Now, I see myself awaking under this cement viaduct, awaking with the chirping of wild birds and the sporadic shooting of the traffic running overhead, on the bridge's deck. A sound somehow comforting at night and time-accelerator during the day... Anyway, it looks that I'm not alone here, there are other strangers around, sleeping, dozing... on their rubbish nests, rotten sofas, canapes... And you are here too. Look at your laziness! But, with some distance between us. Between me, you and them... Not important who are who now... One thing is true, we are all lost... here we are all junkies... and we go nowhere... But... Now alone, I stand up, barefoot, I go through the dull curtain of smoke expelled by the incessant fire installed on this kind of pirate camp thing... Smoke and abstract hoarseness coming now from the battery-operated radio (installed in a dry shrub by the fire) announcing crazy things in an obscure language, the raucous voice of exalted  capitalism. Economic facts being deformed by gruffness, huskiness and far away tremolos...

     Further on, as I piss over the sweet herbs down the slope by the creek, I watch the spectacle of the tale-wag mallards, coming from what once was ordinary household appliances, now corpses of... old refrigerators, stoves, freezer cabinets being disintegrated by the force of moss, black earth and frothy water. And I feel calmer. All this scenery fulfills me, gives me joy, and I don't need to know or tell you why... 

     The black ducks, with white patches on their necks, softly sliding down away from me. And I washing my acrimonious face in this downdraft waters while trying to discover, over the brambles, on the other side of this stream, where are the such creatures birds whistling to me with that mad tone of provocation. Because I can't see them. I can just listen. It's like they're not there. All a fictitious reality designed to entertain vagabonds, alienated minds, literature consumers, yet, when I whistle back, mimicking their sounds, they also reanswer, all in a suddenly, with even more praise on their melodies, and again, I try communicate with them, imagining feathers growing in my ass and throat... Well vociferous they are, thus I have to do it harder,  inserting my fingers in the mouth, I whistle really loud, as if calling a dog, again, and they, getting so exalted, and disappearing from where they never had been...

     I myself go back to the camp, where my doped fellas are still asleep, or pretend to sleep. But I don't disturb them. I just sit by the fire, watching the flames... watching  and remembering... There were an old man here... he came from the wagons... A man that used to dominate a certain kind of mythology adapted to the circumstances. A reality rebuilder.  An whole new history of the world he created... And now, he is gone... passing his stories around, from city to city he goes... and people thinking he is from some kind of new cult religion,  when in fact he is just having fun... I remember, how he used to spend time in front of this same fire, watching his relics (crockery) from different perspectives. Polishing them. Talking to them in his whispered language, while Yol, the kid, played his jelly harmonica, and Jaku, the cyclist converted to the Kevedra, making percussion in those loose pieces of quasi-bicycles, recovered from the dump, to be rebuilt and donate to some unknown philanthropic associations. And there is also Zara, this one still around, the transvestite, we encountered her/him on the ditch, by the motorway, in a state of coma or so, we brought her/him here. Somehow we were her/his saviors... In the first days he/she remained absent, mute, not eating, not moving, not nothing... on the days to come, many times she/he escaped, but always came back, because here now, is his/her safe haven, and - talking about the evil  - here she/he comes, speaking nonsense again, his/her jokes are the most silly mismatching thing you will ever hear... but... not so different from the daily-standard conversation of successful businessmen. And here more close to me, now, the black brothers, with syringes on their hands, half awake, half dozing,  injecting this homemade poison in their steel-pink veins... and racist words being repeated over and over, in a murmur, with an expression of satisfaction that protect from the cold, from the pain, from the suffering, from the loneliness... 

***

     By the fire, hearing the radio and the wind, now, thinking about politicians: we all have been watching them talking, chatting or cheating seriously on the TV screen through the times... In your house, you observing patiently, or at this or that kind of commercial houses you may visit, any sort of coffee shop, an occasional pub, or a greasy tavern in the countryside.

     There you are, watching the news through the racket of the ignorant people around, the buffoons. This could be in the beginning of the day, during the lunch time, or after the dinner. The serious faces trembling on the screen, more all the smoke that goes around in the numb commercial house. Their neck being strangled by the tie, as usual. The dull expression punctuated with some grimaces and defected smiles. The bulgy eyes, like a bull, never looking straight to you. However, the fluidity of their speech may capture your attention and the attention of your relatives around. Perhaps you are not really understanding all the words, but you keep watching, or you take a look to one or other side, trying to spot the origin of this or that silly comment, or maybe you are eating your diner at the same time, and while you chew up your food you keep looking the screen, hypnotized. There are something in their indignation that entertains you. But sooner or later, you will get bored with the misunderstandings and you will spite out the food on the plate, you will start to protest, to satirize, who knows, and you will start to utter opinions as well, because yes, it's a cliche, we are all political beings, social individuals, moral being, individual individuals, etc. 

     The good, the bad and the ugly. Cheap philosophy, football and sex appeal. Some drama at least, some confusion... that's what we need to keep alive. But after all, what is a man, what is a politician? What he wants? Is he really serious? Or a mere language juggler, some would say. A chatterbox, others will say, or even a shitmind, a phony, a crook, a pervert... some will also defend: A necessary figure in order to keep our society going, a mind pushers. Engaged politics, the worthiest job a man can take up in life, some will advocate. Even a kind of a pragmatic modern poet (sick), an actor on a loan, may I say? A man that sold the soul to the devil because of power... A neurotic, a awkward human being, when it comes to actions, a star, ultimately... A terrifying figure, populating the outdoors of the city and even in the villages, scaring the flock and disorientating the herd. His language, learned in the schools of the political parties (sick), is a mix of classic philosophy (sick) and populist expressions (sick) stolen from the people, the working class. Also some vocabulary from the jurisprudence, terms that nobody understands, and some science verbiage, just to be with the times... all flavored in a journalistic tone. News, the actuality, is their motto. They may follow the tics and style of some kind of journalist, they study their enemies, they play the friend, the fiend and the referee at the same time.

     But some of them may really fell like becoming the saviors of the world, of the nations, and may have good intentions (sick). Well, I'm not saying that is it all just lust for power, yet. I'm not saying that is all nothing more than words. I'm not saying that is all fancy... it's good to remember that words have a body too, once released, they can fall down over humanity like a weapon, or at least, a kind of virus that can spread through the mind, bones and heart of all biologic systems of the world, and the nonbionic existence may be touched too. Their intentions to lead people's lives to a better situation may be true, may not. The desire of making the nation more wealthy, may be worthy, may not. But, even the conquest of happiness might be political as well, not just personal. Perhaps it's all a conjugation of factors disseminated by randomness. Chaos. But there is a fact, some people, and not a few, still believe in politicians, so, while we “citizens”, have a demand, we should get the product, the offer, that's the capitalist way of doing the things, if you still wanna label it like that...

      Well, we look around, and we easily understand that people need leaders to orientate themselves, in order to keep going, or at least, in order to have something, a source of power they can criticize, and the will to criticize, is just the tail of the desire to occupy the positions of the ruler... we already know, we are all creators... Life have no meaning. We are here to create the meaning... The desire of power is in all us...

     Power is a thing that all humans being (and other forms of life also) pursue. Some more easily satisfied than others. The power of being in control. To give orders and instructions to the others and being in charge of plans and structures, trying to make them happen in a better way than others did before. Making it lucrative and enjoyable, with some traps in the middle where people can deposit their left-overs of happiness. The excitement being absorbed by the machine. Energetic games. Opium to the people. The power of wining a match, the many sportive competitions and their lust for money. The group. The identification. The athlete full of self-esteem, being respected and parsed by the public. The public, individuals that want to be so cool as this or that athlete. The will to feel more close to the skies, even if God is not there. The feeling of being at the top of the world aspired by almost everyone, or in the top of the stage, or being important in your neighborhood, to say things that matter to your friends and family. Yeas, everybody likes a bit of fame, even the awkward one, trying to escape from other human beings, the alienated one dreaming of his virtual magnificence, dreaming of the day he will come out of the box and kill everybody, and at the same time save the world. The artist, the sensible soul sweating and bleeding inside, having a ritual inside himself, being constantly on a war with his own monsters, the monsters he absorbed from society. The secret mood of supernatural artifacts. The war of the worlds. And after the destruction comes the lull. The winner and the looser becoming again the same, and it's time to reconstruct the structures, the nests becoming shelter and the shelters becoming cement again. The re-junction of the broken bridge. New unions, new clubs, new conventions. History. The power of the flesh. The nativity. The household. The ambition of the clan. The power of being in charge of the whole family. In all this is already the roots of the political world. But the politician itself demands more, engaged with bankers, clerks, scientists, military chiefs... he claims always a reconstruction of the system, for him, the system as it is at the present is never perfect. Yeas, we know, life is about change, but a permanent intent to restructure the system will make you sick. Sometimes it's time to stop and accept the world as it is, take a rest, listen to the clouds, go with the flow... So, the politician itself... a junkie under the bridge... or the minister in some office, have people waiting for his signature, but now he withdraw himself... he goes to the countryside to read about the magnificence of his ancestors, and also, he dares to read some fiction, some stories, some romances, we can say, he enters in the fancy world of literature. He sucks the imagination of the feeble ones and when he comes back to the metropolis he don't want no more to give instructions. He just listen what his subordinates have to say. He just have to choose the best ideas. Sometimes randomly. Letting himself being touched by the excitement of his comrades. And he knows, there is nothing more to add, the goal is the same, economic growth is always the more important, it's this the point he always have to repeat at his public appearances. And the virtual equilibrium of the society, from time to time. And as it goes, at some point, he don't want no more to be in charge of everything, he let his party take the reins. It comes the time when he just have to act, he just have to be an actor, he studied the good artists, in his exile, so now he knows how to imitate reality, he can dramatize a opinion and make it more real and less confuse, too much emotiveness is not good, but he also let himself go by the emotions, he learn how to make a equilibrium between mind and soul, a politician have to have a soul (sick), because he his on the top of the world, he is the soul of the world, he realizes. Still thinking, he longs to become the torch itself, not the hand that holds the torch. He is the message, he his the air, he is the void... the black hole.

     He have no ideology no more. He just reorganize the energetic waves. He put order in the speech of his comrades. He knows his public, and gives them candy. Sometimes bitter candy, you have to do it, because people also get saturated of good intentions. He speaks about the destiny of your life, and the errors you have done. His critics are gambling against his own opponents. And at some point he let himself be driven more by the critics than the ideology itself, and people will get tired of his propaganda, people will get tired of his haircut, people will spot something amoral in his nose... 

     It comes the day that the industrialists are no more with him, and a scandal of his private dirty life will spread through the newspapers, through the commercial institutions, through the coiffures, through the radios, through the TV channels, through the internet, through the intranet. He goes down. He looses a lot of friends but get the support of other that he didn't know. With the help of some he moves into a new stage, he joins forces with outmatched ones looking for revenge. He make alliances with old enemies. He goes to have graceful diners with them. They talk about everything less politics. Together, they create new terms to defend the same old ideologies. He dedicate himself to his family, to his wife, to his children, finally. He explore their scars. The scars that the public made on them. Also, he starts making collection of classic sportive cars,  but he don't drive them, he let himself be driven by his new chauffeur. Through the times, it happens that the chauffeur becomes his best friend, he get to know all the family members from this chauffeur. He make permanent visits to them, and stay overnights. They discuss trivial matters. He recycles his energy with this sudden approach to the working-class, a class that he never really knew, but relax yourself, because this doesn't mean he his becoming a socialist, a communist, or something like that, that socialist rhetoric he used it already in the past when he entered in the political world, during his teen's. After, with his conquest of the power, even before, he is not sure, nor me, he became a republican, a democrat, a moderate, he became what others wanted him to be. He was a leader, we already know. He made a war against starvation. He ordered missiles through the post. He presented a new order, a new heartbeat. Do you know that? Can you feel it now? You ate his bread, but you payed the cheese. You may say that the money invested in that fictional projects got us all mislaid, but it's not fair for you to protest cause it was you and the ones like you that thrown him out of the tribune. You believed in the newspapers, in the TV, in the rumors, now you pay to the wind. Anyway, never-mind, you are not guilty, nobody is, we are all involved...

     So, coming back to the main personage, the falling leader, now he his nether becoming a new radical or a new republican. He still consider himself a democrat, but he don't believe in democracy, he thinks democracy came to an end after he had been off-screened from the big stage. So, what he wants to be now? Actually, he wants to have fun, that's what he wants, and he is right, all the human creatures, and not only human, have the right to have some fun, to get some joy from the non sense world. Now, after his time of drift-age, he no more enjoy the company of his old friends, that at some point wanted him to come back, the bankers, journalists, the social analysts… now he is becoming a friend of cheap philosophers, wizards and militarists… but he still keeps his approach to the family of the chauffeur, he still try to get joy from the banal conversations, he even try to speak to street walkers, he asks them where are they going, and this people tell him the truth. They tell him they are going to the work, coming back home. They tell him they are going from the work to home and from home to work. Some of them are also going to the supermarket, some don't answer, some are coming from the barber, some looking for the right boutique, trying to find that dress they saw on the Tv, in that commercial, the announcer was using it. It happen that he knows this announcer, a she, of course. An ex-presenter, now-model-and-wanna-be-actress. He asks to some friends in the circuit where she lives. What kind of parties she frequents. Soon he gets the information, and goes to meet her in that party made to celebrate doesn't matter what.

     On the going he gets drunk, they meet straight away inside the glass covered hall, and she falls in love with him automatically. She loves his speech, he have a different speech now, different from the one he used when he was in power. A more sensible one, his voice became hoarse, and he knows how to incorporates his words in her body. In the course of the things, some cocktails after, she pushes him out of the lobby into the garden and there they go, walking around the swimming pool. Someones watches them, a body floating on the water, we don't know if dead or alive. Mr president, now acting as a movie critic, and miss TV presenter, now acting as a real bitch, here they go, into the shrubs. They reach the willow tree, under this tree they stop, attacking each other, awkwardly. 

     He his the first one to fall on the wet grass, trying to get rid of his modal tie, or perhaps trying to suffocate her with his claws, we are not sure. But she jumps on the top of him. Her hands on his neck. His hands tinkling on her breasts, we see. And the green silk dress becoming a mess. His tie is still not coming out, problem, he gets stressed and finally ejaculates over her belly. She still try to get it more down, but there is not enough pressure on the hose. She getting angry now with his misconduct and slapping him on the face several times and he not reacting. Firm, he stays, stiff on the floor. The chauffeur watches everything from behind the shrubs, he even took some pictures with his iphone and later he will show it to the family. They all laughing, in the kitchen. In the meantime, the younger daughter of the chauffeur takes hold of the photos and innocently, publish them on the facebook and other web pages, and of course, in a fraction of seconds, this photos go around the world, they spread everywhere, people make money with them, they ruin lives, they save lives, this photos, they will be listed on the stock-market and treated as import-export goods.

     Anyway, in the end nobody knows the source of this, but Mr politician himself, even he don't cares so much about, coz it is not the first scandal he has to go through, and he is all prepared for that. His people are already waiting for him in the aerodrome. He have just to enter in his personal jet and escape to a "developing world' country while all new cases of corruption associated with him appear on the news, like an avalanche... So now, you may think that the career of this man is finished, damned, but no, don't be so predictable. This Mr president that goes out with prostitutes and stole money, the world say, from the state coffers to give to how knows who… is now in a private clinic making some kind of surgery. Already in that 'developing world” new country , he his now working on a new face, expression, identity and ideology. This man is chameleon, he adapts to everything. In this new country he becomes active in the oil trading and in the cosmetics industry. He buys a new mansion, a countryside palace, in the slope of a hill with luxurious vegetation. Some other escapees from the modern world are living around there as well. With the help of a psychoanalyst he overcomes his premature ejaculation thing and to celebrate (and announce himself in the community) he throws lascivious parties at his house. All kind of new-riches, chique-freaks, religious-militarists, smart-tongue-travesties, including Zara (from the under-the-bridge-thing) are coming to this parties, to preach, to avow and to have fun. They are all in search of a new kind of pleasure. To this people, sex is a kind of souvenir and soon will arise a new wave religion, a kind of masonry. Rituals of flesh, prosthesis, fake money and modern alchemy are being celebrated in this mansion, on the lusty hill. A kind of Hollywood, series be or ce... 

     By this time our hero works on the back, he is just the re-organizer now, not the spokes man, for that, there are many gurus around, and their secretaries and promoters. He works on the back, licking the pussy of the promoters and he also licks some cocks, the cocks that ejaculate oil. So much oil they ejaculate that he gets sick of it and decides to change to other clean, ecological, not scarce energies. Taking the counsel his his personal warlocks, he no more eat meat and no more make sex. He starts a diet on escargots, cabbages, carrots and pink onions, and his shit becomes green and his mucus blue and he don't know no more what to do. He don't even know in which kind of business he is involved now. He walks along the extravagant garden, giving corn to his chickens, talking non sense to the his transgenic roses, and as he goes up the hill, through the volcanic grounds, not satisfied with what he have reached, he decides to climb to the top of a dry high palm-tree and from there, on the top, he cry and cry. His tears coming down over the fauns. He even thinks of suicide, of providence, of angels and demons but no, he don't have the courage to kill himself now... so he gets down from that tree decided to, first, destroy the world, and after, yes, who knows, he can kill himself... 

     But now he puts his feet on the floor again, like a man. He realizes what is happening with him. Actually, he is just missing the combat in the parliament, missing the applause of the public, missing also, the scandals on the news. Thinking about the golden old days, he comes back to the mansion, kicking the chickens on the way, he puts fire on the sofas, he rapes the impressionist pictures on the wall and even makes a knot on the hair of his wives for the sake of... Promptly his serves are coming and making a scene, but he expels them with punches and kicks, he curses his emotional advisers and goes up in the room to dress up, he puts on his old business smoking and also some make up. Finally he comes down, through an alternative door, escaping from the flames, from the screams, from the callings. He goes out, he passes the gate, the secret lift takes him out from the hill. In a question of seconds he is at flat lands again, alone, sweating, his make up getting blurry, he enters in the airport, the civil one, he pays, with civil money, and he comes back to the same old country, with a new plan of revenge, amusement and command. 

***

     And me, moving around in the sand now, sometimes walking, sometimes dragging myself, with sand until the heels, I try to keep on the vertex of the dune... Trying to reach that ruined towers on the horizon but it looks that they never get closer... I try many different ways of approaching, but it looks that I'm just walking around, that towers are a  mirage, I assume. I'm inside a labyrinth in the desert. Need to find the away out. And where are the camels? I question myself. There are always camels in the deserts, but here none. Tired of dragging myself in the sand I stop. My mind is blank. If I could make a hole, I would cross directly to the opposite side of the world. I think about what can be on the other side of the world, how it looks. All green, I imagine. Anyway, it's getting dark and windy. Some whirlpools begin to circulate around. It's good to listen the sound they make but, a sandstorm is coming, I guess and... there is strange lights in the sky, first they look like falling stars but after as it gets more dark and cold and windy, I see decimal numbers, equations, running, changing, zeros and ones... What the fuck! It looks like the stoke-market screen. And the wind is stronger and stronger. And there are vaults coming around me. I get involved in the whirlpools. The wind pushing me here and there, it's no more heavy to move around but, I get covered with sand and the sky looks closer and closer, and the numbers are bigger and brighter. Paranoid, I try to hide myself in the sand, but how? This wind make me move and I try to run around, looking for some kind of way out... 

     Suddenly, full of energy, I can run against the wind now. I run with closed eyes. Sometimes I open them to see if I'm getting closer to the towers or no, that is my last hope, and yes, by God, it looks that I'm making it now. But, from one of the towers a vault is coming twirling with the wind. Coming in my direction. “The Cyclops is me. The primordial fire blown by the somnambulist angel” it says to me as it enters in my body. But before I absorb it, I can recognize it. This entity is the same I saw when arguing with my double by the road under the lamppost, other day, other night, other dream, this entity is the truth, I recognized the scar on his ladybug face. And now I'm stronger. The truth is inside me. And the sky is getting closer. I have to run. I must trust myself. I know the true way now. But from another ruined tower other vault comes, wrapped in the wind, it enters directly inside me without saying anything but I recognized it, I remember from the night arguing with my double, too, this one is the despair, I had a glimpse of her/his shiners... or maybe no, maybe it is the temptation, the temptation used to have shiners too... Damn! I'm not sure now. As I was not sure the other night. And now, I have got the temptation and the despair fighting inside me. I feel like fighting against the wind and making love with the sand at the same time... Anyway, the lead sky is approaching, I must keep running. I must find a solution. But I keep going with the wind, swirling and twirling, another vault is coming, and another one, and another one... the ambition, the beauty, the joy, the yearning, the freedom, the confidence and I don't know what more, all them enter inside me and make me feel things. I get very confuse, but confident, I'm no more paranoid or afraid, the sky is falling over my head but I trust in the universe. I know I can make my way through it. And there I go. Being sucked by the magnetic sky. I dive in this/that stoke market screen. Now just a character being analyzed by the matrix. My body and existence being chocked by the numbers and their brackets. Electricity and dysfunction running through my skeleton and meat and sap. A soul being washed by the passions of the future. Though, in my mind, I'm still the same, I still know who I am. While rolling through the tunnels, at the speed of the light or whatever, being sucked by the tentacles of the machinery, I still know who am I. 

***     

On the road, by now I have already picked up a handful of rides, more or less in tune with the forces and the wills of the universe. I was caught by silent people who didn't want to know who was I or where was/am going. I got caught up by people worried about themselves. I was picked up by people interested in my destiny. I was picked up by people who wanted to know who am I and from where am I coming from. So, in order to mislead them, I had to create some biographical data, scattered things. And because I speak several languages and other ones invented, I can pass as Caucasian, as Beltran, Sicran or whatsoever. Therefore sometimes I said to be the fruit of an incest between the moon and the sun, or that I had come from the Caribbean in a ship, or that was just arriving from the World War III, or was I escaping from the evil yet looking for work in this country. Willing to work with the red fruits, or climbing lampposts. Or perhaps a mere lawless tourist making his way through the new world.

     At some point was I inside a little car, that kind of thing you can guide with a motorbike drive-license, the driver a mature lady, hairspray overflowing, and the little car totally decorated with various types of teddies, teddy bears, dogs without eyes, colourful monkeys with bells around the neck, pink cats, etc... The auto-radio reverberating songs with caressing rhythms and light-romantic-melodies. Along the way she have been confessing details about her messy happy life and I listening and dozing at the same time as the dark green landscape with sheep and cows passing by. Without paying big attention, I got to know that her paternal great-grandfather was from Russian origin and had made fortune working as a goldsmith. She went on even explaining that his maternal great-grandmother belonged to the royal family, but had been completely excommunicated because of adultery.  About the grandmothers the woman did not speak. About her father, all his life he have been cobbler, and died with complications in the heart, her mother, a seamstress, was now admitted to a nursing home and her job is counting buttons, by now... And me, closing my eyes, changing the scenarios, I enter in this dream current dream again. 

     I walked through this village so many times. And here I'm again, walking through this road with one floor houses, each one with a small garden on the front. People beating pots on the windows, as I pass by, and after a while I see myself in front of this garage door, in front of whom some young lads are seated, on a wall, young lads that are reminiscences from my childhood, I guess. I already know this dream. I'm coming here to reunite my best friends, from different times and countries. A strange need of making this totally different people meet. After starts to rain, as normal, or maybe just someone spitting on the air. Someone, seated on the wall, telling bad stuff about my persona. The rain (or the spit) gets heavier and people getting stuck with umbrellas at the entrance, by the garage door, and when I try to help them, me too, getting stuck in that confusion. 

     The young lads, seated on the wall, observing who enters and who leaves, sharing secrets between them, making signs, and I trying to reach them but it's impossible, a heavy hand push me inside the garage and the door is closed with a big bang. Once inside, my eyes adjusting to the rotating lights. It's very hot here, and the floor made of black earth, like in a old cellar. There are big vain spaces between each person and everybody walks alone, it looks. By their movements we could say they want to leave the place, but as they approach the big gate, there is a strong magnetism that make them, me, you, stand back and the door man, a muscular stone man, smiling slightly without moving. More to the middle zone of the arena, I had to make a few pushes against some of those figures in order to get through, and with this physical contact their dark faces gain new expressions. Like, just now, I discover in front of me a man very familiar to me, it is the butter-man, that's what people used to call him. A bohemian, from the suburbs, he used to be in the movies. Once again, pretty drunk he is, smoking through the nose and speaking by the elbows, monologues, as usual, he tells his typical interjection: "shoup shoup shoup..." and well, he pass me the butter.  And I, have to pass the butter to other one and a dude with long dreads is coming against me, back against back, I pass him the butter, and he say that “the grass is always greener on the other side”, I agree as we separate. After some more turns, a lady with big tits and fluff comes against me asking for money and I wake up... 

     The driver of the little car, for a second, looks to my side, making sure I'm wake now, and keeps on with her life story. Now she speaks about her children, she assures me they are all well, healthy, wealthy. One of them, the younger, is an awarded sportsman, other, the middle one, a banker, and the younger, an artist, living abroad with a foreigner woman who have some special skills. And I asks her, just to say something, what kind of skills is she talking about. She tells me that her daughter-in-law can speak with the hands and that can read things written in letters that apparently were not there, read the psychology of a person by their calligraphy, she means.  Then she slows down the car, change the radio station, and begins to talk about herself, while the road descends, and the car goes, automatically... 

     Almost all her life she had worked as a cleaner, cleaning houses of important people such as architects, businessmen, shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers, and at some point she had worked at the house of a false judge with whom she had a case. With this man she have almost spoiled his marriage. But her husband, a simpleton with a saint's heart and an iron-made liver, managed to forgive her. So nowadays, Dona Filó, her name, she says, is no longer a mere cleaning woman, with the money she could subtract from the false judge, she managed to open her own business related to cosmetics and dietaries and creams and lotions and locutions and suctions etc.. Then she stops on the gas station and I'm sleeping again and I guess she tries to jump over me but...

 

***

     There, in that cellar dream, I find my old friend Piricas, he has just escaped from the psychiatric hospital, that's what he tells me with his nasal intonation, and as we meet, I promptly introduce him to the butter-man, and the two and begin some kind of confederation. I move around, someone puts a bowl of wine in my hands, and as I drink, the one that gave me the wine says “Do you know why Jesus Christ came so late?"; "No idea!"; "He was late because before his arriving the cow and the donkey were already waiting since ages". I look to the man with a pale expression, and he looks to me with a strange smile more like a grimace, but suddenly we can hear a squeaky laugh romping, out of nowhere, Zara have just arrived, her face painted like a puppet, yes Zara from the dream-under-the-bridge-thing. Or maybe was I inside her dream. What is certain is that she slowly crosses the cellar, parading and pushing a shopping trolley full of... thrash... It seems to me, that she goes towards the toilet entrance blowing kisses to everybody. And then when she is already inside the toilet, I hear her comment coming through an echoed tone "Three things that a woman can do and a man can not - first - cry without reason – second - fuck without being horny – third – to piss without grasp..." Then the butter-man goes into the toilet to meet Zara, and the woman with tits like melons comes again to ask me money. I run away from she, moving away from the cellar area, stepping more to the middle zone, where there are more people, well dressed, and the furniture is dark and waxed, like in an old Irish pub. I try to stick through this crowd, but it's not easy, this people here do not want to move. It's like they are speaking through codes and it makes me nervous.

****

      

     Coming back to the road. I ride now inside a broad car, accompanied by an exiled-contemporary-history-teacher, we have been talking about experimental music and free-jazz, Stockhausen, John Zorn etc. And at some point after telling some details about his ex-wife he starts a confuse speech about fashion that goes like this: "When the future is threatening and uncertain... there is the retraction... the retraction of the present that is constantly being protected, arranged and recycled in an endless youth... while putting the future in parentheses, the system proceeds... the devaluation of past... impatient... for cutting off the chains of archaic traditions and territorialities... and for instituting a society without a base of anchorage or opacity... and together with an indifference to historical time... collective narcissism is established... a clear symptom of the generalized crisis of bourgeois societies of…” And then I'm sleeping again.

***

     Now seated again inside this cellar-Irish bar, girls are very tall here, and men shorter on their back, their conversations are not so different from the one verbalized by the smothered teacher of contemporary history with whom I was just riding. They say things like: "the square root of the adjacent annex..." or "the soul of the impubescent system..." or "the disaffection of knowledge that is significant..." or "a bulge in the facts in convergence..." or "the dualistic and central ideas of..." or "the new powers provided for instance in between the statute" and such other barbarities the likes. I guess this is people connected to the show-business, and this girls, maybe wanna-be models, without enthusiasm, or perhaps mere presenters of television in quarantine. And the barman looks to me with that look, he will give me nothing,  because he is more bored than me. And the music, make me remember bumper cars in my infancy, and the stupidities, generally associated with them. Thus, I move to the side of the bar, looking for something different, because I'm getting all deaf and dumb here. But when I reach the maids, and ask them free drinks, or either they do not listen or they don't want to understand me. So, I point to the beer machines and they, they shake their heads in a negative consent, and rush to serve other bored customers. But I don't give up so easily, turning back, I look around to see who can I outrage this time. And further there, more to the sideline, where there is some vain space, and I see a lady in a vest dancing awkwardly with two glasses in her both hands. I move to her side and straight off I ask a drink, but she confesses, smiling, that is waiting for her future husband, whoever takes her drink will have to marry she. And I agree, telling her I wouldn't mind marrying her now, but she assures, she can see that I'm not her  type, and I have to move away...

***

     Inside the car again, the teacher continues his ridiculous speech about fashion. "Since the jeans, the fashion has not stopped to promote the original clothing of the working class, the army and sports... bib pants... napkins... parkas and the sailor jacket, the jogging style... peasant skirts... the frivolous one identifying himself with the serious and the functional... and in doing so it adopts an explicitly parody style... imitating utilitarian clothes, fashion maladjust its points of reference... the solemnity dissipates and the forms lose what they could have to be polished or studied. Fashion and its exterior cease to be radically opposed... in parallel with the movement, everywhere visible, denial of oppositions... fashion today belongs to the sloppy, relaxed... the new must seem used and the studied spontaneous... a more sophisticated fashion imitates and parodies the natural..."

***

     Back to the dream, beside me, some guys are confederating on international football. They seem to be a bit upset about my getting into their conversation but then the first thing they do is asking that thing, that perennial question about “my club of election”. And I try my luck, letting myself be realist for a while. I tell them that I have no club of election, that I go with everyone and I do not belong to anyone, but somehow I prefer the black and whites... And the guys seem to turn happy with my comment. They even pay me a drink, a big one, and finally we make a toast to the black and whites. I drink it in a sudden because I'm really thirsty, and the guys ask me who am I after all, and I say I'm an actor on a loan escaping from a bad movie in order to find love. They get silent. We all get silent when the word love enters in the game and I run away to the wall, to the corner, I can't stand this silence. I look in the mirror and finally I see another familiar face approaching. Dressed in sportive clothes this mate gives me a clap in the back. I'm happy for meeting him. I know what he is looking for, and instantly I point where is the dude with rastas til the floor, but he does not show interest in that matter. We change recycled drinks, from the corners, while remembering  the details of that peculiar moment we  experimented, the story of a bathtub we stole from some posh house, the story of how we took it out through the window, the story of how we made it come down through a tree, and how we crossed all the city with that thing and how it got full of... before we reach the cemetery.

***

     Now, riding with this silly bourgeois teacher again. As I clean the vomit from my clothes he stares to my figure, inspecting it carefully, for a long time he does not look the road, but the car does not wags. He assures that by looking to my attire (dirty t-shirt, long-shorts-made-from-jeans and broken tennis) he can read my life pan. I tell him to go ahead. He gets his way to say that I wasn't properly loved as a child, that I used to shut myself in my own world... and... I agree... after, he also suggests that we need to look around, because inside the self we have only darkness... and I also agree... he tells me that due to my inadequacy to this world I haven't yet managed to get out from adolescence period... and I agree too... and he keep saying that I'm still looking for something sacred in this moving but because of my  stubbornness... and I agree... I will get frustrated with my searching... and I don't know if I should agree... he says I should look for dignity... and I agree, while facing the road, facing the white line, silence follows after the classic contemporary music have stopped... and I come back to the dream... the cellar-bar... by the mirror, I find the spiral staircase and down I go... around... and before reach the bottom I stop... trying to spot any familiar face in the manifestation, kind of performance, that is going on. Actually, I can't recognise any faces, because they have blinds on the eyes, and they scream stuff related to the word CRISIS. "Long live to the crisis” they say, in unison “the crisis is friendly, the crisis is great... the crisis has always here when we came... the crisis is primordial...” they keep saying while turning and going against each others. “Long live the crisis, love the crisis, live the crisis, trust the crisis... because the crisis is the challenge of nature itself”. And here I go down and try to pass unseen, but it's impossible, promptly they come to me and involve me in the performance, me too going around as they keep their slogans “long live to the crisis, because from the crisis comes the cutting-edge technology... the crisis appeared to kill our desire for reality...  the crisis exists because men can not live only from dreams... the crisis is a river that belongs to the monopoly of the creator... the crisis is the energy of the universe itself... the energy contained in the lizard's tail... in the snake's tongue... in the name of the father, the uncle, the son, the daughter, and the holy spirit, long live the to the crisis now...  let's dig our fertile lands... let's love the crisis... lets hug the unknown". And finally when I can reach the other side of this CRISIS room, I reach some youngs, girls and boys, seated on the floor in circle, and I seat by their side. One turns to me and says “"Close the eyes bro, and see how you will see the panic turning into mint, you know that we are matter, the the navel can save, this ventricle carries the love, we are doomed to give and to receive and the illusion is real, everything is real, we are more real than the conception of reality.” And other one, like in a competition, says something like this: “through the ruins of thought the sacred monsters stroll, the circulation may becomes slow and heavy as the irony falls into the gutter... there are sirens that never stop... day and night a permanent pulsar... Reason deviates freedom... and it's always a good time to leave... being in the shadow creates worms, and worms are bad advisors, they have a crush for philosophy and sometimes they spit flames in your face...”. After the conversation changes into the money subject... and futurology and control.... The dude with a funky cap says that in the future, money will be like a bar of energy in our body, if we do not have enough, we will die, or maybe we will enter in a vegetative state. "But we're going to destroy them before we get to that point" stammers a fat angry boy. "If we destroy them, we will also destroy ourselves, we are all part of the same whole," says the pink-haired girl with fish eyes. And another boy with fat glasses interferes "I'm not part of any, I'm me, we are we"'. "They know we're here," says the pierce girl, without looking up from the computer (laptop) screen. "They think they know, but they do not know anything, we are the future, we are the ones who fled, they are the ones who persecute... we go ahead," says the boy with red dreadlocks. "They betray one another's" adds the young man (with a closed fist in his t-shirt). "But money have always existed"; "Bullshit, money was created, everything was created, but we can destroy...”

***

     "When there is no longer any military and police monopoly, and when, therefore, insecurity is constant...” say the contemporary history teacher, now at home (in the exile) we are installed in this posh living room, me staring to the abstract-minimalist paintings on the wall. “Individual violence and aggression is a vital necessity... on the other hand, as the division of social functions and... under the action of the central organs that monopolize the physical force establishes a daily security... that is where the use of individual violence proves to be exceptional and the extreme and unbridled impulsiveness of men is no longer necessary or useful or even possible. From the societies that carried out the absolutist states... a co-regulation of behaviours is replaced... a self-control of the individual, that is .. is to forget that violence was, from the most remote times, an imperative determined by the holistic organization of society... a behaviour of honour and challenge... and as long as priority norms have priority over particular desires, as long as honour and revenge continue to prevail... the development of police apparatus, surveillance techniques and intensification of justice will only have a limited effect on private violence... hence the process of personalization that works to increase the responsibility of... individuals... favours well see, see, see, aberrant behaviours, unstable, indifferent in some way to the principle of reality... and for this very reason... in line with the dominant and correlative narcissism...” he keeps going and going and me dozing on his leather sofa, and at the same time  going up and down in this cracked spiral staircase (cellar-irishbar-basement-squat). 

     Listening to the teacher,  and getting entangled in the spider webs around the railings, and the CRISIS performance (basement) still going, and the squatters seated on the floor talking bullshit about the future society and upstairs the butter-man talking about butter and cheese and Zara talking about politics and cosmology and genetics and cosmetics and micro-biotic organisms.

***

     “If you have money”, says the butter-man “you can enter in a supermarket and buy a chocolate bar. I mean, one, two or three, whatever. If you don't have money you better eat the chocolate bar inside the supermarket, but watch out the moves you do with your jaws and pay attention to where you throw the plastic wrapper. Well, If you have money you can back home in a cab and eat all the chocolate bars while you are seated in the back seat watching the world passing by... If you don't have money you may have to walk somewhere, not exactly home, you may take a shortcut and you may get lost and end up in a middle of a field with cow shit. If you have money you can enter your home, take off the shoes, turn on the computer and and start doing nonsense researches on google about Satanist, ecology, and sexology. If you don't have money you will have to find a way of leaving that muddy fields by yourself, and you better come back to the city because you will fell lonely out there in the fields. If you have money you may get bored of cyber research, as well, and you may come back outside to visit some museums and galleries or go to the cinema. If you don't have money you may go around in the city-centre and beg for coins on the streets cause just a chocolate bar a day wont be enough to fill your body desires. But if you have money you may go to the museum, to the gallery, and after to some clothes shops in down-town in order to buy something new for your new style, 'cause you are bored with your old style. And if after all this time you still don't have money it means you didn't go for the begging practising 'cause you really don't like it, or because it makes you fell ashamed, or perhaps you did it for a while and because not even one hand gave you a coin in the first ten minutes you quit the job and came back to the supermarket to try to steal again, but this time not chocolate, this time something more real. But, if you have money, after the clothes shopping, you may go to a good restaurant in uptown, 'cause the evening is coming and your stomach is making your head creative. If you don't have money, at this time, you may be happy laying at some door-step, accompanied with some classic wine bottles you just reduced from the nearest supermarket. People will look at you laying on the floor with an half empty bottle in your hands and a golden crown on your head, you may smile to people and they may look to the other side. Now, If you have money, you can pay the restaurant bill and go for a walk in the grand boulevards in a way to make the good digestion and see the views, and who know, after some walk, you may encounter your brother or sista still laying on the floor with that two empty bottles on the side, and you may try to give a coin, but it's possible that you realize your money have also finished, and the two of you will drink together, and share secrets, so... that's it, the story of the world!”

***       

     At the teacher's house, the mastering continues "...Today the master's discourse is completely trivialized, desecrated, on equal footing with the media, education is a machine neutralized by the school apathy, made of dispersed attention and jaunty scepticism about knowledge... and all I have just finish to express could have been just black humour... because nowadays… for example... the sense of humour of the media, no longer tries to ridicule the logic ... report or satirize… the humour now fills a factual function... It is not bad no more to confess personal problems... to show our own weaknesses... unravel the loneliness that we feel… nevertheless, the important now is to express all this in a second degree... through modernist hyperboles… and when I say modernist I mean... disruptions are becoming increasingly rare, the impression of déjà vu prevails over the novelty, the new changes in society are monotonous, we no longer have the impression of living in a revolutionary period... there is a trend fall in creativity rate of the vanguards, which on the other hand… coincides with the very difficulty affirmation of anyone being truly vanguardist... the fashion of “isms” have passed, the noisy manifestations of other times are no more appreciated nowadays... but this doesn’t mean that the art is really dead ..."

So your grace is talking about art now!? (I say)

Yes, I'm an artist as well, I do abstract painting... I have a web page and everything... have already sold some things... especially to Japan-pan-pan-pan... - says the brain-man coughing while we smoke that kind of things...

And you, my boy, do you also do art?

For sure, I exist, art is everywhere, the human being is a artistic by nature... in every move we make art ... but this kind of discussion about what is art or what it isn't for me is non sense, it bothers me, I think that is an outdated issue... 

Not only the concept of art is outdated... all concepts are outdated, the concept of art, the concept of God, knowledge, information, life and existence... and even language... 

As in all great dichotomies, that one about the body and spirit also got blurred, the customization process, the expansion of the psychology erases the oppositions and the rigid hierarchies... confuses the reference points and the bold identities... The psychological process is a destabilizing agent... under his effect all criteria wander and float… a general uncertainty… thus the body is no more relegated to a status of material positiveness… opposing himself to an anacosmic consciousness and becoming an undecidable space... an object-subject, a floating mélange of  sense and sensitive...

Like eutony and yogra, such as bioenergy, the Rolfing, Gestalt therapy, where starts and ends the body? If the body and the conscience of it are exchanged, if the body, in the mat of the unconscious, speaks, we must love and listen to him, he must express itself, communicate, and from there emanates the will of rediscover the body from the inside ... 

The body problematic is a semiotic paranoid... 

I do not understand that, is that humour? Actually the world is being destroyed at this precise moment by brutal radiation, and this is not a complaining... the most powerful bombs ever made are currently being prepared... and this is much more clear evident than what people watch in the news…

In my point view, if God is empty, as you say, the devil is the doubt... and if we want to see it with inner eyes, the concept of emptiness and the concept that manages doubtfulness are similar things... flowing ideas ... that liberate us if we want... because the universe is one... there is no fault... all actions are perfect... but maybe it is the duality that humanizes us... that gives us the power to cause balances and imbalances in the world, in the things around and in ourselves... and...” I shut up. 

***

     Therefore, what happened next, after I have escaped from the teacher's house, during the night, those hours I've lost and found myself in those metamorphic shrubs,  revitalizing innocent times of no expectations... a certain type of animist electrolysis in assonance with the phantasmagorias of the green but... there's really nothing that can be described about that, here, 'cause it isn't a matter from the dominoes of the grammar, or poetry,  or literature or history or story itself.  Actually, I was just listening musik through the (F1 mb333), I explored the forrrest. Through the lateralus brain receptors, I absorbed the glorious sounds of Amon Dull, Acid Mothers Temple, Can, Neu, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Secret Chiefs, Gong... Missed Carriage...  At some point I got to a grove. 

     And, after a night of forrrest exploring I saw myself sleeping inside a cottage house, with some kind of witch on my side, making a operation on my body, something like removing stones from my guts and in the morning I was in a valley, the big eyes of flaccid mountains watching you and me. Blinking. Well, not just hallucinating. Sorry the verbiage. To tell the true I'm getting nauseated with this time travel. So, conversation about spaceships. Unavoidable. Still being absorbed by the gravity, I topple from room to room. From white tunnels to halls covered with analogue micro-ships fiber-optic intersections. I go through big cogwheels rooms, through the gangway and I'm damped on the court room, still coughing, just in the time to hear the verdict from the judge. “Absolved” he says, and the public clap their hands. I'm a free man now. 

 

***

     Trying to cross the highway now, getting closer to the humanity. Cars passing at hight velocity, honking and honking as I cross. Some breakages. Some swearing. On the ditch, opposite side, a pack of cracked biscuits, I pick it up. Chewing, climbing, I get to the top of the hill and find what can be described as a suburban city garden, with sandy earth and female pine-trees here and there. Big stones. Herbs. People walking around with dogs and I'm going to seat on a wooden bench. Resting and watching now. They passing, far away form me, indifferent to each others.  From here, I/we we can see a kind of a statue, a big man made of cement, and on the side a shorter one made of... a tourist approaches... taking pictures of it. Shooting from many positions, even taking pictures to the bushes around, the rocks, the trees, the floor, the ground... Everything he finds he shots, including himself... and after... to my surprise... he comes in my (our) direction, and click-clack, without giving us time... he makes a picture of myself rolling a join, and runs away. After a while, one young lad, bringing his dog with him, approaches and sits on my side. We know what he wants. He starts his speech. First he revels how he's fed up with this country. A job in the area he studied, would be very difficult to find... and people in this country are rubbish... because they just criticize... they just say bad stuff about everything...  they not create anything new... and he smiles as he says this things. I let him talk, also smiling, passing him the cane, and he continues... saying that almost all his friends have emigrated... and he also wants to go, but because of his actual girlfriend, he is still pondering... but soon he'll throw her in the cabbages,  coz she's a soap-operas sucker, more the suspecting of  betrayal... and then he also says he don't like her parents, coz of their regressive mentality... he even thinks, it was them who poisoned his foxy dog... and he turns to the canine now... caressing him... while we smoke...  “Afterall afterwalls what do you want from life?” I ask, innocently, “What do you like? What's wrong?";  and he turns to me quickly, "Oh man, what is good, what's is bad... you know... I want a big car, travel the world with it, me and my dog, that's what I want from life, after I will tell you what's good what's bad and much more... you tell me, have you tried black pussy?”

***

     More into the city, going through the city centre, many kinds of people walking in many different directions. Some excited some dull, I try to catch up with some of them, 'cause I'm happy to be here again, in the world of real people, again, I want to touch, I want to hug my fellows humans. Unfortunately, they run away from me with panicked faces. Damn, what's wrong with me, after all?  To be accepted I must have good clothes on, someone tells me. So, I enter in the first boutique I find and instantly I pick up something reasonable to wear. It's one only piece that covers my trunk and legs. I think it makes my style, so I put it on and I make my way out of the shop, but a young lady with a strange haircut (bigger one side than the other) is coming on my back telling I have to pay. Have to pay. OK. I understand. I remember. Money. And here I may remember the butter-man's conversation about the chocolate bars and the wine bottles. She say I can't go out without pay. I even try to explain that I need clothes in order to be accepted, but she just ignore me, she says she will call the boss right now and here I go, a newcomer to the this world, already escaping from the boss. I open my way through the masses, some of them looking to me others walking their way, like there's nothing happening. I study their faces now. I watch their moves. I analyse their style and their pretension, fast-forward. Men in suit, with bulgy eyes or normal eyes or little ragged eyes, sweat under the armpits of their sleeve-shirts. Plump ladies carrying plastic bags.  All kind of girls showing up the breasts, indignation in their expressions. Male and female teenagers with hands in the pockets, some looking to their feet, some watching the skies, while talking with others and carrying their little backpacks... Many kind of T-shirts with more-and-less funny sayings like “Just do it”; “Good girls go to heaven Bad girls go to...”; “Sometimes pretending to be normal”; “I'm not rude I'm just saying what everybody is thinking”; “Not perfect, just limited edition”; “Warning! explicit contention”; “Stop following me!”; “Pizza princess”; “Blink if you want me”; “Obey”; “Too much self control”; “etc.” and so on. Some of them with colourful haircuts, sharp hair, curly hair, no hair at all. All kind of accessories attached to the clothes. People looking inside shops. Others just waiting in corners. Munching. Chatting. Yawning. As they spot me they talk something to their phones, as to denounce my presence. All them have phones, or almost all. Should I get a phone too in order to integrate myself in this society? No, first I should get a job, a house and a wife... That's what a shoe-shiner tells me in a corner. And I'm still not sure about what all that means. But I will discover... I watch him shining the shoes of someone else... I watch the shoes of people passing by... he tells me we can read the personality of men by watching theirs shoes... and maybe what I need is really a new pair of shoes... new clothes is not enough... but for that I need money... and I don't want to steal again... so I must find a way of getting money... and where is the money? Should I ask some of you where is the bank? “which bank?”; “anyone”; “there” someone points. “Too late” tells the security man. The door is closed. “Come back tomorrow”.

      “Tomorrow” I think about this world, as I walk around, barefoot, because my boots were hurting, and all I see now is trees and houses and cars, no people. Until that, suddenly a hand in my shoulder make me come back to reality. And as it comes it goes. So, I'm now planted in front of a big building in construction. A metal fence between me and the construction. Inside it's all hustle and bustle, the men carrying materials from place to place, operating noisy machines, yelling to each others. I like it, don't know why, but I like it. I approach more the rusty fence, and I stay by there, under a big street tree, from distance, watching the men working, moving tools-objects from place to places. And soon they will be aware of my presence, someone making hot comments about me... asking me what I want from their scenario. And this is just what I wanted to listen, so I'm peremptory in my answer, I say that I'm looking for work, I can do everything, I'm very motivated and I can start at anytime and I don't mind about shifts. On the other side the men keep working, sometimes glancing, me squeezed against the fence until that, one comes, lifts up the fence and suggests me to pass under it. 

     “Barefoot?” he asks, with some disdain. 

     “That's how we came” I answer. 

     “That's how you came!” he says while making signals to follow him. 

     In instants we reach the other men. All working around a manual concrete-mixer. They are five, or six or seven. Some mixing with hoes in the hands, mixing the heap of sand with the mount of cement.  Others putting water inside the mixer. Others filling buckets of ready made concrete. Others approaching with wheelbarrows, bringing more sacks of cement, opening it with a jerk and pouring the content by my barefoot while asking me to stand back.

     “What is the kid doing here?” someone asks.

     “He wants to work” someone answers.

     “Bring him a pair of boots!”

     “Here they are!”

     Me, all happy, all ready to put one foot inside that buckskin boots made of...

     “The pipe is over there” a comrade suggests. And I think about the suggestion. 

     Then I go around the amount of sand and I come back to the cement. One, operating the concrete-mixer, tells me orders:

     “You have to go through that garage, cross to the back of the building and use the metal staircase, the bricklayer will tell you how he wants it, more smooth or more rough, creamy, you have to inform use here, understood?”

     “Super!”. 

     “Hands on”.

      And there I go, carrying buckets of concrete up and down, listening to the men's jocular comments, making it faster, with my new pair of boots, I almost can fly up and down. They even tell me to slow down. Sometimes they want it more smooth, sometimes more rough, I'm the messenger, the wall is growing, I'm contributing for the creating of something real, a big house, building, is rising... I wonder who will buy it, for what purposes it will be used, and if it will really be “useful” or if it's just for decoration. 'Cause I'm not stupid, I know some people make houses just for decoration. But I don't want to talk about that now, I want to talk about the men I'm working with, their kind of humour, what me and you can learn with them. The bricklayer upstairs tells me about his wife, a donkey, that sometimes stops by, and there is nothing that can makes her move again. Downstairs the concrete-mixer operator tells a story about a politician that after a scandal went away to another country and became a porno actor and found a new religion based on the believe that we all came from outer-space etc... the guy handling the hoe, also wants to make some confidences about his wife, that used to sell sardines around, now like no fish. He have to do everything, cooking, washing, cleaning, go in the supermarket and pay the bills, while  he works, she is out, hunting flies watching operas in the hair-dresser, making desserts all night... and he  looking for bitches in the internet, while she is reading, in the sofa... and on Sundays he goes out, she goes to the church, to the doctor, he goes to the fluffy snooker... his best adversary is a butcher, open-eyed, that know the priest... and the boys around, helping with the mixer, they also know about this femmes moving through the snooker house. They start arguing about the quality of the meat. My buckets being filled up, and off through the garage I go. Upstairs, he bricklayer is now in silence, concentrated in the plumb bob thing, but his assistant, the kid, turns to me smiling, he also have something to say, also wants to prove some kind of smartness. While wetting the wall he start talking about chickens, eggs and gold shops...

***

     I enter in a commercial centre, first floor it's all about mobile phones, computers and techno-logic paraphernalia, I'm quite afraid of all that so I jump on the second floor that is where all the boutiques are, I go inside some of them, watching women, guys, their indecision about buying this or that item, me approving or disapproving with expressions, they coming out of the shops with their packets, controlling the pressure. Going up. Next floor is all about fast food restaurants. Different king of burgers, pizzas, colourful spaghetti... etc. I watch people eating that things with drowsy faces... a lot of them don't even finish their plates... I pick some rests here and there... the waiter cleaning the tables offers me some different sauces, personal questions being involved. I  leave this area coming down through the mechanic-stairs.

     On the ground floor, a big  fountain ejaculating dark-silver water and some fake palm trees on the side, I lean over the handrail, staring to the reflexes that run through that yellowish water. Once arrived, I sit on the brim of this same fountain... where other people are already seated, alone, or accompanied with bolt shopping bags... I sit  between this people, there is plenty of space between us, and no one from the sides seems to be interested in doing any eye contact with me when I seat... Our backs turned to the jet of water, the moist coming to caress our nape and scruff... some drops coming further to land on our face and projection... I close my eyes and I open them again, I do the same thing, again and again, and as I do it, one man on the side (with long-grey-hair running back, but bald on the top), seems to come closer and closer to me each time I open my eyes again. At some point he dares to present himself and says that I made him remember someone that he had meet long time ago, when he was young...  

So very familiar too me you are... you have all the looks...   (And I look to him)

Just like my old fella from the service... 

From the service?

Yeap, my comrade... died on my arms... in that bloody war... he was young... we were young... yes... my old fella, his name was Mike, but we called him...  Diego...

Diego? Why Diego?

'Coz he looked like a Italian bastard!

So I do look like him? I'm not Italian...

You do... the same pointed chin... the same half closed eyes... the same far away and so close expression... the same shabby hair...

Yeah, in the end it's all about the hair... 

And you look coming from some kind of war also... 

I do look like a war victim?

You survived, you are tired, but proud of your achievements, I can see... I didn't born yesterday... I was there in that hell... I looked the devil in the eyes...

Sorry to disappoint you mister... I myself just born today... you believe or not, I... don't know anything you are talking about...

No problem buddy, I will no more bother you talking about war shit, I just wanted to tell yo how you look so much like him... we loved him... I remember it las if it was today... 

So you are the war survivor?

A victim, actually... a fucking victim...

But you survived...

I survived with a smashed leg, if you wanna know... this thing you see here... (and he pointed down to his right or left leg, not sure)

This thing is not made of flesh and bones, this thing is made of wax, platinum and screws... that's how I survived, they sent me away, I was no more useful for them, I got a pension, I didn't have to work that much... I went though life with a lot of free time, I had time to think... to overthink, you see... I'm not complaining now... I achieved something, just to say, I became a kind of Guro... that's what some people call me...

Guro? So you are a expert...

Yes, I'm a fucking expert, you can say that...

You are a war specialist?

Not that shit... enough of that shit I got... sorry... let's leave that for the psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychologists... 

So, what's your specialization?

I don't want to talk about myself, kid, I'm tired of myself, tell me about you, what have you been doing, why are your skin so flaky? Why you say you born today? You born with this cement on the clothes?

No, I born separated from the cement... went lost in the desert, huge sandstorms I crossed, that's why my skin got flaky like this, you see...

Looks thrilling... Which deserts? Are you talking about this world or some kind of dream, kid?

I don't know the name of the desert... I was there, all the spirits came to me, I tried to run away, the sky was coming down, a black sky full of mathematical equations running at the speed of the light... the numbers changing like in the the stock-market... and I was engulfed by that sky, I was sucked by the tentacles of the big machine, space travel I went... spit by the infra-reds...

You crazier than what I thought kid, what kind of space-machines are you talking about?

Not space-machines, when I woke up, I was on the stairs of the parliament, the freedom statue on my left and the democracy stone lady on my right... or the inverse...

Yeah, I see, and they spoke to you, they whispered sweet word into your ears, and you three went to have a ménage in the city park, was that kid?? 

     (And as the man swallowed his gasps a chubby middle age woman with bulgy black eyes arrive close to us carrying many bolt shopping bags in both hands - straight away she starts speaking about something she couldn't buy cause was sold out)

      Me not totally understanding what was this thing that was so much desired and sold out... the man stood up, helped the woman with the the plastic bags (before he go away he turns the face to us one last time, blinked the eye and)... the woman looking back too, sending me, us, a kiss through the air... I could see her fluff and guess things... both leaving the fountain swagging, one with a deficiency in the right leg other with a deficiency in the left one... both holding the bags on the the opposite hand of the defected leg, equilibrating the walk...

***

     

     I enter in the first bus that stops in front of the commercial centre. An old lady protests about the weather.  An old man protests about people protesting about the weather. I move to the back seat. A young couple kissing next to me. They get off in the next stop and a man with an umbrella comes and seats on my side. I remember that dream inside the cellar-Irish bar with people getting entangled with umbrellas at the entrance. 

I ask if he knows that place. He asks what kind of idiot am I. I say that I'm a straight kind of idiot. He gets out in the next stop. A woman with a dress 'till the knees comes and seats on my side. I ask her name. She tells me the name. I ask her job. She tells that she is a secretary. I ask what she secretariats. She smiles and not answer. She gets off.  The next one is a young dude with a cap. I look his cap, he looks my look with intimidation. I look out. Silence follows. The bus goes around. People just looking through the window. Out of the city we go. Into the suburb. Buildings and green fields. Green fields and buildings. Horses. Time to get off. Last stop. I follow some pedestrians. We go down, into the subway. I watch the publicity on the walls, I read the signs on the papers and I choose a direction, randomly. The carriage comes full of bodies, me being squeezed against the masses. I try to accommodate myself. Everybody touching each others in silence. Dull expressions. I get out in some station and I enter in another carriage going in another direction. Randomly. Following a natural order of the things. I watch people and their autism or small eccentricities. Some playing with their phones. Some reading books about exotic tourist destinations and self motivation. “The meaning of everything in the cosmos, for dummies”. But after a while, my curiosity is gone, my eyes closing and opening, the nervous system being lulled, saliva coming out through the corner of  the mouth, disintegration. Down we go, falling and falling slowly, down under the clouds, not afraid, “just a dream inside a dream” I say to myself and actually I can choose where to land, over this tree, inside that hole, against this or that tower, in the middle of the road, on the ditch, under the bridge, here we go again, under that viaduct, landing over some rotten sofa, canapé, the serpents nest.. the African brothers, still talking about corrupted politicians while injecting that strange poisons on their veins. Zara approaching with her trolley full of condoms, all broken, she insinuating me to choose one, me understanding that I have to blow on it, but at the moment I try to speak and my voice is not coming out... me getting in chock... paranoid... but there are a voice in my hear and I wake up. “Que est ce la decadence?” asks the beggar passing through carriage. And I answer something silly about over-dancing. The beggar goes away, smiling, an evil smile. 

     The train stops, many people gets off (with big luggages), and I get off too, already running through some tunnels (perfumes advertisement). Up and up (mechanical-stairs) I go and suddenly on the top, I see myself inside an super modern airport, me staring to the large departures timetable, curiously, the next flight is to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, I think about it, I forget about it. I go around through the airport big hall, observing people, their impatience, I dare to make conversations with some of them... I ask their destinations, their goals in life... I get some answers and after I take the opportunity to ask some coins, I'm asking money to go on holidays, 'cause I'm also son of God, but unfortunately the security comes and throws me out of the airport. And there I go again.

     It's night and  I move through the back of the airport, the last air-planes passing over the bared wire... me approaching again the city. I walk now through a crappy neighbourhood, there are kids covering the head of statues with black plastic bags. I walk away, changing from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, walking no stop, getting tired. Finally I decide to enter in buildings, going up and down on the lifts. Battering on doors. Some don't answer, others (despite the signals of life inside), don't open (just spy me through the keyhole).  But sometime they want to know who am I and what I want from them. According to the roughness of the voices, I was Jack, I was John, I was Gabriel, the angel, but they didn't care, I was sent  away. And I continued moved from building to building. Still trying. Even if one or other proprietary caught me in their corridor and pulled me out of their buildings, out of their doorways. Some, called me dirty names, people coming out in pyjamas, trying to understand what was happening... And in one of this happenings, there was woman, a middle age woman, that pushed me inside of her apartment and said BACK OFF to the other ones on the corridor, treating me like a dog. 

     Once inside, she offered me tea in her cosy living room and made me be relaxed. “Don't need to hurry to tell your story” she advises. “You can tell it late... after the tea” And the cookies, I guess... “And no need of big acknowledgements”.  So I deep breathed and installed myself in an old fashioned couch while looking around... there are some pictures of discoloured birds on the  walls, the stuff inside the cupboard is messy and the fan on the celling is making a slight continuous hissing. A door on my back was half-open, and someone inside was watching a movie, from the mirror I could see the screen of the computer but not the person in the back of  it. The movie looked familiar to me, also the sound track, but while I wondered, a force from inside the room closed the door, and I could not see or hear nothing more...”

     “That's my daughter, Maho. Not a very social one, she just worries about... well.. I'm not sure what she worries...since she left the school, she show no interest for boys, don't want to go and look for a job... look for a life... just stay here... watching movies... too much like her father...”

     “Mam, I advice you, you better don't censure she”, I intervene, “that's how I started too, make attention, one day maybe she can get off and just disappear...  like me, I got tired of my family morality as well, and one day, I went away... and didn't come back...”; “Oh I see, but where have you been, all this time?”; “I have been on the road... walked thousands of kilometres going from cities to cities and finally stopped somewhere, slowly managed to make new friend and found a job, more precisely  in a meat factory... me that have never worked before... my job was to remove the bones from pieces of meat, I was a dis-boner, removing the bones from pork ribs, with a special doubled knife I  worked on this ribs all day... and sometimes during the night... I did overtime too”; “Ouh poor you..  but when was that??”; “Ages ago, not that much... I'm not good with numbers and time anyway...”; “I see, you are still young...”; “Yes, you are right mam, I'm what they call a eternal teenager...”; “Hum... they... but who are they?”; “They, the trained people, the students of the brain... the specialists of the mind...”; “And are you OK with that?”; “I'm very ok mam... I don't care about nothing they say... I mean...”; “So, you never came back home, since that first time you abandoned your family to go look for... a job?”; “I never came back...”; “But where have you been more precisely, can I ask you?”; “I have been in many places, many countries, worked in many shitty jobs, different kind of factories, operating machines, dreaming with myself being sucked by this machines... after the meat factory I changed to another country and found work in a timber factory, but it didn't lasted for long... I also worked in some glass factory... making windows for offices... I worked in a mattress factory... that was not so bad... my last one was a stone factory... we had to use a mask all the time because of the dust... it was depressing... we were making the engravings for the cemetery tombs... after that I never got a job again...”; “And no relatives can help you?”; “I didn't ask their help, anyway I forgot everything about them...”; “And since then what have you been doing?”; “Walking around... being a hobo here and there... have been in many countries... crossed many deserts... almost died in the last one...”; “Found your oasis finally?”; “The oasis is inside, not outside...”; “Can't fully understand your words, but that's ok, if you fell happy here now, enjoy your time... it's my pleasure to give you a place to rest before your next... lets say... your next desert crossing...”; “No more deserts crosses for me mam, please... I had enough from deserts...  wanna tell you... today I just got out of that sandstorm machine... wanna tell you, today I feel human again... wanna tell you...”

     she watching me, as I stand up, walking around in the living room, I go for the window, open it and put my head out... fresh air... there is a horse (maybe a donkey) down there, grazing the grass by the building... and I don't know way, I start to yell some onomatopoeias... “arrrshurrruffuff” just because... She, on my back, romping into a strange dry laugh... roaring like a female lion... and in some seconds other people began to shout from another windows of the buildings around, some cursing, some just yelling, some even pronouncing the name of God in vain... And the spectacle continues like this during some minutes until the madam began to fight with her breath and no more can laugh... now she pull me away from the window... I don't quit on the first pushes but I also don't resist that much. Her daughter (long back hair), by the door-still of her room, watching the whole scene. I turn my face to see her cold expression, ridiculous angriness, showing disgust on the main facade but a beginning of a smile in the corners of her mouth. 

What's going on here?? Who is this man and why is he doing a pathetic scene like this in our house?

Don't worry, sweeter... This man is the...the... the... is the new the plumber... can't you see? He came to clean out the roast from the tubes... 

(Me and the mam making half smiles, the daughter, still looking at us, with an even more confuse hatred expression)

So very fucking funny!! (she screams) And what you gonna do next hein? Invite him to live here... you will pay him food just to listen his street jokes? And we will have his beggar friends coming over for super too??... and after they will want to stay the overnight too... and they will fight between them for the better places to sleep??... over the kitchen table... on the back of the curtains... inside the wardrobe, in your room... is that what you want hein? And after they will get really mad... they will disrespect us... they will disrespect all our neighbours... they will throw us out, sell all our stuff and smash the house... is this what you want for your life hein? Do you know this people?

     Her expression was serious but sounded very silly at the same time... a really hypocrite one,  she had stolen her interjections from an old black n' white movie from the fifties I have also seen... I'm sure... I knew the very same movie she had just resumed... I could tell it with more details... but her mother didn't know about this movie, she took the story straight, her face turned first sad, after bitterness took over... there was many feeling fighting inside her head and nervous system... 

You stupid girl... don't scream like that on me... you are just as ungrateful as your father was, I gave you everything, I took food from my month to feed you... to both of you... and... one disappeared when was more needed.... the other... closed in this room all day... almost not talking... just addressing me words to insult me... you son of a pig... who are you to judge the people I receive at MY house? You jealous of me sharing the house with someone else? What is all this non sense all about? Why are you trying to control what is not yours... Why don't you go find a work, pay your food, pay your rents... and after you can come and stand up your voice like that...

And even before the mother finishes her discourse, the daughter's hand already passing over the cupboard with violence. One by one she smashes all the crystal figures against the floor. After she goes inside her bedroom, more sounds of stuff being broken we can hear... the mother trying to enter that same room, but can't... until that finally, the daughter is getting out, with a small leather pack on her back, her hands going over tables again... some more decoration stuff being broken... and as she make her way out through the main door, the final words:

      “You fat cow... you will not see me again... for long I have grown tired of you... I'm gonna live with my father... you bitch”. The door being slammed, she was gone, like I predicted. 

     And as the scene goes, the mother bursting into crying, open the door again and tries to pursue the daughter, they have a small fight on the corridor, again, the mother tried to slap the daughter but she managed to push the mother against the wall, managed to enter in the lift and down she went. The mother was left over the floor weeping and gurgling like if it was the end of the world... the neighbours coming out, watching the woman there, watching me on the door... I hesitating between advancing to help the madam or close the door... But I didn't have no time to choose, because, two men, the same ones that hours ago have tried to expel me from the corridor, they took hold of me, grasped my arms, one each side... they pushed down the stairs, dragging me... calling me names... and with a kick... onto the streets I went again... but not so far, some meters away, I just entered in another building, made my way to the last floor, and there I lay down, on the mat, with the shoes under my head...

 Listen now, the squeak of the brakes as the train came to a halt, a man accompanied with a blue monkey under a umbrella coming from the station passing out there, outside this window, and a letter entering under the door straight away. I picked it up... I try to read it, but can't understand what is written, it's a terrible calligraphy, looks mine, actually, and in the middle of the letter, there  is some little childish... semi-monster faces and a pink elephant and a couple of butterflies with big antennas... I leave it, as I move to  open the door coming out of my barrack, but I see no one... even the train station is not there now...  All a dream inside a dream but when I touch the roses in the garden, under the window, I hurt my fingers in the thorns... It turns out that there is a lot of people behind the bushes, on the other side of the same garden, all them half asleep, with only half body visible... I ask them what are they doing there by the walls of my barrack but I get no answer... they look so tired of waiting, that they can't talk at all... And while turning up, to the stone stars, I see, by chance, over the roof of my barrack, the same blue monkey, still holding the umbrella, speaking with the voice of a business man... He has a mission for me, he tells, in the letter I had in my hands was the instruction for my mission. “Do not care about what is written... simply burn the papers and read the message in the smoke” he says with nasal intonation.

***

Now I wake up in a posh bedroom with a disconcerting hangover. Felling like vomiting. There are carpets on the walls with geometric-abstract motives and pseudo-arabesque lettering. A huge golden candelabrum is pending from the roof, right over the bed. It looks like is moving slowly. It can be illusion but I'm afraid of this thing to fall on me. So I jump out of the bed and I run out of the room looking for the toilet. As I try to vomit, there's no material coming out, just a yellowish fluid. Back to the living room, still cleaning up my mouth and winking the eyes like someone that have just awaken up for the world. Too much light entering in this rich furnished living room. Again the walls adorned with floral motive carpets. Geometric labyrinth patterns. Alone, sited on a luxurious sofa, on the other side, a well presented man, with a thin mustachino and a knot on the collar of his white sleeve-shirt. Hands spread over his knees. He talks, talks without looking to me, talks to the walls, in a soften polished tone, as if he have honey in his tong and lips. “Haji Bektaş Veli, the Sultan of Hearts, the Derwish of the Derwishes, the pilgrim saint, a descendant of the seventh Shia Imam Musa Kazim, also called Abul Hasan, Abu Abd Allah, Abu Ibrahim, al-Kadhim, the one who controls his anger. Haji Bektash Veli, our spiritual father, from Hanna-talia, about his biography... it was said... “Before the world came into being.... in the hidden secrets of nonexistence, I was alone with reality in his oneness... He created the world; then I formed the picture of him... I was the designer. I became folded in garments made of the elements. I made my appearance out of fire, air, earth and water. I came into the world with the best of men. I was of the same age even as Adam. The blessed rod I gave to Moses. I became the Holy Spirit and came to Mary. I was guide to all the saints. To Gabriel the Faithful I was the right hand companion... To this world of "being annihilated in God" I have often come and gone. I have rained with the rain and I have grown as grass. I have guided aright the country of Rum. I was Bektash, who came from Khurasané” and I'm in the toilet again, looking my paleness in the mirror, outside, the pastiche voice continues, this time even more grave :

     “Seek and find... To search and investigate is an open exam... A path without knowledge will end in darkness... Be in control of your hands, tongue and loins... Whatever you do, do it for the Truth... There exists in you a “there is” to replace every “there isn't.”... He who walks the Path never tires... There is no rank or station higher than the Friend's heart... The one who is wise but doesn't share his wisdom is ignorant... To the ignorant, abandoning what is no longer needed is death; to the wise it is birth... There is no repentance of repentance.... Let your heart, your hand, and your table be open to others.... Look for the key to all within your deepest being... Whatever you seek, look within... Do not forget your enemy is also living thing, like you... The beauty of human beings is the beauty of their words... If the path appears dark, know that the veil is in your own eyes... All blessings upon the one who overlooks another' shortcomings.... All blessings upon the one who makes a secret of secrets... Do not hurt others, even if you are hurt... Hand-in-hand, hand in Truth... One hour of meditation is better than seventy years of piety... Never desire fame, fame is disaster...” 

     I'm in the living room staring to the man. He turn his head to me... “Where are we?”. I ask. “How do I ended up here?”. “Aiii doooon't knowwwwuu... a friend brought you to me...”: “A friend of who?”;  “A friend of... mine, that works in the night... but don't worry, be good, you are safe here, here is Kurtuluş... not far from Taksim... I will bring you something to cure your pain... come back to bed... enjoy your hangover...” 

***

     Another day, I walk on the road again, by the motorway, out of the city, cars passing by, not stopping, the sun bringing new interjections that we still can't understand, a bag full of stones I carry. After a few hours marching, a lorry stops on my side. The chauffeur, a man with a toad smile and muscular shoulders invite me to get in and asks me immediately what I have in the bag, “stones” I say. More I assure to be a gladiator of lost causes and have just survived at great cost the last battle with the more impure gods. He glimpses, from me and the road, with half-closed eyes and a tricky smile. Adding that he have been giving rides to many crazy people but none of them have ever proved to be more crazy than him himself,  and (as I changed my socks and throw my stones out of the window) tells me of a dude, that, instead of speaking, only grunted... this dude offered him strange drugs, but he... instead of taking his drugs...  without ceremony, he fucked the dude in the ass, just because “he looked so like Tom Cruise”, he assured. But above all, he considered himself a good person, he liked to help the ones lost in this world. He felt this as an obligation. 

     And as he said this things he put his hand under his seat and pick up a black pistol, showing it to me... he hides the pistol again and from the same place he brings up some plastic roses, after an LP from the band Guns and Roses... We laughing together. “Welcome to the jungle... here we have everything we need...” The camion gaining velocity... grenades and horns balancing on the ceiling of the cabin... down on the sides, throw the windows of this truck we can see, little people looking up from their little cars with curiosity and apprehension... with a small touch on the staring wheel their lives could turn into... At some point he asks me about my destiny, but as I'm not being clear in my answer, he puts the hand under the same seat again, and from there he fishes, this time, a hard cover book... and with a kind of serious expression, he tells me (order) to read a few passages of my choice from that book... but to read it well, not to eat the words... and me slowly, starting to defoliate the gospels... the chauffeur smoking non stop... with impatience... me still studying where my story should start... he throwing the smoke in my face... until that finally, here he goo...

     "When any man of the Israel house,” I start “or any foreign, residing among you... offer a burnt offering or a sacrifice and not bring it to the entrance of the assembly place in order that it can be offered to Jehovah ... this same man would have to be cut off from his (our) people... right... so if you are a Jew by name... and you are proud of God, and you know his wills and you approve his good things, as you are verbally instructed by the law... and you are equally persuaded that you are a guide of the blind... a light for them in the darkness... one who corrects the unreasonable, instructor of the little ones... and having the structure of knowledge and truth in the law... to you will come the very glory of Lebanon, the juniper, the ash and the cypress... at the same time in order to adorn the place of my sanctuary, and I will glorify the place of my feet ... are you too much pure-eyed to see what is evil, and canst not look upon misfortune, so why you look upon those who act treacherously, shutting you up? And why you make the earthly man equal to the fish of the sea, equal to the creeping things over which no one dominates... you see that man is to be declared righteous by works and not only by faith... in the same way... was not also Rahab the harlot, declared righteous by her works... after having received with hospitality the messengers and sent them off through another way..." 

Really! Rahab the harlot! - utters the chauffeur with a smile crossed in his crooked mouth and his little eyes glancing. 

     “Just as the breathless body is dead, faith without works is also dead... and the priest will have to return on the seventh day and have to see, and if... the plague has spread on the walls of the house... then the priest will have to give orders... and they will have to pluck the stones on which the plague is and cast them out of the city in an unclean place... and the house would have to be scraped from the inside, and all around it, and the ruffle they cut will have to be cast away of the city in an impure place... and they will have to take other stones and put them in the place of the previous ones... and He will cause them to take a different rebound and make  the wicked house to be towed...”

You see!? Do not forget this one! If you ever have family problems in your house, send the walls down! Dont't forget!

     And I continue “The spirit of the Lord Jehu Ovah is upon me... since Jehu Ovah anointed me to proclaim good news to the meek... He sent me to think the brokenhearted... to proclaim liberty to those who were taken captive and open the eyes from the prisoners themselves... To proclaim the year of goodwill on the part of Jehovah, and the day of vengeance on the part of our god...

      - God does not sleep! - interrups again the enignatic driver, and I continue:

     “In order to comfort all that mourn for Zion... to give them a covering for the head instead of ashes... the oil of exultation instead of mourning... the robe of praise instead of despondent spirit... and would have to be called great trees of righteousness, Jehu Ovah's plantation, for him to be beautified... And they will have to rebuild the places so much devastated... they will erect even the desolate places of old and certainly renew the devastated cities, desolate places, this, from generation to generation ... 

     - Exactly my boy! Exactly! From generation to generation –  exalts the driver.

     “And Solomon came to have forty thousand horse stalls for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, and these servants provided food for king Solomon, and every one that would came to his table ... each one in his month... nothing was miss... and the barley and the straw for the horses ... and for the couple of steeds... they brought wherever it appeared to be the place, each according to his commission... and God continued to give Solomon wisdom and understanding to a very great extent , as well as broadness of heart ... just like the kind of sand that borders by the sea...”

Heil Solomon! Heil! Heil the holy trinity fucked three times a day... Yes... Heil! Let's stop to eat now, I'll pay you lunch my boy, coz much I enjoyed your reading! Yahhhh!

     And this way I escaped from the hands of this satirical man, who I was already painting as serial killer. I do not know if I was lucky, or if it was the gospels that helped me, anyway, everything I read was felt, it was a message, you know I know, who is the one with wet eyes now?

***

     At the restaurant, the driver went to talk with another lorry drivers, they shared their lorry-driver stories while laughing, drinking wine, beer, and sometimes pointing to me... I, sited on a corner, away from them, attentive to a scientific program passing on the television... a program about the brain and the nervous system... about the  "Vagus Nerve" and it went on like  this: 

     “Human beings have an autonomic nervous system that is actually comprised of three separate subsystems… the parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system… The enteric nervous system has been described as a kind of second brain, which communicates with the central nervous system through the parasympathetic… via the vagus nerve… and sympathetic nervous systems. However, vertebrate studies show that when the vagus nerve is severed, the enteric system continues to function… We now know that the enteric system is not just capable of autonomy but also influences the brain… In fact, about ninety per cent of the signals passing along the vagus nerve come not from above, but from the enteric system… and that is why many consider it as a backup brain centered in our solar plexus… Our gut instincts are not fantasies but real nervous signals that guide much of our lives...” 

     And while I watch this I think to myself “our guts have interests” and there's a big mess on my back, the truck drivers laugh and yell because of something I'm not interested and I turn again to the screen.

     “It is our vagus nerve that provides the gateway between the two parts of the autonomic systems.... The vagus acts as a bio-informational data bus that routes impulses going in two directions… Since the vagus nerve acts as the central switchboard it should come as no surprise… that impaired functioning of this one nerve can lead to so many different conditions and problems…. Some neurological diseases actually come up from the gut spreading to the brain via the vagus nerve…

     - It's scientific, it's scientific (says the bar tender loudly) You can see the true now!! The shit you have in your bowls makes the thinking,  think about it ladies and gentlemans (and an whole conversation about shit comes up in the restaurant, from all directins).

      “The vagus nerve is the commander-in-chief when it comes to having grace under pressure. The autonomic nervous system is comprised of two polar opposite systems that create a complementary tug-of-war, which allows your body to maintain homeostasis inner-stability... The sympathetic nervous system is geared to rev you up like the gas pedal in an automobile… it thrives on adrenaline and cortisol and is part of the fight-or-flight response… The parasympathetic nervous system is the polar opposite... The vagus nerve is command central for the function of your parasympathetic nervous system… Unfortunately, the vagus nerve reflexive responses can backfire and turn it from comrade into saboteur.”

     (the mess continues)

     “The vagus nerve is known as the wandering nerve because it has multiple branches that diverge from two thick stems rooted in the cerebellum and brainstem that wander to the lowest viscera of our abdomen… touching our hearts and most major organs along the way. It meanders all the way down, into the belly, spreading fibers to the tongue, pharynx, vocal chords, lungs, heart, stomach, intestines and glands that produce anti-stress enzymes and hormones like Acetylcholine, Prolactin, Vasopressin, Oxytocin... influencing digestion, metabolism and the relaxation response… The vagus nerve uses the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine… If our brain cannot communicate with our diaphragm via the release of acetylcholine from the vagus nerve then you will stop breathing. Botox is a toxic substance that has the power to damage the nervous system and shut down the vagus causing death…

Botox, hum!

     “It's interesting to note that... the heavy metal mercury blocks the action of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter that passes the nerve impulse from the vagus nerve to the heart muscle… Both acetylcholine and the nerve receptors in the heart muscle contain thiol proteins… When mercury attaches to the thiol protein in the heart muscle receptors… and in the acetylcholine, the heart muscle cannot receive the vagus nerve electrical impulse for contraction… Mercury accumulates in the heart muscle and heart valves, causing damage by attaching to thiol proteins. The frequently observed rocking and swinging behaviors in autistic individuals may reflect a naturally occurring bio-behavioral strategy to stimulate and regulate a vagal system that is not efficiently functioning… Public have been highly contaminated with mercury used in dental amalgam… which dentists routinely place only inches from the brain… Moreover, more than three thousand tons of mercury are put into the atmosphere each year contaminating the entire biosphere of our planet but the government nonsensically worries more about CO2 emissions from coal-fired smokestacks instead of the huge amount of neurotoxic mercury….”

     To summarize, I think to myself, it is the mercury in the atmosphere that is blocking the vagus system which in turn is affecting the connection of the heart with the brain and triggers the indolence and autism in people -  and the great culprits of this are the dentists!  - I say with loud voice, but nobody listen to me, they're all are in another room now, still talking about shit... and their bosses, and their wives, and about other stuff related to camions and prostitutes... A fat woman, that seemed to work there, in the restaurant, is coming my side to remove the plate of food I didn't eat... She even try to ask me something about my teeth... but I don't dare to answer... after she open her mouth and obligates me to watch her craters... all in a sudden, I stand up, and putting my hand against the mouth (making this sound like the Indians do in westers movies) I go through the room where all the truck drivers are (still talking about shit), they see me passing by, doing the chicken...  some getting irritated, me being persecuted by this fat pigs, and to get rid of them I even have  to put in practice some acrobatic steps, more to fuss than anything else. Through the window, out of the restaurant I go, pissing against the wheels of their camions, I vanish...

***

     Soon I pick up a new ride with a young man in a sportive car. The young man says he's a pharmacist and takes me to a village farther ahead. I ask him which is the best selling drug in his pharmacy, he says it is the Aspirin, for sure, and the Gel for insect bites, also. 

     I wander through the village of beige buildings. All people are sleepwalking. I greet some of them. Asking directions to the Mall. They tell me there's no Mall. In the meanwhile, I pass in front of some convenience stores where certain things are still sold in cartridges or by weight. I walk by a hairdresser with posters containing haircuts from the old heroes, of the old war. I pass by an insurer with a cleaning lady inside. Closed gift shops. A bench with drawn curtains. One ready-to-wear boutique  shop with naked, dismembered mannequins on the vitrine, and I stop staring at a girl (with a fringe and shorts) dealing with one of these mannequins. She is cute and mysterious. I blow her a kiss, from outside. She looks at me and her eyes close when she smiles. At this moment, I decide to go into the store and straight away I tell her that I have just fallen in love with the person she is hiding inside herself.

Ah what do you mean stranger?

Oh my dear, it's like seeing through water...

Really, and what am I like inside water?

I see your bright soul, tired of being trapped inside, it wants to fly, far away from this shop...

But, who do you think you are stranger?

Me? I'm like the clock sent through the washing machine, my dear, do you know about it?

Somewhat, I guess, it tells me something... but from where are you coming, stranger, you might be coming from some distance place…

You are right my dear, I just arrived from the world's end, in true I went there just to change my boots but…

Curious, I've also been to the world's end but I haven't seen you around there!

That's because I was there in a dark corner, recovering, but... now tell me, what a beauty like you have to do in the world's end?

I went there to... buy some dresses!

And and, did you found your number?

No, unfortunately I haven't find my right number there, nothing fit me really...  (and as she says so I go towards her)

Just now, my dear, I know exactly who you are! I know! 

Who am I then, tell me stranger?

You're... the queen of nooone!

The queen of nooone? nothing? Oh that is sad...

No my dear it's not sad, one day we will meet again, please do not forget me...

     And with this promise I retreat myself from there and run down the street. My head is totally blank, I go against a bunch of people and after I pass the mall, I'm out of the village, out of the road again... I run across a field of red poppies just thinking about my queen of Nooone, my queen of Noone, my queen of None... and after I can't advance more... I throw myself in the floor, crying and crying and crying... I need love. I need she. I want to dream with she... I want she... (                      ) Still sobbing, I clean the tears from my face and I manage to climb through some mossy rocks until the top... once there...  I lay on the peak this same rocks, staring to the white rails crossing the blue sky, and... in order to induce the sleep quickly, I imagine myself sniffing this rails (lines), and turning into a god, an angel, a specter of light... something like that.... I'm gone, now...

***

     I see now through the window of the psychiatric hospital. And there she is, yes, it's my queen of none, look how she is beautiful, perfect. Yes, she is all dressed in white, lying on the sofa, watching the movie. The movie inside my head. A man runs in the desert, and above him the sky is a digital screen with millions of small mathematical equations approaching... and behind the numbers it is possible to discern a series of distorted faces with sharp teeth. The man looks at the sky and covers his face with his hands, the numbers seem to become bigger and bigger, and the monstrous faces coming closer and closer... The man fleeing in circles and the sky getting closer and closer. After several laps in the dunes, he finally discover the oasis, and at the last moment he manages to plunge into the lake and slides through a tunnel, like inside a space machine. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!", she screams while looking the scene. "Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!" she continues, now with a louder tone of voice, and then standing up and getting completely hysterical " Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!". And at that same moment the nurses are coming on her side asking her to relax. "What's up? What's the matter our queen?" - and my queen throwing herself against the floor, her body full of cramps... says "That stupid actor that... instead of facing the monsters in the sky, fled through a hole in the sand and..." 

       

***

     And here I go again on the road, this time along an earthy path in the middle of the forest, a man gave me a lift in his tractor, even took me to his farm house, his wife gave me soup and he, the man, sent me away mounting his donkey – Jeremias. Through the earth path I continued, riding the donkey, slowly... We tried some conversation but Jeremias was not interested in my story... many times he stopped to eat some bushes and brambles... I tried to pull him, but he didn't want to move no more, so I abandoned him, and continued, alone.

     Further, I got a ride on a three-wheeled motorcycle (me standing up on the back of the seat). Albino, the name of the rider, a fat middle-age man with long grayish tousled hair fluttering with the wind. And on his shoulder, a parrot, calling me all kind of dirty names and trying to bite me. “Stand back from him” tells me Albino, his arms wide open, clinging to the steering wheel like if driving an Harley. This way we follow along a zigzagged provincial road, up and down through a hillside filled with shrubs, groves, fields of cultivation, looking (from here) like gardens, and a few farmers and land-dwellers' houses here and there stopping their works to watch us passing by. And each time we pass this land-dwellers', the parrot repeated  “Fuck-Fuck-Fuck” and Albino, would accelerate more, the engine emitting a wretched noise... and the exhaust pipe, liberating an elongated cloud of black smoke. Then the landlords are gone, and we slow down... as Albino starts to tell his story...

     "Actually, I used to be a a resin collector... from pinewood to pinewood I went, picking the sap from the pines... I had no family or house, and all the holy money I would make I would spent in the taverns and whores... I didn't even have documents... I never knew my mother or father... my name was a creating from... But people liked me, they helped me... and I helped them, in all kind of jobs I was needed, like killing pigs, dressing dead people, digging wells, etc... In the winter, I used to sleep in the haystack, between the barrels of the resin... in the summer many times I slept in the crags, under the pines... this pines, that have been my best friends, through the times... specially the female ones... and I was not afraid of anything or anyone... I had a ranch of dogs that would protect me, their name was Galvão, Pintas, Caçoulo, Xibanga, Cabrita, Magana and a few more... But you know... walking through pine groves and forests has its dangers, there are hidden wells, ravines, skylights and other traps of the nature... so it happens that one afternoon, was already dark, at a devil hour, coming out from the tavern I took a shortcut, many brambles around and and in the floor as well, two-by-three I put the foot in false air and down I went, rolling into a dark hole... result... I broke my legs in several sides, a few holes in the head... and no more I could move without crutches or this machine... well, you see, god punished me, I don't know why... me that was already miserable... he punished me instead of torturing the liar, the abuser, the greedy... maybe it was the devil, that came in my body through that girls... you know... but fuck the girls... fuck the gods... I still do my life... people bought me this machine... I have many friends out there, everybody knows me, I continue to run all the taverns, I take the news from here to there, when there is no news, I invent them... that's my job now... now you know... I'll show you how it is... we'll stop there, here, at the house of this man, he sells wood, he his a lumberjack, one of my old bosses...”.

***

     We are at the tavern now, outside, Albino still installed on his tricycle, me by his side, the lumberjack and other man inside, drinking wine and looking to the ceiling or to the floor, or outside... tin our direction... Deep in the background, sitting at a table filled with wine glasses, three other men laughing and protesting... One have a diatonic accordion attached to his chest, fat red pimples around his aquiline nose and chin with a question mark. The other two on the side, one with hair coming out from inside the hears and the other with a bony face and a burnt mustache, because too much tobacco. And we start listening to the accordion (concertina), a melody that riles up the ego of any drunkards. The man with the instrument, taking a deep look over the other two as if he wants to eat them. And without wasting time, the one with the more scavenged face, licking his lips advances like this:

      "Here we are now oh my fiends and friends ... here we are in this estranged life... I sing to all the stepmothers and stepbrothers of the world... here we are now oh my and friends and fiends... attending this nefarious life we are now", and soon after a short solo by the accordionist, the other one, with the big mouth opened like making bubbles, continues "Yes that's right, here we are now ladies and gentlemen... here we are here we go... but you just starting and already crying like a foo... if you want to sing like that you better move there to the loo...”, and Albino, trowing logs on the fire, enters in the conversation this mode “Yes oh Joshua from whose is the fault we shoul apurate... Who to blame after all??... the abominable snowman? the Postman or the boy Luciooo?”

*** 

  After leaving the tavern, I walked all afternoon without spotting a soul, but by chance, when I was stopped at some crossroad thinking, in a groove, surrounded by eucalyptus, came a guy riding a bicycle, as he came by my side he stopped and pointed the way. I took his suggestion and together we kept going, in silence, after when the path started to descend, he invited me to jump on his bicycle. I decide not to ask him questions, but he started, he asked me what was I thinking about. “Home” I replied, and almost everything was said. After, just to make conversation, I asked him from where was he coming.  Promptly he tells me that had already done the silk route, the cedar route, the route of the coal etc. I told him, to not be in second plan, that I too had already been in the golden Crescent and golden Triangle and... Then he showed me the tattoos in his arms and chest. A few piranhas, swords, and kind of flaccid monsters with multiple eyes. He have been in the prison. Was released just recently. He explain me that all that tattoos were made by his mates in the jail, the piranhas made by this or that killer, the swords by this or that rapist, the anchor made by this or that drug dealer, and finally, the flaccid monsters made by some preacher man, unjustly condemned. Then this new friend wanted to know about my travels, and which adventures had I been into. I told him that I have been in many places, but my memory was not good, but I still remembered about Heliopolis, the city of the dead, the place through where I have been wondering lastly. And about this story he was very interested.  “Its a slums”, said I “the biggest slum in the world... the original profession of the city of the dead was guardian of tombs, allied with the guardian of treasures... after came their families and you can imagine what it became... foreigners fleeing from wars also came to take refuge there. Orphans of various genres transformed into scorpions persecutors...” and then he started to tell me about his life in the Barbados, the happening that led him to the jail and his life while imprisioned. To open it, he tells me that had been sexually abused several times, but that had already done his revenge. Then told me how he had been forced to do forced labor for months. And about his addiction... when when he'd been out of there he'd never ever touched that things... The family did not want to know about him when they came to know, quite late, that he had been arrested for drug trafficking and did not even consider that a bail could have been paid and he would have spent much less time inside that inferno...  Although, inside he had learned all sorts of tricky techniques in regarded to traffic, robberies, looting and whitening... He also had secret information on how to escape state control. And he was still aware of the best ways to open locks, whether they were built-in, tubular, magnetic, or telescopic. He explained that there was the possibility of using remote control gazes by remote switches capable of miracles. I listened carefully. But this was not the first ex-convict Imet, of course! (I myself had also been arrested more than once, though never more than two or three days) And at one point, when the guy felt that he was comfortable enough with me, he confided that his future project was to rob a bank. He knew now how to do it in a totally clean way. He even invited me to assist him in the process and I felt tempted. So he began explaining how we could do it, everything in detail. Then we started talking about what we would do with the money. He said he wanted to buy a boat and there make his living. I told him that I was not quite sure what I could do with the money, because there was nothing I wanted to buy... now... and when the next crossroad came, we followed diferent directions...

***

I down know if it was already morning when all the bustle came suddenly, the siren from the fire-brigade  buzzing and buzzing, the sounds of man running around and stuff being moved, from place to place... and me still under the bunk bed, hidden, not wanting to move (still with the taste and smell of my queen of none in my lips)... But, finally, someone came, (all equipped) to take me out, to the fire, he said, I would go with them. So, I had to dress up some equipment, and down (the rod) we went, sliding... and at the main door, everybody ready, with their helmets and gloves and fire-extinguishers... and thermic lunch-box... everybody entering into the camions... and me going to inside, the camion already moving and the translator (from the last night) there, not equipped, outside, on the door, waving bye byes to me, and me waving bye byes to him... he looked sad, like a pierrot... my comrades, on my side, making fun of him... making me questions, but me answering in strange languages... into the forest we went, galvanizing the road, a big fire was waiting for us, some tanks were already there, combating, many fronts of fire plowing from different mountains around, my comrades pulling the pipes, I helped them for a while, but after I escaped through the smoke, into the fire I went, I crossed the flames and through a valley of ashes I kept my march... Going down, through some cliffs, ironically, I ended up on the beach. I tasted the water, it was ok, so, I went for swimming, and from here I still could see the smoke over the mountains... by the coast I swam during long times  and finally I came back to earth and I came back to the ocean  and  came back to the earth and I came back to the ocean and I came back to the... finally some vestiges of human shadows, apparently, fishermen well hidden in a middle of  a basaltic group of rocks... I approached...  it was like if they got holes in their faces, all them touching the fishing networks, slowly, uniting threads, cutting threads, making knots, attaching little pieces of (what looked like gemstones) to some parts of the tangle.  I watched them silently, and their altitude through me was like if they were not seeing me... they worked in silence, until that one of them (with naked trunk and shorts – like all others) looked to me from head to feet and asked “What's up?”. “Up and down all the same”, I answered, “What are you doing?”, I said, “we are doing a romance, dont you see??”, “Noooo”, I said, “and what are you looking for in these lands?”. “Me? I'm... looking for the... Cyclops, yep... that's what I'm looking for... those giant with one big eye on their foreheads". And when I said this  the men crossed eyes between them, but without showing big reaction, until that one of them asked “and are you coming for the marriage or the funeral?”, “both”, “so, that way”, says the man pointing to the ocean where I'm already going....

***

     So, here we are (under the sea now?) still stunned by the inexpressible facts of real things, by the breeze conceived, by the spectrum moulded, by the reason stupidalized, by the vanity freed... without direction towards the present we go... several worlds and war zones we already crossed, we met another beings, in almost everything similar to us, but still strangers... Various unifying and malicious drugs we experimented and now it's the time to take our caprices to the bottom of the sea...  some spiky red berries we will pick and we will remember the bureaucracy... Pleasures assimilated, we can vomited now, a initial pain that was not ours, a returned poison, that comes in cycles... Coming back from the bottom of the sea, with dramatic nuclear machinery growing on our skin, we still breath, we still can choose a direction, the direction of inner  salvation...

***

     On a interception, me hidden inside a bush, this time I would choose the driver that would give a ride, I would not go with anyone. I waited and waited for the right one. Finally, meandering from one side of the road to the other, came a brand new Jeep. Electronic dance music coming from the inside, like an aura. From the bush I got out suddenly and to the middle of the road I went with arms up. The car braked abruptly, almost stopping on the ditch. Inside, two female mischievous smiles, bulgy eyes staring to me. The back door was open, I got in. The girls turned back to inspect my complexion, while making dancing moves with head and shoulders. The beats were blasting the windows. The driver had red hair, and slender face. Her accompanist  and the other red. We were family. We knew that, on the first seconds. One of them reduced a bit the volume of the fast beats in order that we could be listened. 

     They are fugitives like me, have stole the Jeep from their parents, I got to know, and were on their way to an electronic music gathering supposed to be in the middle of... Well, promptly I agreed to accompany them to the said rave. As normal, they wanted to know where I come from. I told them to not worry,  that I was coming from some fiction tale and my name was Shima. But the sound was so high (the power of the beats almost making the window crack), that I doubted that they could hear anything I said. Anyway, they shared looks between them, and laughed bizarrely. “My name is Mila” said the driver, while reducing the volume of the radio. Mila had red hair and slender face and lips, “and I don't like boys” she completed. The other one, with  blue hair, also presented herself.  “My name is Daphn, and I have nothing to do with Greek mythology ok”. Daphn's face was kind of oval, a bit chubby. I saw almost nothing in common in their faces, still, I decided to ask if  the were sisters, and the answer was Yes. “Criminal sisters” said the driver while turning the music up again. And I had to grab myself on the front seat cause Mila's driving style turned somehow crazy.

     While I felt to the right and left on the back seat, Daphn spoke with loud, but sweet, voice, “and what is this story you are coming from a fiction tale, what you mean with that, what kind of liar are you?”. And I said I was the same kind of liar as them. I have come from far far away, my memory was fucked, fiction and reality was the same to me, I have been sleeping here and there, by chance, have been living under the bridge with other indigents in a country I don't remember now, have been on the road for days, weeks, years, not sure, but last night, I was sure, I slept in the fire-brigade building, in a village not so far away from here.

     “What?” she says. “What fire are you talking about? By the way do you have a lighter?” And before I could answer Mila continued “We are going  to a deactivated military base... that's where the party is! Ok?!", “OK”. At this time, a join is being smoked, they share it with me, I grab the cane between my fingers, I take some deep puffs, that make me stand against the back of the seat, and they tell me to not worry, they want to know nothing more, they know already everything about me, need no more excuses. And I look the white line on the road, being eaten by our anxiety.  

     The music goes from goatrance to dubstep, from dupstep to afrobeat and from afrobeat to teknopunk, and from teknopunk to acidhouse, and from acid house to pop music or whatsoever... The GPS teaches the way. "Are you not fed up of changing your identity?” asks the driver. "No, never, I'm still looking...", “And what do you like to do more? Besides walking around?”, “Steal the rich to give the poor”, “Oh yeah, classic”,  "And what did you steal?" asked Daphn, this time. “I have been stealing many backgrounds” I said seriously. And their laugh was CONTAGIANTE> “I want to rob a bank”, said Mila, “Would you help me?”, “Sure, I'm here to do the clown”. After the conversation changed to Olympic modalities.  

They ask me if I have any favorite Olympic modality, or one that I would like to practice. “Maybe the pole vault!”; “And that's because?"; “Perhaps because I find beautiful that quasi-stop of the body when passing over the crossbar"; “And what else do you know about beauty?"; “I know that  she likes us!”; “And let's see, which one of us do you think is prettier?"; "That's a difficult question, but I see that you two complement one another, anyway, I'm far the more handsome here, yes, I'll explain... let me just ask, I have the right too, what kind of Olympics modalities you would practice?"; “Pentathlon... Triathlon... Spartacus... a mix of cycling, swimming, belly dancing, cooking and bullshiting ... and you will need to eat the ball at the end!” No one laughs here. We ride now in silence. Enough of ridiculousness.

     How many people are birthing now? How many are dying? That's what I think when I look back, through the rear window. We ran at a slow speed now, going down on a muddy earth road, the GPS is gone. Mila stops the vehicle here and there, and we come out, in silent, trying to listen something, the beats coming on the wind, trying to find the clue that we are going on the right direction. But no, there is no beats coming on the wind. Just stars moving stealthily, and trees cracking.. And inside the car we go again. And down the hill we go.  And out we come again. Many times we repeat the process until the confirmation arrives. Still far away, but yes, we car hear the beats now, we can feel the groove. Down we go some more kilometers, the road getting worse, more tricky, until that behind some bushes begins to appear the valley, the valley where is that supposed ruined military area. The sky getting  cloudy, Pieces of scaffolds appearing and disappear in between the trees.  Lights appearing and despairing. The sub-bass becaming more and more evident on the back of our head, and that feeling on the of stomach, like someone putting the hand inside.

     Finally, we leave the car (covering it with roots and branches) and we walk, following the sound, the fat beats. We are in the valley now. Only a few meters from the barbed wire that surrounds the citadel. I tell the girls to watch out for the rusty grenades around, to see where they put their feet and making fun of me, they pass me the bottle of Whiskey, Gin, Liqueur, whatever... After the barbed wire, there is a wall, and the space between is like a war trench, where other individuals are undressing their personalities, humans becoming silhouettes and silhouettes becoming humans, and silhouettes beats, whatever... Anyway, while standing on the top of this wall, we are heroes, we are happy to be here on the top of the world. "Attention  the radiation", someone says as we land inside over the crashed brambles.  People with toxic masks approach us, trying to sell something, we run away from them, in the direction of the pavilions, the sound of helicopters prowling over our head. 

     Buildings (ruins) with colourul decorations attatched to rusty  asymmetries structures, a postmodern-almost-never-seen-plastic-repeated-scratched. And inside each of these pavilions it seems to exist diferent micro-societies, the girls explain. We have to choose the one that have more to do with our identity. 

     Now we are looking for the entrance to the one that looks like a giant aquarium. But soon we realize that there is no door. The entrance is through several round windows that are at middle height all around the building. And by this windows, there are a serie of creatures clambering through the walls, with the help of sticks, tattered clothes shining in the dark, some of them falling. Portable soundsystems installed in their body and hair, like in a video-game. Smoke with diferent aroma coming from this criatures. Juggle techniques from medieval times adapted to the future. A guy dressed in a gorilla trades I do not know what with a basketball player ( the number 777 stamped on his back). And on this instance the gorilla grabs my friends and the basketball player throws the ball in my direction, he wants me to sign my name in the ball, or whatever, but then he goes away and I stand there with the ball in the hand inspecting the other signatures on its surface. Not just signatures, drawings, memories, mixed symbols... But I don't feel like writing anything, instead, I throw the ball to the Jeep sisters, now dressing diferent clothes, pijamas with underwer over it, and they start to play some silly game with the Gorilla and other zoo creatures. I stand back. Coming back to the big aquarium.

     Once inside, sinking into that ambient - downtempo sounds - glich that makes my feet slip over imaginary bananas from the moon, or Saturn, maybe Pluto. The light inside is reduced, and a series of shiny-blue teeth heads dance around me, and me, also wobbling the skeleton, slow rhythm doping my nerves and soul. Soon, those silhouettes dancing next to me, are like imitating my moves, opening and closing the mouth... I throw the the tongue out, as demanded, and they deposit something. I chew it during long time, dancing, enjoying... I get a erection, while thinking about my queen of None. Then screams echoing, and whispers  coming in endless spirals. I imagine the opening of single eye, in the forehead. Oblique gestures announcing intentions of sporadic levitation. The schizoid dismemberment of the body. Hypnosis in continuous feedback. And the head is left behind. Smashing against the speakers that I can't see. And he djs, hidden behind a kind of military texture curtain, cease to exist...

     And overhead, from the concave glass ceiling, some individuals hungging on ropes, embracing thorny flying fishs more real than anyhing moving on the eath. Pretty cyborg girls approaching and moving away from me. Guinea fowls. Militarist pandas. All insinuation. Armanis. Pradas. Guess what? The beat hits bottom. We're not dummies. Despair exists. And it deserves to be explored. The pain is being purged. And we throwing the skeleton against emptiness just to feel that ricochet, and it is now or never.

     A voice in my hear, telling something I can't understand, but this face is not strange to me, I stop, watching it better, and now I can figure it out.  This is the guy I met at another party like this, on some abandoned subway station, maybe Paris-Texas. I also remember the swans crossing the canal at night. His way of drawing attention, emitting a sound similar to snakes. The kid asks me if it's really me. I tell him “No, I noe me... I'm another”. Then screaming on his ear, I ask where he had been, he says that had married and is  now living on the surface. But he had grown tired of natural light and repetitive work, and abandoned everything again, now coming back to the old style of life. Then he wants to introduce me to his friends, and his friends come suddenly grabbing me and pulling me to  to the bottom, they want at all costs to offer me some powder. And we go more back, into the puddle area. There, around us are creatures coming to kiss our feet, others puking diamonds on the floor. We inhale that shit while the devil rubs an eye and Judas itches the bullocks. We get up all crooked, they move forward, but I go to look for a way out because of a sudden need to catch fresh air.

     When I get out, my Jeep friends are still there playing with the gorilla and other animals. They don't notice me. Better. I move through the back approaching another pavilion. I pass a kind of derailed roller coaster. I step over the rails, wobbling,  and I enter in a wagon. All kind of props messing around, pandas, lizards, some naked, licking each others, but I don't care about this now, what I really care is to find a freezer, because my head is boiling. And when I find the kitchen, the door closes on my back and everything is floating inside. White furniture, knives, appliances... touching the ceilling.  Chantilly cans spreying around, alone. Viscosity falling through the walls. Voices, murmurs, coming from inside the cupboards. More. The refrigerator is also floating at half height and my body is as heavy as the entire universe, in a trend totally opposite to what is happening there. But as I breathe in that mothballs air, I feel lighter. Still not enough to float, but enough to be able to jump and reach for the refrigerator. I manage to pull it down, open the door, take out the packaging, the grills, and I get inside. But not for long. Because soon  someone comes, open the door and wants to get in too, but there is not enough space for two, I get out.  

     I go through another door with curtains, staggering, Pierrot are coming to mess with me,  two Pierrot, three Pierrot, one Harlequin, two Harlequins, three Harlequins, everything is double and triple here, tailed girls dancing, all them looking like copies of each others. The super-ape, dub music, echoed beats with silly medolies. Remixes from the publicity, in slow motion. Raggatek - jungle - drum n' bass. I get to the dance with long steps, head down, kapoeira style. One false foot another in the fold. The knees raised. The golden triangle.  The renegade sons of Princess Sheba and King Solomon. Rum and Yamanja, the princess of the brown sea. Airá, the god of the whirlwind. Ibonã, the queen of the black smoke. Dada, the son of Òrànmíyàn, brother of Xangô and Soponna – weak king that almost haven't reigned. Dadá Ajaká with his wide stray hat. Egungum Mariwó. Prince of vanity Ojé Xangô – plays merindilogun in the cemetery. Oxum, owner of the Ijexá nation. Oloxum, guardian of the Osun-Osogbo forest. Mistress of the waterfalls – dresses golden blue, and wears an abebé and an ofá. Oxóssi oquê arô. Liberator of the Queto people, liberated them from the possecion spell. Oxossi Ibualama, the hunter with one arrow only. Ifá running away from Iku. Obàtálá, king of Pano Branco. Oh Exu, menssanger between Orun and Aiye – king of Ketu. Iroko with infant spirit. Ogum, mistress of the war -  founder of the Ifé city. Visvakarma. Ìbejì colobô, the blue monkey. Obaluaiyê. Babá Igbona. Oyá, mother of the pink sky. Nanã Buruku, appearing in the rain to tell the mangues. Oduduwa, the head from where the life came. Oxumarê coming on the haze. Ossanha, lady of the herbs. Oxaguian-yum-piled. Oxalá gives the palm wine and me going down, into the bottom of the well.  Down there there is a percussion circle, and I throw the shells over the goat skins of the djambes. Possessed maniac spirits dancing around and around and around. Toxic pheromones making everything turn dizzy. Opium. Opium. Opium. Sage. We are all the quasi-human. And a rope descends and everybody in pulled up, still playing, still dancing, still divinalizing. And I walk now over the roof on fire and I see, down there, a giant vinyl plate sort of a dance floor. Transgenic fairies, politicians, pandas, grabbing each others with passion, slowly, making scratch sounds on the vinyl, while turning. And from nowhere, the dragon-ball guy comes again and pulls me inside. And when I fall, there is bugs in my hair. And the bugs jumping into the fire, provoking big explosions, and the ravers trying to catch the bugs.

     Now I walk down a white sand road, maybe not sand, maybe quicklime, which burns like hell, but some ravers are swimming on it. Injecting on their brains. And I run away from that road, from that scenario. Soon, I'm going around through a staircase of a pyramid-shaped building, made of  recycled cardboard, it looks, instead of stone. And it looks like my heart is inside that pyramid. And when I get to the top it looks like a Vulcan. It have lips, and teethe and I'm being eaten now. I go through the throat of the monster, sliding, and I see images of wars, and massacres in big screens around.  Heavy metal music is being played at full speed, and skinny people with no expression dance around grunting, pushing, biting. I also have go dance, enjoy this macabre ritual, and I want to prove that I can be faster than them, the bones fighting against the nerves. The nerves fighting against gravity. The time and space is gone. The music is gone. We are all cyborgs. Possessed by the trauma. All against all smearing and kicking. Fantasized frustrations arising to the skin. The guts instead of the heart. Fight until all is gone. All the misery and confusion, taken by the universe. Now I'm the fall out boy, and Nikita makes me breathe mouth to mouth. I cling to her, I do not let her go, my queen of None. She need me too. After all this macabre frenzy we can be romantic now. We embrace our bodies, felling our paranoid hearts, and off we go. Outside we try to talk, but nothing is coming. It seems that our voices are inside bubbles. We try to run away from all this self-denial and see who we really are. Heading to the swamp, now. We lie in the midst of the reeds. Finally, it's possible, the soul is answering, we babble soft words. Trying, perhaps, to describe contradictory feelings. But I do not understand her language and she does not understand mine, nevertheless, it's even better this way. We galvanize each other's bodies. We remove the masks. My fingers already tinkling in the middle of her legs, and Nikita with my member in her palm. Silence. Frogs from the lakes around humming their songs. Bees flying around the puddles. A soft wind rising. While we explore the skin we find the scars. The imperfections. The black spots. We dig on it. We dive on it. Various convulsions. I'm coming. She cries. Blind and absent, again. She spits the poison in my face, stands up, picks up her things, and there she goes. Into the maze again. Abandoning myself there, with a corrupted face, the frogs already approaching with their bitter tongues wanting to touch the divine nectar. And  I let them come. No obstacles to the will of nature. I let the animals prove their the plasma. For sure, there, here, in the middle of the mud and the reeds, I will leave offspring. A new kind of man-amphibian-of-the-reeds-and-the-moon will reign around here. A fruit of a lost land, possessed by trauma, eclipsed by the cyber-ecumenical trance.