Litigation

This is the time―this is my witch-hunt, my Salem song, my psalm of change. This is when I need to hurl my insecurities, my routines and my procrastination―all old, all entrenched, and all too comfortable―onto the stake of change, and burn them all.

I sat across the three of them―prophets in their business suits, my messiahs of change―and I felt the familiar bile of self-puffery rising up my throat. Sell yourself, cried my inner corporate whore. Tell them. Why you're good enough, how you desperately need the challenge and the space to grow, and what you can do for them. Tell them, sell them.

So I told them, and I might have sold them. For in that two hours I was a corporate maverick; I was an ace pilot, dodging loaded questions with grace and haste, and hightailing out of awkward moments with my self-deprecating humour. I certainly didn't mind crashing and burning, if it meant I could tumble onto another runway.

'We hope, that in one year, we'll still remember this conversation―that we both have put in our hearts into making this decision. Because if your heart doesn't sing, I don't really care what I can do with your mind.' One of the prophets―his hair white, his smile bright, and his eyes raging with the glint of business vivacity―spoke.

I gave him a winning smile. 'I'm looking forward to starting a choir, Mr. T.'

And then we all shook hands and ordered coffee, and I saw the sated look of maternal pride on WN's face: you did well, I think you got the job, was the silent message her eyes were sending.

And my feelings of excitment were crossed with the sentiment of an imminent ending; I felt like I was turning my back on an old lover, whom may no longer excites, but is still precious in his familiarity.

But this is the time, my time. I need to stretch my wings, and I'm lucky enough that a new horizon is already steadily stretching its blue over the grey of my current rut.

And so. Bon nuit.

***

Romantic love is a gangster; it swaggers into my life, extorts me, threatens me, thrashes me with its blue-black knuckles, and then it stalks away, leaving me whimpering in a corner.

I came across my own petty metaphor the other day, and it made me laugh.

***

There came a post-card, over the seas, once upon a red moon night: liebe Gina-Maria, I am far but I never left. Kisses from Croatia.

Which, by the way, contrasts starkly from the blinking blank that is my inbox.

I felt―feel?―the pang, the pain, the astringent of missing him, the other him, and I thought of May. May, with her eyes smouldering fires of cold, algid lust; May, with her red-lipped passion for casual loves and Virginia Slims. May, who despite a book-and-paper appearance, has a bank filled with the rampant bodycount of men. May, whom I seldom meet in person but often run to in thought, with my often lengthy, and frankly pointless, emails.

I thought of her and her formidable wisdom: if you love to do him, don't think; if you think you love him, you do.

'Are you always this flippant?' I asked her once. At 28 she's an inverse to the 14-year-old I first knew her to be. She kept the bangs and the polar passion in her eyes; otherwise she's a woman through and through. There is no apology to her sexuality, something I admire but distrust.

'Jean, sister―unfortunately for this world there is no golden mean to love. You can't average it, account for it, or try and make pretty little equations. You experiment and you cherish or despise the results, but hey, you don't start treating it like science.'

'The Big Bang Theory,' I'd quipped, knowing I can never match up to her libertine loves but understanding her quirks as though they were mine―and they could very well be. My logic, and her liberty. What a pair, us.

She'd laughed, but her eyes had stayed the same shade of stone. Nothing―no one, no man―had hurt her, cracked her; yet she seemed to have been cast in metal, made to singe, forged to be broken against, and never into.

So he hasn't written? Running scared. There is no sacred answer to fucking and forgetting―it's just choice.

Words that I could have written. The pain is clumsy, unnatural, transient. I allow it to hurt because like René, I seek a vehement validation through the racking burn of truth, and there is no greater truth that a love that doesn't write you back.

Kisses from a distant island then. Kisses stolen from a love that has gone sleepwalking; will you wait for me to wake?

Rumour

An afterthought

Love sees love with a jaundiced eye,
Its pupil pale and yellow.
Swallowing distances with a blink, a lie,
Its lashes limp and sallow.
Will the deaden lids stay closed and sick?
Will the tears not vainly follow?
Will the pulse of sight not a worn heart kick,
Will the vision of truth be less than hollow?
Still be still, this disease sight,
Still be unto sorrow.
Peace to peace, this tepid slight,
Peace be unto morrow.

No more, or less;
Hurt is a tedious thought.
No sin, confess;
Pain is tender, overwrought.
How far, we bruise;
Swollen pride deflates.
How close, we cruise;
Inconsequent debates.

Telling Tales

The Great Wall sits, a diadem, a brawn of an ancient brutality, an undying miracle. The moutains soar, their shadowed shoulders lolling from one jagged jade to another. The sky is seven-seas of blue, with wisps of clouds trailing low. The Wall, the Moutains, the Sky―three stanzas to a timeworn haiku; words are reduced to dust.

I ignore the tourists, and the barbed, apical clicks of cameras. I block off foreign voices and the rapid-fire delivery of tour guides. I lay a careful hand on the sun-drenched wall: the old stones are warmed and smooth, polished by the elements, and luminous with age.

'The majesty of history―how small it makes us!' Brother Yu―I've taken to calling him that, despite the fact that he's one of the journalists I'm hosting on this trip to China―bellows, his ruddy complexion glowing under the September sun. We are at the first watch-tower: here, at the northen section, the snaking lines of the wall dips into the deep bellies of the valleys, before diffusing up the steep, russet ridges.

'How much blood must have been spilled here,' I mumble, looking at the watch-towers and battle-forts that are dotting the wall, regular fixtures for the regularity of battle-deaths. I can almost see the sky: no longer blue, but a deep amber, a bloody sun for a bloody war. The ghostly orchestra: the clang of the weapons, metal on stones; the flap of the flags, wings of the troops, thrashing in the wind; the warring cries of the soldiers, jumbled voices of the Chinese, the Turks, the Mongolians, no longer human, but death-warriors programmed to kill; the sick, soft yielding of flesh to steel; the calligraphy of blood, splitting from veins like broken fabric.

'History is written by blood, my young friend,' Brother Yu says, the Chinese lilt to his voice lyrical and sagely. The sky is blue again.

'The country is broken, but the mountains remains,' I quote the opening line of a famous Tu Fu verse.

A satisfied smile break across Brother Yu's face. 'Spring comes to dress the grass with its deep green colours,' he continues.

'The flowers are drenched now with my tears,' I go on, his grin an infectious warmth.

'The farewell causing grief, too, to the birds. The battle-fire burns, a three-month reign, but nothing is worth more, than a letter sent from home.' We finish in unison.

'It's wonderful that a young girl like you can still recall Tu Fu. Very, very rare.' Brother Yu beams.

But rarer still is friendship forged quickly and naturally, and rarer still is that at 23, I think I've found someone to call my brother.

Debate

I hear your whispers called across distances.
I feel your treading feet.
But now my heart is impalpable to me,
A paper ghost of old instances.
And I summon to speak but my words grow old,
Taking wing in my throat:
They leave my mouth―empty puffs, bitten thin, unseen.
Silence holds her secrets, and at her whims,
I am swiftly without speech.

And so, at first light, I watched a great grey grew,
Staring still with hooded eyes;
Breaking free, to raise an alpha-dawn,
Struggling strains, as night rhyme dies.

Splendor

Trial

Today: how ordinary, how plain! The dawn brought in the newspaper, the alarm clock rang in sense, and the decree of doomsday was ruled when my coffee cup ran dry. The sky looked like a hermetic milk bottle―uniform and uninteresting, but mysteriously, perfectly cut.

I miss the magic of being alone. My solitary enjoyment of a long country road, curling around the rocky waist of a hill. My ascetic admiration for the wild bloom of sunflowers under the autumn sky. My sequestered joy as my thoughts echoed off the walls in my quiet hotel room. My uninterrupted indulgence in a book. No calls, no worries, no emotions to account for, no lover to complicate time, no nagging sense of obligation for this or that to get done.

'I am a hedonist,' I told CH. We were sitting out in the balcony of my hotel room. The sleepy little German town of Ingolstadt was bathed with the milkglow of the moon, presently and pleasantly strung like a Christmas ornament behind the dome-roof of the old church.

He jabbed me gently, smiling. 'You tease. You know I would not know this word.'

'It means―pleasure-seeker. Bon vivant, some say.' I found his easy companionship a perfect way to round off my week-long jaunt overseas. The balmy autumn air, spiced with his cologne and my sleepy contentment, was an epicure for my overwrought senses.

'The French has a word for everything,' he said, with disingenuity, a boy suddenly, that ageless youth bright with candor in his eyes.

'Especially for pleasure,' I replied, grinning.

He caught my grin and gave me that slow, sweet smile―an accidental Adonis, always. I liked that he did not attempt intimacy―not physically anyway. We sat and nursed our weissbier, indulging in the stillness of the night, and indulging, still, in our unhurried conversations.

'We don't say goodbye,' he said, hours later. The dawn was diagraming our separation.

'We don't say goodbye,' I agreed.

The sun surged with fierceness after he left, and I got dressed quickly, absent-mindedly, for work. I was early for my guest―the elderly journalist would not join me for breakfast. So I returned to the magic of being alone; I sat out in the windy courtyard, with the table laid out for one. The butter yielded to the warmth of the freshly baked breads, and the coffee aroma gathered around me like tiny angels, chattering. I relished everything, but most of all―I relished the freedom of being free.

'You look very happy,' remarked a colleague at the headquarters later.

I squinted into the distance, watching the bluebell sky. 'Must be the weather,' I remarked.

The trip ended. I'm leaving for another one tonight, a shorter one, back to China. Another spell of solitude, another interlude, another access to freedom. Selfish as this may seem―I'm already smiling.

Genau, liebe: den Mutigen gehört die Welt.

Elucidate

My Three Day Week

Sometimes you cannot cure the quiet.
It sits like a random beast
in God's acre―a necropolis of nerves―
A vampire's feast,
That bleeds freely, into another Monday.

As though reined in from a haggard sky,
My footsteps fall like rain
in perdition―six ponderous chimes to a clock―
A dialogue slain,
I talk myself, into another Tuesday.

I promised you a feckless ever last,
I am widow to wingworn Adonis
in utopia―broken at last to rapacity―
An enduring kiss,
To drug the lids, into another Wednesday.

Wings

When I was nineteen, the airport was the holding room of my dreams. René and I―united by that ferocious hunger for new skies―often found ourselves at one of those pedicured balconies overlooking the runway, where we'd watch the Boeings taxi towards take-off with wistful silence.

'One day, some day,' We'd say, with that sort of morbid hopefulness made possible by youth. I remember her eyes―how her lashes were beautifully curled even then, and how her expression was brightened by the sun, but still shadowed, somehow, with wandering worry. It was a worry that I'd shared―the anxiety of not knowing, the fear that our one day becomes a random thought back in '99, the possibility that our some day will degenerate into a broken verse from the doomed anthem of our coming-of-age. Yes, darling, one day, some day―and we'd be too old to sing.

The calendar pages have come off rapidly since then; time has bled past our fingers. Some of that old fire has simmered into something more tepid and less tangible. We still talk about 'running away'―it's our thought du jour, and it gives colour to our monochrom routines. Doesn't matter where to, doesn't matter how we'd get there. That's the beauty of imagination. It doesn't wait for your logic to take flight: it only needs the hyperkinetics of desire.

I'm still gunning for that some day, still running. Run with me; we'll find the chalk to draw our own finishing line.

:: Deux ::

Beijing. An old city, made older by the indolent merging of my previous romanticism towards China and the present reality of its moneyed mirage. Burdened by work, and welded in by a routine exhaustion, I saw the city only as a body of tangled blood vessels―veins rich with commercial miracles, feeding with a ferocious hunger. But for all the economic endorphins, a certain erosion has set in, a deadweight sinking the old, and heralding all things new and Western. Now a graveyard of nerves―both for me and the city―some of my early sentiment towards China has unfairly dissipated.

I was taken to a fashionable part of town after a long, harrowing day of meetings and site recces: Gui Jie, they call it, or Ghost Street. 'Big clubs are completely passé now, and little cafés and restaurants and street bars are much more trendy,' said JD, my colleague and my only guide in Beijing, as we got off the cab and stepped into an evening smeared with smog. 'So all these little places started here, and the locals call it Gui Jie because most of the cafés and bars close around 3 or 4 in the morning.'

'When ghosts and nightcrawlers roam the street,' I remarked with a smile.

She laughed at my literal understanding. I entertain her, I think, and she likes that. There is always something distant about JD, something contained about her. It was the first thing I noticed when I first met her at the conference in Barcelona: she observed everything and everyone at a self-sustained length, an outsider on a social permit pass to life, almost. It's like she understands the need for human warmth and friendly interaction, but she doesn't care much for it. It doesn't make her unlikable, though. Just―honest.

'A certain sort of ghost,' she retorted, casting a conspiratorial eye at a middle-aged Caucasian man, his beefy arms encircling the slender waist of his Chinese companion.

'In a different sort of hell,' I countered. She grinned, cat-like.

'Not always so bad,' she said, her smile filled with secrets.

'Not always so bad,' I agreed, my secrets filled by smiles.

We walked down Ghost Street, which was lined with cosy establishments: bars and pubs and little eateries. Red lanterns were the decor du jour―from far, the street was set aglow with washes of crimsom, titian lights cast down by lanterns and signs strung on trees or fixed on doors. Like scarlet spirits, the contemporary Beijing crowd weave themselves in and out of the street, laughing to the rhythm of music, conversation, and the general noise of youthful enjoyment.

NJ, a young chap from the agency, was waiting for us at one of the restaurants. Next to JD, who is extraordinarily well-travelled for her age and infinitely more authoritative, NJ pales with his scholarly shyness. We made little small talk, while our table was quickly laden with quirky dishes: pepper-tossed shellfish, seared with buttermilk; fresh prawns, boiled in a sweet, tangy waterchestnut broth; chilli lobsters, their reddened shells in echo to the russet interior of the restaurant; barbequed items, dripping still with oil.

I nursed my beer, grateful for the sleepy solace alcohol brought. I was glad for the experience of contemporary Beijing―fodder for my stories, if nothing else!―but again, anchored by the call of work and a disconcerting sadness for impending loss of meine schöner Fremder, I wanted only the siren song of sleep.

Back in the hotel, back in the familiar strangeness of clinical white sheets, I settled down with a copy of Anaϊs Nin's erotica femelle. Between her sensuous prose and the interjections of my own memories, I fell into the darkening of another day done.

***

From another memoir:

'You smoke like you're in love with the cigarette,' I teased.

And he did. He drew deep, desperate breaths, as if his cigarette was a lover, and every contact could be their last.

He shrugged. 'Twelve years. Almost a wife,' he grinned, showing even white teeth. The law of genetic beauty prevails, it seems. More than a decade of nicotine abuse, and he wears the smile of a toothpaste ad. But he does not indulge in his own physical beauty; his aesthetic worth is a part of him, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing better. 'And I really love smoking,' he declared, curling the o in 'love' and drawing it out with passion.

'Then this is a love that will kill you,' I said pleasantly.

A slight wisp of a smile―sardonic and sensual―tugged at his lips. He dragged deeply, as if to prove a point. And then, inching close to gently curl a slender finger into my hair, he said: 'Ah, arme Jean. So das liebt. Und so ist das leben.'