MASTORNAVINE, WATCHING THE LAMP

Soren - Watching the lamp won't suffer the bulb, you may as well wait for the switch - It comes hairless, forgets your name - Comes uninvited, laden with gifts - Removes borrowed stockings with a toothbrush - And examines cuticles under seaside strobes - Making amends with cuts and cold coffee sandwiches - While ordering in overdrive entrees with grapefruit juice - Eyes full of lightbulbs, it clicks on the band aid covered heater - Winding up as a timepiece telling fairytales with bad jokes every nineteen hours - In lines watching lamps on lent only legal pads - In a building left standing on a favourite Beirut street.

MASTORNAVINE, YOU CAN CONTACT ME

Soren - You can contact me at the next hotel when I reach another half century - Meanwhile keep gallivanting, and decline all offers to preside over any board of directors, for it would only make you crabby - Keep rotating too those trusty snow chains of yours, all the while maintaining a safe distance from the latest flickering shiny news - By noon yesterday, we found ourselves surrounded by workers’ struggles, eventually derailing in front of a Buenos Aires apartment block - Green uniforms rifled through the science of our injuries, shuffled through the different doors of our correspondence, and kept insisting on pushing through their own version of events they found gathering dust in the archives - Much depended now on the queen in the bed folded up in the best looking blanket, who would be, indisputably, leaving in the morning - Back out on the street again, I suddenly liked the look of every surrounding word burst - Behind a bombshell, a rack of Russian - And of the world’s hurt, I try not to think twice, until that instant when, without warning, a most notorious rifle shoots Roger - Mora

MASTORNAVINE, LATELY SO USED TO SOLITUDE

Soren - Lately so used to solitude sudden company seems strikingly peculiar - Occasionally so much so I need to determine whether the woman lying beside me is part of some elaborate dream - On her suggestion I rub some blood from the cut on my finger into her milk cloudy nipples - Back outside the hotel, heavenly lost in the laneways - Market stalls piled high with dry beans - Salamis in all shapes and sizes - Festooned ranks of cheeses - Early evening corn on the cob steamed in seaweed with lobsters and clams - Mora

MASTORNAVINE, DO YOU REMEMBER

Soren - Do you remember Seasons All November Fire? - Down on the wire, sharing seats with chickens, crossed blackened feet, bales of hay, and wailing toothless peasant women - Clutching their tickets and loudly lamenting their rapidly rootless state - In the mirror the scars resemble maps never before encountered - Leading the curious into corners never before seen - Drawing all desire through the apparition of perpetual doubt - Where everything is always at its beginning and nothing ever comes to an end - Then there's the latest picture postcard that takes turns fanning the brow - As the world awaits the four horsemen and whatever clowns are still hooked to such obsolete harnesses - Further from the owl and the ghost of a cowardly cactus - Still stranded under a yellow moonlit window of memory - Mora

MASTORNAVINE, AS THE STRAPS CUT TIGHTER

Soren – As the straps cut tighter into my arms, eventually I shall start crying –Not tears of pain or sorrow though – But rather laughter – A constant formidable flow shall pour down my face – Help carve out deeper and deeper lines into my features – The floor before long growing more and more slippery beneath what were once the steadiest of feet – While the keeper of the wolves walks steadily behind – Never lagging or needing to run – I’ll catch sight of him occasionally – Coming round a corner in the distance or appearing out of a wood I have only just left – No more than a glance though will I ever get of him – For it is never too long before registering his presence that I turn and start running again – And for years now these wolves have been on the chase – Before they finally catch up – And dive right in – But far from causing me any harm, their bites give me strength – My skin strangely welcoming their latest range of scars – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, IF I AM A CLOCK

Soren – If I am a clock there is a woman sitting in the sand at nine – Crosslegged – Her long blonde hair hanging straight down her back – Perfect posture – A small dog running around her, yelping at the surf – Nearby, a young girl frolics in the water – Kicking the froth around her ankles – Nobody else is around – And now the dog is in the woman’s arms – And the girl stands motionless knee deep in the broken waves – And I must shut my eyes – The now screaming ocean almost too much to bear – Then later, eyes open again, I see the woman still there – Now standing – Now walking toward the dog – And she picks up a piece of driftwood and throws it down the beach – Here comes the girl – They are getting ready to leave – I no longer know what time they are at – And again I have to shut my eyes – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, TENNIS TODAY

Soren – Tennis today down by the river – On the clay court – At one point watching my desperate attempt to reach one of those sly drop shots of hers – Inevitably leading to my falling first through then over the net – The momentum keeping me rolling and making me wonder whether I’ll reach as far as her feet – And she just can’t stifle her laughter any longer – Until finally I come to a stop, somewhat bewildered, and look up at her perspiring face – She says she’s thirsty, but all her water’s gone – I point over back behind my baseline to a near full bottle waiting in the shade – She passes by the net as I slowly get to my feet – I can see she’s watching me out the corner of her eye – As I brush the clay away from my thighs, knees, calves, backside –Tighten my shoelaces – Then go and sit down beside her and watch her gulp gulp gulp gulp down the water - And I bend down and kiss the inside of her thigh where the hem of the pleated white skirt meets her tanned skin – Listen, she says, I can’t think of anything right now I’d rather have in my mouth than water – Later tonight though, she says, when we’re out watching the stars and the rising moon, maybe we could sip some whiskey and make the most of this free time before being summoned back into the fold – And then, she says, before you know it, we’ll be tanned and taut with tickets in our hands and plans plans plans – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, AN ENORMOUS FOG

Soren – An enormous fog completely encompasses a hatred for the outside – As beautiful as anything can be to shatter the calm, though surely there can be no more for us – Who would like to see his seclusion of years? – Thinking at some point in space, a place: others of him – And somewhere within the million miles away, a flash – Light, they say, now carries her – The presence known across the momentary state of death, where light and dark are equal – All the while detesting those who land - Weeping tears falling from ten thousand stony eyes – And she fails to understand that it might be her only chance – Mora

MASTORNAVINE, BORED BUT STABLE

Soren – Bored but stable Anthoniszoon van Aken first counts up the remaining fingers of hope and then subtracts that figure from the complete comedy of distress caused by the lack of a properly sufficient emotional response – Next dividing the resulting nuisance with the number of visions of Ana left to him – Leaving a remainder just within reach – Held timidly in the space between and just above the eyes – Mora

COMMENTARIES, 8

We couldn't get on to the tracks to help. They had to keep us back. That’s okay, I understand. Seems like the whole town was down there that day. Some never managed to get properly back up again. They’re still down there in a way, mourning the mangled. At the memorial service, Father Justin said he had never seen so many injured before. So many maimed. So much destruction. So many dead. He cupped my elbow and wanted us to pray for peace. I almost joined him, out of habit. But this was something else, this was something else entirely. Any solace I might find could only fill a tea cup. That stuff’s not for me anymore, if it ever was. This kind of belief is usually passed on like supporting a particular football team, isn’t it? I’m sure even Father Justin would know that about me now. Not that we’ve talked too much about such stuff. He’s tried a few times but left it at that. He’s an old family friend. He values more highly the lofty climes of love than my sorry ass on a pew. We have an understanding. After what happened, they offered me counseling. I don’t know if they offered Father Justin any. The church probably have their own people who see to that. Justin saw people with their arms hanging off too. He saw the blood, he saw the pouring blood too.

COMMENTARIES, 7

They asked me to tell them anything I saw, anything to do with the man they think was seen around and about. Hair colour, they asked about hair colour. Different kinds of clothes. It sounded on occasion like they were trying to catch me out. But I understand. I doubt I was any help. It wasn’t long after breakfast. I was still trying to wake up. But I do remember seeing a man, a man who stood out to me. He was wearing a woolen hat, that I do remember, it was covering his ears, and I remember because my ears were freezing at the time. I remember because I was cursing myself for leaving the house insufficiently prepared. But I couldn’t stay in any longer, she was going to make me burst. I couldn’t even get down my bacon, she kept going on about the state of the nation, the kind of direction we were heading in, and how come Carl across the street could find some work and I couldn’t. I’ll tell you why, like I didn’t tell her. It’s because of where he puts his nose, that’s Carl in a cup for you, and where he also places other parts of his person, when he thinks no one’s looking, when he thinks no one knows. But a lot of us know, it’s not news anymore. Some women out there value his sort, that’s all, while the others of us on this side of the street are waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

ANOTHER YELLOW INSERT

Putting all the poison high on the shelf, I then knocked down the shelf, and used what I could for firewood. That night, the flames were impressive. You could have cooked a cow, a whole cow, if you were that way inclined. But no, nobody was invited over. Now it was time to get going. Leave Katoomba. My leads were leading nowhere. So I stayed long enough to picture the flames rapidly rising to the rafters, grabbed my bag, and headed to the station, a little after dawn. A train was due to roll in anytime soon. Here and there you could barely count your fingers through the thick mist. The platform was empty except for a couple who would appear every now and then and approach the edge, peering either way down the grey yellow tracks in search of the bright one eyed train, which according to their timetable should have pulled in by now. Otherwise they stayed cooped in the waiting room and compared climbing gear. Nearby, braving the weather on a bench, sat an old man wearing a long white beard, which narrowed toward the centre of his chest and was shaped like an arrow aiming at his heart. His head was covered with what resembled a tea cosy, atop a frame of admirable posture, and not just for a man of his age. If he stood up beside you, you'd straighten your spine in a second, lengthen your neck and tuck in your chin, otherwise what remained of your testicles might tighten even further, shoot up your trunk and permanently station themselves behind your chilled nipples. Then came the announcement through a cone from the station master, followed by a face to face debriefing, informing those waiting that the train would not be coming as expected. There was a delay further back on the tracks. Reports were coming through of an accident, some said incident, but for the moment there was nothing specific. Everything was mere speculation. Opinions spread like a house on fire. Soon the platform was crowded with commuters. The sun was sleeping in and the mist in turn was making the most of the sun's sluggish mood. Then I saw him, there in the crowd, waiting with the rest of them. Even if the light were even less than it looked, I still would have recognized him, no matter how many steps away. It was Ava, undoubtedly. He was suddenly a stray amongst a sleepy snake of commuters now about to go down the ramp and around the bend upon being informed that the train would not be coming and that some buses were on their way instead. Ava. He was here after all. And so it looked like I would be staying, staying after all, when I was oh so ready to leave. It's easy now in hindsight to say I was silly to assume that he would turn left at the bottom of the ramp and wait with the others for the buses, but I was, I was silly, I was plain stupid to take my eyes off him for even a second, so that by the time I changed course and ran back down the tunnel and over toward the south side of town, he was nowhere to be seen. After a cup of coffee, I booked a bed in a hostel for a few nights until I could find something more permanent. Then I called Susie to say I loved her and that I wouldn't be coming home after all, and went back to work on the translations.

COMMENTARIES, 6

The sun crept through a crack in the curtain, climbed and caught Jimmy's closed eyes, then turned and crossed the covers on spotting me crouched in the corner, waiting for him to wake. I didn't say a word, just got up, stretched, and went over and sat down beside him on the mattress, chin resting in the cup of my hands. The sun seemed to like what it saw, quickly deciding to do all it could to help me wake Jimmy, for he didn't look like budging anytime soon. So the sun sent its wild waking force through the crack, through the glass of the window, through the flimsy machine patterned material of the curtains, and then sooner rather than later, Jimmy opened his eyes. Then together we listened to the morning mail fall through the slot in the door downstairs and onto the handstitched rug that was a wedding present from my much travelled grandfather, and I smiled and put a finger to his slowly parting lips. Then watching the crack under the bedroom door I listened to his footsteps falling away, then return, more steadily. He closed the door behind him and held up two envelopes. The rest at best were firestarters, he said. He sat back up in bed, slipped his feet under the sheets and thumbed the first envelope open. It was from the university. He was accepted. I remember grinning, shaking my head, and saying over and over: I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. And I took the piece of paper from his cold hands and read it over myself, and then again, while he went about opening the other, smaller envelope, finding inside - wait for it - yes, a postcard, but no, I don't have it and I don't know where it is. Jimmy might know but you'll have to ask him. Of course, you'll have to find him first too. As far as I can recall, the card had no greeting, no words at all for that matter, just a painting, a watercolour if I remember rightly, depicting, as far as could be told, according to Jimmy, the discovery of precious jadeite beneath the surface of the earth by three masked prospectors, whose skeletons could be seen on the outside of their skin, as they stood atop pools of blood which seeped into the colourless soil all around them. That's what I remember at least. And I remember how it was that painting more than anything to do with the university that got Jimmy jumping out of the bed that morning and into the shower so as to be ready to catch the 8.23. Or, like I said, at least that's how I remember it. You'll have to ask Jimmy. If you find him. Is that what you wanted to know? Is that why you came back here? My name is Elise Blayney. This is my statement. Will that do?

COMMENTARIES, 5

I heard a woman there say: Human beings could not have done this. That’s silly. I mean, I think I know what she was getting at, but it’s still silly. I mean, who else is there? Is there an evil out there beyond the human kind? Calling them monsters won’t help either. They called Hitler a monster too, but remember: One monster does not a massacre make. I’m sure they had ample volunteers lining up outside beer halls in Munich, each with the name of their own personal jew stitched into the lining of their lederhosen, on the slight chance of a sudden influx of amnesia, or any disturbing signs of decency that may have suddenly arisen. No, listen to me. Humans did this. We always do this. It’s one of the ways in which we make our mark. One of the many ridiculous ways of trying to achieve an immortality project. And now we’ve reached the stage where it’s all stations go. We find ourselves destroying a train full of morning commuters and schoolchildren. It has become part of the parcel. I just happened to be there, that’s all. I was about to pass over the bridge, I mean, I was coming up to it, approaching it, I was close, but not too close, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now. Then it was as if the earth tore itself open from the inside. What use is democracy, one woman wailed, what is the point? I had no response to such an outcry. I admit, I almost laughed. I had to turn away. Then everything seemed to stop. I went about my day. Afterwards, they said I was a great help. I did what had to be done, that’s all. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. There’s nothing I can say. All I know is that one moment I’m watching the police standing guard by the wreckage, the rescue crews toiling away under the sun, and then it’s night and they’re hauling away huge blocks of rubble with the aid of chains and cranes and consistent cooperation.

COMMENTARIES, 4

I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes when I heard the train going by faster than ever before. Then there was a huge bang. There was a giant cloud of smoke. The rescue workers asked me to bring blankets. I brought all the blankets and sheets I own. I saw a man climbing out of the train. His hands were covered with blood. He was calling out a woman’s name. I remember that clearly, because it’s my sister’s name too. Only for a split moment did he resemble her husband. I took a deep breath. It was easy to see who was dead so we set about covering the wounded. There were bodies on the line. One man was lying there naked. They covered him up. People were wandering around with blood all over them. Nobody knew which way to go. You could see the wreckage from my front window. I know one of the ambulance drivers, they call him Beni, but his real name is Constantine, or at least that’s what his girlfriend says, Maria, who I see at Marigold’s on Tuesdays. All day long Beni ferried the injured to hospital, and then once his shift ended he didn’t know what else to do with himself, and so he went back to the scene and sought some kind of higher authority I suppose. I wonder where he should send the bill.

COMMENTARIES, 3

You wouldn’t recognize me now if you knew me before. You’d know what I meant if you’d been here yesterday, when my sister came to visit. Seven years older than me she is, though you wouldn’t know it now for looking, no, not now. Only on the outside though, I must say, for inside it’s another matter entirely, I’m sure of it. Inside, I feel blessed to still even be here. Blessed, or just plain lucky, call it what you will, depending on your point of view, where you’re sitting, or how close you come to look into my eyes. And look, you should really look, because unlike some people I can’t hide behind my eyes. I’m as naked as a newborn. So look, see the gratitude. Of course you can see the sadness too, but that’s to be expected. Anything less and I wouldn’t be human. I wouldn’t be talking to you, I wouldn’t be telling you what I saw. The tremendous rattling, the tremendous shaking, like the land itself was trying to shake me awake. And tears, yes, they’re also to be expected. Infrequent, irregular tears. I stared at Tara’s shoes while she stroked my fingers. We didn’t say much but it was good for our skin to touch again. The shoes looked as if they’d been recently stitched. Maybe she’d just been to a cobbler. My eyes travelled over the red leather while her fingers travelled my fingers, rubbing my nails, my knuckles, massaging my joints, as pictures of stitches, welts and woe, circled the edge of my vision, that up till then was cushioned in codeine, and doing its utmost to deter further infiltration. But they inhibit wholeness, these types of medicines, and I won’t be taking them anymore. Tea will do. Tea will do fine. Trying to push down all those sights and sounds is not an option. Let them rush all over me. If that's what they want. Let them lick me clean. If the actual attack couldn’t kill me, then how could the memories? So I will sit here and wait and see it through. Tally my scars, or connect them in my mind like a dot to dot puzzle, and go on from there.

COMMENTARIES, 2

You could just as well say it all happened yesterday, you could, and I wouldn’t be wrong. Such matters show that time isn’t what we think it is. That’s what I say anyway. I wondered aloud to the man beside me how easy it would be for the flames to pass through the carriages, if a fire broke out and nobody acted in time. It was strange because I wondered this aloud to the man beside me with whom I had only exchanged the most cursory of greetings when we'd boarded. I wondered this, full of wonder, but it was obvious that we were not on the same page. He merely glanced over to the cafe and then emitted from his shut mouth a sound that could only be an acknowledgement that he’d heard me, and not much else. He went back to reading his newspaper. Maybe the newspaper got me thinking such thoughts in the first place, I mean I recall reading an article once, before I finally stopped reading the papers altogether, before any of this happened. It happened in Cairo I think, a few years ago, or it could just as well have been last week. Yes, it was Cairo. The morning train to Luxor. A fire broke out, it might have started in the cafe, or maybe a gas cylinder burst. The flames quickly spread. Witnesses said that the bars on the window prevented more people from escaping. A lot of them died anyway, those who did get out, as you would, jumping from a speeding train. I wasn’t a witness of course, I was more than that, I was right there, in the bloody filling of the chaos sandwich, destined for a stomach already way past full. I’m a survivor. I was. I am. Time starts to play tricks on you. In your mind’s eye you can see the newspaper photo at the scene of the devastation. Remnants of bodies burnt beyond recognition. You can’t help but look and wonder: Is that a skull charred to the bone? But as to what exactly happened to you yourself, you remain unsure. Though certainly I remember the sound, the sound that seemed to signal the tearing open of the sky. I almost expected horns to follow. Then a black faced man, one of his shoulders the width of my two, carried me out like a doll into the cool spring air, despite my telling him that I could walk, despite my telling him that I was fine, put me down, there’s barely a scratch on me, go, go help someone who needs it.

MARGINALIA, 2

Here in this neck of the woods I could either sink or swim. The locals stress on sticking to the path, especially at night. For not that long ago some drunken english went to watch the stars at the end of the world, stumbled on some crag and caused at the very least a crick in one of their red necks, tearing their flesh and tumbling one or another over the edge like a tangled ball of beer soaked string. I spotted Joseph Balam making the rounds of the rotisserie. Eventually we came to chat again by the club's coffee machine. He looked different. The neat manicured beard gone in favor of a thin mustache that if anything only accentuated his potential mischievousness. He said he was surprised to see me again. I spoke of a persistent desire to make everything clear, once and for all. But why, why come back, he wanted to know, before confirming that yes, he did receive in the post a picture postcard a short while before the crash, and yes, it'll still likely be around the house somewhere, and yes Louis, you can have it if you want, before adding:

MARGINALIA, 1

Still living alone with two cats, Danby was much as I remembered him. I did not doubt for a moment he would open the door. We caught up a little while he made some tea. He wondered what had brought me back. I gave him some answer about smoothing out all the edges of the story just as my eyes were catching sight of the postcard pinned to the fridge with a magnet in the shape of a seashell. It was true. The man in the hotel that night was right. There it was, right in front of me: one of the handmade watercolor postcards he was talking about. There, on Neville Danby's fridge, amongst all the other shotgun splattered memories vying for space and attention amid old shopping lists and a parking fine. Then he offered me some bread. Good, I thought, he's at least baking again. He's a master. But there was nothing from his oven for a good while after what had happened that morning on the train tracks. Neighbors said he simply stopped baking. Just like that. They said the walls around his house suddenly smelled lonely. They were missing the dough magic of a man who could warm your belly like the sun. Poor peeling walls. They must have got plastered when he picked up his pastry brush again.

COMMENTARIES, 1

They called me a witness, and requested, no, demanded my presence down at the precinct. Did the voice on the other end of the line really say precinct, or did I suddenly see myself as a guest in some gritty New York crime drama? They said I might have seen something of value. I don’t know. But we need to catch them, whoever did this. We need to put them in chains and block up the lock of their cell with quick drying cement. People like that should be only fed through bars, and fatty fried food at that, so they come down with a coronary. And spit in their water bottles if you like, I don’t mind. Piss in them for all I care. They deserve the darkest dungeons, the lot of them. Or maybe there is just one out there who is responsible for the lot of it. I don’t know. But I kind of doubt it. These things take time, piles of planning. I knew it was no accident. Not that I’ve seen anything like that before. That was certainly a first. I went walking down that way again earlier in the week, just to look, to see if anything jumped out at me, jogged my memory. I just want to help. They need all the help they can get. How are we supposed to go on after something like that? So anyway, I crossed over and turned down the narrow street that runs past the bungalows and lush gardens, rising towards the bridge that now ends in the middle of the air. It was all so quiet. I stood around a while and waited to see if a train would come past. But I couldn’t even hear a bird. I was pretty sure that I could smell something distasteful somewhere but I might have been imagining it. All the same I checked under the soles of my shoes. Nothing was there, just some sort of dust, from all the crushed concrete perhaps. The concertina I inherited from my grandfather now reminds me of that morning, the way the carriages were piled up.