Song of Beauty & Truth 2

For four minutes and forty-seven seconds, Kowalski had stared at the postcard of Queen Beatrix on his mantle shelf. Precisely the time it took to listen to While my guitar gently weeps. ‘I’m a poet died young,’ Kowalski thought. Then he stopped staring and put on his coat. He had to get out, away from the place where the walls were closing in on him.  He placed a note behind the window of his front door: “He is not here, for He has risen.”

He’s outside. Luckily the sun didn’t shine. Sunny weather made everything twice as bad. Lights were flashing behind his eyes as if searching for overflying bombers. Despite the shaking and the pavement blubbering beneath his feet, he managed to follow the curb. ‘It moves a bit, but it’s safe to walk on. Keep cool... no real danger,’ he reassured himself. ‘Just keep on walking... one step after the other.’

Just before the end of the street, he was intercepted by Valérie Morel, his 60-year old lesbian neighbour with grey, almost white spiky hair. ‘Oh God, not now,’ Kowalski thought. Not that he disliked the woman, but this wasn’t the best of times. Avoiding, however, was no longer an option. ‘Good day, Mr Kowalski. Don’t you think it’s quite nice weather for this time of the year?’ she asked, smiling from ear to ear. His heart was squeezed by a clammy hand, black dogs swarming all over the place. ‘Hello Mrs. Morel, yes, the weather is acceptable and within parameters... um, as you rightfully assessed for this point in the annual cycle, and, yes, especially for the global latitude we find ourselves at...’ He could barely bring his mouth to form the words, but he was relieved he could speak at all. A few seconds after he had detached himself from the encounter, he realised he had spoken to her in an outrageous Flemish accent. What the hell was that all about! Shame and guilt were spouting from his brain.

However, for now, he had made it out of his street, the most hazardous place for human interactions. Now he just had to find a quiet spot somewhere out of sight, quickly... The park with the petting zoo was a good destination. No one ever came there. Kowalski chose an empty iron bench on a dead end path in the park. The bench was tilting forward... an uncomfortable seat. ‘I’ll be damned! And the Lex Luthor Award goes to... ’, he pondered, while staring at the ducks swimming in the pond.

‘That noise... it’s the Earth rotating... can’t you hear it, that deafening roar... going on for ever and ever, never changing tune, never picking up, until the mouldy old meatball grinds to a standstill...‘ Something stopped his trail of thoughts. On the island on the other side, he saw some rust coloured deer and a dirty white turkey walking on the bleak grass, picking in the mud. They were acting out some hypnotic wordless play, eternal and useless. A small white house with two white doors and a red one was visible through the trees. It looked haunted.

Kowalski reached in his linen bag for his papers, sketches of stories he had worked on. He had read three words. Then it started to rain. A steady, slow, discouraging rain. It didn’t matter. Resignedly, Kowalski packed the papers in his bag and proceeded walking further through the deserted park with mechanical steps on the slimy blown-off leaves. The rain fell harder still, but he didn’t care. Why would he? Rain was his friend.

Kowalski’s path brought him via the football pitches to the harbour. Then the rain stopped. The boats lay glistening and bobbing up & down in the foul water. ‘Call me Ishmael’, Kowalski said to himself. ‘No, call me Queequec, what do I care!’ No one was about. But no sooner had he reached the inner city with its narrow shopping streets, or the crowd began to thicken like wildebeest on the plains. And oh boy, did it frighten him! These were no normal people: these were demons, creatures with twisted faces, deformed presences, all capable of causing interaction or piercing with their looks his inner sanctum. The people with their inhuman grins were drifting all over the street, most in couples, two-headed beasts, slobbering on each other, looking out of obscene eyes, with scary smiles. He kept his eyes firmly locked to the pavement. . ‘This is not happening... not real... just a bad day.’ He laughed at himself. Today, he needed his humour badly. Even more when he saw buildings swinging to & fro that looked like made from porridge, and all kinds of scary sights, like shops that hadn’t been there before or lamp posts with irregular colours, triplet babies, strange headwear, a guy with Snow White tattooed on his forearm... ‘This is not a good place to be,’ Kowalski thought. He walked straight home, closed the curtains and waited for nightfall.

What? Too bleak? Would you have preferred a happy ending? Well, go poop in the woods with your happy ending!