i dream (at night) of her beauty, a beauty which is – in itself – rather dreamlike. That she is unaware of her beauty, makes it all the more affecting. i dream of it in the day, too.
… She opens the door with no clothes on. There is no need to wear any. It is warm outside. High summer. The light lingers and the night trickles in. In the small of her back there is a snow snake. Peeling back its skin i see its crystalline bone structure.
What crazy dreaming is this? Send for Doctor Freud.
i must be infatuated, i think.
*
Five sunsets ago i was with Strayleaf. Strayleaf, beautiful and stoned. All bangles and bells and bands of cotton tied tightly round ankles and wrists. i gaze at these mauve coloured decorations and lie clumsily.
– i am carnally experienced.
What had got in to me? Was it owing to my disappointment at her throwing into the lake the wild flowers i’d presented to her as a love token. She hadn’t interpreted my gesture that way. Nor, thankfully, had she understood my truly horrid expression. The intended meaning eluding her. There is talk of the ‘hang-ups of vegetarians!’
Earlier we’d been making stones jump across the water. Then, desperate to impress, i’d read aloud some of my writings.
– Too many hollow words deaden the tale.
Strayleaf, a hard critic to please.
*
Three sunsets ago i was again with Strayleaf, gazing at her bangles and bells and bands of mauve coloured cotton. i try not to lie much. We are sitting upon Mount Wilders, overlooking Lake Wilders. There stands, close to very summit, a lonely Scot’s pine. Said to be the holiest point in South Europa. A holy tree on holy ground. Say the monks. So, by default, holy water wells and slithers down the mountain to join the river running through town. It feeds the lake too, of course. A lake which, in mid-summer, is swimmable.
The sun has set and there is a brilliant white moon. Calm waters cast in its light. Because of the leeches we put on clothes to go night bathing – in which we compete to produce the most ridiculous stroke.
– You win!
i do but unintentionally. It is natural inelegance. i hadn’t properly started my ‘ridiculous stroke.’
– Round two i’ll win, she says confidently. She and her family are champion swimmers.
It becomes an endurance test and i am the first to stop.
*
Trunks thwacked on a boulder until told not to bother. Her swimsuit dries on a stump of oak. Upon the shores of the lake we sit, smoking weed, unembarrassed by our nakedness. She speaks gypsy patois. Polysyllabic whisperings. i barely understand a word, but care not. The lilt to her voice, honey in my ear. It is pure soul lint. We embrace but something is wrong. The beauty of the setting seems to have sucked out any passion we might have felt for each other. The swim has also sapped our energies. The hour is late. Admitting to feeling tired comes as a relief to us both. With mud caked feet we fall asleep naked.
i awake first, disorientated by the lake. So perfect is its reflection of the stars and moon. Do i look up or down? Then i see it, glittering in the moonbeam, a most peculiar creature. A fish with over-sized ‘eyelid scales’ that resemble a pair of glasses. Despite badly wanting Strayleaf to see it too, i decide to let her sleep on.
The place and time is ripe for contemplation. Nearby there are experts who are doing it.
On the opposite shore of the lake stands a Buddhist lodge constructed entirely of bamboo. It is home to saffron robed monks with shaved heads.
The lodge is a popular retreat, conveniently situated for those pilgrims en route to Wilders Tree. In order to get there they must be determined, circumventing checkpoints and outwitting customs. Most travel with few appurtenances of worldly property, coming from places like Ukaksty, Hindustan, the Vales of Kashmere and Croydon. Coming from London’s admin capital is an especially arduous journey; the traversing Europa’s Skinny but Deadly Sea.
In winter the monastery is frequently snowbound; the roads impassable. A season in which the Kommune puts up monks who have lost their way. (Geographically, not spiritually.)
Manu, who is ferociously anti-religion, has to put up with the monks. He hates it when appreciative monks bless us and the château. He can’t understand why it is that Martha overtly enjoys such blessings. She has tried to explain.
– That the château feels like a moral entity is rather splendid, Manu. I see it as being akin to a medieval peasant’s sense of domus.
A contingent of the Sulunna Tribe (Kookie, Reymond and Saskia) hold the monks in even higher estimation. They believe the monks to be in possession of deep mystical secrets that can unscrew of the locks of Space and Time. Calculus is baffled by their professed reverence for the spiritual. During his sojourns in the East, he had his fill of smarmy swamis. He says that the spiritually inclined have simply requisitioned a geographical fact of altitude.
– The Gods strongly predisposed to living in such exalted places. Surely it would reflect better on them if they were to take up residence in far less dramatic and downright insalubrious environments. Such as downtown Wilders.
He means Utopia Streets.
*
Midnight, a minuet of monastery bells. Strayleaf awakes, hurriedly putting on her swimming costume.
Holding hands, we walk silently down the mountain, basking in the presence of the silver moon.