An Emerging Theory

I am troubled by the fact that all art is artifice, no matter how hard we try to "keep it real." The beginning of any artistic endeavor soon evolves or devolves into artifice. The artifice arises because of the limitation of our perception, our natural desire to bring order to chaos, the inherent structure of the narrative, and the level of our consciousness. In that regard, the greatest artifice is found at each end of the spectrum of human consciousness. The primitive mind desires magic, whereas the refined consciousness seeks the symbol, the numinous, the archetype. Ironically, the quotidian mind is content to reside in the fact, the so-called real, which is an artifice of culture. As a result of this battle with artifice, which is inevitable, I find myself letting go of the real and moving more to the fantastic. In this movement I find solace in the fiction of Paul Auster, Peter Ackroyd, John Crowley, and Franz Kafka and the poetry of Paul Celan, Bill Knott, Gunter Grass, and Charles Simic.

Snail Silence

The order within him
was so black
it absorbed the sun’s rays.
Bright auras, like moths,
fluttered toward this darkness
until he could no longer
stand the weight
of their anxious
pushing.
In despair,
he cried out to the snail
that slid past on silver thread:
“Why do they press against me so?
What have I done to deserve
such dreadful desire?”

The Myth of the Snail

Each day it journeys
from the rose leaf
to the yard's loam
alone.
Without the help of any god,
it carries a shell
that grows evenly
through the years,
marking the limits
of its world.
Its boundary of being
measures the stretch of silver
between the rose leaf
and the grass blade.

Life on the Under Leaf

They emerge from darkness
crawling across the cement
on the way to the rose garden.
They find their way to the under leaf,
where they sleep through the day
to appear at dusk, to work
their way back to the yard
and the trees. Not once
do they repeat their mathematical
purpose nor speak of their twin
that fades into dark history,
nor do they lecture
on verticality
or the ultimate fate
that awaits the horizon.

Vertical until Horizontal

to Ferdinand Hodler


Anxiety rises like the tide,
overflows its banks,
covers the causeway,
and drowns the rose field.
He grabs his board
and rides the waves,
hanging ten, screaming
all the way to the western shore
where bait shops and trailer parks
sit nestled in contentment.
He runs the board ashore
and stands barefoot
in the white sand,
wiggling his toes.
Two pelicans fly to Cuba.
He studies the horizon,
ready to pit his verticality
against its horizonality
until it delivers
him in the end.

Günter’s Secret

With his left hand
stained yellow
from Schwarzer Krauser,
he pounded stone
and smoothed wet clay
into starving nudes
and granite head stones.
This sinister activity,
he later wrote, emerged
from his singular German virtue:
hard work, everyday, to the end.

A Snail's Tale

A snail on a mirror,
smuggled onto a Russian truck,
one snowy night passes
through the American lines.
That morning it had been a Communist;
by nightfall, it crawled from the polished glass
onto a silk table cloth in Salzburg,
speaking German and telling a strange tale.
It said, “there are two snails:
the one that speaks here to you
and the other, my twin, that lives
on the other side of the projection.
In that alternate world of thrown light,
my double slithers on slime
along a razor’s edge of time
that flows in reverse toward Romania,
where snow buries frigid bodies
crumpled on the side of a ditch,
their eyes perfect calcified shells.”

Günter and Paul in Clichy

A break in the gray skies over the gray stones of Montmartre illuminates Sacre Coeur, which shines like a beacon above the snail shaped map of Paris.

Two men walking on the Rue Lepic look up at the beacon. The short, stout one, with a massive black mustache, makes the sign of the cross, while the tall, handsome one, pulls deeply on his cigarette, a Gauloise. They continue down the street, searching for a clean well lit café where they can share an espresso, a cigarette, and a chat about modern German poetry.

They stop in front of a café that the short stout man sniffs. He enters and walks about smelling the kitchen door, the entrance to the toilette, and the bar. He looks under the tables and runs a fat finger along the edge of the window sill. He grunts his acceptance and takes a booth near the window.

A waiter with a vulpine face, arrives with a huff, and frowns when he hears the German accented French of the stout one. He turns to the other who speaks perfect French, showing his disdain for the boche. The stout one ignores the man’s rudeness; he has accepted the French’s hatred of the Germans. Instead, he pulls a small moleskin sketchbook from his pocket of his tweed jacket and a pelican pen and quickly sketches the man’s fox like face with a few clear lines.

The other, the handsome one, extracts a thick wad of folded papers from the inside pocket of his jacket and places them on the table. They order espressos and a carafe of water and place their cigarettes on the table. The stout one pushes his drawing aside and reaches into his left pocket and produces another moleskin notebook. This one is lined and full of scribbles.

The waiter places the coffees in front of them with a bill, which they both ignore. They intend to order another later. The handsome one with the sad dark eyes begins to read in German, while the stout one watches a woman bend over in the doorway of shop across the way to pour some milk into a saucer for a sick kitten mewing on the sidewalk.

A Snail's Pace

The snail steps on command
and slides along the razor’s edge.
Its day’s work ends well and small.
The hare celebrates,
as it rests
on its racing laurels,
waiting for the tortoise
to bisect
the line of slime
that shines
silver in the sun,
reflecting brown fur
and green shell.

Seeking Celan 1968

The gray stone absorbs
her black lace as silver flakes fall
on the cobblestones near the museum.
Her perfumed thighs
spread by his warm fingers
define the degree
of their digress toward the word,
defined against polished phrases
reflected from Venetian glass.
Its sound like a laural leaf
caught in the fall breeze
soars above a serpentine Seine.
Beginning at La Manche
it arrests itself
beneath the bridge
of his mounting distress.

Resolution 2008

The garden though small
needs tending and time,
while we approach
the world though big
by baby steps.
The fear mongers
and the money men
wait in ambush for fools
taking giant frantic footsteps
without speaking the coda,
the key. Mother may I
protects baby’s foot pads
and seals hermetically the innards
of the rusting ship, sunken to lie
next to Jonah’s leviathan,
our twin who sails west
but arrives in the east
three days late and a dollar short
unexpected, unheralded,
undone, and unknown.

Conjunction

He stands before polished glass
and greets his contrariness.
His simulacra balances on crystal shards
and questions the conjunction
of known and unknown,
of good and evil,
of real and imagined,
and finally of passive
and active energies.
He claps his hands
and his dualities splinter
into sparks of yellow and red
like spent embers
in the darkest night
or twins separated at birth,
alone on the earthen plane.

Projection

The mirror throws
the stone's subtle substance;
a red powder reflected
through his green
eye transforms
iron rods
into gold bars.

The Blond Beast

I have finished the first re-write of Okeanus and have returned to The Blond Beast. Here is a cutting from near the end of the novel.

“Is Simone tied up in this story somehow?”

“Yes. She is very much involved in it. She is a perfect example of the innocence of youth. We arrive on this earth as an offspring of two people, who had a complicated existence and history before we take our first breath. We grow up thinking we are the center of the universe. We never look back and ask where we came from and who we are. We just push forward.

“Children are egotists. They think they are all knowing and universal. Their feelings are the world’s feelings.”

“I wish you could imagine the world in 1933. The people were different; they thought differently. Even the world smelled different. Now it is purified and perfumed. In 1933, you could smell people. There was no air conditioning, no shower in every apartment. People lived closer together, even though there were no cell phones. We wrote letters. We talked to one another. We didn’t spend the evening in front of a television.

“Imagine horse-drawn wagons on the streets of Berlin. Imagine the smell of horse droppings on the cobblestone. Imagine the smells of outdoor privies and coal-burning fires. Imagine butcher shops where the carcass of the dead animals hung in the window. Imagine men in uniform walking up and down the streets in the hundreds, in the thousands. Imagine the smell of fear in the air, as the great Nazi beast began to stir.

“I met your friend Sartre in 1934 in Berlin. He was a smelly little man. Quite unkempt, but smart, very smart. I remember drinking beer with him on the Unter den Linden. He was reading Heidegger and Husserl and he was full of their ideas. I had never heard of Heidegger before, but as Sartre talked about him, I became more excited. He was reading Introduction to Metaphysics. He started talking about Being, and as he talked, there was a light in his eyes. That light was so bright that he saw nothing else around him.”

A waiter appeared and asked if they wanted anything. Löwe ordered a glass of Proseeco and invited Vogel to join him. In the background Vogel heard Bettina laugh and saw her reach out and touch Simone’s arm.

“In those days, Sartre was having an affair with a married Frenchwoman. He told me that she was a ‘contingent love.’ I had never heard that expression before, but I soon experienced what he meant by it.”

He paused to sip his drink and then turned to listen to Simone’s conversation with Asshauer. Vogel was impatient to know what the old man was talking about. He didn’t believe that he was just talking. It seemed to Vogel that Löwe was calculating and sly and that his choice of conversation was designed to tell Vogel something, something that he wanted him to know.

Asshauer stood up abruptly, shook everyone’s hand and then said that he had to rush to the airport to catch his plane. Once he had left, Drago replaced the chair he had moved and Bettina signaled the waiter to bring them menus. Löwe was now sitting next to Simone and it was as if he had forgotten the conversation he was having with Vogel. He was now speaking French fluently and asking Simone about her life in Paris.

“I live in a new area called Le Défense, a high rise.”

“I have seen pictures.” He wrinkled his nose and frowned at the concept of Mitterand’s new Paris. “Why is it always the socialists who build the monuments?”

“Vogel wondered if he was thinking of Mitterand or Hitler or Albert Speer.

“Are your grandparents still living?”

Vogel was perplexed by the non-sequitur and it seemed the question also surprised Simone.

“No.”

“What were their names?”

“Rosenberg and Aschheim.”

“Your father’s mother. What was her name?”

“Martine Lauté.”

“Was she French?”

“She came from France.”

“But was she French?”

Simone looked over at Vogel to see if he was listening. Vogel thought she was saying, with her eyes only, that maybe he was right, that maybe this old man was playing some unknown game with them and they were his victims rather than his interviewers.

“I believe she did live in Berlin for awhile before she returned to Paris. In 1940, she escaped through Spain to Ireland and then to London.”

“Not in 1940 my dear, in 1941.”

“What?” Simone’s mouth fell open.

“May I take your order?” asked the waiter.

Löwe turned to the menu and ignored the look of fear and exasperation on Simone’s face. After ordering, he turned to Vogel and asked, “Did you know that Martine Lauté, the grandmother of Ms. Aschheim, knew both Sartre and Magda Goebbels?”

Vogel heard Simone gasp and then watched, somewhat dumbfounded when she reached out her hand to touch the paper-thin skin of Löwe’s hand. As her long, thin fingers touched his, Vogel imagined he saw a shock shake the old man. How long had it been since someone had touched him? The old man turned toward her and she saw tears in his bright-blue eyes. “You knew my grandmother?” she asked.

“Your grandmother was a friend, someone I met in 1933, in Berlin.”

“You said she knew Magda Goebbels?” asked Vogel, interrupting Simone’s next question.

“Martine Lauté was a student at the Kollmorgen Lyseum, located on Keithstrasse. She was a classmate of Lisa Arlosoroff, a Jewish girl from Königsburg, my mother’s hometown, and Magda Friedländer, who later became Magda Goebbels.”

Simone’s head was buzzing with questions; however, within the chaos of her thoughts, one idea emerged as her most pressing concern – had this interview been simply a ruse to get her here at this table in Florence sitting next to this frail old man?

She cleared her throat and asked, “Am I here because of my grandmother?”

“Not exactly, but partially. You are here because of who you are and what you are.”

“I am here because I am a Jew?”

He started to laugh and then coughed. Vogel handed him a glass of water.

Machen

He finds a body at dusk
sleeping beneath a blanket
of snow.
He prods it with a steel toe
of a hobnailed boot
and demands a response
to a compound question
of being and doing.

Membrane

Lake freezing into a blue mirror
reflects me swimming.
The I in the dank drink
reaches for the revenant
shuffling on thin ice.

Chapter Thirty-Nine of Okeanus

A sibilant sound shattered his concentration. He turned and caught a glimpse of a slight figure silently moving in the shadows of the deck. He screwed his eyes into a squint to see. He was sure the shadow was not one of the sailors; it was too small and thin. Unconsciously his right hand wrapped around the bone handle of his curved dagger. His fear awakened a sense of the bear; his nostrils flared as the spirit of the baresark rose into his conscious mind.

The figure stopped, sensing his presence. The wind changed direction and he detected a faint musky perfume. He knew then it was the woman, the Xipponese diplomate, who walked in the deck’s shadows. He moved away from her, searching for a darker shadow in which to hide. He suspected his attempt to hide was futile, because he sensed she knew intuitively that a baresark lurked in the shadows.

She slowly approached him, granting him a few moments to relax. She stopped a few feet away from him, waiting in a beam of the moon’s light that was now spreading over the waters. Although the light was faint he could clearly see her thin figure, her pale white face, and her long black hair pulled back and elaborately braided in a thick cord that hung to her waist. She wore a dark purple robe and flat leather shoes. A silver pendant dangled around her neck; she wore two rings: a large silver ring on her left hand and a ruby ring on her right. She had a prominent nose, thin lips and heavy brows.

As she drew closer, he noted her teeth were white, strong and straight and her eyes pale blue, like cornflowers. Finally, he decided, somewhat subjectively, that although her expression was feral, she exuded an extreme intelligence.

“You are a Keltoi?”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know that to be true, although the Keltoi accepted me as one of them. I suspect I am related to them, especially after the things I have experienced over the last few weeks.”

She took a step forward and reached out her hand to touch his cheek. Her fingers were long and well shaped. At first he pulled back but when she reached toward him a second time, he let her touch him.

“Where are you from?”

“I am a Frenchman. I live in Paris.”

“Where is this place?”

“The Keltoi called it middangeard.”

“Yes, I have heard stories of this place. There is an ancient poem-éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended. However, I have never really believed it existed.”

“What does it mean?”

“Hail Earendel, brightest angel, above middle earth sent to men.”

“So you are from this mythic world, the home of Earendel?”

Her hand held his jaw and he suspected she used touch as a sort of lie detector.

“Yes, I am from middangeard.”

She stepped back and he let out a breath.

“How did you come here?”

“Through a portal opened by a witch.”

“A witch?”

“What witch?” Her voice rose.

“Her name is Jacqueline Le Tourneau.”

“Where does she live?”

“In France like me.” Now it was her turn to breathe a sigh of relief. He suspected she feared a witch from Okeanus, the watery realm, was opening portals to middangeard.

“Does anyone on board know what you are?”

“No.”

“Good. If they did they would throw you overboard. I sensed your presence from the start but you have been asleep and it was difficult to see you. I have a lot of questions but we have little time now. I have agreed to dine with the Captain and I will soon be summoned.”

“I have also been invited.”

“You must never reveal who or what you are.”

He noted for the first time some sympathy in her pale eyes.

“Of course.”

“What do they call you baresark?”

"The Captain knows me as the sellsword-Tatyx.”

“What is your real name?”

"Oiseau.”

“Oiseau, I am Sor Michaelsdottir. My friends called me Mikk. I am a diplomate for the Xipponese. Do you know what that means?”

"Not really.”

“It means power, power in all its forms, and it means magic.”

“What were you doing on the Island? I heard that the King hates witches.”

“The King desires power so he is forced to deal with the Xipponese. But he hates all forms of magic, which makes his intercourse with us particularly distasteful. Nevertheless, we supported him in his war against Brasilika because it was in our interest to do so but now that the war is over, the relations between our two countries is strained. I came to the Island to tr y and smooth the King’s ruffled feathers.”

“Did it work?”

“A little. He lost the war with Brasilika and decimated his mercenary army in the process. He is now weak and needs his allies more than ever. Although it offends him to admit it, he knows he needs us. Imagine Oiseau, being afraid of witches, dragons and daemons in our world. It is like being afraid of life itself.”

“You are right Sor Michaelsdottir. We do have many things to discuss because dragons are the reason I left middangeard.”

She cocked her head to the right and Oiseau knew he had her attention: however, at that moment, the botswain rang the time and Roby called for them.

The Prologue to Okeanus

I am editing my fantasy novel Okenaus. Here is the Prologue.


On October 31, La Toussaint, Benoit Kohlbert leaned against a brass street lamp on a corner of an intersection near the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris. His shadow stretched across the street until it penetrated the boundaries of a dense wood.

He whispered, “I shouldn’t go. It’s not fair.”

He gazed into the woods with such longing, however, that a stranger stopped and asked if he needed help.


Benoit waved him away and as soon as the man turned the corner, he argued, “but it is really better for my wife if I do this. I need it and it calms my nerves and makes me a better husband.”


A figure emerged from the woods, a shadow really, an outline of a man or a woman.
Benoit gave a faint wave. The figure waved back and then lit a cigarette, which illuminated delicate olive features, long black hair, and a slight frame.

Benoit made up his mind. He straightened his jacket, looked both ways and then hurried across the street, dodging the nighttime traffic.


As he approached, the figure, dressed in a black dress and stiletto heels, reached out to take his hand. Benoit smiled because the prostitute, in honor of All Saints Eve, wore a Venetian mask of pink porcelain, leaving only eyes and full red lips exposed. The two turned away from the streetlights and entered the autumn woods like Hansel and Gretel.

Benoit had been here before and he knew the routine. They walked silently to a clearing deep within the park where the young man spoke for the first time, telling him the fee and asking what he wanted.


Benoit fished a wad of euros from his pocket and handed them to the prostitute, who sat down on a tuft of brown grass and multi-colored leaves to count the bills.


While waiting, Benoit heard two things, which distracted his attention. The first was a distance rumble of thunder from the north, somewhere over Sacre Coeur. Because of global warming, Paris was undergoing a drought and rain was a rare and unexpected event. Even though France desperately needed it, rain tonight, he thought, was a bad omen. The second thing, he heard, was a soft hollow thump coming from his right, just above the trees; the sound repeated regularly like a runner’s heart at rest.


The young prostitute, ignoring the sounds, reached for his hand to pull him down onto the grass, but Benoit, unnerved and distracted by the eery sounds of thunder and thumping, pushed the hand away and looked up through a break in the limbs of the trees, where a deeper, darker blue shadow separated from the rain filled clouds. The shadow hung in the air like a hummingbird, its great wings filling with air and then propelling downward with a mighty push that made the bothersome thump that had first caught his attention.


The shadowy creature descended, close enough for him to see its yellow eyes. Benoit deflected his gaze, hoping not to attract its attention. The beast sniffed and turned its wolf-like maw toward the prostitute, who was pulling the dress off to reveal a flat hairy stomach beneath a red padded bra. He still wore the mask.


Benoit, now no longer interested in the young Brasilian and his taut body, watched entranced, as drops of saliva fell from the beast’s fangs and ignited into yellow flames. With a moist cough, the beast, like a snake before a strike, recoiled. A heartbeat passed before yellowish flames spewed in a concerted thrust downward and engulfed the young man, melting his flesh in a private inferno, and burning a silhouette of the prostitute into the grass.


Benoit paralysed with fright, his nostrils blistered by the acrid smoke of the burning flesh, watched the beast recoil a second time. In awe he crossed himself and whispered: “Sweet Mary, holy Mother of God, a blue dragon.”

Okeanus

I have finished the first draft of my new novel Okeanus. Here is the synopsis.

Jacques Oiseau, a French psychologist, trained in Uppsala, Sweden, and a Capitaine of the Police Judiciare in Paris, profiles and tracks serial killers. Shortly after the death of his Swedish wife, Birgit, the Commissioner orders the grieving Oiseau to investigate a series of murders, involving arson and cannibalism.

Oiseau summons his team and throws himself into the investigation, which soon produces a witness. The witness warns Oiseau that he is not tracking a man but a Drac, a mythic creature from Celtic mythology.

With this bizarre information, Oiseau follows his leads and interviews witches, wizards, alchemists, and a beautiful representative of an ancient people called the Keltoi, the hidden ones.

The Keltoi directs Oiseau to an alchemist, who informs him that only a dragon hunter, who possesses and integrates a darkened soul shard, can rid the world of the Drac. The problem, he says, is that a darkened soul shard can only be obtained from a magus residing on one of the four elemental planes. Since, according to alchemical principles, the Drac comes from the watery plane, Okeanus, Oiseau must seek help from a magus there.

In exchange for a favor from the police, a witch creates a tear in the membrane separating the worlds and Oiseau falls, naked and unarmed, into an unbalanced watery world inhabited by a multitude of species, arising from or kin to dragons, and the humanoids that oppose them.

He does not speak the languages; he has no map or compass; and, once he arrives, Focalor, a denizen of the fiery plane, who knows of his quest and is determined to stop him, hunts him.

Vogel and the White Bull

Murder of Crow Books will be issuing a new edition of Vogel and the White Bull next year and I am currently working on the editor's changes and suggestions.

Below is another section concerning the function of images-one of the major themes of the book.

Elisa sipped on her beer.

“When I left Germany, I was working on a study of Heinrich’s head. It’s realistic, but with the usual tricks of Expressionism. For some reason now, I feel I could paint the same study with a new resonance. I think I understand a little more about the resonance of life. Before, I was painting what I saw physically; but now, I want to capture some of the mystery of what it is to be a Vogel or a Harding. I want to see beyond the skull into the psyche and beyond it to the spirit that animates the skull.”

“What does that mean?” asked Tracey. “I don’t get it.”

At that moment the waiter arrived with Vogel’s drink and Jonathan ordered another round for the table.

“It means, Tracey,” said Elisa, looking at her closely, “I’ve discovered something inside me that makes my vision of others numinous or mysterious. I’ve tapped into some new lode of energy that wants to get out through me and my art.”

“I still don’t get it,” reiterated Tracey sipping her margarita.

“We understand or are led by images. Sometimes the images are flat and inanimate. At other times, they are alive and electric, magical and mysterious, mystical or ineffable. Something out here in New Mexico has touched me and I have a sense of wonder I didn’t use to have. The other day, I met an Indian who told me a story and I could see the characters of the story. But I also felt there was something behind the story, the people were archetypes, expressing some greater meaning. I know these feelings emanate from me, but that doesn’t lessen the excitement or the beauty of the image. I also realize that certain images, because of cultural and personal reasons, are imbued with emotion or energy. I think I can reproduce those images in my art that will touch the observers in the same way.”

“Can you give me an example?” asked Jonathan who was very interested in Elisa and her new approach to her art.

Elisa thought for a moment and then said, “Suppose I paint a very realistic painting of a nude woman with a large snake across her body.”

“Well,” said Jonathan smiling, “it would be symbolic.”

“Yes,” she answered. “All of a sudden there would be all types of mythic, sexual, and religious associations from the image of the snake juxtaposed on to the nude woman.”

They were silent for a moment, thinking about the image, making their own associations, and painting their own picture in their imaginations.