Succulents

Taste of marmite. Sitting on a plastic grey chair in front of the beach. Below me there is a miniature jungle of bright green succulents. There are hundreds of tiny white snails sucking onto the succulents. A slender cat with a red collar approaches a giant grasshopper, in savanna-lion hunting style amidst the grass and succulents. The moment before the pounce they are both rippling with stillness. The audience; snails, flies and myself, watch with bated breath.
    The climax - a tender little cat leap, landing on her front paws just after the grasshopper hops away. Meanwhile the grass sits idly by, hoping to be born a tree one day.

Taste of her lips, salt and vinegar from earlier crisps. Sitting on a deserted beach by the turquoise sea. Above us a clear sky as bright and blue as her eyes. There are hundreds of chocolate coloured freckles on her face. Slender thighs with red pants, approaching the end of her feet and off. We are both rippling with desire. The audience; freckles, turquoise sea and the sky, watch with bated breath.
    The Climax - tender little moan, lips landing on lips. Meanwhile, the soul sits idly by, hoping to be born a Bodhisattva one day.

Taste of coffee. Sitting on a chair in a cafe's back garden. In front of me there are two small trees whose leaves are hundreds of shades of green. Their shadows play on the courtyard floor. A man with a chiselled groomed face is smoking a cigarette, I notice his socks are red. His dark eyes are rippling with desire at me. The audience; me, watches them with quickened breath.
    There was no climax. But had I introduced myself, perhaps we would have been lying on his bed while the late afternoon sunshine shone onto our bare bodies. Meanwhile the flaccid succulents would have sat idly by, wanting for nothing. 

Taste of Serenity. Standing watching the sky become a hundred shades of yellow and gold in between two high-rise apartment blocks. Behind me memories that stretch back forever become a field of succulents, then feed themselves into the sunset turning red. The sun is rippling with power. The audience; earth, moon and us, watch with bated breath.
    The climax - a tender little surrender, the soul hopped and landed on the grass of eternity. Meanwhile time disappears.

    

Tungsten Explorer

It is evening and I am looking out my window, the recently storm-washed patio is aglow with pearly light. I step into it as it spills all over me, the path to the beach, and the sand. I am in a theatre and the stage light is a clotted cream disk streaming down from above.
    Out at sea the large parked drill ship is dressed like a Christmas tree with an unnecessary abundance of red, yellow and orange lights all over it. There is a low barely audible thudding coming from it. For no discernible reason every 10 days or so it decides to de-anchor and drive out to sea, only to return a day later. For the first month I would be intrigued by it's hulk taking centre stage in the bay. It is now a source of frustration. It is ugly and the thudding sound, though barely audible, runs all day and night. It is called the Tungsten Explorer and is 238m long.

Tungsten I've just discovered has the highest melting point of any element at 3,422°C, it boils at 5,555°C. Neil Young was mining for a heart of gold, which has a fairly high melting point at 1,063°C. I wonder what my heart's melting point is? I have been known to have meltdowns in my life over not too strenuous episodes. But a meltdown isn't the same as melting, and is more about the mind than the heart. Perhaps I am aluminium? 

On stage a shifting passage of silver is running across the sea into my eyes. It's brilliance grows more intense the closer to the horizon. It is spring tide bulging towards the moon. The scene is a painting of my heart, where a passage of your light is spilling in from the inside, calling tides of sorrow to freedom. You are a far away moon that never wanes.

I walk back to my one bedroom apartment and warm milk up in a briki, add two teaspoons of cocoa powder, a dollop of carob syrup and a dash of turmeric. I stir it as it warms up. Steam is starting to rise. I watch closely as it heats up, turning the gas off at just the right time before it boils over. I'm getting better at making coffee and hot chocolate in this way. It's one thing to melt the cocoa powder, but when it boils over it's a mess.

It's one thing that you are warm enough to melt my aluminium heart from a distance, but it'll be a mess if we get too close.

You are my melting point.

The point into which I cannot help myself from melting.

The bay's back is bending to her.

        

Zeno

Some go to church or temples and kneel at an altar. They place their hands into a prayer position, they mutter faint hymns to a cold, or perhaps wrathful, or perhaps loving, patriarchal or matriarchal personified almighty power. They step into stone, brick or mud buildings with an air of utmost sanctity for their place of worship.

I go to a beach, my worshipping hands are not still but moving, propelling myself. My prayers are not words but the sound of air bubbling out of my mouth. My temple is not solid but liquid and it arrived here on meteorites, apparently. Meteorites which fell onto this from up there, where at this moment a mountain of cloud is bellowing up into the sky above Cyprus. I am floating.


I woke earlier with a foggy brain, depression was using it to create thoughts like: why is anyone bothering to live or do anything, it's all pointless, I my as well not exist.

Still in bed I blearily reach for my phone and watch a BBC news story about female Buddhist nuns who are learning what for thousands of years has been in the realm only of the male, Kung Fu. The Kung Fu nun has gentle deep black eyes above her vibrant saffron robes.
    I put my phone down, moments pass. Having had enough of wallowing in nihilism I decide I will get up right now and go for a swim to shock me into wakefulness.

I put on my swimming shorts, grab my salt smelling slightly damp towel and walk the one minute it takes to get to the beach, passing a cat with wide teal eyes whose vertical slits are black windows into another universe.
    Above the beach the sun was shining through the edge of cirrus clouds, I peeled off my t-shirt, shirt and jumper in one swift movement. I did my swimming shorts into a tighter bow, my belly button above it waiting nervously for the cold.
    My feet are on the sand. My depression is still heavy upon me, life is still pointless.
Stepping in, the cold water reaches my ankles rising up the body like a chiding slap. My waist now encircled, three deep breaths and I dive.

Splash.

well no, it's more like...

shslslahsssh%blkkllaubblubb

There is an instant, before it I am above and after I am under the water. Before it I am hearing vibrations of air and after it, vibrations of water. Before it I am a blob of depression, nihilism and drowsiness and after it, a ripple of movement, a smiling gliding under water face, a salty clean serene body. That instant is the doorway through which I enter my place of worship.


So here I am, gazing at the mountain of cloud while floating on my back. It startles me, swirling with bruised blues and purples underneath, reaching up high with huge puffs of white. It seems as though the sky has stretched to accommodate, it seems as though it is falling over me as my arms jellyfish my body backwards.

In the other direction, out towards Beirut, a plane is passing high above, a distant slicing of the blue sky is heard. 

    Zeno of Citium would have looked at this same sky 2320 year earlier. A statue of whom I saw in Larnaca yesterday, where Citium used to be. He said - 

Well being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself. 

Why is anyone bothering to live or do anything, it's all pointless, I my as well not exist.

Little by little I discover these stories are only as real as the extent to which I believe them, well-being is discovered to be what discovers this. This is no little thing itself. Because it is is large enough to contain all stories.