Orpheus JM muse chronicles: Scene 1 of The Pirate with the Vampire Eyes parallel drama

It is a market scene by a port circa 870’s

The one known as the Pirate With the Vampire Eyes is seen leaving the long boat and he walks to the market to trade his hides

He carries his crafted swords he forged in a thick sack he carries on his back.

His long, gold-blond hair is caught back and tied in a leather cord and he walks with a proud and energetic gait up the beach to the market among a group that leaves with him off his ship

He is seen walking as the scene of the market’s activities fill the screen

The camera shot pulls back to cover the scope and then capture the scene of when the Pirate we shall call “Raoul” first lays eyes upon the Girl, whom shall be called “Elan”

He is dressed in warrior clothes and armor

Now in profile of Raoul watching her with her father. Her father is wearing the dark blue woad robes of a Druid medicine man. He is a healer and he is also a soothsayer. He travels from port to port with his daughter. There is a scrying bowl on a wood table made of crystal and jars of herbs and teas. There is also a small harp which he now picks up to play, sending his daughter out to search the beach for moonstones

Father: It is low tide now, Elan (his eyes peer at the sky)

Elan (wears a long dark blue woad dyed robe, the hood covers her head except for long red locks that escape it; she wears a pendant that falls to her waist that is a heavy silver crescent moon; bows to her father): yes father

Father: don’t forget to si—

Elan: to sing the incant; yes I know, Father

Father: To the four winds

Elan ignores him and picks up her basket and as she does she begins to hum the incant but this is when she sees Raoul and she stops suddenly stunned by him

In profile the two on the screen in silhouette

In slow motion she drops her basket. It rolls right to him. He grins at her as his eyes openly expose more than a decent interest in her. She reacts at first with fear by suddenly jumping back from him. But she then stops as if magnetically pulled to stare back at him.

He picks up her basket and hands it to her. She stares and slowly takes it from him. Bends in a curtsy and rushes quickly towards the direction through the market that leads to the beach

He watches and then looks towards the stall where he saw her come from. Raoul narrows his eyes on the father thoughtfully before he slowly walks towards the stall

Jörn; Beth entry Film Noir

Of course, I realize, it is madness to believe that I could outrun Jörn—but I don’t think, I just act and the impulse is purely fight or flight

Jörn easily overtakes me,
“where do you think you’re running to, min lilla duva?”

His eyes look like ice when I am stopped by his grip upon the shoulder of my coat as he turns me around; they blaze with a kind of electrical charge that seems to spark and for a second there I forget where we are; when we are

I am reminded of the eyes from ‘the dream’ ....the pirate on the boat from across the sea

I get a chill that stops me to stare into them. I am stood frozen by them on the spot. This is when he drops his hand from my shoulder and he tilts his head to one side to stare into my eyes.... and

I see the smeden there inside and this is what I trust

This unreasonable feeling. I just do

....somehow....

I don’t know why....I do.... somehow—I don’t know why

“Where are you running to?” he asks me now in repeat. His voice cracks into a tone changed to one that almost pleads as his ageless vampire eyes....implore

with unspoken words that I don’t yet comprehend but strangely.... believe

I see a veil lift from within the gray and he says as if reading me through my eyes,
“you think that you can’t trust me—“ but he stops himself from saying more

Yes and..... yet—I don’t know if that is really what I feel. Not fully

“What it makes me fear is that you will turn out to be another one who only .... came into my life with preconceived ulterior motives,” I tell him

“Like Nigel and Eliot....”

“Like everyone turns out to be.... “ I say this as I think about the last few years of my life and all the users who pretended friendship when they had other uses of me in mind, so I say,

“tell me now, Jörn, did you set all of this up? Everything that’s happened? Our meeting that day?”

“Are you serious?” he stares at me with a look of deep hurt, “Do you really not trust me, min lilla duva? All the dreams? The memories we —both—share....? Do you think all that stuff with Gerald was ‘bullshit’; part of some cover? Do you believe I have such vile scruples?”

‘Jörn Film Noir’ foreshadowing

Because he drives I sit in silence, even as he talks .... my thoughts are working

Jörn talks about his mother when I ask him how the surgery went, saying,
“it was not a big deal, everyone made more of it than necessary— we at least all had a family reunion—we’re talking about getting together at the summer place....”

Still my thoughts....

“You met with your Dutch friend....” I stare without seeing what I look at, staring inward

I feel him turn to me but I I don’t look

“Why would you do that?” I ask

I listen for anything he may give away

It feels like too long before I hear him sigh,
“I guess I was curious to know—the off chance there could be a connection.”

I whisper,
“To your Dutch spy friend? bullshit, Jörn.”

I don’t even move and just stare ahead. I consider why I had the impulse to pick him up at the airport after his dropped hints of the details of his flight

After awhile he sighs again,
“what are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know.... it just seems too convenient to me,” I say in a whisper

“What does?”

“All of it.”

He pulls the car off the road to a rest stop area. The car hardly stops when I jump out

But I don’t run towards the building there. Instead I run anywhere else

messenger of the gods

Within the perimeter I’ve skirted my issues

using veiled and curtailed words

You see, these memories of that man appeared to me in times when I was most lost

As I was often on the brink


the ledge

I would remember him

It always called me down off the ledge

My thoughts are so different

So odd from most people

I don’t know where this comes from but I never have fit comfortably with society because I am somewhere else —coming from somewhere.....

 else

And so 

 it was when I started reading his words that— I went to the library to check out a book he wrote


.... suddenly I realized why I did not fit the family I was in. The school room; the country, etc etc


It was so strange

it was so strange to connect with a mind I finally understood; the patterns of thoughts; the flow; the philosophies and social concerns but most the value of why the humanities are at the core of evolutionary civilization that .... makes or breaks extinction

so strange to hear the echo within a conscious place

And just feel bereft of some unnameable loss

I think of the smeden who was too late for the girl

I think of the darkness in his pale Nordic eyes .... the vampire who dies a million deaths and never dies

who carries the burden of loss

But I think of the purpose of this emotion—an emotion that is not wished for but instead chases and haunts in some tucked away inner place

In terms of what archeologists discover written on caveman walls

This message is at the driving center of existence whether anyone is willing to ponder existence or not— it is there anyway

and written on the caveman walls

like a mural of a wave —and overwhelming emotion

Maybe the vampire is the only voice because he holds all the abject memories

I do believe art is one continuous conversation through time and all the threads are valuable like what we find in a DNA helix

6 February 2019 Orpheus’s Testament & Starbucks

Orpheus’ testament 

It is randomly that I hear the strangest shock of a sound— or rather, more like an alarming array of notes,

“Oh my god! What is that?!”

“It’s my mother....” Jörn says to me 

Why does that make me look around?

I see him go over to his phone to check a text. I watch him grin and chuckle and then he looks st me and blinks switching lives between Sweden and here

“I think you’d like my mother....” he says this walking back over to the birch wood dresser where he is busy sorting things .... it is hard to determine if he chooses color or purpose when he’s organizing but I find it provides entertainment to watch

“You said she’s a musician too?”

“Did I?” he asks

“Yes, you said something like how all the people in your family are....”

He seems to have found something he was looking for behind some socks and sets it aside to stack a pile of neatly dry-cleaned shirts across the top shelf of his closet that I realize is eye level to him

“What instrument does she play?”

“My mother? She’s an opera singer....” he goes back over to the dresser looking at what he found in the drawer; they are cuff links I see now and he looks at them thoughtfully before he closes them up in a box

I hear that crazy sound again and he turns to go back to his phone

I realize this time it is the sound of an operatic voice singing in exclamation “OOhhhhh!!!!!!” in a very high pitch ..... as if demanding to be heard as if to drop everything immediately. Which clearly he does

“Is that her voice?” I ask

He glances at me while he’s texting his mother back, smiling, so it must be funny
“Hmmm....” as he looks back at his phone

.... it makes me I wonder if he recorded that himself or —?—bought it on a Swedish ringtones app

“What instrument does your father play?”

“Oh, all of them,” he shrugs as he is busy replying to his mother

Another sound emerges from his phone and this one sounds like a crescendo in an orchestra with one dramatic and long open note

“Father?” I ask looking up at him as he walks by me laughing into his messages

“He’s the conductor at the opera house,” he says to in answer to my question and says this also with a shrug — but now he pauses suddenly—thoughtfully as he looks up from his phone at me to study me

“What?” I ask at his odd expression

“My father says ‘hej’ ....”

It takes about three seconds for it to sink into me that he means that his father says ‘hej’ —to me

....Jörn concludes, for us both now, a bit stunned,
“Andreas must have told them about you....I think —they want to meet you....”

I feel the need to sit down.... now.... wow....

Parents?

the parents.... I never thought I’d be meeting anyone’s parents at this point in my life.

It’s been almost twenty years for me


Mine long gone.... a long time to not have .....the overshadow of their looming subconscious presence. I don’t remember anymore what it’s like to have parents


I begin to feel a sense of fear and panic

“Why do you think....?” I whisper this..... I feel nervous and start to organize my own things —the contents of my purse are all over his bed and so I start to gather everything

Jörn watches me now and laughs,
“They’re in Sweden, min lilla duva, it’s not like they’re coming this instant!”

It is a self conscious laugh when I realize I have exposed my fear to him by this.  And I don’t notice I mumble something until he asks me,

“Why do you keep saying that phrase? You keep asking if they speak German....”

“what?”

“‘pratar du tyska’?.....”

“Ohhhh—Have I?”

“Yes.... he smiles at me,

His electric stormy eyes are now laughing at me as he says,
“have you been falling asleep to that lära sig svenska app again, sötnos?”

“Ohhh....” (he knows I do this?)

“Anyway, I must get to rehearsal, have you decided to come tonight?”

“What is it again?”

He walks over to kiss me quick on the lips,grabbing hold of my hair as he does so as if it is a rope to pull my head to him
“I told you twice, min lilla duva, Stravinsky and Mozart,” and kisses me again

“I have to meet Eliot about the Project....”

“Do you think it’s wise to trust him with your work? He seems like such a shark, isn’t that obvious to you?”

But then his phone chimes “OOhhhhh!”

“Mamma!” I say, imitating his accent

Starbucks Script discussion; sketching the opening scene for Electra’s dictionary


I meet with Eliot at a nearby Starbucks and he starts talking immediately,
“Why haven’t you answered me?”

“Because I’m still not sure about .... doing this....”I tell him and say ‘with you’ to myself which he doesn’t hear

He asks,
“Are you going to be using any of Nigel’s footage?”

As if....,

Instead I say,
“I told you I found his videos of me under hypnosis—did you know about that?”

Eliot looks uneasy and turns his face away scratching his ear uncomfortably

26 January 2019; dreams everlasting

 ....  he always showers after a run. He is like me this way; the neurotic hygiene obsession— in this way we are the same as it is an intimate quirk of mine or it’s not ever going to happen; to let someone that close, skin to skin....  for all his earthiness.... he is always clean.... everywhere.... and smells so good; and he says,

“I won’t be long, min lilla duva....”

I watch him walk towards the bathroom as he strips off his clothes; he peels off the long sleeves of the black Henley that still clings to his back muscles that flex with every movement he does....

the sinewy of his back and arms hypnotize me

It is when I fall asleep waiting for him

 a pathway has opened up. A passage through

This time I don’t run away,

I don’t run away anymore.... and only now I realize it has always been here where I seem to always be running back to

always running back to him....

 in those shadowy unnameable dreams.

And only now do I know.... this is what I have been hiding from. Deep within my consciousness, this person’s memories, this ancient pain that can haunt a soul. Part of a repeated theme and pattern

.... the heavy sorrow

and the dream of the pirate on the boat.

The frozen land and that unreasonable fear of the Nordic sea. And only now do i know that I have been visiting him all these years

he has been there, somewhere buried in my mind.  Haunting in my dreams.... and pulling me back to him; like the mermaid on the rock who traded her voice and dug out her guts

....I waited for him, and fell asleep

I dreamed of the enclosed hut with the fire pit, now cold and dark; I dreamed of the animal hides stacked on the floor; his familiar scent captured in the warmth of the furs that I bury my face into and watch the white of them turn blood red as I become colder and colder.... and recall that I feel such agony of longing and such sadness knowing that I am leaving him.... the pirate from the boat with the vampire eyes; how I love those eyes, with their ferocious beauty, like storms across the frozen Nordic sea

and slip into horrors, I am gone through the passage....

Time shifts; it overlaps. And runs in parallels as it rewinds and replays and plays its haunting symphony from out of time because time is not real; what ever was always is, it says in dreams. The pain never goes away, it never leaves; its memory indelible on the spine; it hits, it beats, it whips, it cuts, it tears into my flesh; it gapes apart these open wounds. There is no safety. No safety from the pain. As flesh tears away, as flesh is torn apart, as beauty is destroyed.... knowing I am leaving him as in slow measures blades carelessly carve, irrelevant of the girl’s torture as it licks into flesh; whip or bow or blade, the blood lets cascade in the laughing teeth as another takes a life cheaply. Sharply, deeply, through a passage, and through a glass starkly; the mortal blow is cast upon some cavity of an unborn child womb cocoon and doom is cast too long to last

The sadness of his vampire eyes the last time he looked....

I wake up screaming, still feeling the blade and the dead born in a flood

This time it was too real

“Wake up! Min lilla duva.... just a dream.... it’s just a dream! Wake up, min lilla duva!”

The strangeness of seeing him takes awhile to understand. He leans over me with dripping hair. It rains on me as he shakes me awake, falling in long blond streams around his face as he shakes me. It is a while before I stop confusing him with the dream, awhile before I realize she is not me. That girl is not me. She is not me. Is she....? Why should I ....?

Still

It is only because I wish never to go back to that place; not to that moment .... not want to see the disappointment there in the horror of his undead eyes that rain

I close my eyes and wrap around his neck, put my face into the pulse and tell myself: this is real.... he is real. I am here, this is now. But I am .... not sure I can believe it; I need to know

“I heard you screaming—“ he starts to say but then I am kissing his mouth, kissing him hard and throwing him back against the bed but he pulls his mouth from me and turns me over him as he moves over me to look into my face, he presses me into the bed looking wildly into my eyes, and says in a whisper in my ear, “you were having the dream.... I thought someone was here! you sounded like someone was murdering you—min Gud, shit! Was it so real?”

But I don’t want to go back there.

Instead of answering him I reach for him and pull him down to kiss him and he relents when I wrap my legs around his hips and cling to him as he says, “slow your breathing.... breath slower,” and says, “sshhhh....here, let me get dry, I’m soaking you, I just ran out when I heard you screaming....”

“Please no, Jörn....”

“Ok,” he says and laughs when I move my mouth down his wet body as I touch him with my hands to smell and taste him and put my mouth on him for the need of something real and of the flesh .... and this overwhelms everything along with the wanting that always comes as soon as he is near. The need to have him becomes everything; a kind of painful throbbing that is so urgent like some savage, desperate confirmation of life. He smells like pine and I put my mouth on him and feel his fingers in my hair as he cups my skull to him, “det är för mycket,” he says and stops me, pushing me back against the pillow on the side where he sleeps, pushes me hard into the sheets as he moves over me and deeply into me and it is only the brutality of his motions that takes away the nightmare

notes to a celf in a dictionary; Thoughts of the legend & the loss of all

What do you do when you have lost everything....?  Do I mean the homeless person who walks the streets daily because there is no where to go? do you feel for this person and can you put yourself in this person’s skin?

there is a terrible isolation to be deplete

I will not put my meaning clear; I will speak in symbols. because it is all I am able to say. but I speak of society and not really in the political sense. no. I mean it in the actual sense.

where do you go to find understanding and compassion, when there is no one who can relate, when you find yourself flung on the street and there is only street and black ahead?

Let’s think about our sad Viking with the vampire eyes because it is easier to talk of him. Let us consider a warrior who is used to cold and violence and has lived by the seat of his pants without ever stopping to feel. Because if you stop to feel.... you will crumble down. What he might have seen before he found his Siberian princess with the mahogany eyes, no doubt something turns you this way.

To consider this one aspect to know a moment’s joy from a bleak horizon —now the dead girl is left in her pirate’s arms.

If he was too late then the heavy loss would burn his soul alive .... how did he get through another day?

who would understand the loss of all and where do you find such society? The awkwardness of shame keep people away and make friends into spiteful fiends as they look for excuses to avoid you

what society is there when dragged out from Hell and you are left with your guts ripped out