the stranger; lost in translations/marker of more notes to e.d.

struggling to define a self, between the pages behind what makes the mortar of the Noir façade

~As work continues on the following scenes that stands for my allegorical map and legend to the center of a Celf, I am caught and trapped over serious concerns over my own responsibility to my personal purpose and meaning in this life in order to stay true to why I work at all on this divine comedy~ (of errors) 

dear e.d.,

but I am reluctant to leave my ivory tower. he tries to convince me to come out to see him before September. he says he wants to see me. am I ready to come home, he asks me.... but what does he mean? 

he tells me it is time to come out of hiding. he says everybody misses me. return to the fold of the band of misfits. 

we talk about growing up as expatriates, being foreign in a country ....only to find we are foreigners in our own country when we are forced to return years later to our own. we do not fit in. we do not understand our country and culture. we compare notes of the failed marriages and relationships. the partners who just don’t fit the mark and I find it reassuring to know it is not just me so lost; we don’t understand them, they are shallow with empty values; they are ignorant and self centered and they don’t understand us. the ones who were there only a short while adjust better coming back, but I guess they were only visiting. only visitors; the ones like us, where even the money here doesn’t make sense— to us that was home but we cannot go back.... we don’t belong. we are foreigners. I never thought I’d end up married to an American, I never wanted to be. such abrasive and misogynistic personalities. caught between the cultures; neither of the other.... and I couldn’t pretend to belong to any other one culture, I’d never be Dutch, I don’t think one slips on a costume and becomes. nor sheds the other. I’m too shy and reserved to be Dutch as they can be quite invasive, and it gets so exhausting having to be outgoing —but so are Americans. 

I don’t know what I am, really, but I suppose as I’m akin to one hemisphere, in particular, I suppose then I could think of myself as generally akin to European, like the friends I knew at school that I became the closest to; they were children of diplomats from other countries and went to our school. also caught between cultures. a stranger. how easy it was just to take a train and be somewhere else within hours, easy to step into other worlds of thought and see through other prisms. no enormous sea isolating you from all that is that other world. 

and I wonder of all the others too; was it cruel our parents played with our internal programming? our experience that made us forever such outsiders. would it have been better to remain among the sheep.... to be an ignorant pig, like Mills questioned, happy in not knowing better? 

and as we compare our experiences and our fond memories of teachers, friends and shared experiences, we agree why reengaging in our presumed patriotic national culture doomed us to fail in our attempts to pursue happiness; blend our requirement of needs of the pursuit among those we meet here. for too well we understand the stigma of the ugly American ....but where do we belong? ....and then I dare to confide to him the wicked and unnameable horrors about my sister.... it comes out in a few words.... everything, the worst; all she did to me.... and find in as few words as, tells me he’s not surprised and reveals to me how everybody hated her at school —feel released. vindicated ....he says to come see him. he says to come home. but where is home? 

....so strange

and with white knuckled grip, I cling to my ivory tower still, anyhow because I built it, brick by ivory brick, as I set my course on my path to escape all the deceivers with false faces; the ivory walls insulated in steel, I trust it, it is what I know and has come to be reliable and all I know ....such a stranger in a strange land.... my dictionary tower, it is what is my home, I know these walls and why they are there. and I could only belong with whom showed a true face, and whom ever could know how to translate the pages because .... surly we know by now I have forgotten how ....somewhere in those crumbs.... dear Electra 

arwyddion a negeseuon

 

ai camgymeriad oedd meddwl ichi fy ngweld?  eich bod wedi clywed y llais tawel. 

 gwnaethoch chi ateb unwaith yn unig.  ond yna dim mwy. 

 efallai nad oeddech chi erioed yno.  

Mae'n debyg fy mod yn anghywir pan feddyliais mai chi oedd e. 

 roedd yn teimlo fel chi

codau a thudalennau rhwng

ond mae'n debyg fy mod yn gofyn am arwydd. ond a yw hynny'n fwy nag y gallwch ei roi?

Noir of demons past (e.d.jmmusechron)

It is awhile that I watch the SWAT team move in, like long limbs of a black widow spider move and curl, progressing across the back lawn in a circle. Up the hill, and closing in, they move all around. I follow the paths of the sides of the barn house as others towards the front seem to mirror this progress

And so fixed am I to the spot staring through the binoculars, that I hardly see what is there before me. Perhaps it is the remote sense from seeing it all through shields of glass and lenses that I don’t really seem to connect. 

I don’t connect with the immediacy that is

And again, like the other time I watched, it is like some action film that I seem not to even believe what I am looking at and, because it takes long for me to register what I am seeing; a slow motion reflex of some kind of disbelief .... 

But—there! 

And it is only because I recognize his silhouette so well—that and the enigmatic way he moves; lithe and menacing at the same time—because I would know him anywhere just by the way he moves, would know anywhere— like his hips, his shoulders, knowing without having to see the details of every line and crease, as if I put it all there myself. Jörn comes from a different direction, from behind the arthropodrical limbs that move as one, he takes a different route, going in an angle horizontally across the lawn and stops beside a shrub at the front corner of the shed-like building that is the sauna

And for awhile nothing happens. Everyone is still. 

and fixed so intently holding the binoculars steady it feels almost fake; like a video game or an action thriller that lulls me deeper into that disbelief of what I am looking at....until I taste it in my mouth. 

I taste it..... it is as if —like a warning

It has been described as a kind of metallic taste and it is because this is what registers to me, I realize  ....that taste is danger and.... I have tasted this before

and maybe it was long ago, for certainly, it has been years.... the alien sensation triggers the reminder of.... what tastes like fear. Yes, I have tasted this before. In a dorm room feeling myself die, the air squeezed out of my throat by hands careless of soft tissue, careless of life, hands with a cruel iron grip that cared nothing for the life it was wasting. And even back then, yes, it was surreal, slipping out of myself, letting go of life, not connected to my body and seeing images of the life I was departing; a cruel father, a sneering killer telling me how that father wished me dead, so why don’t I just die? ....seeing the image of a newspaper of the dead girl found in the dorm room, raped and strangled ....and remember —as I felt life end for me—how I saw my mother holding the newspaper of that story.... about the girl ....in black and white print.... a story in a newspaper. That was me. Yes, I saw it. I saw myself. Dead.... until somebody screamed “No!” ....somebody screamed no.... but that was not me because I had my vocal chords in a vise, but somebody screamed it in my head....and sent me back to myself.... 

Retnuh Nivek.... just now I get a shudder as the taste in my mouth connects with.... the present

Something at the corner of my eye moves! Something ....There in the shadows it emerges from below and closer in the direction of the underground, where I know is mostly dense woods, slightly past the rusted and defunct sewers .... another figure emerges! This one is different from everyone. This one is not dressed in the SWAT clothes, nor is he dressed like I remember the assassins were, this one.... is different

By the way he moves I can see he is older, there is a stiffness to his movements. This one is big and heavy and, although has muscle, it is not so lithe, slightly bent and there is a lumbering quality in how he moves.... no, he is not with the SWAT team— no— this one is not one of ours

and again, like a warning, I taste it in my mouth, something I recognize

and as he moves towards the barn house something finally registers in my head

Jörn can’t see him! 

and because it is clear to me that this bear-like, lumbering figure is loaded down with weapons with one in his hand at the ready pointing towards Jörn I spring into action! I reach for my phone with fingers shaking and type into my phone, 

<look out, there’s someone behind you!> 

—and send it....

but Jörn stays in position where he is fixed and makes no reach for his phone

I bolt to the hobbit door, now glad that I had the forethought to have changed into the clothes Jörn left for me with a pair of my own hiking boots Ilya packed for me. And so in familiar footing, I move fast down the narrow, spiral stairs, through the tree trunk, through the passage, past the rover and then through the hidden doorway that leads back to the dungeon

It is the only way I know how to get there the quickest, and as I bolt through the dungeon, I have a split second to notice— there is someone in the cage— but the cage, with the iron bars, which is never shut, I notice now is and fastened with a padlock. And as I run past I see someone in there tied up and gagged that I recognize from the parking lot at Lake Placid, the one smoking the cigarette who stared so oddly at me.... but at the moment is slumped over a desk and seems unconscious 

I feel a surge of adrenaline and along with it mixed, is panic, as I head through the catacombs that will lead just behind the new imposter heading straight for Jörn but the space of time between having seen this new arrival and getting through the walls makes me afraid of what I may find, fearing I move too slow, force my limbs to move 

When I do reach outside they are much further than I expected and with the aid of the binoculars I can at least see the intruder has still not made his presence known. I decide to go wider around, under cover of trees and shrubs and head towards the sauna.

As unused to this kind of exercise of stealth and fear, I become aware I am in danger of passing out, at turns breathing too hard, between holding my breath and the pain in my shins from exertion after weeks stuck inside. Practicality forces me to calculate my actions, first concern—do not pass out.... forcing breathing to calm until the stars go away along with the black dots that had begun to take over my vision—now move! I bolt to the left corner of the shed building and find the cover of bushes I well know by heart —but by the time I reach the corner where Jörn was, he is already well past!

Shit!—as I can see he is still not aware of the imposter! I run out away from the cover of bushes and shout,

“look-out!!”

but only after having done do I realize what I left myself in for as I feel myself being grabbed from behind and before I can shout again or do anything more, I am pulled right up off my feet with a hand pressed over my mouth,

“well look who I caught!” said with an ....all too familiar evil laugh, with a voice I could never forget ....and a stench of bad breath against my face

“Retnuh ....Nivek ....” but only comes out muffled against his hand pressed to my face

“Sorry, little hussy bitch, didn’t get that—you sayin’ you recognize your old college buddy from da hood? Said I’d finish the job, didn’t I?” and reeking with body odor, his sweat dripping onto me, he laughs again, “you’ve been keepin’ yourself nice and fit, hardly weigh as much as my dawg, nice and fit for ol’ Retnuh, —yeah, I remember, you hussy bitch!”

thoughts and asides; a passing note on the dictionary:

I am not who I was when this chronicle began, as though delivered; it shifted and I shifted

after years of scrapping it; the problems, the blocks I stumbled over —and realize it is because of the antagonist.... that is why this version of my dictionary —the analogy I define myself—works....the levels —Inferno-to-Purgatory-to-Paradiso ....and past....it is shifting; the apparatus is evolving  ....to be defined onto another level, a higher next level evolved.....which I could not reach until —challenged.... to see past

Noir hide of confession (jmmusechron/e.d.)

 

The countdown to 0-eight-hundred hour seems to stretch. as if in some eternal loop, like a lapsing of time and, with it, mounting, comes agonizing tension

I sit sipping the coffee Jörn made me— still steaming, too hot to drink. And with the binoculars fixed to me, I peer out through the trees from the safe screen of the hide watching the stillness of the back of the barn house. 

The sun has long made its presence in the sky —but nothing seems to be happening; no movement anywhere that I can see —not within or without 

.... and the excruciating minutes that barely move each time I glance down at my phone to check the time

I’m no good at this sort of thing. I don’t do anxiety at all well

and each time I get up to pace, I feel sick and just go back to the spot on the floor where I’ve found it is the best vantage point to see what is going on; best spot, low to the floor for the angle it provides and I am there half-sat but with legs and feet ready to spring 

the waiting is so maddening 

and as I have no experience with ambushes —or war tactics .... I have no idea what to expect —and feel uncomfortably ready to vomit ....and just hope Jörn knows what he’s doing ....

 and ....feel myself filled with fears and worry .... 

only now .... does it strike me that this is the first time I am really confronted with the thought of.... what if something happened to him?

what if something happens to him....

and how did I seem always to never have had to actually consider this.... ?

always before there was .... the excuse ....the screen of his spy world mystery; the mystery of knowing what he was up to.... and safe in not knowing ....and then, of course —the times too busy being angry at him. the excuse....

guarding emotions

but what would I do....?

In that suspension of time that takes forever as I wait.... these sudden thoughts consume me.... 

And remember —was it almost a year ago now—?— there was the time I saw him hang from the helicopter —but it seemed surreal through the surveillance monitors ....like watching some special effects action film 

And so....

       .... it makes me wonder about him —now as I sit there.... 

and think about what he said in the truck —that things “usually” go as planned.... 

.... and.... it makes me wonder things.... and wonder too, like— if he’s ever been shot

His mystery —and his scars ....I never have asked him as they seem as subjects closed —as is the poker face he keeps and.... as unknown territory like so many other things about him. Things I wish I could know. wish he would say.... so many things behind that beautiful mask he wears.... of what lays behind....

so the thought grips me now as the nausea sweeps like a wave over me —what if he’s shot.... ?

—or worse .... or else, what if he’s horribly —maimed?

 ....and alone with my thoughts as I am ....here in my hide ....

for the first time confess to myself things I never have allowed myself

 ....like 

those things I never told him. those things.... and not wanting to, my eyes blur and I find myself whispering things .... 

whispering promises....to some silent ....beyond ....

and feel myself seem to step out of myself, as if watching from outside of myself, like I have so often watched in dreams .... watching the shore, waiting .... watching the sun in the sky and .... with it that feeling of ....dread .... 

and again think. things I never told him. never got to say. things I never even said out loud to myself —as if by not—that made it safe. safer.... and yet knowing it wouldn’t matter, I’d still —feel— this. even if the worst occurred....

killed or ....maimed.... but, I know with all that my soul does know about life. about meaning. about existence that.... that even if maimed ....or even death— that it wouldn’t change anything ....of what I feel; it would survive....even life times 

but I suppose it was wrong to suppose that he ever would ....that to him—it would be this way; that he would—could.... no, I was wrong to believe he might

but now gripped with this feeling of dread I reproach myself.... should I ....have said? and now, possibly too late—it ....was pride making me pretend that I don’t care .... pretending I don’t care .... that much. but —does he? maybe not and maybe it’s better not to say unless he does care about me, then the moment lost

No. I don’t know.... and....

why would I matter to him? to him ....I am irrelevant; easily forgotten ....more interested in his espionage, and then, there is his opera, when he gets a free moment 

....he has no time for anything else—he’s a spy—a hacker, like he told me—all he cares about are his spy games, his capers, cracking his safes and codes. And I am i anything more to him than just a code to him? no, I am nothing to him—anyway —and now that game is up, isn’t it? .... I’m nothing, nobody ....now —and no, I could not imagine he would ever consider giving his heart ....and to me....? never, I know better and I should never expect he would. of course I know. who am I anyway.... just a curiosity .... a passing curiosity

and now as I wonder, staring through the lenses focused at the landscape with a sinking faith.... 

and I wonder ....maybe

....he must have been hurt long ago.... found other means to fill what replaces the need of such things.... of course, I’m nobody, nothing to him....

but still....  

what if he should be shot ....?! 

what if....? because, I’d regret it....I know.... even still. even ....if he does not.... I mean, if I never had the chance to....

And watching the lawn, waiting tensely, my thoughts keep wandering into these places I’ve avoided wandering into; wondering all these things I never let myself before .... how many loves has he known? but then, what opportunities has he had to really find someone who was actually capable to know what is hidden within his soul.... so busy spying ....undercover;  traveling around the globe; new philharmonic symphonies, playing concerts; consumed in his opera ....that no one but he knows what it means

 —and so, I wonder—did anyone really ever come close to seeing past the façade? in his alienated world of spies and shallow concert hall acquaintances —was there really ever an opportunity for the chance for him to stumble upon someone capable of decoding him? —anyone either deep or clever enough to know there was even something buried there? 

and ....as this new turn of anguish and self-deprecating torment takes hold of me—I suddenly jump at something I see—there!!—moving in the trees!

I adjust the lens to sharpen the sight—yes! My heart lunges before it pounds like drums in my head as I see, like apparitions move! —the first shadow of change —from the woods—they are there! like an invasion of a small army!—all dressed fully in black! I have to force myself to catch my breath, feeling my pulse become erratic before it rushes too fast, sweeping that strange amphetamine wave over me....

as I watch them start to crawl slowly through the trees, and move across the lawn, holding their weapons ready; like spider legs, closing in; surrounding in a circle towards the barn house.... 

*a footnote in a dictionary of synonyms & symbols

is it for money that an artist is driven to work ....?

but I cannot speak for all artists. and everyone is different. all artists are different.

of course there are many artists whose interest and only aim is to satisfy the current trends. whose purpose to work is to produce what will be a sure sell. (But will be forgotten in less than five years)

I don’t care to judge them, I don’t like to judge. I just don’t look at their work. it bores me

I am just not one of those 

like I have said, Van Gogh is a word in my dictionary; he stands for something symbolic to me

he did what he did; his style was unheard of and thought primitive and without talent. but a great artist expresses moods, emotions, and so many infinite things without a single word. To only see unmixed colors, the visible brush stroke, the crudeness of the thickness of paint you can see is raised right off the canvas as if smeared by a palette knife and it is as if you could touch it just to look at it there on the museum wall; you’d know what it feels like. It looks still wet as if he stands right over your shoulder as though he just painted it. ~It is not my style, but when I saw his works up close, I felt personally touched by them and —moved. This was the thrill I felt standing in that museum in Amsterdam.

today when we look at Starry Night, it is impossible not to feel the magic of the stars and even be in his moment; it is universal; it is infinite  

So, you see, he stands for something to me; call it my poetic license 

in his times he was not respected. he was not in fashion; not trendy. he was thought of as a bum. People wondered why didn’t stop wasting his time 

some may have wondered why he even kept at it

in our ‘modern’ times he is seen as a kind of icon which would be ironic to him. But I think, like Kurt Cobain, it would have appalled him to have become a trend

as Cocteau said, about the nightmare for an artist is to be admired through being misunderstood 

only, I think in Van Gogh’s case, he reset the bar on what is classic

why did Van Gogh keep painting? .... it was his tenuous grip, I think.... on life. I think it was all he really had. his love. his validation. to remind him he existed .... and even though he saw what Rembrandt painted and knew he did not paint the way Rembrandt did, I believe he felt that what he himself was painting came from something true within him and this drove him because it was his own personal expression, his language and it expressed what his soul ached to express. 

I think in this way he was a poet but then, aren’t all artists really? 

what is my passion for the humanities, where does that come from?— the arts; visual, literature, the performing arts (i.e. Sophocles, Shakespeare —another two who carried a conversation), a commentary about life (maybe cautionary) to be continued on .... they are the humanists who document history through all the common emotions with their reactions to life and the times they lived in. They tell a truer history than the events, I feel. They don’t lie or bend facts. I think when Socrates came around to “practice the arts” at the end of his life he saw this.... I feel the arts are the only true reality that can be depended on

I guess I am quite quirky and have been long resolved to accept this, I don’t really know what drives me unless it is my own tenuous grip and still —it is more than this, like a faith and a loyalty to remain attuned to the conversation 

even as I may not seem at the moment to have the means, the power, nor the backing to create what I envision, given these times such as they are, I can’t stop envisioning; it is just who I am, I regret to say. why do I do it? I don’t know. I have always thought in scenes where I tuck my most coveted secrets. screaming undercover of alluring diversions. but still they will not bend to adjust to the fashion, they simply cannot on principle —because that is not where the ideas are born from 

....but I promise, it will be very very pretty, like a film noir* (with the secrets blaring and all neatly spelled backwards to release the demons to the light and they will know)