A hammock is stretched between two trees above a mountain stream that turns into a waterfall further along. I am lying on it and water is all I can hear. Stark nakedness has been sprouting into my life in various places: beaches, bays, a hammock, several beds, lakes.
Later I slip my feet across the hard rock and plunge into the freezing waterfall pool. The green moss smells of fairy-tales. It is soft like a limp penis or the mushy lake floor. I walk back dripping to the multi-coloured hammock held tight between two sturdy trees. Could my mind ever be as sharp as the shards of sunlight slanting in through the canopy? Will my heart become as fresh and merry as the stream I hear rushing down to the sea? Will my will become as sturdy as the trees? My thoughts slide clumsily into shade, Hades is there with a mirror. I turn away, unable to bear an endless vision. Never turn away, he whispers.
The Χαντάρα stream never stops, or turns away from the earth. Where does it all come from? It's forty degrees and hasn't rained for three months! It is like your eyes which never stop dancing even in droughts. It makes me feel 'I love you', I hope my eyes said this because my tongue did not have the strength to, only to vibrate your body with milky laughter.
At night I sleep alone in a white Toyota Yaris with the forest's crisp alertness all around. I fold my hammock twice for a sheet and use the dismembered passenger headrest as a cushion. Before sleep I stare at the sky, the milky way is splattered like a smudge of twinkling glitter down the centre. Our story of stars says they are nothing more than nuclear fusion, yet they manage to instil the deepest feelings of magic and peace in me. I curl up, close my eyelids and fall into sleep. There my dream eyes look out into a different kind of endless space, one that doesn't have stars floating in it, but nations of images, birthing and dying constantly out of their own selves.
Real life nations are also birthing and dying, such as England - born 1,076,034 days ago, not yet dead. On my way there I have turned my phone onto aeroplane mode and gaze out at a dreamy watermelon red sky. Then I'm on the tube noticing a woman with an ill-fated white rectangle and red cross painted on her soft cheeks. Then I'm breathing fresh countryside air and stroking a New Forest Donkey, it's grey fur soft on my hand. Finally I sit, drinking tea, listening to Travis sing 'Turn, turn' on the radio and eating a scone with marmalade.
Sadly I am distracted from the marmalade scone because there is a swarm of invisible bees buzzing around trying to sting my head. Born into the invisible air whenever a person doesn't say what they mean, i.e. passive-aggressive e.g.
I'll butter your scone for you (I don't want to butter your scone for you, please do it yourself you twat)
I'll just go and empty the dishwasher (please empty the dishwasher, you've been so fucking lazy today).
Oh my, you look so relaxed lying on the grass (Jesus, what a lazy, good for nothing cunt you are)
After more than a million days, we haven't yet learnt the art of saying what we mean.
Perhaps it is like a human, we are born not filtering truth, and then we are taught the ability to mask what is real.
