Jörn’s email

 

Only, I must not be thinking right, I find this makes almost no sense to me ....and now sitting here in the chair staring at the screen I think I must have confused some words .... for awhile I cannot seem to sort it out.... maybe I must have misread the letters and seen the wrong words.... as my head is so cloudy it seems ever harder to focus and try to think through cottonball brain morass to decipher his meaning .... it seems he implies Jörn may be with him .... 

I drop my face into my hands and lean forward closing my eyes, what does this mean....?

Jörn is on a mission with him.... 

I think again about my dream of Amsterdam .... I think about the Dutch windmill builder who made the safe and wonder if these things are related 

I find in a quick instant I get lost in memories I’d not thought of for a long time during my years in the Netherlands ....such odd things .... like.... the time I’d mistakingly got caught in a violent crowd that turned out, to my misfortune, to be an anti-American demonstration, or when I would be followed by uniformed policemen and all the police would ever ask was if my father was working for the CIA, only, it was never really said like a question 

.... and the first time meeting Willem at the Dugout bar in The Hague when he told me he worked for Dutch intelligence and I didn’t believe him until he told me things about my family —my grandfather .....he could not otherwise have known and ..... so many other strange occurrences during the years I was there. It was the Cold War back then 

but.... why does it feel there is something I am missing about this.... something I knew ....some things I knew ....

and like those other things forgotten .... like where those crumbs were leading away from 

With sudden urgency I search back for Jörn’s emails and find the ten he sent. Willem said instructions .... 

I find the first one he sent:

Duva—    

When you charge your phone call the number below, it is a secure line.

Stay where you are.

I’m going to send you some useful and important information about the bunker such as where you will find food and supplies. My following emails will have a map of each tunnel and where they lead and the things I need you to do.

There is a phone charger in the mini bar drawer

Call the number when it’s charged

—J

   ....I read it a few times as its meanings gradually takes hold. 

I get up from the chair and find my dead phone on the desk by the invoices of the last orders I’d done, where it’s been since I got down here. 

I go to the ‘mini bar’ with its unassuming factory chrome and bolts that blend with the cage decor that I hardly ever noticed it before camouflaged as it is

I find the phone charger buried among some interesting and very old looking tools but waste no time plugging my phone in and then remember what he said about food and go back to the emails 

Willem’s reply; e.d/noir

 

I find Willem’s reply buried between spam and almost scroll right past it

He writes:

I was surprised to see your email as we were not sure if there was a problem with the internet. 

Let me assume your reference of a mutual acquaintance is who I think and say that he has been just as concerned you have not followed the instructions in his emails to you. He has been detained.

If you have been concerned—the number is a safe line to call. 

Please remain where you are, don’t be creative,

Wil

he comes to me in dream (e.d., muse/noir/jmchronicles)

 

“can you give me sanctuary

I must find a place to hide

a place for me to hide

can you find me soft asylum

I can't make it anymore

the man is at the door....”

 —the Soft Parade ‘Doors’ song lyrics by Jim Morrison 

and I guess it is about meaning and life’s meaning 

what all philosophers and poets search to find and while the philosopher may need to have answers, 

well, for the poet ....like the artist, it is about another quest 

that it should follow me here to my dungeon .... in my search for higher knowledge and purification on a project begun long, long ago even begun before ever leaving the step of my high school

but now, it seems I’m lost, and with it any belief and faith there is any point to what I do or ever believed and have fallen into a pit

dictionary, these writings on the wall 

never have I felt so empty 

***

it must be so long resisting sleep, it seems I sink deeper into subconsciousness and deeper under into ....like here, within my corner of the world to hide in a separate peace 

in exhausted sleep in dream.... 

I see the hut and I am there again.... how many nights of this memory have I dreamed? the smeden and the forge, his back bare and slick ....in dream have seen replayed to me; have stared and watched .... watched the muscles of his back and how they hypnotize.... his fingers, their skill.... the way he moves ....his rhythm and timing as he hammers the blade, the force of the sound that he makes as the metal hits, the gold of his hair alive in the light of the forge 

and the shapes of the shadows on the wall ....

until what seems peaceful, steady, un-quiet becomes the silent forbidding dread when a shadow falls across the threshold that swings an ax with a bloodcurdling battle cry 

It is when in my dream I hear, 

“duva!” and suddenly wake up 

and sit bolt upright

 —but— upon waking.... realizing he’s not there 

....then, become aware that I feel exhausted and unwell and— as I attempt it, find it difficult to stand up, as, somehow I feel more exhausted now then before .... and wonder again, still confused, how many days has it been.... ? —so long preoccupied with anxiety and pacing the perimeter of the dungeon floor —but now suddenly, painfully, my stomach starts to growl as I manage to finally get up from the cardboard ‘bed’. The room starts to spin around me; I take a moment and grip the staircase above to steady me and then manage to stumble to the cage to ....check for emails

 

Noir symbolic dream

 

And so, when I do fall asleep .... I have such disturbing dreams 

.....dictionary I write for the clarity over what my subconscious is telling me .... as I feel the need to sort this out and so I come return to the cage and sit at the desk to write....

I dreamed I was back in Amsterdam but I woke up in Anne Frank’s house .... I am running from Hitler and the halls are winding reaching the hidden stairs in time behind the bookcase .... then I am running through the canal streets and I suddenly trip on the uneven bricks and fall down .... 

my first thoughts were of numbers 

I see numbers before my eyes in shapes 

But there was another part that I remember upon waking ....what is it? ....they turn inside out and Hitler with the interrogation light shouts, “what? are you stupid? niggerbastard can’t even read? I said read it back to me!” .... I wake up here

the numbers mean something .... they go inside out .... I don’t see numbers ....they keep moving all the time and when they stop they stand upside down and change again .... it is the feel of numbers  and the muscle memory of what they feel like to write that is reliable but six and nine are always hard to get right 

but all through the dream —I hear the the Beethoven chord .... the notes on the sheet music dance off the page but fingers know what to do .... how many times?

the first number is three ....

Next scene: hidden clues, hidden themes; the Beatrice/Virgil duality dichotomy; noir muse

 

‘Willem’ I begin the email.... but then already stuck....

hmmm....

‘I’m not sure if you have lately been in contact with ....’ 

I stop—No. Delete .....but then I put it back....

‘I’m not sure if you have lately been in contact with’ ....

with....?

‘a mutual acquaintance’ ....I tell myself that I should think like spies think, and I remind myself who knows who might intercept the email

“but under current circumstances, well, I’m in an awkward situation and wonder if I might have the opportunity to get your impression of an extremely serious and pressing problem I’m having. 

‘I would be so grateful to hear back by your earliest convenience ....’

and send it.There. Safe and no details ....

then cross my arms in front of me onto the desk and put my head down wondering how do I always end up in disastrous situations? 

.... but then become aware Jörn might be looking at me. from his spy glass.... 

and think of ..... vampire eyes

sometimes teal, sometimes slate, but always kryptonite; I start to fall asleep in the chair staring at the floor to wait for Willem’s reply 

but who knows when Willem will decide to read his emails? I don’t even know what time zone he might be in

so I make myself stand up from the desk to walk around, maybe I need to clear my head I think now, glancing up at the cameras as I pass them

and idly think about my chances of reaching the sauna from here, dreaming of the shower 

and then get an image of myself here stuck in a secret underground in the middle of the mountainous wilderness with a guy in a ski mask and who would ever find me?

....so what are the chances he’s still there, I wonder? —50/50? (how long have I been down here— ?I’ve lost track ?)

....is it worth the risk....? But who am I kidding, not exactly good odds up against a man built like a bull dozer because, despite my roar, unfortunately, I’ve never appeared physically threatening as..... my best offense is to play possum; clearly, I need a body guard 

And, judging by the monitors, I’m guessing there is two more feet of snow since I came down here through the shaft and before that there was already a lot— and based on what the weather report predicts there will be even more soon .... guessing ideas of going it on foot would be a bad choice as it has dipped well below zero (Fahrenheit) quite a lot all week and I don’t think my clogs would get me through the snow drifts 

I leave the cage part wishing for some privacy from the omnipresent voyeur cameras but who knows where else he puts them

And go to the part that is below the staircase where there is an alcove made by the shape of the stairs above it.... i sit down below on the floor where I have made a kind of bed out of broken down cardboard boxes and it is also the warmest spot because a furnace is behind it so a nice spot for a nap as ....maybe then I would know what to do and think better if I did that 

but instead of sleep my tired mind returns to thoughts of Jörn and then .... I think of that day at Lincoln Center —rushing to see him.... to watch him perform ....and find now.... I long for that moment back 

noir; someone to count on (jm muse chronicles, Electra’s dictionary)

 Climbing cave walls ....

even as I know eventually I will start to get weak without anything to eat

.... I pace the dungeon thinking.... and stopping to consider trying to be objective of it all .... between the spy games and my own mission in life .... my own mission....do I even still believe in that anymore ....I stop and sit down on a stack of boxes and reflect on life; wasting life ....was Elan’s life wasted? because it is easier to be objective here.... about that life

....and wonder because maybe it could shed some light on this one 

so was her lesson she had to learn ....? not to trust? I mean,

after all ....?

my thoughts go back to Jörn and his email 

that I only read as far as the subject line —to inform me that besides not having the use of my mobile phone, the landline is off limits 

as hours pass I realize that avoiding his emails are as intrusive as opening them ....for thoughts of him ....although I have done reasonably well so far ....I jump from thoughts about the ski masked guy walking through the barn house watching for the phone light to go on and wondering who he actually is? hired mercenary or.....? But I guess more importantly, what specifically he may be after —I mean, I guess the code—right? but didn’t Jörn crack it? Were the contents examined? what was in the drumtable/safe?

And then wondering who I could ....trust?

well, maybe I don’t exactly need to trust —just an ally would be nice ....but even for this, who I could I even think of now— the police ....? That question boggles the mind there in itself and with society as it is.... the dungeon feels suddenly cozy ....

When it seems the walls mock and judge from staring so long at their empty, expressionless surfaces, my thoughts go in random places my exhausted brain seems to fall back into ....from exhausted thoughts and the sterility of my surroundings ..... to something far from here ..... like those hazy and deep thoughts of ....Elan and the smeden and the cost of a lifetime

they seem to haunt the shadows ....the odd shapes of the shadows made by assembly line orders of boxes that follow hidden turns which give the basement that feeling of catacombs and tombs ....andI then think of bog people 

....the smeden ultimately is the cause of Elan’s life time’s end for her —even though inadvertently because he should not have left her there....

I turn to the screen with the email —still unopened .... and see now Jörn has sent another .... this subject line only says, “Important” all in caps 

but I ignore it like the other....

and try to think instead, who do I know that I could even consider telling I am in danger and need help? So I turn to names through my contacts available through chats and look at names of people I know from my life’s collection of work and school .... as I wonder what I’d say? “hey, what’s up? Um, yeah, there’s a guy with a ski mask after me because I have some secret code....can you pop over and get me, I’m in the secret distillery basement.”

And remain still frozen, poised over the keyboard ....searching names ....going through my entire catalogue of life events right from ....the names on the list and the dim memories they evoke

I look over my last messaging conversations with “people” and as it’s not something I do, and —the list is short; names of people I know or knew once; but of anyone of substance seems to be few and far between and wonder the purpose of having such a forum and ....look again 

at the chat conversation; just the one that is, 

not surprisingly, from my very long ago—first boy friend who has always remained well in touch yet, despite he has always proved reliable in a jam, but—I x out rereading his last chat message and.... keep looking....Jackson....? my UN friend from high school ....I start with a ‘hello’ seeing he’s on

He sends me back a message: 

<hey, red!>

So I reply: <can I ask you something?>

I begin this way still trying to work out how exactly to phrase this .... thinking, as he would be accustomed to serious and potentially dangerous problems as he has shared his Iraq stories with me and so, I think, who better?

so I think it over watching for his reply considering how I might word it ....

someone to count on I think as I wait and as I wait my thoughts go back to Elan’s life....

But.....The smeden ....

would he have been someone for her to count on ....?

was she wrong to trust the smeden ....? 

I don’t know why I ask myself this now .... I mean.... 

of all times —now....why should I only understand it all, now, because, after all, I mean, was it really his fault ....? It seems I see it another way from here

Jackson replies: 

<sure, first—what are you wearing?;)>

I change my mind. I click out of the conversation and stand up to randomly kick something ....who to ask, who to ask.... and pace the cage 

I glance at the screen when I see another instant message pop up from yet another yellowed photo from the social album.... with a message that sadly echoes the last non-related one ....I move the curser to click off social media, then move to log out, sign off and get up to pace back to the cage doorway to stare at the conveyor belt .... 

perspectives .... things you see and different when you look another way

And look up again by the shaft I came through remembering that first day I discovered it down here ....I look up at the guillotine door at the top of the staircase; the pantry false wall.... and think

suddenly....Willem! 

Why didn’t I think of him before?

I move back to the computer to my emails....there are about ten more emails from Jörn all in caps 

but I cover them with my hand not wanting to read what they say and start an email for Willem....

Noir Terror/Does the individual still matter if there is no one to acknowledge your existence? (edjmmusechron)

….to fall out of existence, to not exist; unknown, forgotten or never even seen and not ever again to be known any existence of ....well.... 

in here, in this dungeon that is both a prison and a fortress —how long before someone would search for me ? ….this thought causes that panic button reaction into motion 

I fear a moment of horror to have to face —when there is nothing else left ….and no hope to have to accept ~this is all there is 

to be remembered or gone with no trace, wiped as if that identity never was, that fabric and skeletal frame thar hangs a self .... like it never was and will never be remembered ….

Does the individual still matter if there is no one to acknowledge your existence?

No. you know, without the daylight it gets confusing what time or even what day it is —not that time has ever made sense to me 

and ....if not any familiar connection.... what is left....? to hang a self 

this invisible self 

....a dictionary