette understands that life is principally a series of moments in which anything could happen but something rarely does. as a result she worries about neither love nor religion. it’s not that she’s hostile towards love or opposed to a world view that includes a notion of a passive or active deity or deities. she just hasn’t put much thought into either. instead, claudette lives a simple life dedicated to art and polygamy.

it just so happened that one day, whilst leaving the studio of her eighteenth lover, claudette happened upon a curious abandoned house covered in vines, a house that she wished to visit. this posed a problem for claudette because, you see, she had just started using a new conditioner that has been known to drive plants and trees wild. cautiously, claudette began to approach the house but, just as her outstretched wing reached for the doorbell, one thin vine wrapped itself around her ankle.

‘excuse me’ claudette said politely (for claudette had always been told to be kind to others).

‘oh, you can talk?’ answered the vine

‘yes’ replied claudette, somewhat perplexed, ‘of course i can talk’.

‘i apologise’ said the vine, quickly withdrawing from her ankle ‘i mistook you for a tree.’

‘a tree?’ claudette asked, now even more perplexed.

‘yes, you smell just like one’

‘i see’ claudette said (she had no idea that the conditioner was pine-scented on account of her terrible sense of smell) ‘…well no damage has been done. goodbye’. she turned to the door once more.

‘oh please don’t go’ said the vine, sadly, ‘you may not be a tree but perhaps you could help me.’

‘of course, what’s wrong little vine?’

‘well this house is crumbling’ the vine said

indeed, the house was in disrepair. it had been abandoned by people 42 years ago. humans have a tendency to let useful things go to waste while they formulate bird conditioner.

claudette surveyed the building, ‘i can see that’ she observed.

‘soon the house will collapse and i will die’ the vine lamented.

‘oh no. i am sorry to hear that’ uttered claudette, sincerely.

‘this is why i need your help. perhaps you could become my new building, my new bedrock on which i can climb and thrive. of course, you must know that if you agree to do this, you can never again fly away for as long as i live. you see, i need soil to plant my roots in. so i cannot fly in the sky or walk the earth like you. but, claudette, you’re my one hope.’ upon ending his plea, the vine felt that it was hopeless. who would agree to such a thing?

claudette pondered the vine’s request for several moments. she longed always to fly. it was her greatest joy, her greatest source of satisfaction. yet she possessed an unfaltering kindness too, instilled in her by all the misery she had seen on land, sea and shore.

‘okay’ she finally replied, ‘i will do this for you, vine’.

‘you will?!’ the vine said excitedly ‘oh thank you bird!’

without a moments pause, the vine crept its way along the body of the figure that resembled a gull, wrapping itself along claudette’s legs, wings, neck and head.

in the last two and a half years claudette has not moved from that spot, where she still supports the little vine. and through the long days, long months and seasons, claudette nourishes herself by feeding on the people who wander past, mistaking her for a real seagull.

alarming

i was a child once, during a time in my life that has long since expired. and when i was a child, there was a game i used to play. in my home there was an alarm. this alarm had sensors, placed here and there, to detect intruders. i soon discovered that these sensors wouldn’t respond to slight movements and, besides, there were objects (tables, chairs, door frames) that i could duck behind or beneath to avoid detection. so, when the mood struck me, i would creep, crawl, shuffle and slide my way through the house, trying to make it from top to bottom without setting off the red eyes of the sensors. i never made it…but at least that meant we were hard to burgle.

one of my enemies