He says to me,

“if it were possible to hop a magic carpet ride to —somewhere —some other time .... not in the virus time—what would you do?”

“In a world with no borders?” I say out loud and he nods,

“you mean where would I go, I think—don’t you?”

quiet noir noël

I think as I walk to the sauna through the little narrow pathway through the shrubs, it is the other way to get there from the part of the hill before it slopes down to the farmhouse

We have spent so very little time in here since last year, it only now even occurs to me. But suddenly it felt that I longed so much to be .... here

somewhere that matters

....somewhere I belong.... and it can be such a desperate ache ....to belong somewhere ....

but I only thought of the sauna because of how ....and only now realize once again — how yes.... how much like it feels like .... the place in the dream

but with the cold dead wood in the stove the place has a chill to it of another haunting image 

only it seems it does not cause me to want to go; I want instead to connect ....to feel.... to connect a feeling to that part of me ....that long got left as roadkill 

It seems our minds have been elsewhere instead of coming here to enjoy it, I think..... and sit on the wood bench that looks out into the trees

and I don’t know where I go in my head but it seems far enough away that I don’t even hear when the door opens 

“I can get a fire going,” I had not seen him come in 

“Oh!” I jump 

He follows my gaze in the direction of the view but it is not the view that I think we are both looking at. I mean— or is he? I’m not. 

He says,

“we should spend Jul night in here and just a fire....” but it is there in his voice that tells me.... he remembers it this way too and says against my ear, “celebrate like pagans.”

 

the armor has become so heavy, all the crumbs blew away 

            and it is just so dark upon this solitary path  .... 

the burden is so heavy 

         

[a short]Film Noir soliloquy: of Encrypted Notes to Celf & statistical anomalies

 

it occurs to me as I hear the chords play.... I think of this now as I write this....

it is later when I find myself staring out the window .... 

watch, like a synchronized ballet.... reflection like mirror in the water.... reversed

the codes.... 

backward 

numbers, 

backward 

letters....

reflection 

He has figured me out.... we knew that though, didn’t we? ....well, no, there are still a few loose canons out there he doesn’t know about..... but.... still.... I suppose them being safely away in Sweden made me stop thinking about that old safe and drum table ....

I’ve been hiding in the mountains .... and closing out the world to retreat from society hoping to find inner peace through monk like meditations vomited into prose to catalogue my mysterious journey all spoken in code through symbolic meaning 

so.... because he broke one code does that mean I am defeated? It is just one code, after all and he had already, I just chose to ignore it. I mean, without the confirmation of opening it.... well, it was all hypothesis ....you know? Don’t confirm or deny ....

but now he has the safe and table. But where has he put it? Did he ship it here? 

has he already opened it and not said? ....what is in that safe anyway? 

Electra’s dictionary; notes and stranger notes (jm noir chronicles)

 

In any culture it seems it is our stories that define us. The bards and their harps, the folklore, the ancient myths and ....stories told in sand ....sometimes around a fire 

*****

Jörn has spent months rewriting certain parts of the music. I like to watch him when he is deep at his work. I get the best studies of his expressions in the spot that I watch from above by the second floor gallery sometimes with sketch pad, sometimes with phone, pressing play where closeups are a useful tool, as well as my noir footage 

today as I watch him he throws his pencil down from the music paper .... 

he goes from notes to keys as he plays and then he records this in notes.... still in his running clothes, he had returned from this morning’s run with a surge of music as soon as he sat down; not even stopping to drink water nor to shower; still at it an hour later ....he is caught in this one part 

It is the part of the opera that Jörn has described to me. it is across from a watering spot where he has brought a horse he purchased with the sale of some swords when he first sees her

the part when the dove appears to him and then magically it turns into her

but the fear of him startles her and she is speechless with fright

he bends over the water and makes a ripple that reaches her.... and then she bends to reply, doing this back to him as they watch each other across the water

But she has come there to fill a jug with water to bring back to her father at the market place stall where her father is selling herbs and healing the sick so she then returns to her task. He follows her to the marketplace 

by now I have gone down to the kitchen to cut up an apple and quietly observe him from the butcher block table I chop the apple on. 

His spending more time around has me wondering if this has as much to do with the repossessions of the safe and twin table and the association of Nivek Retnuh or ....maybe it is just the opera after all? 

I study him thoughtfully.... then notice his hair has also gotten long ....

the ends need a trim and so impulsively I reach for the gardening shears.... but as I watch, now suddenly in a violent motion he tears the music paper out of the notebook, balls it into a crumple and then savagely throws it like a javelin with some Swedish curse

I go over to the window where he’s thrown it to and pick it up unfolding it

“It’s shit, toss it in the fireplace,” he waves with a sweeping angry gesture and points to the fireplace with a pissed-off commanding glance at me 

“Hmmm....” I look it over as if I can actually read the symbols dancing about my dyslexic haze, still I pretend as I like to collect his scrawls and then walk over and put the crumpled sheet down on the piano surface and say, “hold still!”

“What are you doing with those?” Jörn glares at the gardening shears with a horrified look 

“Don’t move!” and climb on him to stop him from moving 

“I wish you wouldn’t walk around holding those that way,” and grabs for it

“No, really, hold still,” I take out the tie, “you can trust me, I’ve been doing this for years—“

“Not to me!” he protests even as I get the part that was bothering me in a clean cut.... which he hears and suddenly decides to stay still as he says under his breath, “should I point out that I am already feeling slightly bitchie?” and the humor of his tone is meant as a warning 

“Two seconds and it will be over,” I say and swing around, getting off. 

Impressed the shears are freshly sharpened. The neat flutters fall down like little feathers 

“I really don’t recall making this appointment, never mind, it’s getting all over the floor, duva, can you stop now?”

“The floor is slate, not Persian carpet .... you should let me do this for you, this is going to look so much better than who ever it is usually does it—no, don’t move, this part is tricky—“ as having worked around him, am back to the front, getting back on 

“Tricky—“ he repeats in a hiss under his breath ....after a moment, “will be if you ever get away with it if I don’t agree with your artistic vision.”

“There. Fixed,” I let him go and get off as to my amazement the shears made short work of it; a quick glance over, then touching the fresh ends to watch how they fall in a more natural angle that sharpens his bone structure—go get the broom, “you can look now....”

which he wastes no time in doing. He is by the entrance hallway mirror in a few strides as I’m sweeping up the hair dust into the bin and walk by him to throw it away

He’s still at the mirror inspecting himself with an odd, slightly indignant twitch in my direction as I notice him straighten up and look himself over thoughtfully but still with a slightly dubious expression as he brushes imaginary hair off his shirt 

And as I go to the sink I watch him 

I think of the wave in the water ....

    then see it as if in front of me

I get a sick feeling, standing there. But it is not so much sick as it is the kind of motion sickness.... this only happens when ....those things which happen and have happened that I never write much about as they are quite strange; I get a strange feeling. That kind

I consider this.... water .... the water hole .... reflection in the water and watch it like a movie of daylight sky .... reflects ....like a mirror on the water .... watch it 

I don’t even notice he is back at the piano with new enthusiasm .... suddenly a wild burst of vigor which seems to nearly explode from his fingers as he pounds madly the keys ....his hair in the light hypnotizes me, like the sand on the beach on one of those stops ....those nights under the bright stars with their legends and stories 

Suddenly he bursts through my thoughts and says,

“come here!” like some kind of order —I want to call him Henry the eighth or something but stop myself because —I see that wildness in his eyes ....and it is threatening to erupt ....and just go

he indicates the bench hastily between slamming the chords with one hand still in pace and I sit there fast where he has made a quick place for me. He pulls me inside his arms and plays over me,

“I want you to play this exactly this way!!” he nearly shouts this

I watch his fingers pushing down over mine, he places them and we play it together a few times. Then he says he will do something around me but to keep doing these chords as he showed me 

I get confused the first two times and apologize when he gets irritated but he insists and we do it again and after the fourth time I hear .... what he was trying to do 

with the layers of sounds; the first set is one, the other reflection .... reversed notes .... then played back and the strange blending sound made together ....then the left hand.... 

Like a chill ....I feel something seem to touch the top of my spine 

Defining more of the path of the legend (reflections in parallel)

“....I mean, my writing that I put in my blog is a kind of mirror to these more personal thoughts that I record here. The public one I am less likely to delete as the public one protects me in anonymity with its guise of fiction. I can use allegory to support those things that allow me to take another breath and suppose in the strength of the universe some balm of humane understanding as if what I say actually matters, as if my words fall upon some mind out there who may connect with just one tiny aspect to understand.... even just to fool myself, really; it lets me breathe at least another breath.... The purpose is the same though, both in the public and private ones. It is about the search for why I am here; the search for meaning —why anyone is here, I guess, as well

I mean, not everyone is intended for greatness or fame or notoriety. We may argue that some lives are pointless and many attest that all lives matter; all are special, etc, etc

I guess I am not fully convinced; I question this, especially in relation to myself. 

So let us then say that all lives are necessary and all are special even if they are not intended for greatness but to be that cog in the machine .... (the cow, the pig, the chicken, the fish, the ant, the oak tree?)

So what does that mean to me? And what does that mean to my project? 

Does it stop after my trilogy is complete? What does the trilogy signify in relation to what it intends to define?

....I mean, ‘Beth who is what’ was another exploration which reflected a similar diary at the time .... that I suppose I outgrew as that Bran who stood for someone at the time and, like that life ....fell away ....was part of why it did because —did I define that “What” I was searching to find? That ‘bastard “What” that I am’— having now learned to be resigned in: ‘whatever, this is me; take it or leave it’

Has it even dawned on me—(we become our names)Jung and his archetypes and synchronicities .... no, I still search and my medium seems to be whatever my mood of expression happens to require, and I don’t really think it has ever been my choice, just my mission or cog in the wheel which forces these words, these paintings, these thoughts that grips the hand to grab the brush or the pencil or keyboard .... it won’t shut up.... I start to feel that the trilogy is only the introduction to .... 

where it is telling the legend to follow.... but I have not yet reached that Paradiso; the pinnacle of what that high path has been pulling this level of levels along so, really, how can I yet know where it leads?”

(as I sometimes do keep a private journal, I’m not nearly as faithful to it as ‘the dictionary’ as it has twice been my history to have it discovered and used against me; this is why hiding my meanings in fiction is much more reliable)

Screen time with Josef

 

....I am feeling quite foolish and also quite at something of a loss .... as I am staring at the monitor and hearing a disembodied voice in excited chatter

I have taken the “call” in the kitchen where Jörn set it up before taking off for one of his jogging meetings and leaving me in at a disadvantage wondering what I’m doing 

“We have been busy with keeping up with regulations,” Josef says vaguely, “as nobody quite understands —but it’s rather serious here at the moment ....so I am sorry I have taken longer for our chat,” he is saying as he seems to be moving around as he says this

but hazards of ADHD, I don’t comprehend quite what I’m looking at; there seems to be too much going on and adding to the oddity, I am using Jörn’s laptop that normally, he never lets me near. Besides that —I avoid doing this kind of thing 

and it seems Josef has walked away from his side of the camera.... and find ....I can’t understand what’s going on—

and no idea what or —why ? ....but what I am looking at?

Never mind the point, where exactly is this? But, really, I feel like I want to indulge him because it seems, in a funny way, rather sweet, isn’t it? I mean, I have missed him being around.  And he really seems so intent on showing me something

“Well, I can come here because, as you see, the place is empty— not including the phantoms and the ghosts—a meter and a half! I tell them to keep their distance too!” he is saying, as he chuckles loudly, “really, I think this is the safest place to be—no one has been here for months—I mean, if you don’t count Hamlet,” and here he laughs again

I catch a shadowy glimpse of him and then.... he disappears again —submerging into the darkness —then he reappears, reminding me of a kind of Houdini act, even as his voice continues on, talking away as with a lot of activity on his side of the screen. In fact, quite a lot of movement and sounds of bleeps, gashes of music, levers and switches being hit, echoing, clanging, his footsteps, props being moved.... and then! A bright white flash of light pops on; a round spotlight appears first alone in the blackness before more lights follow in a kind of picture spectrum of colors and all the time he is still talking from somewhere. It is only now when he adjusts the light then when I realize I am looking at a platformed stage. Oh.... then it occurs to me this must be the opera house as the focus is now clearer in the light

“....this is the orchestra pit,” he is saying as now a focused light appears he must be controlling and waves the light about like it is a pointer device as he now adds a sudden blast of some recorded music—yes! that I recognize! 

“Oh that’s....!” I start to say and move closer to the screen more curious and —now thinking I am starting to make sense of what this is about and maybe ....where this is going 

“Yes, it’s Jörn’s piece — actually, as a matter of fact, from that night,” he remarks with a kind of giggle as he adds, “I think we recorded that crack of lighting, if you listen....” he says all this from the reaches beyond as he has not returned to the camera’s angle

but I am wondering why he is showing me. Well, I mean, it is interesting. I’m entertained.  A good distraction. As it has been such a dreary wet day I think  ....as more lights come on and then go off, changing the atmosphere .... 

....until hmm, some image in the background is projected

“There!” he says and seems to move the focus or....? what is that? the image in the background now blown up and projected becomes more sharp 

“Oh my god....” I guess I actually gasp out loud because I realize —the image is mine. I mean— that is my painting he’s somehow projecting  ....or paintings.... why and how ....? one or two projected somehow and then overlaid —now three .... and somehow seem to take on a whole new life this way with the music, the stage and the mood

and .... 

I suddenly feel myself break into a sweat, now hyper aware as the music reaches a like a kind of level of hysteria ....or is it just me?

Gadgets indeed.... I am thinking