EPITELOUS

Were I to tell you, and it is true I assure you, that I made no notes at all when we returned from the beach that day and that I have mulled it almost not at all since then then you would not be surprised had I forgotten entirely by now what I had meant to write then. And it is almost true. Almost. But it is not beyond RECALL.

First let me share with you a real RECALL of mine from yesterday or the day before:

"A snippet (clip? video clip, audio clip, memo clip(?)), of memory:

Taking some rubbish along to the bins today I caught the unmistakable scent of figs from a tree growing in an olive grove. Like Proust's madeline it brought back to me a moment one afternoon perhaps 17 years ago: walking up from Vrysses into Kalamitsi one stifling hot afternoon when all of the local villagers were dozing on day beds we rounded a bend and found that a stand of fig trees had apparently dropped their entire crop all at once and that a procession of trucks and lorries had crushed them into the melting tarmac - the smell was sweet and sticky, the day was hot and dry, we were hot and sweaty as we trudged through this sticky scented carpet. Just then a little lady in black beckoned us into her garden where she sat us down and gave us Greek coffee, cold grapes and figs!"

Now let me deconstruct it for you according to my model: the scent of figs is that which triggered the MNEMONIC (the path or route MNEMONIZED), the thing RECALLED (in this case a memo clip rather than a single thing) is the walk into the village and the old lady's kindness and that is the MEMORY. And the reason that I deconstruct it for you is to mention that I can feel a matching pattern between this model and that of semiotics. Is that another MNEMONIC for me?

Well, that did the trick, talking about a theory of memory allowed my background RECALL to operate unconsciously. Exposing the mechanics of memory allowed me not to try to RECALL actively.

My thoughts on the episode of "the day at the beach" were presented to some limited extent, in brief and in overview through Eddie and Shem. Eddie's point that nobody present was enjoying themselves in the way that he and Farmboy did when young was true for the simple reason that he and Farmboy never took joy in being recorded regardless of the fact that it happened only very infrequently. My own, deeper concern was that the act of recording would interpose itself not just in the MEMORY but in the immediate experience itself. As Heisenberg taught us the act of experimenting determines somewhat the outcome of the experiment. I suspected then and fear now that the recent obsession with recording our lives is beginning to get in the way of the quiddity of the moments of our lives and that leads us on to consider whether we the memories we lay down in these times are valid in any traditional sense and this is where Shem's point comes into play and it is at this juncture when the suspicion begins to arise that neither the experiences nor the memories of these three generations will be of the same type or directness as our own. In short, my original concern was for the very real and present danger that intermediating all experiences through the medium of recording (digitally or otherwise) changes the very nature of human experience and so, reality itself.

Marshall McCluhan anyone?

I forgot it

What a piece of work is memory - when I wrote yesterday's piece I did not RECALL that we had agreed to go out to eat tonight. Lindsey of the Lake is buying and we're off to Mesostrato. You will have to wait longer still for my thoughts on the Beach Scene.

The Goddess Mnemosyne

What an odd thing is life. I had thought yesterday that I could write today on my take on the original scene for you but I find that I cannot. There is something else that I have to explain before I can expect any of you to comprehend those, my original thoughts. It is daunting but I must try.

I have to sketch out for you my ideas about how memory and recall are arranged in the human organism. I have long been fascinated about this mysterious human faculty - possibly the one human faculty, over and above the faculty for self reflection, that makes us truly human. Shem mentioned both Proust and Russian studies in the 60s into the phenomenon of total recall in his response and in that he was particularly perspicacious. But then he is my twin after all. And he is well aware of my interest in the topic.

Let me begin by splitting what is known as human memory into its constituent parts: the first crucial component of this faculty is what I shall refer to as memory and that is the process we would, in computer terminology, refer to as the write function - the process that writes and records human experience into the wetware of the brain as it happens; the second crucial and obvious component is the recall of those stored memories, what we would, again in computer terminology refer to as the retrieval function. From this point forward in this text I shall capitalise both of these words when they are used in this special sense.

A brief working knowledge of the arrangement and disposition of key human organs suggests that the organisms that have evolved into the human being tend towards building in redundancy (I carefully avoided any sloppy mention of design) and this is reflected in my view of memory and recall.

MEMORY is, in my opinion, perfect. Everything that a human being experiences and perceives is stored in the brain wetware: permanently and ineradicably. It is also stored redundantly, that is it is stored in multiple non-contiguous locations in wetware.

RECALL, on the other hand, is entirely and necessarily, imperfect. The few cases of perfect recall recorded in medical literature are tales of such an overwhelmingly terrifying aberration that it seems clear that it is counter evolutionary: imagine, if you can a trigger - be it a madeline or not - that gives rise to a memory (in it's widest sense) that takes as long or longer to experience as the original experience did, is as detailed in all respects and exercises all of the original senses. Now imagine this happening several hundred times every day. Perfect, total, RECALL would offer no evolutionary advantage - rather the reverse.

Now the fact that perfect, total, RECALL is both possible and documented would suggest, or at least tend to support my opinion that MEMORY itself is perfect and complete - at least in some humans.

Between MEMORY and RECALL is a little understood realm that I suggest we refer to as "MNEMONIZING". This is the process wherein access routes to memories are constructed and stored in wetware. I believe that there are two distinct types of MNEMONIZING: conscious and unconscious. Unconscious MNEMONIZING takes place, as its name suggests, unconsciously. Much of this unconscious MNEMONIZING takes place during sleep time although I suspect that there is the equivalent of a computer background process that runs in human wetware during wakeful time and that deals primarily with constructing and laying down short term memory access maps or routes whereas long term memory maps and access routes are handled during conscious downtime, or sleep.

Any reader old enough to know of rote learning will be familiar with conscious MNEMONIZING, as will any reader who has experimented with "memory enhancement" techniques. Rote learning and "memory enhancement" techniques both exploit the ability of the human brain to multi-task: they both involve laying down the MEMORY in wetware while at the same time imposing and associating an access route (MNEMONIZING) with that particular memory.

Now the observant among you will have noticed that in the first of the preceding two paragraphs I spoke of memory maps and access routes (plural) whereas in the paragraph about conscious MNEMONIZING I used the singular. Unconscious MNEMONIZING in general, and downtime or sleep MNEMONIZING in particular, appear to lay down multiple paths and routes having established associations with a plurality of pre-existing memories and access paths. Thus, the unconscious MNEMONIZING provides a redundant set of RECALL possibilities whereas conscious MNEMONIZING appears to hardwire a preference for a single RECALL path - think how often you will recite a whole mnemonic or a significant part of it in order to get to the particular MEMORY that you are trying to access. How many days in April? See if you don't sub-vocalize "30 days hath September" before you get to April.

It is my contention that conscious MNEMONIZING limits, whereas unconscious MNEMONIZING expands, the possibilities both of the imagination and future RECALL.

Finally I further have a sneaking belief that there is a function of critical mass at play in the overall behaviour of memory, in its broad day to day usage, inasmuch as there seems to be a point beyond which RECALL becomes easier and that this reflects a sufficiently rich and redundant set of access paths having been laid down in wetware. The more you put in to memory the easier it becomes to remember things.

Now that will do for today and I hope you can RECALL all of this when you come back tomorrow for the next installment.

(T.B.C...)

PS Radio 4 are currently running an interesting feature on memory link

Beach scene considered

We closed yesterday with the following: "We shall discuss the things that are wrong with these pictures later." Well, now it is later and so we'd best get started. I had intended to dominate this post but after yesterday's posting the boys got to talking about it and they reflected a lot of what I would have expected from the general publics o I figured we could use their points as a starter.

First up then is Eddie. Now Eddie is nobody's fool and his response was immediate and strangely nuanced for such a straightforward guy. "Those kids aren't having real fun - their acting. Acting isn't the same thing as having fun - unless your an actor and they aren't. And why isn't the granny joining in instead of filming it? I used to hate having my photo taken when I was a kid and so did Ceddie there aren't many photos of either of us. The dad bloke is just doing his Martin Scorcese thing so he's not having fun either and as for granddad - well I don't know what he's up to. The more I think of it the more it reminds me of that film where the boy's dad keeps waking him up to film him and turns him into a killer with a pointy stick. Are they all trying to make their kids killers? Why don't they just have real fun?"

The film Eddie is referring to is Michael Powell's 1960 classic Peeping Tom. I personally think his reference is interesting.

Next up is Shem. This is typical Shem almost pure Shem in fact: "Your piece is amazingly self referential. It describes, by intermediating, an intermediated set of experiences. In your case your writing is the intermediator - in the referent it is the recording device that is the intermediator. I like that symmetry. The piece points up the distance that people are putting between themselves and their real life by interposing technologies and in this case recording technologies. It is a modern phenomenon and it worries me not a little. Your observation that the "memories" so recorded and later "recalled" are false is quite deep and I shall have to think about it. Maybe you should ask Proust. Or that Russian foundation that was studying complete recall - I remember one of the men who had it describing it as a curse."

That, I feel, will do for now. More tomorrow. My thoughts probably!

MEDIATED MEMORIES

Two swathes of blue separated by a perfect horizontal. The lighter blue above, smooth and solid. The darker below, ruffled.

Pull back.

A black woven roof. The brim of my hat. The pale blue stretches on, filling the shot. The dark blue shades to a green blue closer to the lens.

Pull back.

A grandmother stands by the sea's edge out of the waves. A father stands where the small wavelets break. Three children play around him. His children. A grandfather stands slightly off to the right. Almost out of shot - but not quite.

Pull back.

A golden sandy beach dotted with palm topped umbrellas and green beach beds. Some are peopled. Some are not. Here and there a large pebble. One bin formed from plegma.

Pull back.

Feet - well toes at least. Two smoked glass lenses. Behind them - two clear green eyes. Behind them two more lenses. They are attached to a powerful mechanism that brings a lifetime of experience to the scene. And a learned gift for analysis.

Pan left. Focus to the grandmother.

She holds to her eye a video camera.

Pan right. Centre. The father is directing the children.

Pan right.

The grandfather is too.

Centre the scene on the family picture. The children assume their previous positions and the scene unfolds again. Grandmother gives a thumbs up sign to the father. A very young girl from the group peels off and runs up the beach, past grandma, to mum - unnoticed by the camera. She grabs an airbed and rushes back into the wavelets clutching it. Look at me, she is shouting - without words. Is it her grandmother's attention she is courting or is it the camera's gaze? Whichever it is, she gets both. Grandmother stops the camera and stows it in her bag, trudging wearily back up the beach to where mum sits under an umbrella. Another batch of lies committed to digital memory. To be edited and enhanced, titled and soundtracked. False memories stored permanently. To become a part of this family's shared history.

Pull back. The camera pans left and right as it pulls back.

It hovers momentarily on a couple on a beach bed. A pretty girl in a pink bikini and headband poses her husband, white earbuds of an iPod visible, and takes a photo with her mobile phone.

Pull back and lose focus to a blur. The sound of a camera switching off. A hard drive spins down.


What have WE recorded? And HER? And THEM, the family?

We shall discuss the things that are wrong with these pictures later.

Creative dysfunction ?

Since we killed Gilbert the muse has absented herself. We are running on empty in the creative tank. Is it a mourning/grieving process or something else? International affairs proffer much grist but the cynical slaughter of innocents in the middle east to a soundtrack of mealy mouthed posturing from the US and the UK saps all real impetus. Local life is good most of the time (psychotic, pathetic, paranoid women shouting at us out of windows at midnight and peering through binoculars at our eventime activities notwithstanding) and with the youngest daughter staying here the boys around the farm are in the background right now. The lavender harvest continues and Lindsey of the Lake helps out with that whenever she can lever herself out of bed. And so we rest back and recuperate our creative juices but you will, we promise, hear from us again. In the meantime if you are short of some laconic, sardonic, coruscating analysis I suggest you wander across to the Old Git's blog and check that out.

While you were gone ...

OK kids you all know me and I ain't no moaner - right? Yeh right - but that was one helluva long time to hold us guys back wasn't it? To make almost asif'n we weren't even here no more? No disrepect to Shaun at all ifn you follow me - it was a fine ripping tale and all but I can't say as how I followed all of it with its twists and turns and references and such but reading it to young Eddie most nights I'd sometimes think I near nuff understood enough. Eddie loved it of course but he likes anything any story so long as it's got quantum physics in it. And both of us thought the ending was riper as they say down under.

While that tall tale was going on in here life around the farm was going on pretty much as you'd have expected - spring giving way to summer and wild flowers drying back to twigs and dust. Now all that's left are the huge heads of the wild carrot flowers and some gorgeous chicory plants that only show their flowers in the early morning. G's new morning glory (royal purple) plant is ripping away but the roses and the bottlebrush have been quiet for a few weeks now as the real heat sets in. We water most mornings, nigh on drowning them tomatoes these days, and yet the surface crusts and cracks still and the soil fades from brown to cream to white.

And of course it's July now so the lavender harvest is well under way (hip hooray Lindz arrives tomorrow to help out with the last of the first cutting - G will be so pleased to have what she calls real help). Yield from Lav2 is well up but Lav1 seems to have suffered in the wet winter and is not so good this year - have to trench out in autumn I figure. G is picking close on 2000 flowers each day and I wonder sometimes how she keeps it up day in day out. But she's got gumption that girl - don't know about giving up. The type 2s are amazingly fragrant this year by the way and the new drying rack me and Eddie put up for G in her potting shed has already been filled and emptied. And the one in the bathroom! Wardrobes and chests are filling with product already and that unique smell of lavender drying permeates the whole cellar.

Speaking of which D&G had some works done on the cellar this last month that have transformed the old place: a new window (east facing, we didn't have one of those before); a new stable door (much bigger and arched at the top); and shutters all round. I'll tell you it makes a helluva difference - lighter, airier, all round better. And it'll be great come winter too. That lanky Rob did all the carpentry and he brought a few big old boys around to do the grunt work - knocking out and knocking up and the like - nice old boys they were too - took a real shine to Eddie and him to them. (BTW no sign of the institution coming looking for him yet and The Boss acts like he's just like the rest of us these days so I can't seem him turning the boy over ifn they do) (come looking that is). I asked Rob if his grandad had given him the secret of they sweeties he was always advertising but he made like he didn't know what I was talking about! Mum's the word.

Well that'll have to keep you going for now I've got work to do re-fitting the Boss's carage and this ain't getting the baby a new bonnet but I'll catch you up some more another time - till then I'll love you and leave you.

P.S. The Boss got himself a gun recently - there's been reports of a psycho lady on the loose stalking the valley - and he's been doing some target work, looks like he's getting pretty good at it too (me and Eddie aren't allowed near it) so if that ole loony does turn up near here she'd better be careful coz he's as likely to put her eye out as not.

Becoming the object of ones own hatred - but not the victim

Must it not be awful to become that which you fear and despise? To hate and fear persecution and to become a persecutor to "protect" yourself? To come to the point where your propaganda "justifications" begin to sound remarkably like those spewed out by the propaganda minister for the people who once persecuted you? Having been a powerless, stateless people, persecuted by a country with the third strongest armies in the world how does one become a people with the 5th most powerful army in the world and the persecutors of a powerless, stateless people?

As it stands the state of Israel appears to be displaying all of the signs of a classical case of paranoia and the Palestinians are paying the price - along with the Lebanese. If the USA has its way then the Syrians and the Iranians could be brought into the sphere of punishment being meted out in an increasingly vicious nay heartless display of state led terrorism.

WE'RE DONE NOW

All then that remains is for me to relate those closing moments, that final confrontation, that heroic act - and its terrible consequences.

before the full moon had passed over the girls' run the channel opened it was full moon and not two nights before when Gilbert had laid himself down and here he was at once in Papalaz's writing room delivered safely but not from evil for his was the kingdom and the power but no glory he recalled Dick's mention of the mirror and chanced a glance across past the Laz's shoulders as he hunched over the trusty glowing rusty trypewriter seeing in reflect a man not young and yet not yet aged a face made up he thought but mayhap not to look like a coon face surmounted with a wig surely of outrageous goose grease laden curl amok and a mockery. this image that brought his own to mind looked back at him and winked. a cruel knowing wink of no humour. and then he started to rise to get out of the chair Gilbert fingered the gun in his belt but need not have Laz spoke a smile around his mouth not in his eyes though they were asparkle all along "I'm just going upstairs to the toilet Dave it's all yours to make of what you will when I come back we will talk of plots and character and sealing wax and adverbs and we shall put the world of literature back together. I'll enjoy that. And you may too". A tall man with noble posture erect and daunting he moved to the door and passed or seemed to straight through it an illusion? the door swung silently to as he left a waft of stage makeup in his wake coconut oil on his hair? Leichner?

odd Gilbert sitting now in a still warm seat peering myopically at the text half out of the platen he reaches forward and picks up the two boxes the omnium and the nihilum (the quark and anti-quark) with perfect assuredness a strange prestidigitation follows all fingers and elbows angles and twists. and in a whisper like two barn owls passing overhead on a still summer night in the olive groves the pair slide open in perfect synchronicity. no bang just a whisper and Gilbert looks at them unbelieving. where is the clap the crack the thunder?

rocking back in anger and the chair he slaps himself and poises his hands above the once familiar keyboard for a final fateful time and shift to uppercase P and down a p p a he continues until he has typed the thunderword Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacwhackfalltherdebblenonthedubblandaddydoodled that will release the power of all texts. what's this? quietly he listens to the quiet and thinks he hears the Laz returning but no - CRUSH, CRACK, CRICK, CRICK - something is tearing he looks at the yellowing A4 in the platen and rolls it up three lines a tiny microscopic almost invisible hole has opened deep deep black so black that is as if he is staring for staring he now is at absolute nothingness the hole grows and the sound of Crush, crack, crick, crick repeats again and again in a rising tempo the boxes glow now the trypewriter too the whole desk is aglow and the room itself is flooded with a light that he recalls from a painting he once saw where? of the burning of Joan of Arc it is becoming hot the words on the page slip across the surface of this old stock paper like wax on water like the frontispieces in old books he recalls fingering in public libraries of his youth and the sound repeats as the words letter by letter slip into the whirlpool that is now the tiny hole but growing. soon the sheet is blank clean once more its virginity reconstructed. the very edges of the desk are curling upward now the corners of the room bending plasticly now he is in a Dali world that has the spine gone from it where everything is finally pliable. he pushes the chair back away from the desk as the four corners rear up like horsemen to be devoured in the maw of the trypewriter that seems now to be sucking with a ferocious maelstrom force at the very fabric of the room his ears are humming from the constant Crush, crack, crick, crick rising in pitch now harpy like. Horror and resignation pass across his face - and satisfaction - this is how it had to be - the books fly down from shelving stacked around the walls and disappear into the machine of obliteration the words sliding out of them as they approach the mighty force the pages ripped from their fine bindings Alexandria Alexandria!

the shelving is next bending twisting curling into the trypewriter the cosmic word machine molten metal pouring down into the furnace the forge of language that this terrible machine has become he smiles and feel a tugging at his hands those too they must pass a fine spray of particles from the walls whistles past him as the Crush, crack, crick, crick reaches a manic chuckle. there are no colours anymore there is no substance only melt everything is liquid or is about to become liquid or has been liquid all form flow flow flow unstoppably into the trypewriter that glows now like the very heart of hell stoked by every writer ever to write the walls rush past him into the gape and he he finally surrenders totally. in this finale of final moments his quarks have joined with the chair and together they make their final trajectory into the glowing pulsing mouth from which no word can ever emerge lest it be on the other side of language. And then the corners of the machine itself give up the struggle having consume everything it is about to devour itself ......................

the rest is silence - a wordless silence - in which no Crush, crack, crick, crick is heard

(NOT to be continued ... )

Saga-city

I read those words now and I weep. How could I not? I should have known that the outcome would be ...... awful - I did not know just how awful: how cataclysmic. My eyes burn as I write this, salty tears course down my cheeks, my old wrinkled cheeks. I have seen things with these old rheumy eyes that I would not share with you but this I must share: you are entitled. You have earned this much. You have invested that much.

Did Gilbert himself know what was coming? I suspect that he may have done and if he did then he was a genuinely brave man. A hero for literature. A martyr for modernism and a paragon for postmodernism.

Did Papalazarou (for that , we now know, is (or was?) his full pronomon) know what was coming? We have to assume, from the eventuality, that he did. The evidence points that way. But if he did, then why would he have acted as he did? Bitten by the agenbite of inwit? There is a mystery there but one that we shall not unravel not untangle nor understand.

Could it be the case that both of them knew exactly how it would all turn out and still went ahead? A fatal fatalism? Perhaps it really was ineluctable. A renegade reality running on rails? And only those brutal buffers waiting for them at the terminus?

How prescient now seems Gilbert's recurring use of the word annihilation in recent days. How tragedic. How stoic and Zen-like the laissez faire of the Laz. A match, it was, fit for the sagas and eddas.

Enough though now of introspection and self recrimination. Too much procrastination. Enough prevarication. All that is left is to relate the "facts" as we know them, as they have come through to us as the ripples in time and space abate and the continuum stabilizes.


(to be continued ... )

LOOKING UP AT THE STARS

Gilbert laid himself out on the futon on the balcony and looked, like Wilde, up at the stars even though one could hardly describe his location as the gutter - the moon would be full in another two days - the sky was clear and the air had cooled. He did not need to be outside but he was readying himself for the showdown. The gun was tucked into his waistband - loaded and cocked. He stared up at the constellations that he could not name nor even distinguish. He would, he had decided, sleep thus until the channel to the Laz opened for him again. He half closed his eyes and left his mind to wander waiting, only on the opening of the portal. Make no mistake he was focussed. Focused as though his very life depended upon it: for all he could tell it might well do. His appointment with literary destiny was coming and he was ready. Omnium and nihilum, he had decided were the keys to the obliteration of Laz from literature.

(to be continued ... )

Rain stops play

Gilbert sat in silence. It was raining outside -the first rains they had had for weeks now: since Kelly was with them and since then they'd had a veritable heat wave that had peaked on the weekend just past in the high 90s Fahrenheit. The rain was more than welcome. Last night he had heard it start about 12:30 and had woken Abby to tell her: not such a smart move it turned out for the cooler air that had preceded the burst had lulled her off to her first good sleep in a week and she seemed a little resentful at being woken.

They had both slept so well last night. It was 8:30 now and Gibert was letting Abby sleep on for as long as she would. He had the mandatory coffee before him and a cigarette in his left hand. The ashtray was slowly filling and he was deep in thought. The newly installed window and the bigger stable door let much more light into the cellar. So much, that even on an overcast day such as this it was lighter than ever before in there. He breathed deeply between drawing on his cancer stick and siping the hot Guatemalan coffee: it was novel to get lungsfull of cool moist air.

For once Gilbert wasn't thinking about himself, or the mysterious Laz, or Dick Detective or any of those phonies and shysters from the circus of freaks that Laz had recently peopled his world with. He was thinking of his old friend Hubert. He'd written to Hubert recently, hoping to pick up their correspondence of old, but had heard nothing back. He considered how many invitations to converse or correspond went unheeded, fell off of the radar: how many putative dialogues that ended as monologues or soliloquies? How many hands outstretched, for wasn't that what such a gesture signalled, that stayed empty? Offers ignored. Offers silently rejected. In a world where so many complained of loneliness how could so many dialogues be stillborn? So many cheerful, cheering texts go into the circular filing cabinet? Is there an ethereal bin for unreplied-to emails? Unread even. It must be a very big bin indeed. More words he supposed went winging across the ethernet each day than had been captured between boards and published in all literary history: and how any of them went unread? Most, he reasoned. Spam and the filtering thereof had become an industry unto itself: the myriad ways of throwing words and texts away, unopened, unread, and ultimately unnoticed. He imagined to himself one of those famously incontinent pipes that Thames Water used to deliver water wastefully to households throughout the south east of England but this imaginary pipe was sawn off and all of the bits of all of the orphaned digital texts simply dribbling out of the end and puddling sadly at the mouth of this monstrous pipe. Gilbert shuddered and shook off this uncomfortable idea. He would try again. And he must scribble out hose mental notes that he was making - the ones about defeating his nemesis.

Gilbert smiled to himself and intoned to himself, " - sometimes people have to die - sometimes murder has to be".


(to be continued ... )

BLOOD WEDDING

Gilbert was upset. His late night pot of tea sat in front of him as he looked out over the olive grove. Gilbert was sad. The ashtray was half full before him. The dogs barked desultorily as the barn owl passed over the roof of their run: hunting. A waxing moon rode above the big walnut tree behind their run. The outside lights were still lit. The wind had dropped away but the temperature was failing to recede. He was covered in a fine, slightly acrid film of sweat.

Gilbert was upset and sad because he had misled Abby about the gun. He seldom lied to her: he would rather not have to. In all his life he had lied with an alarming and shameless regularity. He had lied to almost everyone who had ever know him. He had lied to people he had never met and never would - he was a writer after all - no, not lied but misled certainly. But not to Abby. Meeting her had straightened his life out and changed him almost beyond recognition. And now he had lied to her.

It was a well-meaning lie, but nonetheless it was a lie. The gun was not just for target shooting. Gilbert had no idea whether it would do him any good in the world of the Laz but he felt more comfortable now that he had it by him. Would a real gun work against a fictional character - Dick had said hadn't he that all of them were originally fictional - he just did not know. All he knew for certain was that this farrago had to be brought to a finish before the Laz could breath life into his nefarious plan. Post modern fiction had to be rescued from this nemesis. There was no denying now that Gilbert and Laz were locked into a conflict so desperate, so hopeless, so doom laden that a truly terminal outcome was ineluctable.

He drank the last of the tea in his mug and lit another cigarette. It was a struggle that he would gladly have passed on. He poured the last of the tea from the pot and went to the toilet to piss. He came back with the muffled refilling of the cistern behind him and smile on his face.

He was smiling because he had just recalled the conversation that he had had with the cafe owner yesterday. Gilbert had gone to the counter so that he could pay for the drinks of the old couple at the front of the cafe. The couple that they had been watching. The owner, short, plump, and florid had demurred his offer graciously and had explained that he had already covered their bill himself. The man was a cousin of his father's and a man of great honour. In more detail, and with more candour than Gilbert would have expected from any man, the owner had then explained in some detail about how the man with the weeping eyes had just recently been released from prison and that the woman tending them was not his wife but his mistress. Our gentle old man had just served some 25 years for multiple murder. "It was blood murder - sometimes people have to die - sometimes murder has to be" the owner had shrugged "what could he do? It was honour."

Gilbert smiled to himself again and repeated " - sometimes people have to die - sometimes murder has to be".



(to be continued ... )

Heat

Gilbert's left arm was outstretched. His right arm was crooked behind his back tucking into his waistband. His right eye was closed loosely - not screwed shut. In the absence of beta blockers he made the final exhalation of his breathing pattern. He was calm now and he held onto that calm. His concentration was nigh perfect. He had drawn his bead during the run up to this moment. A breeze that had played for the last seconds dropped away and he squeezed the trigger evenly.

He lowered the pistol and walked up to the target. Low and to the left. Not as good as his right handed efforts but coming along nicely he observed. Gilbert was teaching himself to shoot left handed. He had been reared in the days when it was considered perfectly acceptable for teachers and coaches to aver and honestly believe that there was no such thing as a naturally left-handed person. The knuckles of his left hand had been repeatedly rapped with a ruler as he struggled to teach himself handwriting until a sympathetic headmistress had intervened on his behalf and forbad this barbaric treatment to all teachers. But thereafter, he received no help in mastering pen and ink and script because none of the teachers knew how to teach penmanship in the sinister mode. And so things continued throughout his school days.

The most painful of these episodes was literally the most painful: in secondary school he met, in his boxing master, a man determined that, no matter what any authority might say, the entirety of the product of his tutelage would be orthodox. And so Gilbert learned bloodily to box in a simulacrum of the orthodox style. He literally had it beaten into him. But his most notable successes in competition came when he switched to southpaw in the third round. The shock of the unexpected, together with the total ignorance amongst his opponents of how to defend against a right lead usually opened things up very profitably for him. Until he met his first genuine southpaw and was forcibly and violently brought to the realisation that he was similarly ignorant and unprepared. It was an ugly fight to watch and even uglier to be in. It was his last fight.

And so, when the following year he was forcibly inducted into the school cadet force although the blood was stale and the flesh had healed the memory was fresh and he offered no resistance to being taught marksmanship and gun handling in the right handed fashion. Nonetheless it scarcely came intuitively to him and it took him longer than the other boys to achieve his marksman's badge. He had hardly questioned from that day forward but that he was a right handed gun. A shooting friend had once remarked on how awkward he looked with a gun on a crow shoot but he had not thought much of it. Until yesterday that was.

Abby had volunteered to trek off down to the bank and that had left him free to wander the odd mixture of shops in the back streets of the Venetian part of town. A tiny haberdashers no more than two metres wide shares an entrance with an equally tiny ceramic pot shop. Both seem to have more dusty faded stock than they could turn over in a lifetime - stacked floor to ceiling and wall to wall. A bookbinders. An agricultural machine repair shop with most of the repairs seemingly being effected right out front on the pavement. A shop, dark and dusty, with unusually grimy windows that sells nothing but corks and above the tattered, indecipherable, sun bleached, sign above the door, a pair of battered, rotten, louvred doors that let onto a cramped balcony that fell apart some years back and of which mere remnants cling to stuccoed walls . Beside this little jewel sits the camouflage shop. At least that's what they had always called it. Rack on rack of camouflage trousers and flak jackets, T-shirts and belts, effectively camouflaged the actual intent of the shop. "Sports", the sign read when he finally found it. Simple and terse. And true, he realised as he finally entered. Every week for 4 years they had passed this shop and never had they crossed the threshold.

Very little light seeped into the shop through the hectares of camouflage outside. The aisle between the flanking counters was less than a metre wide - a lot less. The walls were covered, bedecked, with sporting goods: fishing rods, rifles, shotguns, air rifles, crossbows, night sights, pistols, a solitary long bow (fibre glass not ash or better, yew), laser sighting devices and much that Gilbert did not recognise. The glass fronted and topped cabinets were filled to bursting with reels and ammunition, fishing lures and crossbow bolts of aluminium.

A squat, broad, dark man with a mop of unruly hair emerged from the depths - a full 3 metres back. He had on trousers that had once been black and a shirt that had once, long ago, been white. Both were spotlessly clean and happily shabby. He seemed to have no discernible neck - the dark stubble, flecked with grey, that covered his cheeks disappeared into the open neck of his shirt. He walked into and out of a pair of blue and white sandals. Or rather shuffled. In a typically Greek way. "Kali mera, ti thelete?" he growled in a round contra-bass. "Kali mera, milate anglika? " tried Gilbert. "I speak English a little yes only a little but we going to try. What you want?". Gilbert pointed to a case on the left hand wall nearest the front window.

"Do I need a paper to have one of those? A license?". The proprietor waved his arm broadly across the several racks of guns behind him without looking round - "No need paper for these. No need." At this point he turned and gestured to a locked case that clearly contained a few high powered rifles - a Kalashnikov copy amongst them - and several shotguns - mostly side by sides and a solitary over and under - "For these yes papers needed police - pah! Where you live? You live here in Kriti? Where you live?" Gibert explained in broad brush terms and the man nodded - and scratched his stubble, "You live in the country yes? You very lucky man. Not village or town no? Mono olives and farmers yes? You don't need paper for these also." He winked a broad and theatrical wink. "You very lucky. Nobody know you have - no police come there yes? No paper needed." And with that he lifted the pistol that Gilbert had pointed out from the cabinet and handed it over - he put it in Gilberts left hand and Gilbert felt the weight of it, the balance of it - in his left hand. That was when he decided to teach himself to shoot left handed. He took one down for himself, loaded it and aimed at the target pinned up against a shelf of clothing in the diagonally opposite corner of the shop and fired off five shots rapidly. Through a smile that almost split his face and showed two gold teeth amid what seemed to be a shelf of broken Minoan crockery he grinned "this automatic - much better".

Later, sitting in an air conditioned cafe and looking out over the square where the taxis ranked, Gilbert related all of this to Abby. They were watching an old loving couple who sat with a Greek coffee and an orange juice - she dabbed his watery eyes for him now and then, her own hidden behind dark dark thick glasses. "It's OK," said Gilbert "I took a single shot pistol, automatics have a habit of jamming." Abby looked sideways at him, "And we couldn't have that could we? Could we Gilbert?". "Oh Abby, it's just for target work - nobody is going to get hurt, not even those stinking cats next door - promise." She took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at his eyes. "Good," she said "because I want us to end up like those two - old and happy - and in love". He smiled and looked across at them, the sun had moved round and they were lit by the noontime sunshine - they seemed to have haloes now and the sun was lighting up the stained glass doors of the church behind them. "And so do I" he said "and so we shall".



(to be continued ... )

Lift high the roof beam carpenter

Abby and Gilbert sat across from each other at the kitchen table a pot of coffee between them. "We'll have to move this table under that window" said Abby signifying the North facing window of the cellar. And this bookcase ..." nodding at the room height metal construction beside them, "will need to go at the end of the desk". Gilbert sighed and lit a cigarette. "But they aren't coming until Saturday!" he tried hopefully. "That's as maybe but there's no call for us to wait. We don't have to move them yet but it pays to know where they are going to go."

Abby had spent the morning, and an early morning it had been, a 7 o'clock start in fact, cutting and gathering ripening lavender and looking to the irrigation of her lavender patches. Gilbert had helped out today: doing the chores and seeing to the watering of all the plants around the house and there were a great many of those: lavender babies, aloe vera, nasturtiums, morning glory, night jasmine, mimosas, avocadoes, cherry trees, plums, apricots and rosemary, mint, basil, chives and thyme to name just some. And now it was noon and they sat to settle on how they would spend the rest of the day.

"It's not a beach day is it? Too windy by a half. I thought I might write to Hubert as I promised myself a few days back when I had my perfervid spell. I have it mostly composed - just a few detailed wordings to work out. And you?". Abby poked her tongue out, pink and sweet.

"It may have escaped your notice- it often does - but I have some lavender to clean and bundle and hang - about two thousand if yesterday's yield is anything to go by. I shan't be short of something to do - don't worry about me!" "More like 1700 I'd say but that's just my guess. You know best - as usual".

Abby collected her electrical ties and paperclips and wandered off to her potting shed wearing the pretty little flip flops that had been her birthday present from the Dutch side of the family. Gilbert picked up his coffee and his smoking set - Assos and lighter, his constant companions - and shuffled over to the iMac. Those flip flops were killing his feet - toe posts - grrrr. Abby's head appeared at the stable door (the door that would be replaced this coming weekend - "... you'll get used to them Gilbert - jut persevere - they'll be good for your feet in the long run".

"Dearest Hubert. Dear Pal " he pecked out. In 35 years he had never learned properly to type nor to type properly.


(to be continued ... )

Getting hot and sweaty

Gilbert sat at the computer. He was sweating profusely, Perspiration dribbled down his forehead. He sipped now and then from a glass of cheap white wine and pulled upon a hand rolled cigarette. It was past half ten and the temperature was still up in the 80s. The humidity was up there too - nearly 40%. It had been too windy to go to the beach today but n the last hours or so the wind had now dropped away completely. He dragged his forearm across his forehead. He had shifted his writer's block by reading some pulp airport fiction and had been working flat out ever since. And Tracey's recent email had cheered him immensely. He had shaken off Dick - for a while at least.

He had rung Trace out of the blue yesterday - they had worked together a few times while he was still in IT and she had remained a friend. Her husband was odd but sociable. She had been very helpful on the phone and was sure she could help and she had been as good as her word. And now that he felt more secure he could get on.

He had begun to write again too; hiding this new screed away in the new location behind the books (here). It was here that he would unveil and investigate the hideous plot that the Laz was hatching. He was thinking of writing to Hubert too. It was a busy time but fulfilling. He dragged his forearm across his forehead again and pressed on.


(to be continued ... )

There's a block!

"Are you constipated Gilbert?" "Me? No, not as such. Why? I mean what makes you think that?" "Well for a start you're looking pretty rough these days but mainly because I haven't noticed you go for a dump recently." "Oh that. No! I've just been using the toilet down here. I'm finding it a bit more convenient because my back has been playing me up lately so when you go out to do the watering I take my crap."

"You're right in a way though, I am constipated creatively. A, I can't produce - and B, I'm full of crap." Abby smiled and interjected quickly "There's a block in your system Dave!" They smiled together. The first time in a while. "There is a block - indeed there is but at least we got registered without any block. Let's open a bottle of wine to celebrate."

(to be continued ... )

PANDEMENTIA?

Gilbert leaned over his notebook scribbling in his malformed hand with a 2B pencil (he habitually used a 2B pencil - it was his his little nod to Joyce via Stephen via Hamlet). Joyce was much on his mind this morning. He slurped down some cold coffee - he had allowed his appalling manners to deteriorate further since they had moved here. "Gilbert, please!" implored Abby as she strode past carrying today's harvest of lavender. She tousled his hair. It was, she noticed well past needing to be cut but he had said when he shaved his winter beard off that he would grow it long again. Ah well, that was his choice. So long as he didn't end up with a tasselkopf or a ridiculous straggly pony tail - rat's tail more like. Then, he would be going out on his own.

She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down. She lit a Silk Cut aspro. "Gilbert, what are you working at now? You said you wouldn't use the notebook again after that horrible Dick broke in and defaced it." He looked up from the page at her, he looked haggard, blue circles under his eyes and a weary, nearly hunted look in those green eyes. "Did I? Yes, perhaps I did. When was that? But he's determined to wreak havoc he's planning a pandemonium you know? Did I tell you? Yes yes I did I must have. He's going to let them all have their own ways about everything. He's letting go the reins. Let slip etcetera. Dogs of war, characters what's the difference. I told you didn't I? ... and cry havoc or was it the other way round no matter. I must get on. "

Abby poured him another mug of coffee and pushed it to his side of the table and then she went round to his side. "Gilbert you have to calm down. You're confused because you aren't sleeping properly and you have begun to forget things that you only recently did. You are under a terrible strain. I know that, but ..." she trailed off. He was staring out of the window at the mimosa. She shook him to. "Gilbert darling you need to slow down. What did I say? Huh? Just now: what did I say?" Childlike he stared up into her beautiful blue eyes - "You said that Dick mustn't find my notebook and that I must calm down. Isn't that what you said?"

She smiled lovingly at him and touched her fingers lightly, lovingly to his left cheek - stubble, he had forgotten to shave for four days now - she stroked down to his chin and put a finger across his lips - crusty - "Yes darling that's right, and so you must". She dug her thumbs into his shoulder muscles and felt the tension. He was like a coiled cobra - there was so much energy locked up in him that it was burning him up. "Now finish up your notes and we'll go down to the town hall and register to vote. Come on, they close at one". "Vote? Vote? Vote for who? When do we vote?". "We talked about it last week Gilbert - there are local elections in October and if we register we can vote. Here. But first we have to go to the town hall to register. You remember?" "Yes yes - of course I remember. It had just slipped my mind. You know I think i have some sympathy for Dick - it's not easy being written. It hurts". He scribbled two or three more lines and closed the notebook. "I think, Moses H had the hardest deal you know. Now, where are we going? Do I need to change?"

On the way out he slid his precious notebook behind the shelf containing the Pynchon and the Derek Raymond and the Celine. "You get past those guys and you're welcome to read it" he said to nobody.




(to be continued ... )

Graffito

Abby came up from cutting lavender and encountered Gilbert dressed in the signature red overalls and wielding a mattock. He was over by the rotating compostor and swinging the old fashioned tool as though he knew what he was doing. "What are you doing Gilbert?" He looked up and out from under the faded black straw hat through sweat stained sunglasses, "Not wishing to state the obvious Abby, but I'd have thought it was pretty obvious - I am digging a trench. I am sweating and digging a trench. A curved trench from the mimosa to the compostor. Ring any bells?" He wiped a copious amount of perspiration from his brow, the brow that was receding further annually, and into his thinning hairline. Some dampness clung to the stubble on his cheeks. "Oh, yes, the lavender hedge - the French - of course. Yes we spoke of it but I thought that we'd wait until October." "No time like the present" interrupted Gilbert, "I needed to sweat and you were picking so I thought, why not?" "But Gilbert, it's in the eighties now and you are drenched. Your hands are shaking and you are so pale. Come on, come indoors and we'll have a coffee. You could do with some water first. And a cigarette I'd wager. It's a good trench, but it will wait you know the cuttings are healthy -we can plant whenever we like. Come on Gilbert, leave it for now!". He stepped out of the trench and followed her meekly - shaking slightly - maybe he was a little dehydrated.

While Abby was boiling the kettle and cleaning out the cafetierre - she'd stowed the 500 or so blooms in her potting shed for now - she'd clean and bunch them later - Gilbert checked his online life. "Sweet bloody Shannon... " he exploded "that bastard Dick has besmirched my notebook - he's mocking me - he's hacking me - shit, he's writing me!!!!!"

The kettle boiled and switched itself off.



(to be continued ... )

ALL SHOT UP

It was a very thin leather belt: perhaps a centimetre wide or half an inch - no more. Gilbert slipped the tail through the narrow brass buckle and slid the resulting loop up his right arm and over the elbow. He stopped just below the bicep and pulled the belt tight. He took the tail into his mouth and clenched it between his teeth. The upper bridge work wobbled slightly but held. With his right hand he slapped up a vein. It had never been easy to get those veins up to the surface - even the blood transfusion people had had problems and after all those donations there was a decent amount of scar tissue.

In front of him there lay a pristine set of works in a stainless steel tray. He had found it at the back of a drawer in the kitchen although he had no idea where it had come from: perhaps he had written it there. It was a big glass syringe with a long sharp hypodermic needle. He tested the temperature of the fluid he had cooked up and drew it into the syringe - it almost filled it. The text had cooked up well and reduced perfectly. He pulled on the belt with his teeth and slapped up the vein again: it was a good blue colour. He purged the air and slipped the hypodermic into the vein painlessly, he had always been better at that part than any nurse or doctor he had ever met, and pressed the plunger down slowly. he emptied the syringe into the vein, removed the hypo and laid it back into its case. He leant back in the chair and lit a cigarette, releasing the belt and shaking it onto the floor.

Some mad old Scotsman had recommended the idea to him although it had doubtless been a joke to start with. But the idea of a transfusion of literary talent had not been such a daft idea after all when he thought on it. It might work might it not? Especially if he was right about quantum transfer. And so, first thing this morning he had brought his copy of Imagination Dead Imagine down to the cellar and dug out the works from the kitchen drawer. It was the most intense literary work he could remember and was mercifully short.

He had chopped it up into tiny pieces with a pair of scissors and put it, thus once reduced, into a small saucepan with a covering of water and put it on the hob to boil. In the first pass boiling the lettering and the ink seeped off of the page fragments and into the liquor. At this point he removed the paper scraps and started the second pass: simmering and reducing. It was not as though he had lost the text entirely, he had had a copy of the complete text printed up onto a tee shirt some years ago and now that copy was fading beautifully at the line ends blurring out the odd word here and there, adding to the fragmentary and fractured nature of the text as written.

By the time Abby came down he had tidied everything away and was sitting at the kitchen table writing. Abby beamed.


(to be continued ... )