Sebastian Michael's Blog: EDEN by FREI, page 42

The Snowflake Collector – 4: And He Had Many Memories

The Snowflake Collector was a lone man, but he was not lonely. He had in Yanosh a friend and in Yolanda a friendly face, and he had many memories, some solidifying like ice that is formed by the weight of the snow in the glacier and others fading like snowflakes alighting atop a meadow too early in the year, or too late, and melting away with the first rays of the sun, much as the first snow in October had already melted and was now no more, and no less, than a harbinger, that had been and gone, of what was to come. And also of what was to go: it would come and cover the earth and the path and the mind for much longer soon, throughout the winter and into spring, but go it eventually would. But during those cold months this year for the first time, and in all coming years left him for as many times as were in the gift of his existence, he would now collect snowflakes. The cows in that meadow he could see from the very small window in the very thick wall of the inn, which had already been covered once, briefly, with snow, looked forlorn now, a little, but also quite safe, because they were already near their barn and soon they would disappear in there for the winter.

He reflected, while Yanosh went online with his smartphone to look up ‘how to collect snowflakes’ on the connected brain of the world, on how each snowflake was perhaps like a memory, and that there would be, in a lifetime, as many memories as there were snowflakes in a season, though what these memories were – much as how these snowflakes would look like – depended a great deal on the era, the region, the weather, of course, and the altitude and the many, maybe innumerable, larger and smaller contributing factors, such as the overall climate and topography and chemicals, be they natural or manmade, in the air.

If every memory is a bit like a snowflake and every snowflake therefore a bit like a memory, then I shall collect these snowflakes like memories and like memories they will be an artifice, in my collection, much as pictures in an album are a curated but also distorted reflection of memories, and they will be an artifice because in nature snowflakes will either solidify into ice and form layer upon layer of no longer distinguishable single delicate structures but the body of matter that is the glacier, or they will melt away with the sun, sometimes maybe having served a purpose – such as providing a surface for skiers to glide down the mountainside on – but more often not.

‘It’s really easy,’ Yanosh said after just a few minutes of such contemplative silence, during which, The Snowflake Collector noted with some delight, it had started gently snowing again outside already, ‘you just need some superglue or hairspray or something to fix them onto your glass plates; you freeze down the glass plate first so the flake doesn’t melt, then you dab or spray on the fixing agent and you put or let your snowflake settle on it: what you get in effect is an imprint of the snowflake, then you cover that with another glass plate to protect it and you’re done.’

The Snowflake Collector breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had not expected snowflake collecting to be difficult, but he knew, from many long years of experience – as he felt he’d experienced them, though they weren’t that many, and they had not been any longer than any other years, except for the leap years that fell in between the ordinary ones, which had been just a day shorter – that sometimes the simplest thing can turn out to be fiendishly complicated and conversely sometimes the most daunting and difficult task can simply ebb away and turn out to be nothing more than a thing that just needed to be done. So finding, upon the reliable research carried out by Yanosh on his behalf there and then, that snowflake collecting was ‘really easy’ came, to The Snowflake Collector, as a relief, and as confirmation – though no such confirmation was needed – that he was on the right track, that he had found his calling, that the universe, at least this universe that he believed himself to be part of at this moment, was welcoming him into – perhaps even bestowing upon him – this role, and since he had already determined, as irrevocably as could reasonably, or even quite unreasonably be maintained, to be The Snowflake Collector, this meant that he and the universe were not now at odds but were in tune with each other, and for that thought alone, The Snowflake Collector felt immeasurably relieved but also grateful and calm, almost happy, though he did not, by and large, entertain any notion of, or great desire for, ‘happiness’, finding it to be so very unreliable and unsound a concept, but certainly, and this was the realisation that cheered him so greatly, at one with the universe. Had he not longed so long just for that, to be at one with the universe.

1 Juice

Of course, I think, for a moment, he didn’t actually say that, I just heard that, I just imagined him saying that, I just made that up, because I think it would be interesting. Or would it?

I realise I need to press pause. But he looks at me with this frankness, still, with this openness. If only I could remember meeting me then, then it might make more sense for him to be saying he imagines himself meeting me now. Or was it a joke? I don’t remember being much given to jokes. I don’t think I was humourless, though I was, undoubtedly, earnest.

I need to press pause, metaphorically, on these ‘proceedings’ (they’re not really going anywhere fast) and allow myself to remember what mattered. And what didn’t. Before I say anything more. But can I leave him just hanging there, here right in front of me? I can’t. Can I just ignore what he’d said as if he hadn’t said it and I had just imagined him saying it? I could, but that might be rude, and rudeness is unacceptable, therefore I can’t. Can I ask him if he really meant that, if he actually knows who I am? Well, I can, but say he doesn’t know who I am, say it was just a throwaway remark, say it was just me being a little bit clever, a tiny tad ‘interesting’, at the age of twenty, twenty-one, then how do I explain to him what I mean, without disturbing his own reality? Is his reality not already disturbed? Mine certainly is. But then I also realise I’m suddenly rather enjoying this. Up until almost this precise moment I had been greatly discomfited, not in a profoundly stressed or let alone panicked manner, just really, really unsure of what on earth was going on, but now, maybe jolted by his answer I feel I’ve just come up for air. I can float in this sea of uncertainty now. Accept it for what it is, even not knowing what it is. That, it strikes me as suddenly obvious, will have to somehow become my new state of being, for quite some time.

I give him a smile that says ‘I do understand’, although clearly I don’t, and enquire just a nudge further: ‘I mean in life, what do you see yourself doing?’

His skin is incredibly smooth. I don’t recall touching my skin when it was that smooth, that soft. I don’t feel like touching it now though I do wish I could hold him, just to make him feel safe. Then again, I have rarely if ever not felt safe at that age and seeing that this is me not some stranger – although for all I know about him or of him, he might as well be an alien – I just look at him, look at me. ‘You’re a writer.’ I say not questioning, stating.

‘I am,’ he says, happy, it seems, that this is so clear; though: ‘how did you guess?’

Ah. That turns everything round once again. He doesn’t know who I am. How could he, in his life I don’t yet exist, other than perhaps in his imagination but then I remember that at his age I was certain – not vaguely inclined to believe, but convinced – that I would never make it to forty. I had said so, to my best friend, Patricia: she was appalled. ‘How can you say a thing like that?’ she’d exclaimed upon my assertion, aged nineteen or twenty, that I would not make it to forty. But I saw no reason to be scandalised: for me, aged nineteen or twenty, the idea alone of ever being as ancient as forty was simply absurd. Surely everything, anything, worthwhile experiencing, doing, saying or, for that matter, writing, would have been experienced, done, said and most certainly written by then.

I have already outlived my early target by some ten years and I know now of course that he can’t know who I am because he doesn’t believe that I will ever exist. Not because he’s being obstreperous or deliberately controversial or simply obtuse, but because he can’t actually imagine it.

This is my chance, this is my opportunity for a pause: if I can make him think then I’ll get the time to think too. There must be, there must be a link between him and me.

‘I saw your notepad and pen,’ I say, playing the I’m an observer card.

He now for the second time does something that moves me, he shows me the pad. I take that, before I can think it through, as a signal of trust. And I read. As I read, I remember well having written those words. I have my pause button. I have a clasp on my heart. I have left the dimensions I was travelling through to get here. I can, at last, reconcile.

.

.

i should point out

that i’m not real

the

juice

that courses through my body

is not

squeezed

by ordinary means

i want to know how things happen.

i want to know how it happens that you see somebody

not even meet them

see somebody

from a distance

enter a room, for example

and think

you don’t

think, you go

yes

that’s him

that’s

the one

(even though

it will turn out

it isn’t)

how does this happen

it’s ludicrous

you don’t even know him:

it is

insane

i

undress him in my mind, imagine him

naked.

i don’t do this immediately

it’s not something i

jump to

like a conclusion

it’s something i resist for a moment

then for another

and for another

until enough moments have passed

an hour or so later, maybe two (sometimes

a whole day or more may pass before i feel it is

acceptable

before i feel ready) to imagine him

naked. i

touch

his body in my mind, his

chest, my

extended fingers spread, gently, run

over the mound of his biceps:

delectable

my

other hand now cups around his waist, just above his

hip

and draws him a little closer, close enough that i can

when i lower my head

just a little

inhale

the scent of his

body

musk with a warm sweet sweat of

excitement

i

zonk out of it

just in time: i don’t want him

there yet

not yet we have not even yet said

hello.

71410201 Autumn

‘It is very nice, this nice weather we’re having,’ Sedartis agrees, ‘but it is also a burden.’

‘How is it a burden?’ I ask, although I feel I know the answer already.

‘It is also a burden because it insists on our enjoyment of it. If it were raining, or grey and drizzly, or at the very least cloudy and disagreeably damp, we would both be happiest sitting indoors and doing some work on the computer or listening to some music or having a nap or watching a documentary we had recorded several months ago and never got around to catch up with or play the guitar and badly sing an old song. We would be immensely, deeply content doing so and in the process get some of the things done we’d been meaning to do for a while. Instead, we have to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. Or go for a walk. We go for long walks anyway, we know there is nothing wrong with long walks, quite the opposite, we love our long walks in any weather, but with this very nice sunshine comes a faint sense of obligation. It would be a terrible waste of a beautiful day to be locked inside and not be happy, but the effort of being happy can be too much. Sometimes it is really more pleasant to just be moderately gruntled and steep in the comfortable, undemanding moistness of misery that comes with being English in England. The stridency of happiness is unbecoming to us and thus also a bit of a burden.’

I know he’s right though I will him to be wrong and I close my eyes and inhale the neither warm nor cold air. The city is in constant, fuel-driven agitation: cars and lorries and aeroplanes and buses and ambulances. Always, always the ambulances.

I like the sun on my skin and the heat that expands under my cheekbones. I enjoy enjoying the weather, burdensome as it may be…

A big fat cloud starts wandering across the sun and immediately the air feels a little cooler, though not quite yet chilly. I open my eyes and see: it will pass.

I like autumn, though it signify decay. This year, I’ve chosen to stay in London rather than go away. I like London, I love London. It troubles me, right at the moment, as there is too much cold money flowing in that doesn’t do anything other than stifle the cracks that before let the light shine through, and it threatens to deaden the life that makes London unruly, infuriating, adorable, quirky, insane, but still I love it, because I know this siege, too, will be withstood; like the small feeble cloud across my sun this very minute, it will pass, and ere long. I have an old-fashioned, daily rejuvenated love affair with ten million people, with more history than I know to make sense of and a generous, rebellious, untameable heart.

I sense there is a change in the air and I know the change will need to be profound.

Sedartis nods in agreement and some slight tingle of anticipation; I close my eyes again and take it all in while it lasts…

The Snowflake Collector – 3: ‘I Need to Know How to Collect Snowflakes’

While he knew well how to craft wooden cases, and for these wooden cases build sturdy boxes and for the sturdy boxes – many as there would be – construct a formidable shed, and had the tools in his hut and the fir trees on his land by the stream to make all this, and while he also possessed an old diamond glass cutter and knew where to find good flat solid glass which to cut into precisely dimensioned plates of three inches by one, over time in very large numbers, The Snowflake Collector did not know how to collect snowflakes.

He had never before given any thought to the possibility that he might one day determine to collect snowflakes and thus become The Snowflake Collector, but now that he had done so – as certain and as irrevocable as if it had been set in stone, and yet, of course, from a wider, much longer perspective, as transient too – he felt compelled to research the matter, in detail.

It would have appealed to his great sense of distance and isolated remoteness, which he so had sought out and which he so cherished, to undertake a long journey into the valley and from there take the yellow bus to the very small town and from there take a little red train to the nearest small city and from there a bigger and faster and greener or whiter train to the bigger (though still fairly small) city and there go to the large stately library kept by the university and ask the bespectacled and certainly not hostile but perhaps slightly weary librarian for a book on Snowflake Collecting, but he also felt and knew that that was an unnecessary and therefore wasteful exertion and an excursion that entailed the expense of time and resources, and while he did not believe that time was something that could really be expended any more than it could be kept in a jar, he nevertheless found the whim that propelled him from his valley and into the big (though not very big) city to be overpowered, readily, easily, by the comfort and safety of his mountains.

So, instead, he walked down to the inn, an hour or so from his hut, in the outpost hamlet some few miles from the village and there he was greeted with a smile by Yolanda, the waitress from the Ukraine. Yolanda had come from the Ukraine to find work here as a waitress and she liked the landlord, because the landlord was not interested in her, he mostly spent time with his mostly young friends. Like everyone else, Yolanda knew The Snowflake Collector, although she, like everyone else, did not know yet that that’s who he was. She greeted him and started pulling a dark ale for him because in all the years she’d known (or thought that she’d known) him (for nobody really knew him at all), he had never wanted anything other than a dark ale from the tap.

‘Is Yanosh around?’ he asked her, having thanked her, as she brought the heavy beaker over to him, at the table in the corner with a small view out of the square window onto the very brown cows in the distance on some meadow.

‘He is, I can call him for you if you like?’

‘When he’s not busy.’

He knew that Yanosh would not be busy now, because Yanosh was Yolanda’s son of about fifteen and he didn’t like his peers down in the village too much, so he mainly kept himself to himself in his room, playing games on the computer or writing songs which he never played to anyone, or fantasising about travelling back in time or forward, or being naked with an actress he recently started to fancy.

Yanosh came down directly when his mother asked him if he would, because he liked The Snowflake Collector, and although he didn’t know yet that that’s who he was either, he, unlike almost anyone else in the world, sensed that he did know him a bit. They both knew each other, a bit. And they liked each other for knowing each other a bit, but not more, and for mainly leaving each other alone but when necessary being able to spend time in each other’s company without ever having to say a word or do anything.

Sometimes, when he felt particularly bored or lonely or uncertain why he was even here, or just wanted to be out of his room, but not anywhere where there were people, but also not anywhere where there were none, Yanosh would stomp up that same path that The Snowflake Collector had just come down now, and simply sit outside his hut, in the sun, or if there was no sun, then in the rain. It didn’t matter to Yanosh whether there was sunshine or rain, or no rain but clouds: he liked sitting outside The Snowflake Collector’s hut, because here he could sit in absolute peace and with no demands being made on him, and simply watch the world go by, which it didn’t, up here, because up here, the world stood pretty much still; but Yanosh, much as The Snowflake Collector, knew of course that nothing stood still, that everything was in motion, always, and while Yanosh did not find this either disconcerting or comforting – he had little need, in his life, yet, for disconcertion or comfort – he nevertheless found it soothing, and sometimes The Snowflake Collector would already be sitting there too and they would nod at each other and perhaps even mutter ‘hello’, though with hardly any tone to their voice at all, and then sit there, and sometimes The Snowflake Collector would not be around but would find him there and join him and they would similarly nod at each other or, not expending any unnecessary breath on words, perhaps mutter ‘hello’, perhaps not even that, but sit there in great silence, which they both so greatly appreciated, Yanosh quite as much as The Snowflake Collector.

Over the years that Yanosh had come to sit with The Snowflake Collector, there would have been the occasional conversation, sometimes perhaps inside the hut, over a glass of Chrüterschnapps or with a slice of Bündnerfleisch, and so The Snowflake Collector knew that if he ever was in need of any information at all, the person to ask was Yanosh, because Yanosh spent most of his waking hours – when he wasn’t sitting with him here in front of his hut or in his very small kitchen – on his smartphone or his computer and he therefore had access, any time night or day, to all the knowledge in the world, if perhaps not all its wisdom.

Yanosh sat down and they nodded at each other their familiar nod that did not demand any words and The Snowflake Collector said, to the querying glance of the youth, who in spite of his pain never once betrayed any sorrow:

‘I need to know how to collect snowflakes.’

The Snowflake Collector [Further Continued]

While he knew well how to craft wooden cases, and for these wooden cases build sturdy boxes and for the sturdy boxes – many as there would be – construct a formidable shed, and had the tools in his hut and the fir trees on his land by the stream to make all this, and while he also possessed an old diamond glass cutter and knew where to find good flat solid glass which to cut into precisely dimensioned plates of three inches by one, over time in very large numbers, The Snowflake Collector did not know how to collect snowflakes.

He had never before given any thought to the possibility that he might one day determine to collect snowflakes and thus become The Snowflake Collector, but now that he had done so – as certain and as irrevocable as if it had been set in stone, and yet, of course, from a wider, much longer perspective, as transient too – he felt compelled to research the matter, in detail.

It would have appealed to his great sense of distance and isolated remoteness, which he so had sought out and which he so cherished, to undertake a long journey into the valley and from there take the yellow bus to the very small town and from there take a little red train to the nearest small city and from there a bigger and faster and greener or whiter train to the bigger (though still fairly small) city and there go to the large stately library kept by the university and ask the bespectacled and certainly not hostile but perhaps slightly weary librarian for a book on Snowflake Collecting, but he also felt and knew that that was an unnecessary and therefore wasteful exertion and an excursion that entailed the expense of time and resources, and while he did not believe that time was something that could really be expended any more than it could be kept in a jar, he nevertheless found the whim that propelled him from his valley and into the big (though not very big) city to be overpowered, readily, easily, by the comfort and safety of his mountains.

So, instead, he walked down to the inn, an hour or so from his hut, in the outpost hamlet some few miles from the village and there he was greeted with a smile by Yolanda, the waitress from the Ukraine. Yolanda had come from the Ukraine to find work here as a waitress and she liked the landlord, because the landlord was not interested in her, he mostly spent time with his mostly young friends. Like everyone else, Yolanda knew The Snowflake Collector, although she, like everyone else, did not know yet that that’s who he was. She greeted him and started pulling a dark ale for him because in all the years she’d known (or thought that she’d known) him (for nobody really knew him at all), he had never wanted anything other than a dark ale from the tap.

‘Is Yanosh around?’ he asked her, having thanked her, as she brought the heavy beaker over to him, at the table in the corner with a small view out of the square window onto the very brown cows in the distance on some meadow.

‘He is, I can call him for you if you like?’

‘When he’s not busy.’

He knew that Yanosh would not be busy now, because Yanosh was Yolanda’s son of about fifteen and he didn’t like his peers down in the village too much, so he mainly kept himself to himself in his room, playing games on the computer or writing songs which he never played to anyone, or fantasising about travelling back in time or forward, or being naked with an actress he recently started to fancy.

Yanosh came down directly when his mother asked him if he would, because he liked The Snowflake Collector, and although he didn’t know yet that that’s who he was either, he, unlike almost anyone else in the world, sensed that he did know him a bit. They both knew each other, a bit. And they liked each other for knowing each other a bit, but not more, and for mainly leaving each other alone but when necessary being able to spend time in each other’s company without ever having to say a word or do anything.

Sometimes, when he felt particularly bored or lonely or uncertain why he was even here, or just wanted to be out of his room, but not anywhere where there were people, but also not anywhere where there were none, Yanosh would stomp up that same path that The Snowflake Collector had just come down now, and simply sit outside his hut, in the sun, or if there was no sun, then in the rain. It didn’t matter to Yanosh whether there was sunshine or rain, or no rain but clouds: he liked sitting outside The Snowflake Collector’s hut, because here he could sit in absolute peace and with no demands being made on him, and simply watch the world go by, which it didn’t, up here, because up here, the world stood pretty much still; but Yanosh, much as The Snowflake Collector, knew of course that nothing stood still, that everything was in motion, always, and while Yanosh did not find this either disconcerting or comforting – he had little need, in his life, yet, for disconcertion or comfort – he nevertheless found it soothing, and sometimes The Snowflake Collector would already be sitting there too and they would nod at each other and perhaps even mutter ‘hello’, though with hardly any tone to their voice at all, and then sit there, and sometimes The Snowflake Collector would not be around but would find him there and join him and they would similarly nod at each other or, not expending any unnecessary breath on words, perhaps mutter ‘hello’, perhaps not even that, but sit there in great silence, which they both so greatly appreciated, Yanosh quite as much as The Snowflake Collector.

Over the years that Yanosh had come to sit with The Snowflake Collector, there would have been the occasional conversation, sometimes perhaps inside the hut, over a glass of Chrüterschnapps or with a slice of Bündnerfleisch, and so The Snowflake Collector knew that if he ever was in need of any information at all, the person to ask was Yanosh, because Yanosh spent most of his waking hours – when he wasn’t sitting with him here in front of his hut or in his very small kitchen – on his smartphone or his computer and he therefore had access, any time night or day, to all the knowledge in the world, if perhaps not all of its wisdom.

Yanosh sat down and they nodded at each other their familiar nod that did not demand any words and The Snowflake Collector said, to the querying glance of the youth, who in spite of his pain never once betrayed any sorrow:

‘I need to know how to collect snowflakes.’

12 The Sultaness (Revisited)

She doesn’t leave me alone, this woman, plausibly because she’s so womanly. With a regrettable paucity of experience, I retain an abstract notion at best of what Woman is. Or Man, coming to think of it. In all likelihood and compared to most, I retain a largely abstract notion of what anyone is. Are we human? Or are we dancer.

I imagine her on a mountain of cushions, brushing her hair. A dwarf eunuch wafting air upon her with a Pergamon fan. As I enter the room – is it a hall, a tent, a boudoir? – she looks up at me with an aloofness that is both superior and benign. She doesn’t know who I am, and neither do I, although she has spoken to me already, in mysterious ways.

Woven into the pillows are the sorrows and tears of the virgins that were slaughtered in vain and the hopes and aspirations of their betrothed princes, kept and murdered as slaves. I hear the din of the bazar and I smell its scents which are, as expected, exotic and I hear the muezzin’s adhan. This call I heed, though I am not a believer, and leave her waiting, once more. She knows, and stifles a yawn, but inwardly she delights.

It occurs to me that it does not matter. It matters not why The Sultaness has taken up residence in my mind any more than it matters why I have come to Istanbul to encounter my thirty-years younger self. It matters not that I make no sense to myself at the moment and it matters not that looking at George here who is me at the age of about twenty, I can’t be in Kingston-upon-Thames at the same time, and it never ever mattered what I was going to go there for in the first place; or second, or third.

What matters is just that I don’t get these next fifty seconds wrong. If I don’t come up with a question that has at least some weight, some inquisitive purpose to it, he’ll not only think me lame but he’ll be bound to query my motives. And although I know and remember myself as someone who will for as long as possible give anyone the benefit of the doubt, I also know that once that bond of trust is broken it cannot be repaired, not easily; maybe never. I don’t want to let myself down.

And so asking him how he is doing, or where he is from, or what he makes of this city, or where he is headed next, or how he enjoys his Mojito, none of these will do (although I am in fact interested to know how his Interrail trip ended up landing him here on the outside edge of Europe, and what might have happened to his friend, and which friend it was, since I clearly would know him; but that also holds me at bay: I should not enquire about our mutual friend, as that would very obviously demand some explanation). Nor do I want to ask him some random question, such as what is the meaning of life, or pretend that there is some information he has that I need to know, or anything utilitarian, like where is a good place to eat. (Besides, we are at a good place to eat already and I know we both are creatures of habit, so unnecessarily asking for a different one would make me sound either disingenuous or stupid.)

I wait until he has taken another sip from his cocktail – only now does it really occur to me that’s what we are doing: drinking cocktails – and ask him, ‘where do you imagine yourself in, say, 30 years from today.’

No sooner have I spoken these words than I realise just how absurd this is: thirty years from now I’ll be eighty and he will be fifty; what is he supposed to answer? Will thirty years from now be thirty years down his timeline, or mine? And won’t that depend on how the next fifty seconds, and then fifty minutes and maybe then fifty hours pan out?

I sense that my reality is about to implode, when he does something unexpected. Having been him, it shouldn’t come unexpected to me; having been him I should have seen this coming, in a more normal situation perhaps even remembered, but he nevertheless catches me out and fairly floors me:

‘Here,’ he says, laconic and calm, with his innocence and nascent wisdom and a curious sparkle in his eye, ‘talking to you.’

3094 Lesson

What, I wonder to myself in a borderline self-indulgent manner which brings to mind Morrissey, complete with a hint of a whine, as I sit by another lake, this time the almost too picturesque, too pristine waterside of Windermere: if life suddenly became real? Would I recognise most of it, still?

I had not intended to involve Sedartis in this query, but since joining me on a train from a small town outside Zürich towards Chur, he has never entirely left my side and he has honed to an art the disconcerting skill of hearing my thoughts before I’ve had a chance to formulate them, and responding in kind: he never says a word, yet his pronouncements are crystal clear.

I’m not sure I like this about Sedartis. His clarity. His straightforwardness. His uncreconstructed linearity. Aren’t we supposed to have moved into The Age of Diffusion. Of vulnerabilities and fluidity, of connectedness, in all directions, of openness and of infinite potentialities? I probably don’t understand him, yet.

If I had a life, I would be that much happier sharing it, I surmise, almost as an afterthought, and Sedartis now latches onto me.

‘Liberate yourself,’ he urges, ‘from the Tyranny of Opinion. Yours and other people’s.’

The expression on my face betrays doubt continued.

‘Banish that.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t banish doubt, of course,’ says Sedartis, as if that were a preposterous idea, though he himself comes over so doubtless: ‘and make allowance for their doubting too, but banish weariness and eagerness to please. You had it once, don’t you recall: the freshness of thought, the arrogance of youth, the Wonder of the New.’

There are a lot of capitalisations, all of a sudden. But I do remember, I remember it fondly and well, but was I not, I also wonder, also just blind to my own …Inadequacies?

(And now italics, as well…)

‘Of course you were! Therein lay your Power. Remember Goethe, remember Boldness, remember Genius.’

I do. I remember Goethe; he is, unsurprisingly, indelibly ingrained in me.

Sedartis, I realise, is nowhere near as mild-mannered as I believed I had reason to expect him to be. He reminds me of someone I know – not just a literary figure I have a sense I’m confusing him with, but someone I have actually met – but he’s too fast for me, I get no respite from him; not at this moment, yet he counsels patience:

‘Learn to distinguish between those who know what they’re talking about and those who just talk. Listen out for the quiet voices, the tender, the considered, thought-through ones. Those with nothing to say shout loudest. You live in a terrible, terrible din. Find the dial and tune out of the noise. Listen for the Gentle Song of Truth, it always, always plays, it never dies.’

I want to, I do.

‘Opinion is cheap. And instant opinion may well be worthless. If you, or the person you’re listening to, hasn’t had time to reflect, has not expended thought, has not at least slept on their ukase then you are ill advised: heed it not. Demand earnest discourse. Reject quick fixes as you scorn fast food. You would not stuff your face with salt-fat-sugar bombs from a garish-liveried American chain. Why do you allow your brain to be poisoned by rash judgments, soundbites and rushed ratings? Insight and wisdom are dear, they are earnt. They weigh with value. Everything else is just froth.’

I get the feeling I’m being lectured to by Sedartis and having never suffered being told what to do, my porcupine prickle stirs under my skin. His unvoiced tone changes. He is with me, he tells me, not against:

‘Experience everything new. You once knew how to, you still know now. Free yourself from the familiar and delve into the exhilarating fear of the unknown.’

‘It’s hard, that,’ I offer, all too feebly, ‘pulling yourself up, again and again, summoning the strength, expending the effort, over and over, from scratch…’

‘Of course it is,’ says Sedartis, laconic and suddenly severe: ‘if it were easy it too would be froth, but:’ I don’t want to hear any more, I’m a little sad now and somewhat dejected. Sedartis pays no attention to my discomfort: ‘the universe gives each of us the challenges we need to grow.’

11 Death (Imagined)

I noticed I was dead when I saw myself lying dead in my bed; looking down on myself from a great height: there I was. Gone. A lifelong flirtation with significance, over. And nothing dreadful in consequence. No pain, no loss, no uncertainty. Just the remorseless ease of an expired existence. Of almost failure. Of having nearly been. Something or other. Someone? Then I woke up and realised that it had been a dream. I don’t like to say ‘only’, but it had been ‘only’ a dream. I had dreamt my self dead. What new joys. Wait on me.

It’s hard now to say what perplexed me more. Being dead (in my dream), or being alive (after all). But finding myself thus among the quick in a hitherto slow existence, I believed I had heard, and was minded to heed, a call for action: I got out of bed and made coffee.

Mug in hand I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, naked. I do that a lot these days, I examine my body. I marvel at it, not admiringly: bemused. I don’t look for blemishes or signs of decay, I look for signs of familiarity; for something that says: this is you. I don’t find it. The person standing naked in the mirror in front of me could be anybody. It’s not that I’m alien to myself or strange, just: unfamiliar. I’m roughly fifty and not beautiful. What I marvel at is not beauty. What I marvel at is the fact that I don’t recognise myself in the shape I’ve become. I’m not even unattractive. In fact, I may be more attractive now than I’ve ever been. And I’m not even sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not sure it’s a thing. Any more. ‘Attractive.’ To what and to whom and to what end. Nevertheless, I’m a little alarmed because it seems late in the day to suddenly start feeling attractive. Alarmed but a little reassured too, because perhaps it just means I’m not over the hill. What is the hill? Going down is supposed to be easier than going up. What ride am I in for? Now?

Mug in hand I stand in front of the mirror naked, looking for signs of familiarity. The eyes maybe. Or the nose. Maybe the lips. I’m stubbly and I like it. There. That’s something to hold on to: seeing as it is that I’m alive there’s one thing that I’m happy with and that’s worth holding on to: my stubble.

I remind myself I am sitting opposite my young self and I had promised my young self – not so much promised, perhaps, as enticed him over by means of the prospect of – a question. My mind goes blank. The memory of imagining my own death, even just as a dream, and the image of my standing in front of the mirror naked, mug in hand, and content that I have inexplicably become ‘attractive’, possibly owing to stubble (which has since grown somewhat into a near-mature beard) sends a shudder down my spine and I put down my Mojito too firmly.

‘George,’ I say, sensing that something – anything – is required from me at this point, ‘what are you doing in Istanbul?’

This is not, obviously, the question I’d had in mind for him, but then I can’t begin to conceive of what question I might have had in mind for him, and since it’s a question that is playing on my mind about myself (what am I doing in Istanbul?) I feel it is pertinent, or if not pertinent then perhaps justified, or if not justified then at least maybe useful, useful in as much at least as it might open the conversation and at this point in the proceedings (are these ‘proceedings’, and if so what are they?) I yearn for a touch of conversation.

I startle myself at realising I also yearn for a touch, his touch, any touch, some contact beyond verbal, visual, aural, and I want to place my hand over his in a fatherly gesture. I don’t. But there are now two versions of us sitting at this table in the garden of the Limonlu Bahçe: one, the ‘real’ one, in which he still holds his glass in both his hands and has his eyes not exactly fixed but nevertheless on it, whereas I look at him in my ongoing state of bewilderment, and one, the ‘imagined’ one in my mind where he has put down his glass and I have cupped my left hand over both his hands and I look him in the eyes and he looks back into mine.

‘Not exactly sure,’ he says – in one version examining the glass in his hands and twisting it slightly, in the other holding my gaze with a blend of confidence and the uncertainty his words imply – ‘I was doing Interrail with a friend, I had no intention of coming here really, but maybe circumstances conspired…’

I know at once that they did, even though I still don’t remember this scene from my past, and I am immeasurably relieved; he is, although he doesn’t know it, similarly displaced from his own reality: we are on the same page, more or less.

I imagine squeezing his hand and cupping my right hand around his neck and pulling him close so he can rest his head for a while on my shoulder, but instead I pick up my glass and lift it up to him and say, as if I had any authority to do so: ‘welcome to Istanbul,’ to which, in both versions, he too raises his glass and clinks it with mine and once again gamely says: ‘welcome to Istanbul.’

The Snowflake Collector – 2: His Task Would Be Immense

At first he didn’t know how to collect snowflakes; he did not even know whether it was possible to do so at all. All he knew was that if he were able to preserve and collect snowflakes then he would have something meaningful to do for the rest of his days, because there would never come a day when he would chance upon a snowflake that would be identical to any he already had in his collection and so his collection would never be complete.

This, he also already knew, would be both infuriating and soothing. There would be times when he would feel like throwing out all the carefully crafted wooden cases, into which would slide all the cautiously cut plates of glass, upon which would rest – for the relative eternity of any civilisation existing to be appreciative, even just conscious of them – the snowflakes in their time-frozen state, and burning the lot in a bonfire. But he would not do so, he was certain, for deep down he knew how precious his collection would become, and how singular, how unique.

The wood for the carefully crafted cases would come from the firs on his land by the stream. Since he heated his hut in the cold months with wood from his land by the stream, he planted two young firs to replace each mature one he cut down, and this way, he thought, the balance in the valley (and therefore in the universe) would stay intact, even tilt a little in favour of trees, with his presence.

He knew well how to craft wooden cases, even intricate ones as these would undoubtedly have to be, because they would need to have slits in them at regular gaps that were just so spaced and so fashioned that a small plate of glass, in size about one inch by three, would slide easily in and out of the case, but stay firmly in place once stowed. The cases would have to be sturdy and each have a handle so they in turn could slide effortlessly – apart from their weight, which would be considerable – in and out of a larger box, and this larger box would need to be stackable, because he knew that over time he would collect snowflakes enough to fill many of them. He would have to, he realised, build a shed. And he would build that shed from the same fir trees that stood on his land by the stream.

It was clear to him now that his task would be immense. Because not only would he have to carefully craft wooden cases and for these wooden cases strong wooden boxes, and for these boxes a formidable shed, he would have to cut glass into regular plates, one inch by three, on which he would capture the snowflakes. And he would have to catalogue them. He felt unsure about how to catalogue snowflakes, since he had no experience or expertise in this, but as with most things that he had ever attempted in his life, he also thought that he would find a way. What didn’t appeal to him was the thought of giving his snowflakes numbers. Numbers, he felt, when they are not being used for elegant thinking, are not poetic, certainly not poetic enough to record snowflakes. No, he was sure, from the first moment, even before he had gone out to collect his first snowflake, that he would have to name them. And since each snowflake would – as he knew and as everyone knows – be different, he would just have to find a specific name for each one.

As he sat down, that evening, outside his hut, having so made his decision to collect the snowflakes – not all of them, obviously, only some – and contemplated the great task ahead of him and the tremendous delight in not knowing which snowflakes he would catch and collect and which snowflakes would elude him, and therefore what names he would have to find for the snowflakes that he would keep, he felt a deep glow of happiness fill his heart; this is who I shall become, he thought to himself: The Snowflake Collector.

The Snowflake Collector [Continued]

At first he didn’t know how to collect snowflakes; he did not even know whether it was possible to do so at all. All he knew was that if he were able to preserve and collect snowflakes then he would have something meaningful to do for the rest of his days, because there would never come a day when he would chance upon a snowflake that would be identical to any he already had in his collection and so his collection would never be complete.

This, he also already knew, would be both infuriating and soothing. There would be times when he would feel like throwing out all the carefully crafted wooden cases, into which would slide all the cautiously cut plates of glass, upon which would rest – for the relative eternity of any civilisation existing to be appreciative, even just conscious of them – the snowflakes in their time-frozen state, and burning the lot in a bonfire. But he would not do so, he was certain, for deep down he knew how precious his collection would become, and how singular, how unique.

The wood for the carefully crafted cases would come from the firs on his land by the stream. Since he heated his hut in the cold months with wood from his land by the stream, he planted two young firs to replace each mature one he cut down, and this way, he thought, the balance in the valley (and therefore in the universe) would stay intact, even tilt a little in favour of trees, with his presence.

He knew well how to craft wooden cases, even intricate ones as these would undoubtedly have to be, because they would need to have slits in them at regular gaps that were just so spaced and so fashioned that a small plate of glass, in size about one inch by three, would slide easily in and out of the case, but stay firmly in place once stowed. The cases would have to be sturdy and each have a handle so they in turn could slide effortlessly – apart from their weight, which would be considerable – in and out of a larger box, and this larger box would need to be stackable, because he knew that over time he would collect snowflakes enough to fill many of them. He would have to, he realised, build a shed. And he would build that shed from the same fir trees that stood on his land by the stream.

It was clear to him now that his task would be immense. Because not only would he have to carefully craft wooden cases and for these wooden cases strong wooden boxes, and for these boxes a formidable shed, he would have to cut glass into regular plates, one inch by three, on which he would capture the snowflakes. And he would have to catalogue them. He felt unsure about how to catalogue snowflakes, since he had no experience or expertise in this, but as with most things that he had ever attempted in his life, he also thought that he would find a way. What didn’t appeal to him was the thought of giving his snowflakes numbers. Numbers, he felt, when they are not being used for elegant thinking, are not poetic, certainly not poetic enough to record snowflakes. No, he was sure, from the first moment, even before he had gone out to collect his first snowflake, that he would have to name them. And since each snowflake would – as he knew and as everyone knows – be different, he would just have to find a specific name for each one.

As he sat down, that evening, outside his hut, having so made his decision to collect the snowflakes – not all of them, obviously, only some – and contemplated the great task ahead of him and the tremendous delight in not knowing which snowflakes he would catch and collect and which snowflakes would elude him, and therefore what names he would have to find for the snowflakes he would keep, he felt a deep glow of happiness fill his heart; this is who I shall become, he thought to himself: The Snowflake Collector.