mechanicalblend-blog

[mechanicalblend-blog]

Transit III

Future heat contained within lifeless bodies in the death valley of memory. Themes emerge from the innermost as we type.

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Distracted mind wandering astray, wrong train.

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Subterranean lights effective suits mask dried glue paper covers senseless activities. Hovering underwater silhouettes at night, violent to a degree frightening. Anger below my skin a film of ethanol that burns my muscle fibres as I clench a fist. A pack of dogs barking.

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Payday night going home leather jackets and horny glares on skin, sweat packed metal en route to golden dawn. In the windows, behind coating, morning clouds in a buttermilk sky. With a sick stomach I/you hold on to reach our destination.

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Stumbling on concrete platforms, high voltage frequency buzz between the eyes. Dizzy the taste of vomit on my paralysed tongue. Collapsing on a grid bench in the fugue between night and day, dusty smell and shivering hair on my arms. In a sea of apathy the train a chain of solitude.

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Sentences crashed into floor tiles. Stories untold as there is hardly anyone who will comprehend the existential fear of losing a tropical continent imagined.

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Kindness

Pipe smoke in the late morning, two men playing cards after a death in blackness, aces drowning in a pit of haemoglobin.

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Absurdity normalized in the repetition of routines, Sardinian sun in the blazing heat of the almost-equatorial.

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Perishes like melting lemon sorbet and your severe look as you gaze through the grill. Fighter's panther body under the fabric, the ellipsis of your shank and the warmth of your waist amidst brutal cries. 

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Dying in the smell of fumes dispersed in hope of relief, toxic fog a benevolent proxy of chemical assault. 

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Surgery in a sterile tile chamber, autoclave breathing filthy fuel and velvet organs on a silver tray.

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Beating heart a little girl, jolts of ache submerged by numbing dark grey herbs, a bone breaking by the sound of drought.

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Nightly ceremonies in fever an assembly of entitlement, house of neon in the desert. 

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A blind man's finger on my temple, his body extends to the borderlands, in the absence of midday he is generous.

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Infinite hamlets ubiquitous - a distinction impossible and no exit. quotidian poison obfuscates the scorpion's sting. 

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We hold hands walking an invisible alley and smell the stars and pain.

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Iron Rods

taking side becoming a diesel soaked marble knight sliding over polished granite floor if tilted.

lance piercing into ribs breaking like brittle grey thermoplastic. Forced removal without fight fingers like dead lobsters weak and flesh. 

fried egg and candied melodies coffee lost hours in the city of dogs and call time from the mosque. 

being opponents hurting bones your consciousness rubbing off on my shoulder, chin smeared with guilt, my hands full of moral fault. 

Toronto grid, northern winds and Canadian dollars a vague echo of foot steps escape of repetition.

teeth with particles of charcoal dust false, judged upon by memories of dead fish on the Coromandel shore. 

daggers in a chest holster and your pure white uniform complete absorption fulfilment in velvet kicks, physical absolution.

oriental lethalness and torch gaze that breaks rocks. hapless movement hardly a forceful action, stamina without morale, a shark in dense network by-catch bleeding on planks fins beating on rubber.

milky way motorcycle touch too soft a left turn not taken bizarre speed on a bumpy road.

If had.

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Mirror

first rain drops dry floor thirsty and longing. thick sugar sweet powder coffee sitting at the square alone with a ghost. wooden bench a rafter floating on the laguna with a broken mast. I pay for cigarettes with green bills and your smile like an axe.

After months you are there and I am a lynx biting cables. Your brown eyes and your fingertips, carved midnight stone still warm from the September sun. A battle that I am not walking part, your sadness broke my blade. I am in exile with the hopeless that gather in the white neon light.

A silhouette on the ferry and the hilltops at the end of the oily titan sea. Too close to return, burning touch. Candyfloss memories single strands that span, then rip and finally disappear if tasted.

unexpected storm and lighting as I sit on gravel on a plastic chair. You made a reasonable choice and a two foot threshold. Mangoes and bright dust, your feet dangling from above, a sense of intimacy that pierces through my gills, breathless my body beats in the bucket, trapped and stripped of power left to die by the absence of self-help.

ride through the darkness and your head on my back. I don't find the right words and you don't say anything leaving me to a wall of signs. I feel guilty yet I can't do anything.

Small porcelaine cups of tears in the steel gallery of milano centrale. green-golden fields of crops next to the minivan. capsule of remembrance dissolving in my organism, a retardant hibernation. paste coolant tightens amphibious muscle strings, hard fibre under green lizard scales.

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Shade

Black and white, though in reality shades of brown and beige. Never walking on the same board. My perception and yours clouds of lemon juice questions as to who we really are. Lime powder pattern on humid soil symbol of dust, impossible to be read equally.

Discussions night bound as hand and tongue grasp hopelessly in the air. Your path and mine never touched if we would be honest. Two close lines in the dirt and we reached out for each other's bodies and minds in need though found citrus peel. A code engraved by millennia of education and fear. The permanent alienation of the closest confidante and sour kisses under mosquitoe tents.

Minivan in the grapefruit sunset of the salt desert. Train window with tear drop rain lines and hot soup on the red cushion seats. Your hand on glass, dark and your eyes so bright piercing through my soul. A soda bottle car ride my head on your lap as i sleep. Your mind a vault of cast iron unknown, your serious lips two dashes of riddled tangerines.

Toss of words that chip away like bush bricks. Your laughter like sea spray in the early morning, fishermen on wooden boats returning from the last catch of the night. Quicksilver fish swarms below the breeze ridges of the ocean. I swim along the shallow shore, my arms cold with tiny drops as I rest on coarse sand.

Your fingers a soft touch on the back of my hand as we ride underground. Burgundy sweater and your head on my shoulder a smell of musambi and we are happy.

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Gravel

Turquoise tiles and palm trees breaking waves. Azul squares and cristal beer, sweet leisure of afternoon lazy hours spent like melting ice, waiter brings drinks with orange bowtie, the lawn is watered incessantly and Dutch tourists boil like lobsters, a relationship questioned out of boredom.

A winding path from the stepwell bombay sapphire glass skyscraper radiates a black bicycle leaning against a mud brick wall with finest cracks split by time. My bare feet burn from alkali and kerosene duck fry. A tin shed and a Wembley match left with no air, sick children on plastic bags the tongue of despair licking over hardened faces. labyrinth with no sense and we stand in a field of white bedding with an illusory salt breeze from a coarse sugar cane sand beach and butter corn. Barbed wire tears up my thighs as I climb and bleed like I have on the ground.

In front of the hospital women die waiting. Rural population starved, machete justice. White cars and white people the minority ruling by moral superiority. Imported cans, gin and tonic, and no sewage system. The music like opium. Teak ember corruption and chloride pools.

My perception clouded by privilege. Beautiful it hurts, fascination with the immaculate fata morgana of your almost naked body.

Military fatigues sharp dagger edge of violence and cold fear on sticky plastic benches. Power limitless in concrete hot cubicles. Pressing steel gun barrels and black leather boots strongly tied. Cigarettes sweat on hairy underarms, a golden watch as I whisper. Ashes on our living room carpet, intrusion into the most intimate, sun glasses and a smile under a moustache, my throat too small to swallow or speak. A pawn wrenched.

Tinted windows the driver navigates the obstacles and cleans the car from the brittle dirt that comes from below. AC, and radio and conversation about the death of Sridevi. In the noon hours phone calls and black coffee from small cups behind fortress walls with jagged glass shark teeth.

The numbing smell of burnt trash at dawn. The rags of children's jerseys on an arching back under the metro line on stilts. Greedy eyes follow the shadows of passing cars. A market for the hungry and transport in the night time, Delhi.

[mechanicalblend-blog]

Transit II

Night in the tropical warmth that speaks home to my rootless soul. Two flights in short sequence arrival for once.

A reinforced dam broke, brittle through constant erosion of grey particles burning onto its brushed cement surface. Nehru's constitution a constant fight for territory, progress undone in a single stroke. Memories flood a dry river bed plentiful and the ground between the pebbles absorbs it thirstyly.

A small plane, empty seats, 4F, nothing outside but a sunset in the far west, molten stone poured over a metal surface slowly cooling down, then a titans' fight between earth a black solid and space a black void. I sit there and still think of nothing else but your smile over a cup of coffee in the morning.

A magical meeting between palm trees and weak beer from small brown bottles on an aluminium disc, intimacy too close grasp, too real to neglect. Cues misleading enough to be evident, a sketch on thin transparent paper with wrinkles. Black lines drawn on the tray table that folds easily.

Papaya breakfast in front of diamond jaali and lush shadow on dusty white paint, desert red stains.

Music from the radio, a call on bumpy roads, the jeep's wheels spin in potholes, melodies like syrup flood the cabin in front of the windshield and drown my thoughts in the afternoon sun. We drive tacitly, an understanding, your hand on my leg and the road to and from the asphalt airport.

Colonial habits etched in dissolved acid clay.

Softest skin under my fingertips, warm like the blood below, and cool like the floor tiles. Mute and dear we walk alongside on the curb. The maze of the bazaar a mad layout of narrow lanes covered by plastic tarpaulin. The vulgar smell of a line of silver fish bellies and heads with locked jaws full of pointy teeth reminds me of morning on a rough quay in Kolaba. Men auctioning produce by the K-G, a block of hard wood and a double sided blade in a bucket full of blood and water.

Next to you driving never to reach and a hand on my leg. Through the open window thick darkness and cloudless dust trickles on my knees and I am still happy. Tension and confusion intertwined. Next to you on a bed though thinking about you.

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Field

beaten warrior lumps from the lotus empire. celebration of a golden centennial in the besieged fortress, ribcage people, starved through lies. soldiers march defeated, the frozen artillery. electrifying promises have long been stripped from meaning.

inner wounds inflicted by pearlshine hubris, a blow too sharp. torn fibre, black flesh under thick pork skin. believing in false power, waning under the merciless rays of an ultraviolet sun.

an army set out to conquer dusty hills, villages bombed by condor air raids. filthy cheeks under layers of dirt and a scarlet bindi on a rightous forehead. flag and anthem want to please, a sad legend of the lost battle. bastions of self-mourning devotees in fish scale armour shells.

real blood and bone marrow on muddy patches of grass. stinging needle pins of the chalk face ferryman. nothing heroic in the decaying glorification of sacrifice.

the mountain lake multiplies, a valley of children's dreams pulverized by Hannibal's elephants. no words can amount to the pain dealt on these loving creatures, on atoms of humankind. battlefield of pure egotism, an absurd rift, crippled schoolgirls and land mines.

pride and illusion a perpetual bird picking on an exposed liver that heals ever more. no regard for remote victims in my perverse search, absorbed by longing and need as to obliviate the primordial killing. metaphors willful complices of equivalency, amalgamation of boring desire and absolute cruelty, a strategy implored by a coward stuck between empty boxes of soaked cardboard. the great nobility of the fight is shattered to uneven grains by the incomprehensible reality of horror.

the comparison results in a sky without ceiling and cold bodies in raw coffins of acid tears. a total absence of scale that radiates in the medium of stale brackwater. in an empty hallway the fingernails of inmates have scratched a count into the pale green arsen coating, Napoleon's folly a set of convictions. the prostitution of my loss a cheap exhibition of basic principles of discrepancy.

leaving the arena of alabaster sand with my head down, seeing rows of vacant seats on shabby timber benches, the spectacle is ridiculous.

Only the purple shadow in the night time.

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Fog

night walks confusion - fog lays on lawn and resonates the sodium vapour glow crystal dew sneaks and my toes freeze in the endless distance between rembrandt and Foucault 

airfields, a future collapsed flyover in an ambassador taxi bengali fog in the morning paddy fields a car ride home that I won’t forget your weight on my chest and the coconut smell of your pitch brown hair. victoria’s columns row, dripping alocasia wilt in the courtyard fog between northern cliffs we silently sat on the autumn train and you told me that I would leave  

layers of people, a carousel of likeness emotional response out of habit, no boundaries masks and halos shine in the colourless pins of misty breeze snake skin faces and fire crackers laughter evaporates in polar clarity  a rock of lies, conscience like wax  the table has your coffee cup stains on it and I read the same books  

black hills high empty buildings viscous fog until the phoenix is numb bones from inside highway yellow lights, pebble wash concrete cracks, a notion of flight  though it is the same hull that walks in circles along the cold steel rail 

waiting for a forlorn call that came and didn’t pick up and then waiting for another one. signals code don’t want to read and my green eyes pierce into your naked gorge 

the end of year you say though the red and orange sand of the shore will just make my lips taste salty and thirsty  small glasses on a strand board sofa the dim brown light  dry jokes linger over spilled glitter on herringbone parquet the voice too harsh errand of the night ends here in blatant alienation of hurried footsteps in the darkness

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Breakfast (2|2)

There were nights when I could hardly sleep, when I used to get up in the earliest hours of the morning because I couldn’t bear the thoughts I had when I laid there alone on my sheets. Now usually I don’t dream at all. Sleep grasps me like a soaked blanket that pulls me down in the dark world below the water surface. A heavy weight that drowns me until I am unconscious; and then I wake up in the morning, with a headache and a sickness in my stomach that makes eating impossible. It gets better when I shower, when I stare into the empty bathroom and the dirty mirror. My long hair is much darker when it is wet and falls in strange ways. I mostly don’t comb it at all.

Today when I wake up you are with me, you were a companion with me in the labyrinth of my sub-consciousness. You were running away from me, you were afraid of me as usually, you hated me. I wish to forget about all these things and during the day I usually can, but at night I am powerless towards this ghost that appears from within my memories that sneaks around the corners of my thoughts. A bandit on my path that hijacks my mind. All along I think of you even when I don’t want to. It is like you sit there opposite of me, staring at me and you don’t say anything, your lips pressing against each other and your dark-brown eyes galaxies of resentment and reproach. This undead corpse of my nightly sinking, that I brought up to the surface, something that clung to my ankle as I drifted upwards, out of air.

The coffee maker hisses and I switch off the stove. Steam streams out of the valve and the metal is hot. The fingers of my right hand wrap around the curved plastic and I hope that I have a good grip on the coffee maker. I pour the steaming liquid into a white cup that I use for coffee and tea alike, which is something that my mother mildly disapproves of. The smell of the coffee is intense and the dark-roasted Robusta beans have a flavour much more raw than the usual blends. Stark and untamed and at times crude. They came in a 1-kg bag made from beige kraft paper that I got from a small shop that sells nothing but beans from golden brass tanks. It is where the old people go out of habit. There is the name and the address of the shop on the bag in red print, the letters sometimes not accurately printed and slightly blurry. They have half a dozen blends on offer and some still have chicory in them just like in the hard days. It is a small shop and they have a contract with a few plantations in the South. In that sense it is archaic.

The coffee is thick and black and oily. I think I have put the powder on too high a temperature so that now the coffee will be too bitter, a taste of burnt rubber. I don’t think I will mind it though. I am not sure if I have ever made a single cup of good coffee.

There on the surface of untreated wood is my phone with its broken screen. A few days ago it fell down on a hard concrete floor and broke as a consequence. The glass is broken into little pieces, sharp crystals that are the smallest in the upper right corner where I assume the phone hit the ground. The rounded lines display the forces that broke up the structure. The phone is functional despite that and I intend on using it until it ultimately is destroyed for good. I don’t use it a lot anyway.

In the sharp light there are breadcrumbs on the table that have shadows like rocks in the desert, long lines, on a milk-white dusty plane. The knife beams the direct sunlight with a radiating reflection on the white plaster, a wandering fleck like a creature, when the table vibrates from the glass of water that I have moved.

On the radio there are more news now. A plane has been shot down in Ukrainian airspace. I get up from the chair, the empty cup in my hand. I put it down in the sink and leave the kitchen, to dress and leave the house. 

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Breakfast (1|2)

I wake up in my bed, under crumpled linen with my face down in the pillow so that I can hardly breathe. I wake up in the morning, without any alarm. I have put my watch on the bedside table next to me and it shows that the morning has progressed to a point where I should get up. My left foot is not covered by the linen anymore, and it feels cold in the morning air. I get up; I put down my feet on the floor. I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of lukewarm water. I drink it as I wake up looking outside through the dusty window. My bare feet feel cold on the tiles. The low winter sun beams through the trees next to the window, through the naked branches in a sharp angle, it hits the white wall behind the chair opposite. The light itself seems to be cold, Nordic, de-saturated, though of course it is still the same sun that shines in the summer. I hold the little cardboard packet that contains my pills. I take out the plastic shell with the aluminium cover where I can see the positions of all the pills and the ones I already have opened, holes in the silver film, tiny shiny wrinkles. I think of the moon lander. I press against the plastic from below and the pill presses through the aluminium that is so surprisingly fragile when it is stressed. I put the pill on my opened palm and look at it. A small object manufactured with sterile precision in a factory. I open my mouth and swallow it. As my glass is empty the pill is resting in my dry mouth for a moment and I am afraid that I dissolve it before time.

I take out the coffee powder from the fridge and look at the Habanero sauce that I keep in the door of the fridge. The sauce is of a stark green. When I bought it I didn’t care about the colour, I thought it would be a satisfyingly hot sauce. Only after I got home I checked the label and realized that the green stems from a cocktail of additives. I have tried the sauce and it is indeed satisfyingly hot, though now, I don’t really want to use it, the green seems too aggressive to me. I close the fridge. Before I take down the silver coffee maker from the shelf I switch on the radio, it is the news channel. I listen to a feature on micro plastic from artificial grass and the negative impact it has on the environment. I think of the shampoo I use every morning to wash my hair that I buy from the local discount supermarket. I am sure it also contains micro plastic. It is silky beige and looks like vanilla custard mixed with quicksilver. It smells sweetish and soft and I really don’t like how it makes my hair smell when I use it, the fragrance seems not to fit my personality in its eagerness to please, although I use it every morning when I shower. I make a vow to switch to a more agreeable shampoo that also smells better, though deep down I rather now that I won’t exactly make too much of an effort to actually buy it, as I will only finish late as per usual when the shops are closed and also I will end up buying my things in the local discount supermarket as it falls in the intersection of comfort and affordability. I have prepared the coffee maker now and switch on the stove. I sit on the chair next to the table and wait. The winter sun falls on the black T-shirt I wore at night. The black fabric shines bright as it reflects the sunlight. I stare at the wooden table top and its lines. I had almost no dreams last night; the sleep was a dull load of oblivion that fell on me. I sit there like paralysed.

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Transit I After one and a half films, the disorientation sets in, as expected all along. Up in the sky weightless, meaningless in the joint between worlds, storming into the night at full flight velocity. The content of the crappy movie seems to have crept into the subconscious understanding of everything. In the ever dim light of the cabin the closest thing to a reference point there is, in a sense more real than the ground below. 115 minutes of Hollywood trash is the whole world now, much simpler than anything, what you see is what you get. No time present, it has evaporated like a pot full of boiling water left on a stove and now the pot is empty: all there is the steam that condenses on the sterile plastic frame of the grey oval-shaped fixtures.   The unreal speed of the spinning globe underneath keeps us a point without gravity. Deepest sense of disconnected-ness overwhelms my body. A primal sentiment of being thrown into a dangerous setting spreads underneath my skin slowly, cold like ice-water, until it wraps me completely. Everything fiction now, a constant falling in seemingly no direction. Fear of what is in store at the other side. Ironically you must have taken the same path, only backwards.  Spirit trapped in the skies, once, to never come back. I look at my own memories from a few hours ago and can’t relate. This language fails me; I can’t feel anything, writing with numb fingers. My legs are unnaturally bent and I begin to notice people around me and their respective ways of being annoying. When looking outside: bleak darkness, the sole source of light coming from the aircraft itself. A self-contained machine moving through a heavy void, self-reflecting and self-illuminated. I am watching a Bollywood movie now. Crap, too, of course and longer. Its moral code may differ somewhat from the Western movies that I have watched earlier, but not that much in the end. It is set in Uttar Pradesh. I wrote a few letters that never reached their destination, not metaphorically, but in actuality. I think about that as the plane speeds up. The movie plays on. Remote hamlets or something that I believe to be remote hamlets glow in the black velvet behind the film of condensed water. The various backgrounds whirl into one and my memories unfold from within my head as I stare at the plastic fabric and its ugly ornaments. I cried during the movie suddenly, I’ve always been prone to this and the movie pushes these buttons so effortlessly that I feel silly and shallow, even more than I anyway do facing the big unknown that haunts me. The synopsis in the entertainment system has listed the following keywords: Middle class, village, marriage.  They serve another dish now as bland and non-distinct as possible to appeal to the greatest number of people. I know after landing there will be a wrong time in a hostile place and my legs will feel shaky under my body again. There will be strong turbulences ahead as the lady continuously repeats over the loudspeaker. I see her as she is speaking into a telephone at the opposite end of the cabin. She is very disciplined. The turbulences never happen, albeit it’s been good to have been warned in advance to mentally prepare. I fall asleep and suddenly we are here. The ground shakes and I wake up. Outside the early morning of a strange city. Concrete and harsh, albeit rather harmoniously in its colours. I am not disoriented any longer but alienated and scared. I think of my previous flights and your flights, too. I wonder if things would be different with more or less travel. There’s so much nonsense out there about travelling but the truth is that it seems to make very little difference in the end.  Vehicles like insects crawl to the belly of the aircraft to perform various steps in a well-orchestrated act of efficiency.

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Tales from recti-linear forest (9/9) - Departure. The quasi-spiritual meaning of everything wears off, and things normalize. The Grid no longer there, nor the Group or the Camp. In the City we walk the streets and a solid ground and a clear sky framed by buildings ensure the banality of the everyday. In the car the landscape passes by quickly and we stand in a different world so soon after. We talk leisurely and pretend there was no ambiguity. A couple of days later I dream about the Grid in a vivid fashion. 

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Tales from recti-linear forest (8/9) - Late Night. “Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I’ve got/ I am still, I am still Jenny from the Block” A different night. Frantic activity now. Proper organization. The Group has quadrupled. We both now dressed up, too. You look fantastic, I don’t tell you that, though. I eat too much and sit down at the side, observing what is going on, in fact merely staring into the evening. The music tonight makes guesswork more successful. You remark that you liked it better before dinner. I don’t know if I agree to that. We talk about the movie industry for a bit, but without any proper interest. People pass by. There are plastic chairs. You ask me if I know Jakarta Records, and I say no, though I do, one of many lies. Then we talk about Yoni Lappin, it must be the overall atmosphere, no Mogadishu this time, in any case.  We are among the crowd now, and everyone is there. I dance, very aware of myself, though I manage to loosen up a bit as the evening is progressing and the music becomes less lofty. More cigarettes, Gin and Tonics and awful water from the tank. People are high on some shit, pointlessly. A more aggressive tone takes over. You look out for me as I drift away, though I’ve lost you for good. I stand there alone between all these sweating people and dance. Individual characters stand out of the crowd, I am not sure if I send or receive any signs. You have gone into the Grid. The forest around me, and I realize it is the last night of staying here. The promised utopia hasn’t materialized, as we expected. How ordinary everything seems all of a sudden, how dirty and trashy. The light shines through branches. The music is really good now so I stagger away. On my way to the tents I look up at the spot where the Grid is almost imperceptible and see the Milky Way pinned between the trees, with a touch of irony, as if to replicate a real night in a real forest.

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Tales from recti-linear forest (7/9) - Night. The music plays and we recognize the songs, some of them at least. Others with more time and insecurity. The sounds of Africa, a reminder of the promises of independence. We speak about Mogadishu in the 80s, a place we have all heard must have been full of excitement, a real beacon of creativity. Of course none of us has been there, neither in the 80s nor ever since and we just repeat what we have heard people say, rather cheaply. We go through the notions and talk about a few more African states like we know them, except you actually do. Having lived there has changed your perspective. I am not sure if you are more cynical now than you have been before. I merely nod, and quote various articles by white old men or people depending on white old men from time to time to have something to say at all. The time has thickened like syrup and flows as sweetly. We sit for hours, smoking tobacco. From time to time people are there, and talk. Over all, it seems like a dialogue interrupted by pleasantries. The Grid is a benevolent guard that keeps away the outside world and makes this place happening. The warm light is reflected on bark. Most people disappear into the darkness slowly, but not us. We sit there and you insist on having a good time. We dance and there is Brazilian music. You glow for yourself.  At some point there is an obvious tension and the unspoken incorporates. We sit in the stream of the night in the belly of the Grid.   

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Tales from recti-linear forest (6/9) - Evening. Pickles for dinner, the strong taste of fermentation. Stored in glass jars. We talk about the past, you and I, a long stretch of time to cover. We try to trace our paths, but they have faded indiscernibly. The darkness shields us and the negative in between the trees becomes palpable. The distribution of light makes up a space, and the Grid is pushed back like a black curtain, but once one walks away from the Camp it is more present now. We sit there and talk for a long time. Your back hurts which seems to stem from an imbalance. I try and help you but of course I fail to recognise the reasons for your pain. Not knowing and miscommunication stand out as fundamentals for us. The Group is there afar, in the light and we sit isolated at the brink of the absorbing Grid-space. I try to flatter you but it comes out awkwardly and makes us both uncomfortable. Talking about the present is even more complicated and yields only a few vague observations that escape into the setting night. A stark sense of alienation manifests. We both confess our goodwill, in a gesture of helplessness. Our extended absence will be noticed I think and want to return; but we stay anyway. Clumsily we try to support and understand each other, questionable as to whether it makes any difference at all. Though trough the nostalgia, the self-pity, a minor bit of freshness that can lighten the mood. We walk back to the table, distant from each other, as individuals, like culprits covering the intimacy we had in the darkness.

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Tales from recti-linear forest (5/9) - Afternoon. We play chess. In a ridiculous thought I look up and the board extents infinitely in the Grid of trees, void of contrast and sense. Colourless figures, distorted, faceless. I focus on my own moves and forget you, a selfish non-strategy and of course, black and white become one and the same. Checkmate twice, a pattern of steps leading to an evitable, arbitrary outcome. Dead territory and walls, a different game altogether. Bread crumbs on the surface of the table. The light now like below sea. Flecks on poles, like markers in a field of depth. Leafs like seaweed. The trees: a uniform wall, slipping away ungraspably, sucked into the blurred metaphysical pillar-strip background noise upon gaze. Hence a forest of mind, limitless. The time stretches between chai and the orange light that marks the time that everything gets re-evaluated. I read some books, in paper and digital. Some of them force themselves upon me. My mind is pushed around like a brick that is sheering under pressure from a constant load. You are there, too. Away, at the event horizon of my comprehension, a silhouette at best. As the content of the pages is affecting my way of seeing the things around me, you merely shrug, running out of the splashing tide. Next to the tents, crickets in thousands. Their noise increases if one walks further into the Grid, away from the Camp. Almost morbidly their grinding-clicking sounds pierces into the ears as if to aggressively remind you that you are walking off limits.