photo by Σπύρος-Ίωνας Μαρκάτης
The phone rang a number of times before he decided to pick up the receiver.
“Yes…”
“Mr. Query?”
“Speaking”.
“Could I make an appointment for a session? I’m… I’m Augustine… I’m… that is I was Vasiliki’s boyfriend… you know… her brother comes to you… ”
“Yes… Come by tomorrow morning at 8.30… You can tell me about it in person… tomorrow, then… goodnight”.
It was almost midnight. He put down the receiver and leaned against his rocking chair. It was a carved cherry wood chair with a woven cane seat and a broad quilted cushion on the back. He never rocked vigorously back and forth. A light rocking was enough to set in motion the associative chain of his thought.
How peculiar! he thought. On the outside a rather good-looking Basilica of a girl and on the inside… mutilated at the foundation… a proper massacre… Another girl who apparently became an “object-hole” without knowing it…
So, where were we? At the second hole, then; a closed hole, that doesn’t pulsate. Besides, what can a whore shut inside a bottle do other than whoring?
Her mother would eat her like a piece of cake. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Another maternal goddess eating her own fruit. Another totemic father witnessing his devoted priestess breaking the law of incest and does nothing about it. What happens if you kill or eat the totem? You die through murder. But if you remain undying, you turn into a pixie. You live your death in the here and now and on Elm Street, exactly at the bend before the cemetery, you encounter a shadow of death looking at you without seeing you. It’s called depression. Psychiatrists call it an illness. They haven’t got a clue. It’s a symptom that winks at all those Tiresias blinded by their distinctions…
They never even wonder who will stretch out his hand to touch the totem and escape sudden death. Not the members of the tribe, at any rate. And all of Thanos’ rituals with the tiles and the counting reveal an “unconscious consciousness of some guilt”. But let’s go back to the “hand” for the moment. Where will I find the profane hand that tightened the knot already at the throat? It was definitely the hand of a wizard of deception. Of the same tribe or from a neighbouring one? It’s too early to tell, although I have my suspicions… In any case, the murderer is one of those people who play “Totem and Taboo” in their spare time. Definitely…
Mr. Query took out a blank sheet of paper and flat-out wrote a letter to “Cain the murderer”:
… I know you’re trapped with your imaginary tripod. Which is it? Tell me… How did one of your three legs collapse and tumble tottering into the marshes of your repressed? Will you return some day, I wonder, as a biped?
For the time being you go about on one foot playing hopscotch on the flagstones your casual affairs trample on. You’re being punished: Sometimes forced to pretend you’re a ballerina on one leg and other times… a wooden soldier who lost his leg fighting against invisible enemies that terrified him.
Who is the enemy at enmity with you? No one.
What friend treats you to a kind word? No one.
The world of “poodles” circles around you wagging its tail… Groomed, harmless, with sly cat’s eyes and pricked up wolf ears. What crossbreeding did they result from? They’re poodles, but they speak with human speech. They are obviously some legendary monster that lives in your present, feeds on your past and belches out your future.
It doesn’t stomach anything. Nor do others stomach it. An unpalatable one-eyed Leviathan.
How can you love thy enemy, if you don’t start with the opposite? I hate my enemy. The enemy of “my”. I hate thy enemy. The enemy of “thy”. Once again you are entangled in the indivisible corpus of “my”, “thy”, “fly”. As in “fly, shoo”.
Only, you can’t exorcise the enemy with exorcisms because it also has a shadow that darts out of every shady corner along your path and sticks something murky on your forehead. It’s certain… you have the mark of Cain.
But try telling the incidental passers-by in your life your encounter with this “shadow” is anything but incidental. They’ll laugh a blunt laughter and pass you by.
Can you bear the stigma of the lonely traveller in the Land of Shadows?
If you can’t… park yourself on the outline of your shadow, prescribed with white chalk on the dark pavement, and don’t speak. They’ll take you for dead already. You meet all the necessary requirements. You’re already the shadow of yourself. Just don’t venture farther and get snatched by some wandering shadow theatre!
Hadjiavatis will overshadow your fate and you’ll get spooked every time Barba Giorgos’ crook chases after the hump on your back…
“Yes…”
“Mr. Query?”
“Speaking”.
“Could I make an appointment for a session? I’m… I’m Augustine… I’m… that is I was Vasiliki’s boyfriend… you know… her brother comes to you… ”
“Yes… Come by tomorrow morning at 8.30… You can tell me about it in person… tomorrow, then… goodnight”.
It was almost midnight. He put down the receiver and leaned against his rocking chair. It was a carved cherry wood chair with a woven cane seat and a broad quilted cushion on the back. He never rocked vigorously back and forth. A light rocking was enough to set in motion the associative chain of his thought.
How peculiar! he thought. On the outside a rather good-looking Basilica of a girl and on the inside… mutilated at the foundation… a proper massacre… Another girl who apparently became an “object-hole” without knowing it…
So, where were we? At the second hole, then; a closed hole, that doesn’t pulsate. Besides, what can a whore shut inside a bottle do other than whoring?
Her mother would eat her like a piece of cake. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Another maternal goddess eating her own fruit. Another totemic father witnessing his devoted priestess breaking the law of incest and does nothing about it. What happens if you kill or eat the totem? You die through murder. But if you remain undying, you turn into a pixie. You live your death in the here and now and on Elm Street, exactly at the bend before the cemetery, you encounter a shadow of death looking at you without seeing you. It’s called depression. Psychiatrists call it an illness. They haven’t got a clue. It’s a symptom that winks at all those Tiresias blinded by their distinctions…
They never even wonder who will stretch out his hand to touch the totem and escape sudden death. Not the members of the tribe, at any rate. And all of Thanos’ rituals with the tiles and the counting reveal an “unconscious consciousness of some guilt”. But let’s go back to the “hand” for the moment. Where will I find the profane hand that tightened the knot already at the throat? It was definitely the hand of a wizard of deception. Of the same tribe or from a neighbouring one? It’s too early to tell, although I have my suspicions… In any case, the murderer is one of those people who play “Totem and Taboo” in their spare time. Definitely…
Mr. Query took out a blank sheet of paper and flat-out wrote a letter to “Cain the murderer”:
… I know you’re trapped with your imaginary tripod. Which is it? Tell me… How did one of your three legs collapse and tumble tottering into the marshes of your repressed? Will you return some day, I wonder, as a biped?
For the time being you go about on one foot playing hopscotch on the flagstones your casual affairs trample on. You’re being punished: Sometimes forced to pretend you’re a ballerina on one leg and other times… a wooden soldier who lost his leg fighting against invisible enemies that terrified him.
Who is the enemy at enmity with you? No one.
What friend treats you to a kind word? No one.
The world of “poodles” circles around you wagging its tail… Groomed, harmless, with sly cat’s eyes and pricked up wolf ears. What crossbreeding did they result from? They’re poodles, but they speak with human speech. They are obviously some legendary monster that lives in your present, feeds on your past and belches out your future.
It doesn’t stomach anything. Nor do others stomach it. An unpalatable one-eyed Leviathan.
How can you love thy enemy, if you don’t start with the opposite? I hate my enemy. The enemy of “my”. I hate thy enemy. The enemy of “thy”. Once again you are entangled in the indivisible corpus of “my”, “thy”, “fly”. As in “fly, shoo”.
Only, you can’t exorcise the enemy with exorcisms because it also has a shadow that darts out of every shady corner along your path and sticks something murky on your forehead. It’s certain… you have the mark of Cain.
But try telling the incidental passers-by in your life your encounter with this “shadow” is anything but incidental. They’ll laugh a blunt laughter and pass you by.
Can you bear the stigma of the lonely traveller in the Land of Shadows?
If you can’t… park yourself on the outline of your shadow, prescribed with white chalk on the dark pavement, and don’t speak. They’ll take you for dead already. You meet all the necessary requirements. You’re already the shadow of yourself. Just don’t venture farther and get snatched by some wandering shadow theatre!
Hadjiavatis will overshadow your fate and you’ll get spooked every time Barba Giorgos’ crook chases after the hump on your back…
